Farming my way back home

It feels like I was bucked by a horse.
My thighs are sore and I have this terrible wobble.
I was farming into the night yesterday: tearing up clods of earth with my jembe, creating borders, mounds and pits to plant our seedlings.
I was frustrated that we are buying greens, when we can put these seeds into the earth and have our own. I went hard. A bit too hard maybe.

I was thinking,
Funny, my primary occupation,is farmer, just like my grandfather in Kakamega.
I am in America, and i work the soil, love the soil, pray pon the soil, like my grandfather is doing now, thousands of miles away.
And wow!
So much for that $50,000 a year college Degree...(you can take the woman out the land, but you can't take that land out the ...)
I was thinking about how therapeutic plowing earth, pinching soil, tugging at weeds, and designing this paradise is.
How natural it feels.
How it teleports me back home.
How I am suddenly in conversation with my mum, her mum, her mum's mum and the dynasty of women whose blood, love, memory and energy runs through my veins.
Ashei.

I don't know much about where I am going (professionally), but I know that farming is fundamental. {growing food is ) as essential as drinking water. It should be as common a practice.

At the moment, we have spinach, lettuce, collards, kales, cabbages in already. Theres tonnes of other seedlings germinating in the greenhouse, just waiting to be grounded.The workload is mounting, but the weather will not give!!!

It snowed today. Too cold for a grind. I was all ready to get the work in but, by now you know I don't play with Michigan cold. Hellurrrr!

I started farming proper, 3 years ago, at lilac community gardens, a parcel of land donated by Michigan State University to the city's food bank. I started because Baba Chiengbeng signed up for a plot of land, while we were still in college, but before he could get into it, had to go to Florida for a summer Yoruba program. I was initially reluctant about the whole idea, especially since the plot was a significantly long walk from our apartment, but somebody needed to water the crops.

He was an Agribusiness major so the farming came naturally. It took a minute for me, but you know, once you start tending to the garden you can't stop. You stumble into loving before you know it, and I was there every evening, after my work shifts, hauling water in jugs and buckets from rainwater barrels and sometimes even a borehole several meters away from the garden.

Only pitch darkness sent me home...

Farming (in America) was always, for me, an opportunity to grow the kinds of foods my mum would cook, that I couldn't purchase in the store, or most certainly not expect to find in the college cafeteria.  I grew as many heritage crops as I could find with a vengeance. I grew a forest of black eyed peas at lilac, together with tomatoes, some other greens and pumpkins (malenge). Black eyed peas leaves are a delicacy in Western Kenya. Nyummmmz. Pumpkin leaves are delicious too, as are sweet potato leaves, African Spider Plant aka Saga, Huckleberry leaf aka Managu, nettle, and a few others I discovered and planted in Detroit.

Food is so important.

It is so powerful and healing.

Especially when you are far from 'home' and far from family and loved ones.

And then when you get into the soil, and start growing...you can't stop. It's exciting. It's intensive work- but its great work. It's not oppressive-work. It's loving work.

Today, as I am feeling my way through life, I am glad, excited, and affirming of the fact that I am continuing the work of many of my parents and ancestors. I am glad that I am touching the earth and swinging my jembe, and kneeling on this hallowed ground.

I am connecting dots.

I am understanding many things and accepting many things.

I am not alone.

I am not powerless.

I walk with thousands, and thousands, and thousands....

When I bend down and pray upon the earth, I call so many who have done so before me.

And when I lay that seed in that earth I lay it with love and say thank you. Grow well. And I lay it gracefully, make sure that it is comfortable, warm, cozy, and has access to all it needs, all that I can give, and all that I can not.

I praise the sun.
I praise the darkness.

I praise those that teach that we are all one, human and animal and plant and earth.
I praise those who teach that time is bending, is fluid, is malleable.
I praise those who liberate minds and spirits.

I pray for consciousness.
I pray for peace.
I pray for harmony
I pray for an end to the bullshit and the madness.
Whether it call itself capitalism, nationalism, tribalism, racism, sexism, colorism, religion, fiat money, corporatism, white-savior complex, white supremacy, (name that evil), (name that evil)

I pray for all of this and fling my hoe back onto the earth and keep on working.