Man in Overalls

Time to put on your overalls. If you've been waiting for a good opportunity to start growing food, now's the time. If you already know how, it's time you started extra seeds so you can get them to friends, family, neighbors, and strangers. And it's time you start posting and otherwise sharing your grocery growing hacks with anyone interested. Right now, food shortages are largely a phantom of over-buying and everyone stocking up, but with the spread of this disease, a decentralized food system is a resilient food system, a disease resistant food system. Not even in the aftermath of 2008 has a home garden looked so good. Not to mention, in the face of disease, health is paramount. My co-worker said, "What's terrifying and yet strangely beautiful about the current situation is that it reveals the amazing power of nature to grow and spread. But that same power is available to us"-- to heal, to grow, to feed. Time for us to grow a better future. In t...

“Why I Wear Overalls?”  or, more simply,  “Remember” 9. My grandfather was buried in overalls. His children placed seed packets in his breast pocket before they planted him. My mother, her bowed head dropping tears on his cold face, She tells me “He never wore a suit.” “Overalls everyday of his life.  Wore ‘em to church.” “Ain’t that the truth,” chimes my aunt.  “Clean shirt. Maybe some other shoes.” And my mother again: “Just didn’t make any sense burying him in a tie.” 8. Five days prior my grandmother was reselling Salvation Army china at the flea market. Granddaddy was waiting to go home. She found him slumped in the front seat of her van; Doctors said he’d had a stroke. I say, he caught a ride from St Peter back to the farm. 7. For decades he carried an inhaler. It helped him cope with the emphysema, earned, like his calluses, from a one-mule plow.  He carried the land in his lungs like gulps of oxygen. Every now and then, he r...