Year’s Gone By!

It’s hard to pretend that as this year ends, I look ahead without some trepidation…. for the past year brought much beauty, joy, unexpected kindnesses and collaboration, but also multiple crises, large & medium, losses, great sorrow, even tragedy. These hardships took place in my sacred environment, family, my business, even my own well being for a time. So while I hope for a gentler year ahead, I do know that tremendous change is afoot on this planet, and it will affect everyone of us in some measure. Our spiritual “health” to become more aware of reality and truths in clear detail, to progress in our capacities for honesty, resilience, empathy and presence is wanted.

One difficulty this year, in the practical life of the gardens, of being someone whose grows botanicals for their business, was that nearly 80 inches of rain poured down! This translated into difficulty harvesting, some crops ruined or with much smaller yields, challenges drying herbs & flowers, also tricky to plant, mow, weed, etc. I depend upon the land’s offerings for my living, buying very little of the herbs used in Tender Flower products. While the gardens have good drainage, and have been cultivated to be resilient and adaptive, I didn’t have the right infrastructure to deal with some of the processing issues with harvests, and, consequently lost a fair amount of the harvested plants. Every grower/farmer in my community had similar troubles this year. We will learn from this and become more creative.

Truly, though, it is the perspective of those who would buy products made by farmers , whether food, fiber, herbals, that needs to develop insight into the role of growers, tenders of the land. All economic activity begins with natural resources…and farms, gardens and homesteads are nexuses of this activity and potential. There is no food without independent farms and farmers, but there is also no freedom. I’m not going to spell all that out..just think it over for awhile, a year or a lifetime. But, community associations of a social nature are nurtured by local farms: great potentials for different forms of economics exist here. Farmers who love nature, who work with integrity, are also traveling along a very specific spiritual path, one that shapes the Earth in profound ways.

Support us, take care of us. We are your future!