Hi everyone!

As a vegetable farmer, the summer is my busy season, and this year, my days are even fuller than usual as I make preparations for my wedding in August! In order to keep my life sustainable and make sure I have time for the experiences that inspire my writing, I will be taking a break from writing for Substack.

I am pausing paid subscriptions, which means that if you’re a paid subscriber, you won’t continue to be charged until I resume writing. In the meantime, you’ll still have access to my archive, so you can look back at articles you might have missed!

I hope you all enjoy the summer!

Sierra

I like to eat plants that grow wild around me because it makes me literally part of this place. When I consume them, my body not only shares nutrients with the soil, plants, and animals around me, I also welcome in living bacteria—as long as I prepare the plants right.

Leafy greens are an abundant source of wild nutrition (and local bacteria) from early in the spring until late in the fall, and I have learned to capture their elixir of health in a jar in my fridge. I call it “wild kimchi” and it provides me with a boost of powerful nutrition and probiotics every time I pull out the jar.

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This story is by my partner, Levi Geyer.

There’s nothing like a 15-foot tall wall of fire to get your adrenaline flowing. The raw release of energy when a grassland burns is as awe-inspiring as any scenic mountain view. Almost every year, I get to help conduct these controlled burns on my neighbors’ CRP grasslands.

The Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), is a USDA program which pays farmers to take ground out of production and plant native grasses and forbs. Established in the 1950s, this program now has almost 1.7 million acres enrolled in the state of Iowa. Proponents of CRP cite its value to native plants, wildlife, and water quality. But it’s not just pheasants and quail that flock to CRP each year—it also attracts people.

When we burn CRP in my neighborhood, it’s a community event. The word goes out that so-and-so is going to be burning, and we all gather our rakes, shovels, drip torches, water wagons, and backpack sprayers, waiting for the call. Once there is a window with favorable weather conditions, we all gather to start the burn. Everyone has something to contribute.

The more people there are helping with a burn, the safer it is. Only one or two people are required to light the fire, but everyone else’s job is to make sure the fire doesn’t creep across the mowed firebreaks on the outer perimeter.

We usually start on the edge where the wind is blowing across the mowed line, and let the fire creep against the wind until there’s a wider firebreak of already-burned grass. Then we light the edges and let them build a similar buffer before finally lighting the far edge where the wind carries the flames faster through the remaining fuel.

When we’re finished, there are usually cinnamon rolls and coffee or some other treat baked by one of the farmer’s wives. We chat as we enjoy our refreshments and watch the last of the flames die down.

This kind of cooperation used to be the norm in agriculture. Farmers would regularly get together to help each other out, especially in the busy seasons. But as farming has grown to larger scales and has become entirely mechanized, it’s quite uncommon to see people working side by side. When I’m driving or running on my gravel road, I virtually never see people in the fields as I go by—I see tractors in the spring, combines in the fall, and that’s about it.

As it turns out, this isolation isn’t good for farmers. In the 2023 publication “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” the U.S. surgeon general cited research indicating that being socially disconnected carries a higher mortality risk than obesity or physical inactivity, and is comparable to smoking 15 cigarettes a day. Farmers aren’t just at a high risk for loneliness—they’re also a high risk group for stress, alcoholism, and suicide. Multiple studies indicate that farmers are 3.5 times more likely to die by suicide than the general public.

I want my rural community to be vibrant and healthy. I’m glad for the CRP grasslands in our neighborhood, not just for the habitat they provide to wildlife, but for the opportunity they provide our community.

Our annual prescribed burns remind us how good it feels to come together to get a job done. They give me hope that we might find other ways to farm and steward the land alongside one another.

Suggested reading:

“Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation” (Office of the U.S. Surgeon General, 2023)

Golden oyster mushrooms are hard to ignore. Even if you don’t know what they are, or—like me on a recent Saturday-morning foraging hike—you aren’t particularly looking for mushrooms, the bright yellow fruiting bodies of Pleurotus citrinopileatus stand out in a world of greens and browns.

On this particular foraging walk, I was on the lookout for greens—sochan, nettles, and ramps for a batch of wild kimchi—but when I passed a clump of vibrant yellow mushrooms on a log beside the forest trail, I had to turn around for a second look.

At the perfect stage of ripeness, the mushrooms seemed to beg for me to harvest them. It took some effort to remind myself that I already had mushrooms in the fridge at home, and if I took any more, they’d spoil before I could eat them.

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Life is never quite the same after learning a new edible wild plant. It’s like meeting a new person in town—once I’ve been introduced, I seem to run into them everywhere, and my life changes—at least slightly—because they’re in it.

This happened to me last week when I met sochan, a native plant I have, until recently, completely overlooked. It turns out I’m not the only one who has ignored this abundant, nutritious spring green; in fact, even most indigenous groups living within its range (which covers most of the Eastern and Midwestern US), didn’t traditionally eat it, Samuel Thayer wrote in his foraging guide Incredible Wild Edibles.

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Last Friday, my grandmother, Una Ross, turned 101. To mark the occasion, I finished the story I’ve been writing over the last year about her life.

The assignment my mother, Jane, gave me was to write about Una’s life with Una as the main character. That might sound like a no-brainer, but as a Scottish woman born in 1925, Una spent most of her life cast as a secondary character in other people’s stories, mainly that of her famous leprosy-doctor husband, Felton.

As I pieced together the events of Grandma’s unusual life, from her childhood in Scotland to the decades she spent living in India, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and the US, it became clear that Grandma has always been a woman in a man’s world. The strengths of women like her have been diminished for too long, and some propose that restoring power to the feminine in our midst could help bring humanity back into balance with the natural world.

This movement is called “rematriation” and I first heard about it a few weeks ago at a spring equinox blessing and land liberation ceremony at the new Indigenous-Led Urban Resilience and Innovation Hub in Iowa City.

At the event, which celebrated the opening of the new hub on an acre of land near downtown, Sikowis Nobiss, the founder and executive director of the Great Plains Action Society, explained that she prefers the term “rematriation” over “land back” because it encompasses not only the return of land to indigenous peoples, but also a return to more feminine ways of caring for land and people.

“In a world where unfettered patriarchal violence and greed has brought us to the precipice of a climate extinction,” she wrote in an article for Reckon in October 2023, “ReMatriation is the return of the matriarchy,” giving “stolen power back to the feminine.”

Rematriation, Sikowis told those gathered on the sunny Saturday in March, isn’t about a power struggle between genders, it’s about validating the feminine energy in everyone, and creating a society in which female and male powers are balanced.

So what is this female energy we’re talking about?

I’ve often tried to avoid associating with “femininity” because I don’t want to be seen as “delicate,” “incompetent,” or “meek.” Instead, I’ve tried to confront the sexist narrative of female inferiority by proving that women can be just as strong, tough, capable, and independent as men.

I’ve worked out like crazy, carried my own bag (thank you very much), and sought out dirty, physically-demanding jobs, like building trails, clearing jungle with a machete, and working on farms.

I was the only woman on a trail crew in the Rocky Mountains one summer, and I prided myself on not only working faster than everyone else, but also beating them all up to the worksite every single morning (it was a steep 2.5-mile hike in the dark, which I practically ran).

I’ve been so driven to prove women’s worth by beating men at their own game, that when a therapist asked me who I would be if I didn’t carry the reputation of all women on my shoulders, I struggled to answer.

I still want to show that women are just as important as men, but maybe it’s time to change my tactics. If Sikowis is right that many of the problems we face today are the result of patriarchal power run wild, then I don’t want to chase success in a man’s world. I want to dig up the feminine power buried inside of me, and help it grow.

When I think of femininity, one word comes to the front of my mind: nurturing. The word brings up mixed feelings because it’s been used condescendingly in male-dominated societies that value building, conquering, and inventing over tending and caring.

Setting aside the cultural prejudice associated with the word, I want to let myself imagine what a society built on “nurturing” would be like. Immediately I think of abundance:

abundance of rest,

laughter,

nourishing food,

music,

sleep,

honest work,

safety,

storytelling,

hugs,

dancing,

deep relationships,

healing,

seasonal cycles,

beauty,

emotional expression,

and creativity.

When I think about the nurturing power of women, I think of midwives—women who, throughout history, have supported and guided other women in the process of birthing new life.

My grandmother, Una, was a midwife. And my sister, Naomi, is following in her footsteps, learning to care for women during the most powerful and feminine experience of all, childbirth.

Over the winter, I visited my two sisters in California and while I rested on their couch one day, a song came on their playlist that brought me to tears and gave me a glimpse of what life could be like in a feminine-oriented society.

“Bring your tired and weary bones to this fire,” the lyrics by the all-female band MaMuse go, “and harmonize these notes together… Take your time, take this water, take these hands if you want them…When you will inhale and when you will rest, hundreds of others will be singing, till you come back.”

Suggested reading and listening:

“Why ‘ReMatriate’ is a more inclusive term for returning land to indigenous peoples” by Sikowis Nobiss (article, Reckon)

“This Fire” by Mamuse and Alexandra Blakely (song)

For nine months straight a few years ago, I didn’t drive in cars. I made the decision not to burn fossil fuels for transportation because I know that doing so is damaging to the environment. When I began driving again, something strange happened: I started getting headaches every time I went on a long car ride.

At first I blamed the sitting position for my pain (which gave me even more reason to hate driving). But I now know that isn’t the real problem. Instead, the headaches are physical expressions of the cognitive dissonance I feel doing something I believe is harmful. My pain is an acknowledgement of my complex feelings, and on some level, I’m glad for it because it shows I care. But is physical pain really the cost I have to pay for caring in today’s world, or is there another way?

Climate change is a dangerous field of work. The fear, urgency, sadness, and despair that come from knowing the reality of the climate crisis often overwhelm those who get too close. An editor and journalist I look up to once told me, “A reasonable response to the world as it is is to go a little nuts.” Until recently, I didn’t know that the emotional strain could take a toll on my body as well as my mind.

My symptoms hit a peak last fall at the end of the farming season. I not only had migraines half the days every week, but my back hurt, my knee surgery from four years ago flared up, and a new pain in the arch of my foot made walking and running unpleasant. I thought my body was falling apart. It turns out my body was actually communicating a message I needed to listen to.

Experts in the emerging field of neuroplastic pain have found that many cases of chronic pain are caused not by physical damage in the body but by stress in the brain. Back pain, headaches, and shoulder tension are some of the most common neuroplastic symptoms, but because the brain is capable of creating any sensation in the body, many other ailments from muscle and joint pain to skin problems to GI tract issues can all be used by the brain to signal distress.

Neuroplastic pain, write Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv in the book The Way Out, is a danger signal from the brain. It begins when we don’t feel safe psychologically, either because we’ve experienced trauma or because our brains are overloaded with stress, anxiety, pressure, and fear. Once the pain appears, it often triggers more fear, creating a positive feedback loop.

The United States today is a breeding ground for neuroplastic pain. We’re not only bombarded with scary news and events every day, but also live in a culture that rewards perfectionism and achievement, encouraging the high-stress personality traits that lead to pain.

Those of us working in the field of sustainability want to heal damaged ecosystems and create healthy habitats for other species to thrive. In a sustainable world, healthy societies where people thrive are just as important. Neuroplastic pain teaches us that to be healthy humans, our lives need to include joy, fun, and rest.

Gordon and Ziv say that people who experience less pain are those who are more joyful, less perfectionistic, more comfortable expressing their emotions, and more likely to spend time doing things they enjoy. In short, those who take life a little less seriously.

Does this mean that in order to be pain-free I have to care less about the planet? I don’t think so. But it does mean that I’d do well to ease the pressure I put on myself and spend more time doing what makes me happy.

Thinking back to the times in my life when my body felt the healthiest, my mind goes straight to the Climate Ride. For a whole summer in college, I biked an average of 75 miles a day, traveling across the United States by my own human power.

The two-month trip was extremely demanding physically, and also incredibly fun. Every day I biked alongside friends, laughing, joking, and sweating together—and not once did I have to miss a day for a headache or an aggravated joint.

How can I make my daily life more like the Climate Ride? By unashamedly seeking out laughter, excitement, fun, community, creativity, and rest. After all, these are crucial ingredients in a sustainable lifestyle.

Suggested reading and listening:

The Way Out: A Revolutionary, Scientifically Proven Approach to Healing Chronic Pain by Alan Gordon and Alon Ziv (2021, book)

Tell Me About Your Pain by Alan Gordon and Curable (podcast)

The Story Behind The Symptoms with David Clarke MD by The Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic Symptoms (podcast)

The Pain Reprocessing Therapy Podcast by John Gasienica and Daniella Deutsch (podcast)

I never paid much attention to the silver maple trees by the creek on our neighbor Bob’s property until for a week in February, I peed beside them every day. Actually, I didn’t just pee next to the trees, I peed for them, giving my gift of nourishing liquid in return for their gift of nourishing liquid.

It didn’t start as an intentional trade. When you’re spending all day among the trees making maple syrup, every so often you have to find a place to empty your bladder. Choosing to go beside the trees we were tapping was an easy choice.

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Trees provided the refreshments at this year’s Nut Fest in Madison, Wisconsin. The food table at our host, Alex Tanke’s, house featured acorns, pecans, hickories, black walnuts, hazelnuts, and chestnuts—all nuts that grow abundantly in the Midwest.

This might sound like a giant trail mix for squirrels, but the array of nut-based cakes, breads, cheeses, soup, pudding, pies, and cookies contributed by participants was proof that local trees can feed humans too—if we learn how to eat their nuts.

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Sitting around the dinner table on my first visit to the Wiederkehr family’s subsistence farm in Southern Ontario a few years ago, I was surprised when members of the family pushed aside their empty plates and began mending clothes while we conversed.

I soon learned that bringing handwork projects to the table was common in the Wiederkehr house. In fact, it was encouraged. This was June—the height of planting season—and squeezing work into every minute of the day seemed the family’s best chance at achieving their goal of growing all of their food sustainably on their 100-acre farmstead.

Actually, it wasn’t just a complete diet they wanted to produce without using fossil fuels or other off-farm inputs, their goal was to source all of their necessities directly from their land—including clothing, cooking fuel, building supplies, and tools.

To me, a completely sustainable, land-based lifestyle seemed like the ultimate dream, and I joined the experiment enthusiastically, eager to do what it took to live a planet-friendly life. But over the next year, I learned that hard work can be as much a pitfall as a virtue.

I moved to the Wiederkehr’s farm in August, just in time for tomato canning, and spent my first week harvesting bushel after bushel of tomatoes to process at the dining room table.

Just when the tomato bonanza was winding down, the green beans demanded our full attention. Then apples, potatoes, corn, dry beans, squash, and all kinds of root vegetables.

By the time my icy fingers pulled the last rutabagas from the ground and tucked them into leafy beds in the root cellar, I was worn out. For months, I had worked almost every waking hour of every day wanting to prove that I had what it took to live a sustainable lifestyle. Now I was ready to enjoy my well-earned winter rest, and take some free time for activities I enjoyed. But that time never came.

The temperatures dropped and the snow fell, but our schedule stayed the same: wake up with the sun, eat a communal breakfast of corn porridge and yogurt, then get to work.

As I chopped and hauled firewood, toiled in the wood shop, inoculated beans for soy sauce, and researched all of the “sustainable living skills” we had yet to master, I began to wonder if we had lost sight of our goal.

We were so focused on working hard that even when we got a chance to rest and enjoy the fruits of our labor, we didn’t take it. In an effort to live sustainably, it felt like we were taking the “life” out of lifestyle.

What were we doing wrong?

In the book Do Nothing, Celeste Headlee explains that people often mistake means goals for end goals. Means goals are the measurable goals we set to help us work toward our more fundamental life goals, but if we’re not careful, they can distract us from reaching the final destination.

Living sustainably is a means goal. It helps me build the kind of life I want to live—a life that doesn’t pollute or destroy the place I call home—but it isn’t my only purpose in life. It’s conceivable that I could reach my goal of living sustainably; then I would still have to ask myself “what do I want in life? Why do I want to survive on this planet, anyway?”

Headlee writes that if we’re honest with ourselves, one thing we want—and need—in order to live good, fulfilling lives, is leisure.

Leisure—time away from productive labor—can be a chance to rest and rejuvenate. It can also help us meet our human needs for socialization, community, music, and play—some of the things that make our lives worth living.

In her book, Headlee presents a theory that I think should be considered by anyone working to make the world more sustainable: the Idle Theory.

“Every living being has to do some work in order to stay alive,” she writes. But, “according to Idle Theory, the entities that meet their survival needs with the least amount of work are most likely to survive.”

I have no doubt that it will take a lot of work for us to build lifestyles and communities that are sustainable for the planet, and that is work worth doing. But if, when we reach our goal, we don’t know how to stop working and enjoy the lives we’ve built, can we call that success?

Suggested reading:

Do Nothing by Celeste Headlee (2020, book)

One of my favorite things about freelance writing is that I get to interview really neat people doing really neat things. They often teach me unexpected lessons that stay with me long after the articles go to print.

In addition to starting my Substack last year, I wrote articles for Anabaptist World Magazine, Growing for Market Magazine, Mennonite Mission Network, and MEDA (Mennonite Economic Development Associates).

Sometimes my favorite nuggets of insight from the people I interview (including most of the excerpts below) don’t make it into the published articles, so I got their permission to share my top quotes of the year with you!

“Our society is very eager with the use of the dumpster.”

• Peter Sprunger-Froese, in an interview for “Colorado couple cooks with the sun”

“When we focus on meeting each other’s needs, we can make a lot happen.”

• Levi Geyer, in an interview for “Farming with hickories is an act of faith” and “Foraging for fine food oil made from yellowbuds”

“I feel that Christians have an incredibly important role to play in preserving the life of the world—discerning those forces (of destruction) and pointing to the way in which God intends human beings to live in relationship to one another and the world around them.”

• Ray Epp, in an interview for “The future of faith and farming”

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“The great savannas of the past were the original universal basic income. Inviting back these great savannas… is something that we believe in.”

• Jesse Marksohn, in an interview for “Farming with hickories is an act of faith” and “Foraging for fine food oil made from yellowbuds”

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“Since we now practice regenerative agriculture, we learn how the life in the soil, the plants and little creatures work together to sustain and make the place healthier. It’s just hope itself to see that; the lives are actually regenerating the earth.”

• Akiko Aratani, in an interview for “The future of faith and farming”

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“You have to take care of yourself as well.”

• Lydia Dyck, in an interview for “Make the problem into the solution”

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“When we started all this, we didn’t have any answers. We thought it was worth trying and we did it.”

• Doug Eichelberger, in an interview for “Turning Waste Into Walls”

Of course, you’re not obligated to read any of the books I suggest, but if you’re looking to dig deeper into the topics I write about and a…

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I hadn’t accounted for the blinding fog when my three siblings and I started up the coast this morning, and now, winding up the last few miles of dirt road in my sisters’ Toyota, it’s clear we’ll barely make it to the cabin where I was born before dark.

Returning to my first home—a small, wood-heated house in the mountains of Northern California—is a trek I haven’t made in over ten years. But this drizzly day in December, the house isn’t what I’m eager to see, rather a special plant: my placenta tree.

I only hope I can locate it before dusk falls completely—that is, if it’s still there.

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Sebastopol, California is full of food. That was the first thing I noticed while visiting my sisters in the small, Northern-California city.

I’m not talking about restaurants or markets—although there are plenty of those. What caught my attention when I climbed out of the car downtown, was a hedge of rosemary.

Four feet tall and neatly trimmed, this hedge growing between a road and a parking lot could season thousands of meals. I snapped a picture, smiling at the unexpected landscaping choice.

It turns out that was just the beginning.

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A week before the start of COP30 this November, images of colorfully-bannered boats floated into my social media feed. This, I soon learned, was the Amazon Flotilla Yaku Mama, an aquatic caravan of indigenous leaders heading to the global convention on climate change.

Traveling by boat from the headwaters of the Amazon River in Ecuador to its mouth in Brazil, the group of 60 carried a message for the international negotiators gathered in Belem: “Indigenous people must be at the center of climate solutions.”

A vast, biodiverse biome, the Amazon rainforest covers about 2.5 million square miles in South America and plays a crucial role in regulating the climate of the entire planet. Destruction of the tropical rainforest over the last five decades—though deforestation and pollution—has become a global crisis. But, members of the Flotilla wrote in an article on the Yaku Mama website: “The results speak for themselves: where Indigenous territory is recognized and respected, the jungle stands tall, the water is clean, and biodiversity thrives.”

“We are the hope,” the authors concluded, “we are the answer.”

I have to chuckle at the statement. Not because I disagree, but because I’ve lived in an indigenous community in the Amazon, and I’m not sure Westerners are prepared for the real secrets to sustainability the Cofan and their indigenous neighbors have to offer.

I lived in the Cofan village of Zabalo (in Ecuador) on and off throughout high school, and one of the biggest challenges I faced was all the time spent lounging in hammocks. I wanted to get up and do something, not just lay around!

Don’t get me wrong, the Cofan are hardworking people: they grow bananas and yuca in their finca gardens, build their own houses out of boards cut from felled trees, and wake up before dawn for all-day hunting excursions. But when visiting our neighbors’ houses, my family often found adults and children alike swinging in hammocks, laughing, and drinking chuchula out of tin bowls. They know when to stop working and relax instead.

By capping their own productivity, the Cofan people protect the forest.

I’ve heard the argument that people who live in colder climates are more industrious than those living in the tropics because we have to work ahead to get through the long, cold winter months. I believe that. The problem is, we have trouble knowing when enough is enough.

I learned the answer the hard way at the end of this year’s hickory harvest. My body was hurting and exhausted, and I felt mentally drained. I realized I had no choice but to take a break.

For a couple of weeks, I spent a lot of time laying on the couch, stretching, reading, and cooking. Resting is hard for me, and I constantly had to fight off the feeling that I was wasting my time.

For motivation, I thought of the Cofan. If these people, deemed “key actors shaping the future of our planet” by the Rainforest Foundation, can spend hours a day happily resting with their families, so can I.

From my couch, I followed the progress of the Amazon Flotilla through posts on Instagram. I smiled at photos of the participants playing futbol, bathing in the river, dancing in traditional outfits, and sharing meals of fish, yuca, and bananas in the towns where they stopped.

But my favorite video was one from inside a boat. It showed indigenous activists lounging side by side in a long row of hammocks, on their way to COP30.

Suggested reading:

Amazon Flotilla Yaku Mama (Official website)

“Amazon Flotilla: Indigenous peoples must be at the center of COP30 climate negotiations” (article, Rainforest Foundation)

Stepping out of the car beside the giant oak tree, my first thought was “wow.” The tree—a Northern Red Oak—was a beauty, its branches stretching freely in the open clearing. But what really had my attention were the shiny, clay-colored nuts that covered the ground below.

My partner Levi and I grinned at each other and were soon on our knees, scooping nuts into our container by the handful. It took an hour or two to gather 20 gallons, and when we stopped, there were so many nuts left, it hardly looked like we had been there.

This was a mast year for Northern Red Oaks (and possibly other oak species) here in Iowa, which means that the trees produced more nuts than usual. In an article published by Radio Iowa, a horticultural specialist at Iowa State University, Aaron Steil, explained that coordinated bumper crops like this one happen every three to five years.

“It can be a big nuisance for us,” Steil said, voicing the sentiment of many land-owners, “we have to do a lot more clean-up this year.”

A big nuisance? Not if you see acorns as food!

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Last year was my first season harvesting wild hickory nuts for oil with my partner Levi, and the job he gave me was straightforward: search under producing trees and fill my buckets with good nuts.

I expected this season to be the same, but a low year in nut production among wild yellowbud hickory trees meant many of the trees Levi knew about—on neighbor’s farms and in nearby parks—were barren.

We needed to look for new trees if we were going to have a harvest, so we began scouting anywhere within a 100-mile radius of home. My job was still to harvest nuts, but the area for searching was zoomed way out.

Finding trees with nuts in a tract that big is no small undertaking. The challenge taught me to literally see the world in a new way: with hickory eyes.

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I wiggle my toes in the mud, probing the lake bottom for the smooth, hard mass of a root. Up to my thighs in muddy water, I can’t rely on my eyes for finding what I’m looking for, so I depend on my feet instead. So far, they’re doing a pretty good job.

After an hour of hunting, the four of us—my parents, Levi, and me—have gathered more than a dozen lotus roots, and we’re just getting the hang of it. Eager to find another one, I push my toes in a little deeper, but this time when my foot hits something solid, the contact sends nauseating pain through my big toe.

Uh oh.

I feel dizzy. But even as I reach for the canoe to steady myself, I think: I don’t want an injury to cut this foraging trip short; I’ve waited too long for this day!

I’ve been interested in eating wild edibles since childhood, but I’ve long been frustrated with the seeming lack of filling staple foods to forage in North America.

Don’t get me wrong, I love eating wild berries, drinking herbal teas, and munching on succulent cattail stems, but you can only survive on those things for so long. I’ve longed to find calorie-rich foods that can fill my plate and my stomach, but despite hearing vague accounts of indigenous people living on foraged nuts and tubers, until recently, these hearty treasures eluded me.

Then one day this fall, my coworker Ken returned from the Midwest Wild Harvest Festival with a gift for me: a lotus root. The off-white tuber was about the shape and size of a banana. I couldn’t wait to try it.

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I always wear long sleeves and pants when working with tomato plants. It’s my defense against the tiny, oily hairs on leaves and stems that irritate my skin and make me itch all over.

I don’t mind the extra layers on a late-September morning like this one, but in the heat of summer, bundling up to work in a greenhouse is a big inconvenience. As a worker at a small vegetable farm, it’s not the only thing I find annoying about growing tomatoes.

From start to finish, tomatoes are a demanding crop. First, they like a plastic house to protect them from sunburn and rain. Then comes hours of pruning and trellising to keep them from molding on the ground, extra fertile soil if they’re going to be strong and healthy, and all kinds of special precautions to fend off the inevitable pests and diseases they seem to attract like magnets.

I’ve probably spent more time babying tomato plants this season at Echollective Farm than I spent with any other crop, and by now, I’m ready to see them go. So I’m surprised by my emotions as I perform the final task of the season, tearing the plants out of the greenhouse.

It’s not quite sadness I’m feeling. It’s more like a sudden, solemn awareness that despite all of my complaints, my life is undoubtedly intertwined with the lives of these plants. Their fruits (the unsellable B-grade ones) have nourished my body throughout the summer. And the profits from tomato sales have literally made my paychecks.

I wonder: what is my responsibility as a farmer and a human being as I tug their roots out of the ground?

I don’t have to think hard; the answer comes naturally: thank them.

As I cut the plastic trellising twine with scissors and haul armloads of tangled, smelly plants out of the greenhouse, I say it again and again, “thank you.”

Even after the plants are dead, the nutrients they assembled in such delicious packages will remain in my body. And the rewards for my work of tending and harvesting them will live on in my bank account and in the places I spend that money.

The relationship between farmers and tomatoes is an intricate one, developed over thousands of years. Each partner gives the other what it wants, and in the process, it gets what it wants too.

During my research for an article on tomato disease management published in Growing for Market Magazine, I learned that today’s large, juicy tomato varieties are almost unrecognizable from their early, wild ancestors in the South American Andes mountains.

As humans domesticated and spread tomatoes throughout the Americas and later the entire world, we “taught” them to meet our desire for large, tasty fruit. They obliged, but not for free.

In exchange, the plants taught us to help them thrive by manipulating their growth habits, lifting them off the ground, and fighting off their natural enemies. (As it happens, the gene in tomatoes that controls fruit size is the same one that controls defense against disease, meaning large fruit comes at the direct cost of disease resistance.)

In the book “The Botany of Desire,” Michael Pollan suggests that the domestication of food plants by humans may not be a story of one-sided gain. By changing to meet human desires, plants ensure their own survival.

It sure feels like these tomatoes have bossed me around this season. And for that they deserve—if not affection—my respect.

Suggested reading:

The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World by Michael Pollan (2001, book)

Thank you so much for reading my stories and supporting my work! It’s been six months since my first Substack post, and I’m making some important changes you’ll want to know about.

New Name!

First of all, I’m excited to announce my Substack’s new name: LANDing. When I first started publishing stories here back in the spring, I wanted to show that living sustainably can be fun and exciting, thus “Sierra’s Adventures in Sustainability.” While I still think that’s true, my writing has led me in a slightly different direction.

When I think about what gives me hope for a sustainably future, it’s the belief that Westerners like myself can learn to live sustainably here in North America. We can get to know this place and learn to live within its bounty and limits, just like Indigenous Americans have done for thousands of years.

I think of LANDing as the process of connecting with a place, putting down roots, and adapting my lifestyle to fit my local environment.

In this Substack, I will continue to share lessons and insights from my LANDing journey in Eastern Iowa. While the editorial-type articles I’ve been publishing are probably my favorite format to write, I hope to occasionally branch out into poetry, fiction, and other genres as well.

Launching Sierra’s Bookshelf

Books have played an important role in shaping my perspective, and I want to start sharing some of the most influential titles on my bookshelf with you!

If you like reading too and want to learn more from the authors who are my teachers, this is your invitation! Keep an eye out for recommendations in your inbox; once you read them, you’ll get a chance to share your reflections with other readers. I’ll also be asking for recommendations from you once in a while, so if you find a book you want to share, keep it in mind!

Sierra’s Bookshelf will only be accessible to paid subscribers, so if you want to be part of the fun, please sign up!

Changes to free subscriptions

Free subscribers, I want to respect your time and your inboxes, so I’m simplifying the free plan. From now on, you’ll only receive emails when there are free posts—no more previews of paywalled content.

If you like what you read and want more, consider becoming a paid subscriber! You’ll get multiple original pieces in your inbox each month as well as access to my full archive. You’ll also get recommendations from Sierra’s Bookshelf so you can dig deeper into the topics I write about and be inspired in your own LANDing journey!

Spread the word!

My goal is to help build a more sustainable future by sharing practical knowledge and insights for living in harmony with the land. But I can’t do it alone!

Many of you have already helped spread the word by recommending this Substack to others. Thank you! If you haven’t yet, now is the time! Recommending it will earn you rewards and help support my writing, research, and further explorations in sustainable living.

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With gratitude and excitement,

Sierra