5 Things I Learned Working on an Organic Herb Farm

Starting last summer, on the weekends, I worked for about 6 months on a farm in southwest Austin. It was made up of greenhouses and I helped cultivate basil, oregano, rosemary, thyme, and mints of all kinds. You could say I was an apprentice out there, or even a stooge of some sort -- but probably I was just a hired hand.

I learned some valuable lessons about the world of botanicals. Certain patterns that exist within nature are easy to spot in other realms, such as relationships, work life, and socioeconomics. Here are 5 free tips straight from nature:

1. Nature Loves Redundancy

In human civilization, we are often taught that there is an efficient purpose for everything and that everything must have a purpose. Yet, in nature, there is an over-abundance of certain things. Within a system (let’s say a tree) there’s actually ‘too much’ even needed for ‘efficient survival’ -- too many roots, too many branches, too many fruits, more than is necessary. Within the context of a life form, nature likes ‘too much’ -- it likes redundancy.

2. It’s an Easy Mistake to Get Caught Up in the Weeds

Little critters and crawlers will sneak up and try to piggyback on a successful endeavor, try to destroy the life form that’s doing well, or simply take up space in the surrounding scenery. While it is tempting to do battle with all of these hangers-ons, and try to combat them all away, there are simply not enough daylight hours to do so.

While certain infestations definitely call for a complete and total banishment, it’s a much better strategy to live and let live, when it comes to tangential weeds here and there. After all, they will always poke their head up whenever you’ve got something good working in the garden. If you really want to produce a lot of herbs for a lot of people, the best use of time is: to spend as little of it as possible dealing with these micro-negative forces.

3. Production is a Cure-All

#3 ties back directly to #2. When you save time by not killing every single little weed on the premises, that leaves you time to do what...? You can actually focus on the creation and growth of new life. This stock is the one thing that will determine a farm’s success or failure. The key here is quality -- and quantity. Both are absolutely necessary to have a natural operation which creates enough value to make up for all the hard work and headache necessary to get there.

In a farm that’s productive enough, the surplus of value makes it all worthwhile: the sweat, and toil, and even the poison ivy. Hence: Cure-all.

4. Energy Travels in Spirals, Not Straight Lines

This one is a bit far out. Although humans have captured electrical energy and channeled it through wired grids, this is completely opposite of how nature functions. The way that a plant grows from a tiny sprout into a mature, structured object is by means of spiraling upwards. In the very least, it spirals geometrically, at the fractal level. Conversely, when the rays of the sun descend downwards, the wave patterns of the light ray can be said to move in a spiraled pattern. Cloud vapor swirls around and becomes rainfall, in winds that circle the earth with their own unique patterns. Of course, the helix shape of all cellular DNA is a spiral.

In Chinese medicine it is said that the energy meridians within the human body travel in spirals, and perhaps they are not far off...

5. Alkaline Chemistry Dominates Acidic Chemistry

Despite all the chemicals, fuels, nuclear waste, sludge and styrofoam that humans produce and chuck around the globe, the plant world is always seeming to be making a comeback. In fact, many plants and trees actually thrive on the mess that humans make -- go down to Houston sometime and look at how big and luscious the trees are that grow next to the freeways. Plants convert carbon, which is acidic, and actually create plant tissues, minerals, and oxygen from it. Plants are this planet’s cleaners and I am personally rooting that they’ll go all the way with it.

[Conclusion]:

I learned a lot from growing herbs, and this article just scratches the surface. Ultimately, the further away our civilization gets from nature, the more important it is for us to understand the lessons that the natural world is willing to teach us (almost) for free. Just remember, as long as you have access to soil, sun and rainwater, you only need to buy one set of seeds...

Yrs. truly,

Dave Escamilla