Backyard Agrarian

Things are changing - you can see it everywhere.  71% of Americans living today will get cancer - an astoundingly higher number than ever before in the course of human history. 70% of Americans living today will die from a “food” related chronic illness like diabetes or obesity caused by eating food that is not actually food - poor quality food like substances and toxicly grown conventional foods.  You can feel it, and every day, you eat it. There are 80-90,000 untested toxic chemicals in the air, water, soil, the food we eat, the products we rub into our skin, the products we build and decorate our homes with, and in the toys our children play with. We come into contact with these every single day!  It is, in fact, impossible to live a clean, natural, wholly nontoxic life anymore.  But with some thought and foresight, it is possible to do better. It is possible to reverse the destructive course we are on that is making us all sick and killing the planet.   

In fact, if as humans, we have any survival instinct left, any hope for continued life and well-being, any desire to save ourselves and our planet, any wish to be healthy and happy and to see what this short chance at life could be in all its glory, now is the time to  rethink how we do things, what products we use, what companies we support and what sort of life we collectively live. Now is the time, as the first generation ever predicted to live shorter and sicker lives than their parents comes towards maturity, to clean ourselves up. Now is the time to transform the wasteful and poisonous American way of life which has developed out of a once self-sufficient people.  Now is the time to transform our culture into a healthier one.

It is important to first rethink our concept of “waste.”  A culture that shows the utter disregard for natural cycles of rejuvenation as we have done, and insists on creating products that quickly end up as “waste,” buried in toxic, sealed but eventually leaky landfills, or as atmospheric and water pollution - literally, throws away its future.  There is no “away.”  There is no, not in my backyard - we must come to understand that it is all our backyard.  Life builds upon life and when we insist upon throwing out the building blocks of life (food scraps, yard waste, cotton clothing, paper made of trees), we then have trouble.  When we pollute and toxify the remaining life, we have trouble.  How can life exist and continue to rumble on, if we poison it, kill it, tear it down, change it and bury it away.  Away, away.  Life is not something we should want to send away but something we should want to unleash and nourish.  What if we cared for every cell of every being on planet earth like it was our own?  Every cell that is connected through nature to every other cell. 

This idea that humans are somehow outside of the realm of nature causes trouble. Our culture has to embrace the not so radical notion that in fact, we are not outside of the realm of nature.  That in fact, we are nature and we utterly depend upon nature - very literally.  Every single bit of our own lives depend upon nature - food, water, air, soil, habitats, microbes, etcetera. 

We must create a society that does not produce waste.  A society that instead produces goods that can be evermore retooled, reused, and composted. Our society must create products that are clean in the manufacture and can be returned to their cradle. 

Bringing nature home, Backyard Agrarian works to bring about this retooling, this cleaner healthier culture, in our clients’ own backyards and in every facet of their lives. 

You may think you are just living, just going with the flow, but each action you take, each time you buy a toxic product you are contributing to the death of the world.  Each time you use that toxic product, rub it onto your skin, eat it, paint with it, throw it in the trash, you are contributing to your own death and illness. Together, your choices create the culture you live in.  Together, your community creates the culture you and your neighbors and their families live in.  And together, we can all make cleaner healthier truly natural choices, and transform our own health, and the health of our neighborhoods, our country and our planet. 

Now is the time to understand that environmentalism is not simply about the spotted owl or some other single and unconnected species. The environmental movement is about saving ourselves from the toxic soup being poured onto us, into our homes and into our common property - by ever-larger and less caring corporations and the governments that let them get away with murder.  It is about saving ourselves by saving the natural resources that continue nature’s rejuvenative processes upon which all life on earth depends - including human life and every-day well-being.

It is the job of Backyard Agrarians around the world to live cleaner, to transform culture and in so doing, to move away from the path we are on and towards a more vibrant, happy and healthy one. Backyard Agrarians return to the garden on a daily basis.  The garden is where one is refreshed, where one learns lessons about how life works, where one eats real food, where one makes plans and decisions and gains an understanding about how to live well. 

Only 1/4 of Americans say they are satisfied with their lives.  Living a life of total disconnection from your source, the source of life, nature, ecosystems, has made people depressed.  Americans have overwhelming feelings of disconnection and it is no wonder. Become a Backyard Agrarian and learn to change that! Learn to connect with your world - the real ecosystems of the world of which you are part. Both the psychic and physical damage of this disconnection can be reversed within your own body and self.  The process is twofold:  (1) Stop adding toxic soup to your physical self and (2) spend time in nature - learn how your garden works and make small but continuous adjustments to bring your life more in alignment with the lessons of your garden: the lessons of nature.   

America has lost over 50% of its original top soil - that soil which is the basis of life, of food production and of all earthly ecosystems.  Most people don’t have a way to connect to this information because most of us are not farmers or gardeners, but this fact is astonishing.  We have reached an epoch of peak soil, much like we have reached the era of peak oil.  We are, many say, in an era of peak everything - destructively using up the last of our resources just as we pollute and destroy nature to such a degree that it can no longer keep up with our taking. The difference though, is that we can actually survive just fine wihtout oil, but without soil, we are a doomed.

Soil should be treated, not like dirt, but like gold. Healthy soil holds massive amounts of organic matter, and is host to a teaming ecosystem of life.  It can can sequester and store massive amounts of carbon and help significantly reduce climate change when managed properly. Right now, soil stores 4 times the amount of carbon than is circulating in the atmosphere.  Poor soil practices like those practiced by non-organic farmers producing the toxic conventional food supply release two times more carbon into the atmosphere than burning fossil fuels!  Imagine if we built up our soil - if we added that missing 50% of soil back into our lands!  We can each do our part to reduce climate change by capturing and sequestering carbon in our own privately own soil.  Backyard by backyard. New studies show that we could get atmospheric levels of carbon down to 350 parts per million (the scientifically recognized necessary level to prevent the worst catastrophes of climate change) simply by better soil management practices! Homeowners must be part of this solution! 

Soil is the basic foundation needed to grow healthy food, clean water, and provide plant life for pollinators and all life forms. It should be the job of every Backyard Agrarian to dedicate themselves to building rich soil in their gardens.  By composting as much as we possibly can (yard clippings, weeds, food, paper, tissue, hair, cardboard) each of us can do our part to sequester carbon, reduce climate change, store and clean water, and create habitat.  Building rich soil in our own backyards is easy and it will bring us joy. 

It will help heal ourselves and the world. It will allow us to grow food, perpetuate ecosystems, sequester carbon and continue life on the big round planet.