 I was fascinated to read in Do Good Lives Have To Cost the Earth? that the Victorians calculated that the average 12th century peasants only needed to work fifteen weeks a year to earn enough money to survive for that year. The rest of the time was theirs to grow vegetables, practise crafts and live their lives in the slow lane. By 1564, it was forty weeks.
Compare our households today, in which the average family needs two incomes to pay the bills and there is barely the time and energy for anything else. My house is no different. My partner Tim and I both work full time – though admittedly we love our work – but we manage to squeeze in as much outdoor time as possible and enjoy every moment spent gardening and walking away from the ubiquitous computer.
The Enlivening of the Earth
The early Spring brings a special kind of joy. As the weather warms we cut back the laid hedge in the garden before the birds start to nest in its tightly knit branches and prune our fruit trees before the buds blossom. We have even been getting up a little earlier on weekday mornings for an ‘organic workout’, walking to a nearby stable yard to barrow manure back to the raised beds in our vegetable garden.
Seeing the patterns in frost covered grass, watching the birds beginning their pre-mating dances and being part of the enlivening of the Earth is a simple yet potent pleasure. We feel part of the seasonal cycle of reconnection with the Earth after the dark and introspection of winter. There’s nothing like the zing of early morning Spring air!
Working with plants and the soil is very sane and grounding, and planning future crops induces a sense of well-being – it’s like visualising the coming good times. I like the fact that living in a connected and green way can be achieved anywhere. It may seem easier in the countryside but we don’t need a large smallholding to garden at all. Suburban gardens, city allotments and parks offer a natural reservoir too and even an apartment balcony or indoor garden can provide solace – take a look at my desk at work!
Despite the rigours of family life and full-time work, we can connect to the cycles of nature and learn to live more in the flow of life. It is too easy to think that we can’t do something because our circumstances aren’t ‘right’ and to look outside ourselves for a culprit to blame for preventing us living our lives as we think we should. But we really can’t wait that long, we need to live it now, wherever we are.
The Unbroken Thread
Living green doesn’t mean we all have to buy a smallholding and move to the Celtic fringes either, however attractive that may seem. We can appreciate the qualities of nature, nurture and the coming of spring anywhere, even in the middle of the city.
My friend and permaculture teacher and author, Patrick Whitefield, speaks about this attitude to life beautifully when he talks about whether humanity will succeed in reversing climate change in time.
He says, ‘The important question to me is how I want to live my life. When I ask myself that question I physically feel the force of life within me, that force which forms an unbroken thread from the first cell that budded into life billions of years ago. I don’t want to break that thread. I don’t want to quietly accept that we’re living at the end of the World. I want to devote the years that are left to me on Earth to life rather than death.’ *
This moves me deeply as my personal aspiration is to live an ecologically benign and simple life. I believe that this is a genuinely spiritual approach; to live with the least impact yet the highest care of people and planet, growing food and communing with the seasons. And wherever we find ourselves, at work, at play, with our families and friends, we can aspire to live by these values and enrich ourselves profoundly in our deepening connection to the Earth.
©2008 Maddy Harland. Maddy is editor of Permaculture Magazine – solutions for sustainable living – now read in 77 countries.
Tel 01730 823311.
* From ‘Turning Down the Heat’, Permaculture Magazine no 55.
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