Lettuce & Protest
We’re 10 days into June and this is the first time since the beginning of April that I’ve sat down to write for my own blog. I don’t really have an excuse, life has not been that busy since lockdown started. I’ve had ongoing work, and I’m a homebody, so lockdown has been ok for me, not counting the general stress of the world being in the middle of a pandemic.
In addition, we’ve had the more recent civil unrest in the US with mass protests against police brutality after George Floyd, a black man, was murdered by a white cop, on video, in Minneapolis. This cop already had 18 previous complaints against him, 16 of which were closed without any disciplinary action.
Not to mention Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, Regis Korchinski-Paquet, Eric Garner, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Delrawn Small, Trayvon Martin…
Since 2015, police in the US have shot and killed 1,252 black people. It is not just enough for black lives to matter, we must realize that they are just as valuable as white bodies, and that property is NEVER more valuable than bodies of colour.
It’s been a heavy few weeks, and I cannot imagine what it is like to experience these moments in history as black person or as a person of any visible race minority. While I’m staying home in lockdown I’ve been working on identifying and examining my internal biases and supporting the BLM movement where I can with the skills and resources I have. It has given me a little bit of hope to see how global the movement has become, with protests in every single state, and in 62 countries around the world (and counting).
If you’re a journaler, or a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) I really recommend starting with Leesa Renee Hall’s #ExpressiveWriting Prompts to Use If You’ve Been Accused of #WhiteFragility #SpiritualBypass or #WhitePrivilege. They’ve really helped me better understand and start to work on changing my own inherent biases.
If you’re looking for more ways to get involved, do a search for “Your Town Against Racism” group on Facebook. I know there is Red Deer Against Racism and Central Alberta Racism groups. If you can donate money to the cause there are numerous bail funds to support. If you can’t donate money, there are several youtube channels that have created long videos that feature lots of BIPOC artists. The videos will also have a lot of advertisements in them, and the creators are donating all their ad revenue to various community support organizations. You can keep these videos on as your background noise, just turn off your adblocker and don’t skip the ads. There are also many great Canadian anti-racism organizations you can contribute to.
Gratuitous promotion: my friend in Toronto has started a program to help black folks with food and groceries. It’s called Uplift Kitchen and I think you should support it if you can. You can follow them on instagram @UpliftKitchenTO to keep up with what they’re doing and to find out how you can help.
You can seriously find hundreds of resources to help you start this work with a quick google search, don’t be lazy. Don’t expect your black friends to hold your hand, pat your back, and give you gold star stickers as you do this work.
This is my bowl full of New Red Fire Lettuce after I picked it yesterday, with whats left of the lettuce patch behind it.
What the Hell Does This Have to Do With Lettuce?
Gardening is many things, not least of which is a form of protest. It is a way to take care of ourselves, build strong communities, and become a little more self-sufficient. And, gardening can give us hope.
Growing our own food, however little, connects us with the environment around us, and helps us develop a new appreciation for the food we consume, and challenges what we think we know about the world. If you’ve never gardened before, now is the time to try it. And I think you should start with lettuce.
Why lettuce? Because lettuce is easy, it's pretty fast, and you can literally grow it anywhere. I think it's best to start really small when you try something new, and there are multiple ways you can go about getting started.
I think the simplest way is to order (or pick up from your local Canadian Tire) a package of lettuce seeds and the smallest bag of potting mix you can find. You can buy a small container for planting in if you want, but you don’t need it. Chances are you’ve got an old plastic container of some sort at home that you can use, maybe an old take out container, or a pack lunch container. Lettuce doesn’t need much soil, an inch or two is fine. Hell, if you’ve already got some houseplants, you can plant lettuce seeds around them in the soil.
What kind of lettuce seeds should you buy? Well, that’s entirely up to you. But, I do have a favourite. It’s New Red Fire lettuce. It’s prolific, it's fast, and it's tasty. This is probably the closest you’ll get to store-bought lettuce, but it tastes way better.
We planted New Red Fire in our greenhouse this year, and we’ve been harvesting HUGE bowls full of lettuce at least once a week for the last couple of weeks. This lettuce is bolt resistant, which means it won’t suddenly get super tall and spindly and go to seed and start to taste gross.
Plant your seeds, water them, set them in a bright window, and wait. Keep the soil moist, but not saturated.
Once the leaves are 3-4 inches tall you can start to harvest them. Snap off the outside leaves as close to the base of the plant as you can, and enjoy. Notice that tiny spark of hope ignited by the fact that you can grow food, in spite of what’s happening in the world around.