Coronavirus, Gardening, and The Future

I heard a pundit say that things will never go back to the "normal" we used to know before COVID-19 de-constructed our lives. There will be a normal, but it will be much more restrictive, much less open, than before. Think carefully about this. This is how dictatorships start. They start by eroding your freedoms bit by bit, in ways that you hardly notice, until you wake up one day and you aren't allowed to do -- ANYTHING -- without the approval of "The State." We are currently in the reality of frogs being boiled alive, very slowly, very carefully, until it's too late to jump out of the pot.

Not that many years ago, Monsanto, through a member of Congress who was the wife of one of their executives, tried to get a law passed outlawing organic gardening - even in your own yard. Think about that. They didn't want you to be able to feed yourself in times of crisis. Luckily, the people rebelled, and that bill wasn't passed, but Monsanto and other chemical companies have now bought up most of the seed companies in the country. They have taken a lot of our favorite seeds off the market, or restricted who can grow these plants and how many they can grow. One of my favorite eggplants, Ichiban, can now only be grown by Bonnie Plants and the seeds cannot be sold. That's only one tiny example of the chemical companies' iron grip on our food supply.

Since this particular Coronavirus struck (there are many other coronaviruses that aren't this deadly; two that are responsible for common colds), people have become much more interested in growing their own foods. Nurseries can't keep up with the demand for fruit and nut trees. Seed companies are selling out, especially those specializing in organic, non-gmo and heirloom seeds. Heirloom veggies are especially popular because their seeds can be saved from year to year, unlike hybrids. Well, you can save hybrid seeds, but you never know what you are going to get. Still, if worse comes to worse, you do what you have to do. Unable to get seeds, some gardeners are now growing their crops from the seeds of store-bought produce.

With newbie gardeners unable to find seeds to buy, seed trading forums are busier than ever. Gardeners all over the web are trading with and giving away their extra seeds and seedlings to new gardeners, telling them how to grow veggies and even flowers that attract pollinators. It's so amazing, that all I want to do is wake up in the morning and stay on my gardening groups all day long.

This seems like such a lovely and altruistic happening, but it's more about control. When you can't find toilet paper, what's next? Will food be rationed? We read of people waiting in lines for hours to pick up food packages from food banks, while farmers are plowing crops under because with large businesses and schools closed, they can't sell them. So as always, (just ask any freegan or dumpster diver) there isn't a shortage of food, there is a shortage of profit. Farms will start folding soon, and even more small farms will be gobbled up by corporate farms, like they were in the 70s. We older people remember the FarmAid concerts that tried and failed to save many of those farms.

As COVID-19 spreads around the globe, will trade also be more restricted under the guise of "protecting" us from another wave of the pandemic? We get a lot of our food from other countries, especially our precious out-of-season tropical fruits. What will we do without mangoes and avocados in the winter if the border with Mexico is closed? I guess we'll all have to go back to eating fruits and veggies in season. Oh, the horror! 😏

Remember the Monsanto examples? HE WHO CONTROLS THE FOOD, CONTROLS THE WORLD.

So it's the wise who are starting their own gardens and growing their own food. It's not a necessity right now, but in the future, it well may be if the commercial food supply is shut down and we all must have ubiquitous "Victory Gardens" to survive. Do not think it couldn't happen here. It's happening now. I'm betting we aren't making fun of citified crunchy granola mamas with backyard chickens anymore, are we? They may have started out just trying to be part of a cool trend they could share on Instagram, but they're way ahead of the curve now.

For those of us who grew up during the cold war, we remember seeing news reports of long lines of people in communist countries, waiting for bread, toilet paper, or other essentials. This got even worse when their economy collapsed, and people were forced to grow vegetables on any plot of land they could find, even on the sides of interstate highways, just to survive.

In some countries, even now, citizens are required to carry a piece of paper or a card permitting them to go to stores or even to take a walk or exercise. There are stiff fines for breaking the stay-at-home orders in the worst hit countries, and even in some of our own badly affected states, such as New York. In some places, people can be arrested for being outside after curfew. In China, you still must have your temperature taken even when coming home to your own apartment building or getting on and off of public transportation, or to go into your place of work. 

Will that happen here? If Trump has his way, it will. He mentioned at a news conference the other day that he had been talking to Vladimir Putin, who has been working with China and Saudi Arabia to collapse our economy for years now, perhaps with the aid of our own *president. He is now talking about "COVID-free" ID cards so people can go back to work. How long before they start rigging that system, denying minorities and the poor the right to work and destroying their lives? When he said people would die from suicide if this continued, you have to wonder if this is part of the plan to rid the country of what he sees as "inferior" people.
 
Many of we baby boomers grew up with parents who survived the depression, so we are already used to being frugal and maybe even growing a backyard garden. Most of us stopped doing those things when we got good jobs and got out on our own, but the knowledge is still there, and we are now going back to those ways, not out of necessity, but because we see the writing on the wall.

Welcome to the new normal. We can accept it, or we can stop it by voting the current group of authoritarian leaders out of office in November. Pay close attention between now and then to the tiny bits of freedom that are being chipped away, and decide what is more important to you -- your freedom or your political ideology.

I've already made up my mind.