Potatoes

After planting potatoes with the Monday group last week, I re-watched the final section of "Botany of Desire," which is all about the potato and human relationships to this plant. If you haven't already seen this film, I want to encourage you to watch at least this final section, which begins an hour and twenty minutes into the film. Besides offering some history of the potato, including its origins in Peru, it provides a variety of perspectives on organic vs conventional agricultural systems, including discussions of diversity, genetic modification, and chemical usage. PBS Video: The Botany of Desire.

Michael Pollan, Joel Salatin & our relationship to all beings

As I've been sharing my gardening/farming perspectives with you these past couple of weeks, I've been noticing how much I've been talking about relationship--my relationships with my business partners, my family and its land, our CSA members, the plants, the soil, and the diversity of non-human beings that live on this land with me. In his book The Botany of Desire, Michael Pollan explores human relationships with plants from a plant-centric rather than human-centric view, suggesting that plants are using us to further their own evolution as much as we're using them to sustain our lives. I just came across this great TED talk in which Pollan expands upon that idea and proposes a system of agriculture which nurtures the relationships between species--plants, animals, soil microbes, farmers, and eaters--to create a self-sustaining system in which the health and well-being of all participants is enhanced. He uses Joel Salatin's Polyface Farm as a model for this type of farming system. Here's a link to the talk: Michael Pollan: A plant's-eye view.

Also, you can watch the film version of The Botany of Desire free on the PBS website: http://video.pbs.org/video/1283872815/. The first thirty minutes are a discussion of the history of the relationship between apples and humans, so you might be especially interested in that section given all of our recent discussions about apple production. But we'll be planting potatoes soon, so that might be an interesting section to watch as well. I think it's the last one.