Hands in soil.
Fingerprint-smothered, nail-filled, crease-covered hands in soil.
Like shoving your fingers into an ice bucket in winter, or working against dry, beaten rock in summer - but still, hands in soil.
Unforgiving, enriching, expectant, glorious hands in soil.
I am not the most impressive of gardeners.
It means a lot to me. I love the process of growth, of watching my plants evolve and take up space, and go from the smallest of sprouts to something at least a little bigger - but I can’t say that I’m always successful. I get distracted, more often than not, as the seasons change or life indoors takes over, and my once-loved plantlings are left to fend for themselves against the elements. Or I treat them all with a blanket level of interest - or disinterest, depending on how well I’m doing - and fail to take into account which ones like sun, or water, or require more attention than others.
But whether it’s been a minute, or a month (or six), the act of getting my hands in the soil is always, always, nourishing for me.
It’s a big deal these days: soil.
Have we spoken about Chef’s Table before? I’m sure we have, because I love this example so much that I mention it more than is normal, but let me repeat it - and please forgive me if you’ve heard it before. I encourage you to watch every episode, because it’s wonderful in many ways, but this particular one is with Dan Barber. On his journey to creating delicious food he realised that he can’t create delicious food without delicious ingredients. And on his journey to find delicious ingredients, he realised that he couldn’t find delicious ingredients without working with brilliant farmers. And on his journey to find a brilliant farmer, he realised that you can’t farm brilliantly without paying attention to the land on which you are farming. And on his journey to find the best land on which to farm, he realised that you can’t have the best land to farm, without paying attention to the soil beneath that very land on which you are farming.
And with that, he realised that you can’t create truly delicious food - the most delicious that it can possibly be - without first creating delicious soil.
I’m not a chef, nor a gardener, but something in me knows that to be true. Not all ground we grow on is equal, especially now that we have ravaged the ground beneath us by overusing chemicals, over relying on horrific large scale meat production, and reducing the biodiversity of our precious landscapes through urbanisation and pollution. It makes sense that in order to grow something unbelievable, we would first have to pay attention to what exactly we are growing it in.
I’m almost hesitant to move away from this discussion because I could think, and talk, about soil for an alarming amount of time but - of course - this got me thinking about something else.
It got me thinking about the soil that we plant our ideas in. I started to wonder what the equivalent for our humanness is. What forms our soil? If we find ourselves, like our landscapes, stripped bare and undernourished, what is it that can rehydrate us?
Because so often we think that we can grow beautiful things from an absolute wasteland, don’t we? It’s beautiful, really, the capacity we have for hope to make something out of nothing; I honour that in us. And also, like Dan, I’m realising that we can’t continuously expect those dreams to take root in abandoned soil. And if they do take root, can we be surprised when they don’t flourish like we’d hoped? Or perhaps they don’t taste quite as good as we expected?
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to tend to the soil.
It can be alluring to think big, to want to push the business plans, or the life plans as big or as far as possible. To rush it. I’ve done it; I’ve made that mistake plenty in the past. I’ve wanted my business to reach certain income goals before I laid solid foundations, or focused on how it looks on Instagram before I looked at how it feels on the inside. Or I’ve made transformative goals for the year ahead, without considering how the stress of a job that chips away at me each day might not provide the most fertile ground for those goals. Or how perhaps my soil might appreciate receiving more than a thimble of water each day - who would have thought?
But I’ve noticed that each time I focus on the flower before I consider the soil, I end up fretting about why the flower I have tried to plant isn’t growing. I analyse it. Fixate on its failures endlessly. And, honestly - as much as I hate to admit it - I give up. Lose interest.
So I’m trying to flip that.
I’m thinking much more about what goes into nurturing the soil, i.e. what am I consuming through food, liquids, sunlight, and even media, that affects the quality of it? Where is the biodiversity within what I’m taking in, or simply surrounding myself with? What creates a truly sustainable seed bed for the business I’m building? What might be crowding the soil, or shading it, or tainting it?
I’m getting hands in soil.
And it really feels like it’s about fucking time.