J.Rhett Lively

Growing up, my hands were always dirty. Whether I was playing in a sandbox in our backyard, helping move pipes and tubes on the farm, or tending to one of the many gardens our family had, dirt was a part of life that we didn’t avoid in my childhood.

Which is why today when my children freak out over getting dirty or seeing a bug, I get really frustrated with them. While it’s partially my fault for not having them out in the dirt more often working with a garden, caring for the yard or just playing, it’s still disheartening for me to see them so afraid of the very substance God molded us out of!

And I’ll admit that back when I was there age, I didn’t understand the need, the benefits, or the simple pleasure of gardening. I was born in that era where those things were a part of our lives, but technology was moving in such a way that it didn’t have to be for the first time in history.

Or at least we were led to believe.

Life Meets Reality

It was Covid that woke me up to the truth. That supply chain which we had celebrated and enjoyed since the 90s is a fragile thing. Our dependence on a few to feed and supply the masses could very easily be the thing that winds up killing us if circumstances end up completely collapse that system, unlike the partial collapse we saw in Covid.

When Covid hit, I at least was still alert to things going on around me. I’ve never liked not having supplies in order for a minor emergency, but the noise leading up to the lockdown was just enough that I stretched my usual one-month supply of things to about three months which saved us from many of the heartaches our friends and neighbors dealt with by being caught off guard. Those events led me to reevaluate many of the things we do in our home including what we supply ourselves vs what we purchase.

Illness, not Covid, but other illness, came into my life right after that year. I realized when looking at why I was getting sick that many of my issues were coming from the food I have been eating for years. Over the last couple of decades, out of partial laziness and partial over stretching myself with responsibilities, I had allowed more and more prepared meals into my life, believing the convenience and speed were worth losing the quality and security of knowing what was going into my body. Those preservatives, chemicals, and sugars had kicked my butt, leading to a stroke and pushing my systems ability to manage my blood pressure and blood sugar. Getting rid of that crap, had be back to a healthy state and off meds within two years.

And even if I wasn’t worried about the junk in our food supply killing me, today we are seeing some of the craziest prices we’ve ever seen when we do go to the grocery store. The same supplies today cost, easily, three and four times what they did just before Covid, straining our ability to feed ourselves, much less do anything else.

The Solution I’m Taking

For myself, I’ve created a small garden in our front flower bed, transforming the wasted space of bushes into a bed that is helping feed our family. I decided to put this one out front so that it is isolated from the dogs and I’m always aware of its status since I’ll be passing by it daily as we come and go.

My plan is to add to this each year, creating more and more space that is edible while erasing more and more of the wasted lawn space that we simply burn money and water into without and return on the investment.

Eventually, I hope that I’ll be able to have at least sixty percent of the lawn transformed into a space that’s growing food for our family. With that, I believe I’ll have enough to use to trade for eggs, milk, and other items that I’m not legally allowed to grow inside the city currently. I know I’ll probably never have enough to barter for meat, but at the very least if I can cut down our costs for fruits, vegetables and eggs, that’ll go a long way to helping us survive just a little easier.

I’ll also know what’s going into at least these items, ensuring that we aren’t taking in chemicals, plastics, and other things that we simply don’t need in our bodies.

I also hope that as we begin to transition the yard, my children will want to join me in the garden, at least from time to time, if only out of the fascination of seeing these plants grow.

I’ve already seen it when they walk by my current crops of tomatoes, squash and zucchini, onions, garlic, okra, and green beans and how the kids are in awe of the size of the plants, the amount produce we’ve already been able to harvest this year. And I’m hoping that as they see the difference in the taste of our produce versus the produce we purchase at the grocery store, they’ll long to have more and more of these items in our meals.

And we’ve already seen the change in wildlife in our lawn. This year we have had more butterflies, dragonflies, frogs, and more in the area around the garden. Our cameras have spotted a fox or two coming up to the garden, and the rabbits we’ve seen around since we moved into the house, have multiplied and taken up residence within the bed, only thieving a couple of squash and several leaves along the way.

More importantly, though, I’ve enjoyed the benefits that come from working in the garden on my own health. I’m up more, moving to check the garden, bending and stooping in the process. The exercise alone has been a boost not only to my physical health, but also to my emotional health in the process. When anxiety, or simple frustration starts to catch up to me, I simply go outside and walk through the space. Often those few minutes of checking the plants and breathing the fresh air under the sun is enough to help me relax and run away from those demons that sometimes hold me back and keep me from enjoying life.

I’ve come to find that getting my hand dirty, feeling the earth come alive as I work the soil has benefits that only God could have built into His design when he commanded mankind to care for the Garden and keep it. It is no surprise to learn that even in the beginning, God knew we needed to feel the dirt between our fingers to be healthy and grounded in our lives.