South Africa Reflections 5

Planting, schools, and building a greenhouse.

I am a farmer.  Truly, I love the land in a way that only a farmer can.  I can feel the richness of the earth coursing the veins of our earth and all beings on our planet.  I can sense our connectedness through, with, between, in, and because of the soil that I step on.  I know that somewhere on the other side of the Earth wherever I am standing that there is someone, or some animal, or a plant, or simply another piece of soil standing right benith my feet.  And I can feel this through the core of our living Earth, and the it touches the core of my being.  In this way, I am connected to farming, and I loved every moment that I spent helping to farm and build on the Thornybush community garden site.  Helping to erect a structure that will surely last a season, I dug through the richest, most nutrient filled sold that I have ever seen.  It inspired me to potentially bring my families knowledge of wine grape farming,planting, harvesting, and resources to the area.  It inspired a thought in my head that could help make the land truly sustainable and create a new industry here that could create long term jobs, reinvent the economy throughout the area, and I thought how we could rebuild schools, revitalize the region, and create a positive, lasting, and a beautiful area that could potentially create another industry through tourism and a new wine region, an economy that could potentially re-sstimulate the area's health and prosperity.  Through service to the community garden I became connected to South Africa, and I was inspired to do more.  Which I will  do.  Not just here in South Africa, but across the globe, on every continent, in every nation, in every way that I can.  Perhaps through filmmmaking, perhaps through education, perhaps by political means, perhaps all three.