Today we went exploring one of my favorite patches of wineberries. Said to be an invasive plant, I encourage everyone to cross compare that with the idea of shipping the equivalent berry from across the US or even worse, foreign countries with less-than-optimal employment situations.
It is an odd culture indeed that targets a local food source as something to get rid of, and to spray toxins on, then to happily go to a grocery store and buy an sub-par replacement, which is often frozen for shipping, always accompanied with tons of fossil fuel burning, and is old and therefore the antioxidant value has gone down.
This is extremely revealing to what has become of the distorted survival instinct of the human. And how hard corporations have been at this game of disconnecting us from our local ecology, and local food sources.
To recap, in case anyone is confused, berries are not dangerous terrorists and therefore do not need to be targeted and eradicated. I personally can think of several other solutions, and I’m sure you can as well.
What if, for example these local patches were managed and maintained by the local townspeople who saw it fit to pick berries from their local environment instead of feed into the delusions of corporate exotic agriculture.
If you would like another solution, how about raising children in a nature based way and teaching them of the local abundant wild resources. If we eat the wine berry, since most people prefer to poop in their county drinking water supply, the seeds will not reproduce. This would drastically reduce the numbers of seeds being sent to the environment.
Perhaps this would be an aspect of humans fulfilling their current ecological purpose, and would help caretake and manage local ecology which would rebirth a transition out of exoticised capitalism into a local cottage industry which rebuilds community, connection, and localizes dollar spending.
I forsee that with more research done, we will realize that ecology is compensating for human disconnection, and that humans don’t need to fight nature, but return to nature.
Plant blessings,
Dandelion
Check out more on Fb: Return to Nature
And Instagram: Return to Nature
Hi Dan,
I love this post – for more reasons than one! Who is the adorable little one foraging with you? What an awesome picture, you cannot help but smile!
OK, “invasive” – “noxious” – “non-native” – I get a little worked-up over this issue too. I was seriously questioning this concept a couple of years ago, but my research revealed no solid counter arguments (perhaps my search was not all that thorough.) Then while reading “The Wild Wisdom of Weeds” by Katrina Blair, there it was! I felt vindicated, and a bit further along in understanding and utilizing my intuition, gut instinct, or whatever you want to call our keener senses that come from developing our level of awareness…so cool!
Anyway, I agree with you completely, and I have since found the growing community of Nature guardians who are on a similar journey. They are raising awareness in different ways and effectively blazing the trail for others to follow. The current story is crumbling and will soon fade into history, marking the end of humanity’s evolutionary phase of adolescence. Not long ago, perhaps a year or so, I found it very difficult to find enough evidence of positive change to balance with the horrific devastation that was taking place. Now I cannot keep up with all the amazing things people are doing – this is truly an exciting time to be alive!
In Peace & Gratitude,
Tammy