As the global community celebrates Earth Day, we would like to take the opportunity to share a little bit about how the farm is marking this sacred day. For starters, it's a regular work day on the farm. We're doing what we do every day; we're hoeing, planting and caring for livestock. We're touching the soil and growing and harvesting food. For farmers and the crew at ATG, these simple acts have sacred meaning, and the celebration of Earth Day brings that fact into focus. It also offers an opportunity to remember why we do this work and what we hope our work accomplishes. Our mission continues to be to grow food that nourishes the whole human being, and by our farming methods to help heal our Great Mother, the living earth.
Earth Day is a chance for all of us, no matter our professions, occupations or callings, to take the opportunity to connect with that which feeds and nourishes us. We can pause and honor the absolute essential nature of the very ground on which we walk: we can bend down, take a handful of soil, smell it and give gratitude for this, our real wealth: this ground, that we need both literally and figuratively as we travel on our individual and collective paths of growth and development. As we hold this soil, may we take some deep breaths and find gratitude for all that our mother the Living Earth offers.
M Mueller, an ATG mentor and Biodynamic practitioner, reminds us that in 1957 Marjorie Spock, a Biodynamic gardener upon whose land the government sprayed from the air a mixture of DDT and fuel oil, and who subsequently sued the government for damages, provided author Rachel Carson with research results which Carson then used to write her best-selling book Silent Spring. Often noted as a seminal source for the ecological movement of the 1960's, the book contributed to the many streams that came together to declare April 22, 1970--50 years ago today--the first U.S. Earth Day!