In the first two week’s of the crisis, our capacity to get fresh greens was heavily constrained. We could basically get stuff from Amazon, and then there was what was left in our pantry. But we ran out of our salad greens almost immediately. And a panic set in, inside me. That was a real awakening for me.
But it happens my wife runs a seed exchange in the village called The Manchester Seed Library. So we had a box full of seeds.
I pulled out a packet of kale seeds and poured a small quantity into a small glass bowl I use to prep spices when I am cooking. Kale seeds are tiny little black beads, like miniature peppercorns.
We had no fresh soil, so I got a few pots that had some dying plants and I threw the plants out. I took down a sifter, and I sifted the junk and dead leaves from the soil from the pots until I had a bowl of relatively clean dirt.
I took an Amazon box and with a box cutter, cut it down to about three inches high. I lined the box with garbage bag plastic and I filled it with soil. Then, with my finger, I dug a series of furrows through the soil, and carefully sowed my seeds like when I was a boy planting peas with my mother in our garden. I gently folded the edge of the furrow of soil over the seeds, putting each little boi to bed in the dirt.
I remembered being taught the Parable of the Sower in Sunday school, “Still other seeds fell on good soil, where they sprouted.” As a boy I remember worrying every morning if my seeds had fallen on rocky earth, or if the crows had eaten them.
But there, in my kitchen, with my little box of dirt, I had each seed in its place. And I put the box on top of my microwave, and with an old jar, I gently watered the earth until everything was dark and wet. I put a fluorescent light over my little box, and I left the seeds to their work.
And within a day, little green heads wiggled up out of the dirt, some still wearing the shell of the seed as a disheveled cap. Like me, the seeds had been awakened.
Fritz Swanson || Manchester, MI || May 6 2020