This was it. I had just finished books on market gardening and my first Holistic Management training, and wanted to do something while still living in Berlin. Together with others we leased a strip of arable land to grow our vegetables for a season. I was excited!
And then reality hit. Sand and dirt. 40 minutes by bike. No quick checking on water, weeds or potato beetles. No budget. But at least organic, I guess.
We really needed to adjust our expectations. What was our context and what would it allow us to do? Want us to do here?
Every action needed to fit into our time, money, and resources available next to the jobs we were both already involved in. With a simple to follow feedback loop: Plants look ok or everything dying?
Efficient and effective, but foremost aligned with our purpose: Eating our own healthy produce while supporting the land and the ecosystem and keeping our lives in balance.
While the weeks went on and our neighbors‘ veggies grew beautifully, I stood in front of the rows and cried a little inside.
My “side of the fence” just wasn’t as beautiful. I felt I was making every possible mistake.
I needed to remind myself more than once that it’s okay. I needed to remind myself that we weren’t in a competition. My partner and I were trying something within our context that we could uphold the whole season and far beyond.
I didn’t know our neighbors’ contexts. Or what they wanted to achieve. I only saw their tomatoes judging me.
It was tough everytime to see our strip in between these intensively tended gardens.
But, we harvested. And not little.
Our involuntary low input system gave us much more than we expected, so we made kimchis and chutneys and gave the land surplus back.
It’s funny, but years later I am still following the same approach just on a bigger scale. If it’s a grazing trial, a land planning, or a financial decision, we need to set up safe to fail tryouts and realistic journeys, starting from where we are.
Looking left and right can sometimes be discouraging. But we are not in a race with someone else.
This is for you and your life.
How do you want it to be?
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