Food Is The Second Medicine

Food is the second medicine.

We are spiritual beings having a physical experience.  When our feelings are hurt or we’re down we might say our spirits are low.  When we feel great we say we’re in high spirits.  Our feelings are one reflection or dimension of our spirit that our bodies can easily perceive.  

Our bodies’ condition can affect our feelings and spirit.

  Hormones, wounds, illness, health, touch and sensuality, all of these physical realities in our bodies interact with our spirits to help us feel emotions.  Water and food provide our bodies with the energy to continue hosting our spirits.  It’s common knowledge that our bodies absorb the physical qualities of the food we eat when we digest it and strip it of usable nutrients.  What would happen if folks everywhere started to recognize that the spiritual qualities of the food we eat are absorbed and used by our spirits? 

Have you ever heard someone say that

Love is the most important ingredient

in their cooking?  More then one professional chef has told me this and though I love to cook, I’m not a chef.  By trade I’m a landscaper and composter.  In my experience, the same ingredient that good chefs pour into every dish in order to bring flavor to life is also the most important tool we have for growing healthy food.  Love guides any holistically healthy growing operation.  Love of people, love of Earth, and love of life are a few of the tools that growers can use everyday in their pursuit of health.  

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Food_Garden_Back_Yard

Some folks understand the concept of voting with a dollar.  The idea is that when we spend money on something we are effectively voting to have more of that thing be produced.  By spending our money we are also asking to have more of the spirit or emotional energy that surrounds the production of the items we purchase be created in the world.  This all comes home to our personal feelings and spirits when we ask ourselves a couple of sometimes hard to answer questions: 

Do I know where my food came from?  Do I feel good about the place that my food came from? 

Do I feel like my food is full of healthy living nutrients, or is it possibly tainted with poisonous pesticides?  When we look at food from this angle we see that from the moment we purchase food, it begins having an emotional impact on our own spiritual health and the health of the planet, an impact that we are in control of by the power of our choice.    

When we honor ourselves we feel better. We honor ourselves when we give ourselves those things that are holistically good for us.  We are fully connected in every way to this planet, the condition of the planet’s living systems guide the condition of humanity.  

To honor our environment is to honor ourselves. 

Our ancestors made our lives possible and our descendants will only know life if we leave the world in functioning condition for them.  I’ve heard it said that we did not inherit this world from our elders, instead we borrowed it from our children.  

Prayers can come true if you live them.

If I pray for a healthy environment then I need to work for and make choices that promote health in the environment.  By this way of living I am empowered to work for a miracle, I like that because life on this planet seems like it needs a miracle right now.  

Water is the first medicine and food is the second.

  What is good for us is also good for our home planet.  Clean water and healthy organically grown food have the power to heal our wounded environments, bodies, and spirits. 

Growing A Sustainable City

The city that gardens together grows sustainably together.  Gardening is perhaps the greatest tool for building sustainability that we can all share

.

Gardens can improve water quality, air quality, access to food, and personal health.  Cities that actively nurture the gardening and urban farming efforts of their citizens reap the benefits of healthy communities.  The nurturing of

sustainable cities

starts with the roots of the community.  Wherever there is a strong activist gardener population, you will find wonderful green ideas and initiatives sprouting up all over!

Rain gardens capture and filter rainwater run-off, community gardens and urban farms grow healthy food for people, locally grown food requires less trucking which keeps our air cleaner, fruit trees on the boulevard provide habitat for migrating birds and meeting places for neighbors.  A city full of healthy gardens is a sustainable city full of happy people.  Each city in Minnesota has it’s own unique approach to sustainability.  In this volume of the Seed, we’ll have a look at two cities in the metro area to see some great examples of how local governments work with residents to incorporate all kinds of great gardening into their sustainability plans in order to grow happy, healthy cities.  

Minneapolis

Homegrown food, local food, or food security, however you want to look at it, Minneapolitans' taste in food is rapidly

evolving

.  

According to Gayle Prest, the city’s official Sustainability Director,

“Gardening is an integral part of the long term sustainability plan for Minneapolis”

With more then 100 community gardens and 33 farmers markets, this city is obviously hungry for healthy change.  Leading the charge for this change is an official city organization called

Homegrown Minneapolis

  which is dedicated to nothing less then building a healthy, local food system for all Minneapolis residents. 

Homegrown has recently been hard at work on an

Urban Agriculture Policy Plan

that will guide city land use decisions related to urban food production and distribution. The plan will help identify where and how land should be used to grow and distribute food through community and commercial gardens and urban farms.  In short, this new ag-plan will help Minneapolis scale up to the next logical step in urban food production.  By defining and allowing for urban farms, and market gardens, and by amending the zoning code to better accommodate urban agriculture this innovative plan will allow Minneapolis residents to have more control over their food choices, and more access to healthy homegrown food.

The time to support the Urban Ag Plan is now, call your

city council person

today!

-Update: Your Support Helped Get This Passed!-

“The key to all of this is to start with deep rich organic soil made from our own compost”

Gayle reminds me as we talk about the city’s goal for having curbside residential compostable waste pick up by 2014.  This point is especially powerful as it shows yet another great way to improve our environment and our gardening habits at the same time.  When we compost we reduce the amount of garbage going to burners and landfills and we improve our garden soil, that’s the kind of sustainable solution we can all grow from. 

Maplewood

Oakley Biesanz, Naturalist for the City of Maplewood, explained to me some of the gardening strategies that are helping to grow a sustainable future for residents there. 

Maplewood is a statewide leader

in controlling water quality through

rain gardening

.

  With over 620 city installed rain gardens now thriving in residents yards, 60 more growing on city owned land and many more to come Maplewood is proving that rain gardens are an effective and beautiful way to keep waterways clean and healthy.  With the city’s support and promotion rain gardening has become the  standard for dealing with storm water run-off in Maplewood.

At the

Nature Center

where Oakley works, the mission is to enhance resident’s awareness and understanding of land, water and wildlife resources; to empower the community to become stewards of the environment. This mission is clearly evident in the Demonstration Gardens, which include rainwater gardens, woodland wildflower and prairie butterfly gardens and a small section of no-mow grass.

For lawn enthusiasts, Maplewood has developed the

Mow-Hi Pledge

This pledge to cut the grass no shorter then 3 inches and leave all the clippings on the lawn will help residents reduce fertilizer and watering costs and environmental impacts.  Of course it doesn’t hurt that there’s a grand prize drawing for folks who are willing to take the pledge. 

Community gardens

are sprouting up in Maplewood this spring as part of a multi-city effort to improve access to food growing space.  Working with the Maplwood-North St. Paul Parks and Rec. department, School District 622 and a local church, the two cities will now be able to offer over 650 community garden plots available to the public this spring.

In the long run, sustainability is just a common sense approach to life, and gardening is the simplest approach to sustainability that we have available. 

Whether you’re filtering rain water run off through rain gardens in order to keep the ground water, rivers, and lakes clean or keeping nutrients in your neighborhood by composting in your back yard, or maybe even growing your own food and medicine at home or with neighbors in a community garden, these are all among the most Earth friendly, community building habits humans can all share.  

It takes a village to raise a garden and no one should be left out of the process.  From youth to elders, from city council members to dirt gardeners, we all have a stake in helping to grow a sustainable city right where we live and we all need to work hard and connect with our community if we are going to see success.

Gardeners, take the opportunity this spring to think globally, garden locally and start to grow a sustainable city!

Eat Your Weedies

Eeyore

said it best,

“A weed is a flower too, once you get to know it.”

The dandelion for instance.  How many of us are completely unaware of the untamed beauty of this plant? 

Providing free nourishing food, and medicine for passers by, offering soil fertility, and perfect plant companionship for tomatoes and other shallow rooted crops, and all of this in a form that is simple, ruggedly beautiful, and completely unstoppable.  

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Nature utilizes weeds to perform functions that are often beyond our capacity to easily grasp.  In an abandoned lot for instance, our hero the dandelion will drive roots into the earth allowing minerals and nutrients from deep in the ground to be accessed by other shallow rooted plants.  The channels made in the ground by dandelions roots also help drive water and air downward increasing the overall capacity for root depth and allowing water to enter the water table instead of rushing off to damage local creeks, rivers, or lakes.

Let's all yank from the root the damaging notion that some plants are evil.  Instead let's see beauty, life, and nourishment wherever we can.

Dandelion, (Taraxacum)

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If you were offered a hardy perennial plant that bloomed all season, was entirely edible, could be used for medicine, helped shallow rooted crops like tomatoes grow stronger, and provided habitat for bees and butterflies would you think I was crazy for even suggesting that such a plant exists?  Sure you would if you were unaware of the amazing super powers of the Dandelion.

Now the English name dandelion is a corruption of the French dent de lion meaning "lion's tooth", referring to the coarsely toothed leaves.  The shape of the leaf is hardly the most notable part of this plant.  I’d have to agree that taraxacum is a lion among plants, but given all this plant offers the world I think it’s time for a new name.  Terrific-lion seems much better suited then dandelion ever was.

Terrific-lion grows everywhere, the leaves are yummy and full of vitamins A, C, and K.  The root makes a tea that can help with liver detoxification.

Creeping Charlie, (Glechoma hederacea)

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Speaking of poorly named plants…. wow, I sure don’t think I’d want to meet anyone whose nickname was creeping charlie, but then sometimes when we get to know a person we realize that our ideas about who they are don’t always match reality.  Such is the case with dear charlie.

Europeans who traditionally used it as food and medicine imported creeping charlie to America.  In days of old, people would eat the plant fresh and cooked and put it to use also as a flavoring and clarifying agent in beer.

Lately, while speaking with a landscaping client who happens to be one of the world’s foremost experts on herbal treatments for autism in children, I was amazed to learn about the magic, magnetic nature of plants and people.

The swing set in my clients’ back yard is the preferred hang out for her young daughter who due in part to high mercury content in her blood lives with the effects of autism.  As an herbalist, my client, Lise Wolf, had been introduced to the notion that plants are attracted to those creatures that they can help heal and nurture.  One day Lise noticed an interesting phenomenon.  The creeping charlie in her back lawn was growing from all directions toward her daughter’s swing set.  The growth pattern was so pronounced that the creeping charlie was actually climbing the supports of the swing set in lieu the rest of her yard.  As soon as she noticed this pattern the herbalist in her took over and she set to researching the association between creeping charlie and heavy metals in the blood.  What she found was inspiring.

Creeping charlie  has been used since the introduction of lead based paints in Europe to treat what was known as “painter’s colic”, or lead poisoning, and modern herbalists swear by it’s use for treating heavy metal poisoning.  Since finding this information Lise has been using dear old creeping charlie to effectively reduce mercury levels in her daughter and the other kids she helps.

Charlie should also not be discounted as an important pollinator food source.  During the spring and summer, an organic lawn covered in creeping charlie and white clover is a foraging bee and butterfly buffet.

So while charlie does creep his way through the garden, his popular nickname would tend to leave a gardener feeling creeped out, and given how terrific Charlie is, I say it’s time we give this fine friend a new nickname.  Good Time Charlie used to make us sing the garden blues, but now that he’s better understood I’m sure we’ll all be singing a different tune.

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Lamb's Quarters (Chenopodim album)

Grows like crazy, and tastes like spinach.  These are the outstanding traits of lamb’s quarters.  The list of minerals and nutrients available from lamb’s quarters are almost as long as it’s list of common names.  Aside from Lamb's quarters, this plant is known world wide as every thing from goosefoot, fat-hen, nickel greens, and pigweed, to the nicknames, which denote it’s preference for compost piles, dungweed, and my personal favorite, dirty dick.

While the nickname dirty dick works wonders at wiggling the giggle out of folks, it only tells half the story.  This plant is nutritious, and that’s not dirty, that’s delicious!  Delicious Dick is the new nickname for this strong, upright, freely seeding weed.  You’ll find new dinner delights with Delicious Dick in your dish!

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Terrific-lions, Good Time Charlie, and Delicious Dick are all right outside your door!  A buffet of heroic plants ready to please your pallet, and these three are just the beginning.  Wood Sorrel, Burdock, Chickweed, Violets, Daylillies, Garlic Mustard, Milk Thistle, Plantain, Purslain, and Nettle are a few of the other heroes of health that grow freely all around us here in Minnesota and Wisconsin.