30 Generations of Farming

Nora Waln was an unusual and adventurous woman.

A Philadelphia Quaker and best-selling writer and journalist in the 1930s–60s, she was the first to report on the spread of Nazism in the lead up to WWII, and wrote on Mongolia, communism in China, and the Korean War. In 1920s, she became the adopted daughter (literally a “daughter of affection”) in the upper-class Chinese farming family Lin, living with them for 12 years.

In 1933 Waln wrote a memoir about her experience in the Lin family—The House of Exile—which Pearl Buck called “Undoubtedly one of the most delightful books of personal experience that has yet been written about China. Its authenticity is beyond question.”

In addition to a wonderful depiction of daily life in China, Waln wrote about the Chinese approach to agriculture. Because of their extensive in-field experience and collective memory, Chinese farmers were venerated as living libraries! Their own knowledge and experience, combined with data gathered from earlier work on the same land, produced the best result. The Lin family homestead had been occupied for 30 generations—a total of 900 years! According to Waln, farming information and yield data from the previous 30 years’ work was always used in the planning of the next year’s crops to obtain the best results.

This book resonates with me personally, and with all of us at Ecology Action because feels like a validation of what we’re doing. Though well short of the Lin family’s 900 years, we have over four decades of experience which we use in planning each year’s crop of food and compost materials. Because we constantly take this experience into account, we have been able to obtain significant results while using small spaces, minimal resources and less time than standard farming approaches.

Our GROW BIOINTENSIVE Closed-Loop Mini-Farming practices are built on a foundation of historically recognized sustainable farming methods like those described in The House of Exile and are being used successfully in 152 countries around the world, in virtually all climates and soils where food is grown. We are continually learning from and building on our own experience, and that of our international partners, working towards discovering the best ways to build and maintain sustainable soil fertility everywhere our method is used.

After all, living soil is the most important resource in the world, but according to academic estimates, there may be as little as 26 years of farmable soil left on the Earth. Life as we know it depends on a soil that is a living sponge cake made from the perfect combination of carbon, nutrients, water, air, and microorganisms all functioning in a balanced way to support healthy plants. Many years ago, an article in Newsweek said that biologically intensive soil is the sacher torte of soils – meaning that is uniquely and importantly rich, layered, and fertile.

Gandhi said, “To forget the soil is to forget oneself.”

Anyone who knows me knows I love to quote what Voltaire observed in Candide, “The whole world is a Garden, and what a wonderful place it would be, if each one of us just to care of our part of the earth/Earth—our Garden.”

The Hindu spiritualist Sri Kaleshwar has the wholistic insightful perspective, “The earth is so beautiful, creation is so beautiful. When we look at the mountains or anything in nature, seeing all the many beautiful things, our heart is completely softened by the divine energy. When this happens, it is easy to attract the earth’s energy.

Whoever connects to the earth energy will automatically receive great happiness and peace. They can live on the earth with great joy. Even though they must face the biggest of problems, they receive the type of strength and courage needed to deal with them. Even though they have problems, without even noticing it they no longer care about their problems and the problems will decrease; this type of happiness will take good care of that.

This is the happiness that comes through the earth vibrations. The earth energy and the soul energy connect to each other. Then the earth energy automatically protects them, making the big happiness.”

Like Waln’s “living libraries” we can use the experience of those who worked the land before us and integrate it into our own work, our own relationship with the Earth. I encourage you to take up the accumulated knowledge of GROW BIOINTENSIVE and begin integrating it into your own 900-year plan! If each person who can practice closed-loop biologically-intensive farming and gardening does so – even starting with a single bed! – we can make all the difference in the world. We can be a part of growing “the big happiness.”