Friday, November 11, 2011

Can You Dig It?

WELCOME!
I wish to dedicate this first blog post to the people who introduced me to worms, soil, and --in emerging ways-- myself. Deb Habib and Ricky Baruc met years ago while working at the New Alchemy Institute. After completing a PeaceWalk from Auschwitz to Hiroshima (with monks from the New England Peace Pagoda in Leverett, MA) they began their married life together in Orange, MA.

Together they co-founded Seeds of Solidarity Farm and Education Center at their home. The Farm consists of 5 hoop houses and a few fields over a 4-acre area of cleared forest. Ricky and Deb have built up the soil on their land through slow integration of sand, manure and organic compost. Intensive, compact farming of mixed crops --mostly vegetables-- with no tilling of the soil is the model they innovate and exemplify. Ricky educates about "the cardboard method" in farming and gardening practice to feed worm, microbial, and fungal populations while facilitating development the soil's ecology naturally. Using cardboard helps make possible the bio-mimicry practices of organic fertilization over chemical input, people power over mechanized power, and intact soil ecology over tilling.


What does this have to do with Worms?, you ask... Well Worms are the natural fertilizers of the soil we live on. They have developed and thrived through the years by transporting nutrients, bacteria, and fungus vertically through the earth, constantly laying the foundations for the ecological system of the soil. And what do Worms ask in return? Respect: that we not poison the soil with chemicals, that we not exhaust their habitats with exploitative agriculture, and that we not regularly turn their houses upside down (tilling). They've built their homes --the soil we depend upon-- with method and intention; we destroy that evolved and honed practice when we till the soil.

Deb Habib and Ricky Baruc are also co-founders of annual regional celebration, The Garlic & Arts Festival. Through the Seeds of Solidarity Education Center, they facilitate a youth education program called Seeds of Leadership (SOL Garden) for local high school students-- free to the participants. A new grant-funded initiative, Grow Food Everywhere for Health and Justice, is putting free garden beds in the homes of low-income families in the area. Deb and Ricky also regularly offer consulting, workshops, and retreats.

Words can't adequately describe the necessary innovation that Ricky and Deb live, nor capture the impact they radiate out to so many others. All I can say is that I have found them in my life for a reason, and that we are still only beginning a relationship that will last and develop through the years.

I'll leave it to Ricky (below) to close this first blog post with some profound reflection...
Peace and Love to All. Thank you for reading.
Cat

Ricky on "keepin' it local". Video clip produced by WhyHunger.