seasons of change

UCSB food systems final project.

It’s funny, how things change. Funny may not be the best word, but I’d like to use it as it is more lighthearted than maybe some other choices that come to mind. As with the natural world, life is ever-changing. Shifting, shaping, soaking in all of the surrounding stimulus, situations, energies, trying to reshape, adapt, and make room for these additions (or subtractions). With time, they break down and mold themselves, old and new, into coexistence. Life, to me, is very similar to composting. One year ago, our world looked dramatically different. One year ago, life was “normal,” pre-pandemic. One year ago, I was adjusting to life in Santa Barbara, after taking a hiatus from school. 2020 had a lot of composting to do. 

Mirroring our earth, our universe, I feel as though human life goes through seasons. Seasons of productivity, doubt, uncertainty, determination, defeat. (to name a few). The past three months, well really the past twelve (and beyond), have encompassed so many seasons. Seasons of change, seasons of stagnation, seasons of frustration, seasons of hope. Always changing, never stagnant.

Today, I am adjusting to life online, still. Adjusting to constant change. After almost one full year of online schooling, I am still sitting here, at the computer, trying to figure out the best ways, tips, hacks, and more to “make the most” of this collective, but highly individual experience. Today, I am thinking about what the world will look like in six months, when I am finally considered a college graduate. Today, I sit and look out at my parents’ backyard, in Roseville, California, which resides on Nisenan land, wondering when I will actually live on my own, have a yard of my own to steward. But then again, it wouldn’t be my “own.” It will still be stolen land. It will still carry the dark history of this country. But wherever it is, it will be appreciated and cared for by me. 

I think about last spring, when I moved home, and all the plans I made for tending to and caring for our garden. Oh, I had such grand plans. I was over-the-moon eager to get my hands in the dirt, to connect myself to this place we call home, to ground myself, literally, in this tumultuous time. As I should have anticipated, plans rarely work out as expected.

I-5 on my SB-Sac drive.

Six months ago, I moved back to Santa Barbara, land stewarded by the Chumash people, though my time there has been fleeting. I had plans to build a garden box outside our tiny apartment, to try and stay connected in any way I could to the amazing life processes we get to cohabitate this world with. This came largely with cooking. Perusing the farmer’s market downtown, shopping at the IV food co-op, and sharing plant-based meals with my roommate quickly became our favorite activities, activities that grounded us in this turbulent year. Above is my favorite veggie soup to make that has really become my comfort food - any and all veggies I can get my hands on, noodles, broth, some herbs and cinnamon to top it off. It is actually a recipe I created while traveling around Europe in 2019, and reminds me of that lively time. 

I had so many goals and ideas and hopes on how to spend my seemingly endless quantity of time this past year. As a high-functioning, anxious, structure-craving perfectionist, I mapped out how I would spend my time… gardening, getting involved with the local farmer’s market, training my dog, reading. But the reality of it is, while those things may have been possible for me to partake in prior to the pandemic, my sense of structure and security got thrown out the door with our compost. I struggled to find ways to ground myself - the thought of starting a garden at our apartment crossed my mind every day, yet for some reason, I could not get myself to go to the store and actually go through with it. Time passed, days dwindled by as I sat at my computer for class, zoom meeting after zoom meeting, reading after reading, final project after final project. I felt kind of like the struggling crops in our garden - trying their hardest to sprout and grow but for a multitude of factors that may not be clear to our conscious mind, unable to find that breakthrough to growth. Seasons are present for a reason, though. Not everything can bloom all at once. Three months ago, I moved back home. 

When life gives you more lemons than you can handle, share as many as you can, and let the rest do their thing.

One of our resting garden boxes.

Not all crops or plants thrive the first time around. Or the second. Sometimes they try to bloom in the wrong season, or have too much competition, or cannot thrive due to a multitude of factors that may never be fully articulated or understood. They wither and wilt and rejoin their roots, decomposing to replenish the soil and preparing for the next season, resting. Composting. Learning. Not unlike the seasons of life we each experience as human beings. We all must take some time to rest to prepare for the next season.

Gretchen, our oldest chicken.

Hank, our rooster.

This time, for me, has been a season of education. One of my greatest connections to our planet has always been through education. I absolutely love reading anything and everything about ecosystem processes, food systems, ecological knowledge, etc. I love watching anything and everything about our planet too. I am getting a degree in Environmental Studies. Being in school the past year, while it has proved to be a very large strain on my mental health largely due to the excessive screen time, has grounded me immensely. Take, for instance, this project. I began researching the origins of the chicken (we have Brahmas), which “is actually an Asiatic chicken breed. It is among the large chicken breeds which was developed in the United States from very large breeds imported from the Chinese port of Shanghai,” according to Roy’s Farm. Kinda fun, right? I likely would not have taken the time to learn about those origins, and therefore about our earth, if this was not an assignment. I started noticing these qualities in my chickens. Paying closer attention. Being more present. Learning, in a different way.

Daisy (our pig vacuum)’s humble abode.

We can learn from everything we do. As my therapist once told me, when faced with (non-life threatening) choices, decisions to make, there is no “wrong” choice, no “best” choice - whichever decision you make, is the right one, because you learn from it. It kind of reminded me of the forgiveness and compassion we must have when looking back at all of the “wrong” choices we have made as a human race in devastating our environment. There is no undoing. We are learning. (Yes, there are many who don’t seem to learn - or maybe it’s more of don't seem to care, but I believe there are less of those individuals each and every day). We are always learning, shifting, adapting. Changing.

Last summer, I took ENV S 193TK, Traditional Ecological Knowledge, and learned so much about our land, the original stewards, how to truly engage in a respectful and reciprocal relationship with nature and other human beings, and so much more. The consistent interaction with my classmates, learning from and reflecting on the unique perspectives we each brought to the class, as well as the vast body of knowledge brought by our professor taught me so much - about the topic of that course but also how to best engage outside of the classroom, even for my own mental health. 

Last fall, I took FAMST 108, Short Production, and decided to focus my final film on food justice and the environment. I spent hours researching, interviewing, filming, drafting, editing, re-editing. All of this sitting inside at a laptop. And I was still learning. 

I have spent a lot of time learning about the earth from the comfort of my screen. From hundreds of miles away from my professors. From looking at photos and videos and books. Learning.

Learning can take on many different forms. These experiences say something to me about the current state of our world - the unnatural engagement we have to partake in via screens each day is not all bad. We are still learning a lot. Adapting. Changing. Shifting. Surviving.

I initially embarked on this project to root myself in my parents’ garden, on this land that we reside on. That was the basis of my idea, following my food consumption from the garden to my plate, connecting with each plant, learning the origins, connecting them, etc. I had this grand idea and in the end it didn’t work out. Days went by, then weeks, and I was not cooking as much as I had hoped. And we truly didn’t have that much food in our garden to feed me besides lettuce. It’s kind of ironic, because I really don’t know much about gardening. I wanted to use this time as a tool to learn more about it. I had the space and the time and the resources to dive in head first. I think I just really wanted to be outside. I think deep down, I was feeling a lot like that watering can - a little awkward and out of place. I don’t know how to freaking garden. I was intimidated, and still am. There is so much knowledge to gain in this world and lifetime, it can feel paralyzing… but at the same time, it can feel liberating. I know that this time wasn’t wasted because I didn’t learn everything there is to know about gardening and grow all my own food. Though it did feel like that at first. My brain was reaching capacity in many other ways, including through these photographs.

The tree that stemmed my mom’s love for fresh-squeezed orange juice.

My mom, who jokes that my dad stole our garden from her (they don’t love working on it together haha), finally got a box back for herself and her spinach last summer. She prefers buying seedlings, and he prefers buying seeds… It’s a very interesting dynamic to watch for sure.

A view of our chicken coop and pig pen from across the court.

As Liz reminded me, we are social beings - evolved to be in sync, ebbing and flowing, with other organisms, and the natural world. We are not evolved to be alone. But are we truly ever alone? Step outside and you will know that you are not. Hug yourself and you will know that you are not.

When I contracted COVID-19 and the flu the first day of February, the reality that this project was not going to shape up to be quite (at all) what I had expected set in. It was quarantine time, and my energy was gone. Luckily, my symptoms were mild, though I was initially terrified that I’d get hit hard with that double whammy. I felt run down. I was just exhausted. Getting off the couch was often hard. Focusing on basically anything besides the latest episode of Glee I was on proved to be near impossible. The simple act of stepping outside was the most prominent sense of peace I experienced during that time, even if it was only for a few minutes. But isn’t it amazing, how you can step outside and feel so full? Take in a breath of fresh air, feel the breeze (or rain, or sun, or clouds) on your face, and hear the life that is teeming around you in that stillness? The stillness that never equates to silence - there is too much to see and hear for the world to ever be silent, just as there is too much that occurs every second of every day for there to ever be real stillness. There is only change.

“What is my being receiving by being here?” Liz asked me on one of our zoom calls. Which then, to me, begs the question, “what is my being giving by being here?” I asked those questions as I sat outside, in the grass, staring at the sky (procrastinating homework, of course).

I used to subconsciously believe that to make any impact at all, you would have to make a big one. Now, I realize and understand that this is not true. Each and every breath we take effects everything around us. This breath that I just released has altered the composition of the air around me. Ruffled a few papers. Altered the air that my dog is breathing beside me. And there goes another. Stagnation is a construct - movement is the only constant. It is truly incredible the impact we have, the power for good that we each hold in our bare two hands.

It’s amazing to me how interconnected all life is. And I don’t think about it as often as I should. How man-made machinery and processes seem to mimic those of the natural world (though at an alarmingly efficient rate) - we couldn’t survive without our ecosystems. They are the foundation of all life - and the webs that tie everything to everything else are truly something miraculous that must be celebrated and protected and conserved.

Our leaf pile. Somehow, by some miraculous process (wink), it never seems to pile up higher thank this - and hasn’t in the 8 years we have been here.

In stepping outside and documenting these life processes, I was in awe. The camera has always helped me stay present in a moment, as much as that seems paradoxical. My mind wanders so fast and far that physically documenting what I see, even if I don’t “get the shot”, helps me remember moments that I don’t want to forget. I looked at our yard with a presence that I have not in a long time. Watching the chickens and pig eat some of our food scraps, and the worms in our compost bins eat the rest. Watching lemons drop from the trees, while the oranges hang on a little tighter. Watching the asparagus grow, knowing that it will be in that soil for another a year before it’s ready as I cook my store bought bunch because I’d like some before that homegrown bunch is ready. It has made me more aware of the foods I am purchasing. Where they are coming from, what their ingredients are, how much processed foods versus plants are in my cart. How quickly everything changes - the stage the asparagus in our ground is in, the amount of sun or rain our garden gets each day, the grocery shelves that are constantly rotating products, the items on my shopping list. Always changing.

I also never, ever prefer black and white over color.

90% of my photos I keep in color, and these originally were no different. I truly don’t fully know why I chose to desaturate. Maybe because there are already so many complex aspects of the contents of the photo, so many intricacies occurring, that I felt they didn’t need more stimulation, color, to understand what is happening in each. Maybe I didn’t like they way they would have fit together in color. Maybe because I’ve started shooting film and while some of these photos are film, the digital ones can’t quite compete with the colors of the film and I don’t want them to be inconsistent. Maybe I felt that it portrayed the tone of my writing better, complemented the feelings I have felt about this experience and time in my life that I have shared here. Probably all of those reasons, and maybe more. I will conclude with one, though.

This project took on a life of its own. It constantly shaped and evolved throughout the quarter, up until the very minute I submitted it. I didn’t garden. I don’t think I stuck my hand in that soil more than two times. I picked lemons off of our tree twice. I did though, come to realize just how much work and energy and composting and time it would take to feed just one person, to live off of the land. Or at least, I can try to imagine. I’m sure it is 100 times more energy consuming than even that. I realized that engaging with the land, which I am extremely fortunate to have 2 acres that I call my temporary home to do as I please on, looks a lot different for every single individual on this planet - even those I share this house with. It also looks a lot different from one year ago, and six months ago, and two weeks ago. In writing this I am realizing that I can pay attention and learn a lot more than I think I can when I want to.

Imagine all the life teeming, in but unseen in this frame.

In the words of Mary Oliver,

…

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

I can’t begin to try and speak words more beautifully than she, like above from her poem Wild Geese. The way she writes about the natural world, and her place in it, is always inspiring. This family of things - this interconnectedness - is the heart of this world, and all life on it. We are constantly shifting, shaping, learning, changing, evolving alongside one another, in the family of things.