Cheers to 2020, Soil & Health

As many folks like to find time to read, educate and inspire their minds and bodies—without the digital world—we would also like to take a moment to engage as we say goodbye to a crazy decade and hail in 2020.

There have been so many good books that take us back and move us forward, authors that will inspire us with stories, deliberate with the truth and fascinate with diversion. Sounds a lot like any given day on the farm, and as we enter into a new season, it is always customary to start with Wendell Berry and his amazing and indispensable voice.

Wendell Berry in the 1970s, along with Francis Moore Lappé, Joan Gussow and other phenomenal contemporaries, came long before organic produce was available at your local grocery stores or delivered to your doorstep; long before the national conversation of food and farming came into play. They diligently brought to light “the problem of health in soil, plants, animals, and man as one great subject.” They were able to draw the line between the vibrancy of life in the soil, and the health of plants and animals and people eating from that soil.

In 1971, when Francis Moore Lappé wrote Diet For a Small Planet, we all could understand our role in world hunger and the environment at a much greater depth than ever before. Connecting the dots between a hamburger and the price of oil became oh-so clear as to the degradation of resources and culture. I encourage all of you to take time and pick up any one of these books, Berry wrote over 50, and remember when we were not thinking of everything as a machine. The change in language post-industrial revolution and the rise of the machine has taken over our intrinsic sense of health and food. As humans, we are referred to as “units”—our minds are “computers,” our thoughts are “inputs,” and our responses “feedback.”

I urge all of us to leave this language behind as we enter into 2020, and remember who we are as graceful, ecologically listening and moving creatures of an entire ecosystem, nothing more and nothing less.

As Full Circle members, you are a wonderful part of this graceful ecosystem and for all of this, we wish you a very Happy New Year.

Make sure to find us on Instagram @fullcirclefarms.