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Growing Mondays: Everything is sacred
I am rooted, but I flow
Jo Hunter Adams
December 08, 2025
Hi! I'm Jo, writing from Heart & Soil homestead, a 1-acre homestead in the Far South of Cape Town, South Africa. Every week I share inspiration and education for your growing journey. Thanks so much for reading!
Welcome to Growing Mondays, where I talk about growing- vegetables, fruits, animals and, well, people. This week I talk about this time of year, and approaches to clearing and abundance, both in the garden and outside of it.
Canna in the early morning light
I am rooted, but I flow
Every year, around this time, we clean and clear. We let go of all the physical stuff that we don’t need. It coincides with a busy season on the farm, in planting, harvesting, and trying to keep the shield bug population below a trillion.
And we start to turn towards reflection: what has gone well this year, where could I not grow past my shortcomings? Where did Eugene and I, and the kids, grow the most? What physical environments and objects enabled that process?
Silkies with their barley fodder: Our newest breed on the farm. They’re not very useful for food but a source of tremendous joy.
Clearing might seem like a very niche process, symbolic of unchecked privilege. On the farm, we need stuff to function, and we use so many tools to maintain our systems. It’s hard to know when we’ll need what!
It even applies to the food we’re growing: How many of our vegetables do we need to hang on to to make sure we feel abundance and can eat super well, and what can we let go of?
The process of figuring out what we really need is actually a process of acknowledging all the marks of both abundance and interdependence. Having seeds and skills and tools and redundancies for food, water and energy is a mark of resilience. Yet taken to extremes, it can become a prison. Usually the rats let us know when we’ve tipped over the edge.
Noah’s woodburning
Maybe we have to go through this process every year because we’re always growing and changing. Maybe we have to do it every year because we haven’t gotten it figured out yet.
I think it’s a process of discovering that everything— from inanimate objects, to plants, to animals, to people, and even those dastardly shield bugs— is sacred in some way. We honour the sacred dimension of mundane objects by reducing the number of things that take our attention. We increase our capacity to maintain and care for what we’re been lucky enough to receive. Things that move out are more likely to be valued somewhere else.
The great thing about farming is the physical reminders— the rats, the duck poop, the dust, the broken stuff— that tell us we’ve veered a little off course. Suburban neat homes are not immune to growing and accumulating beyond healthy boundaries. It may just take on different forms.
Dedicating this month to clearing is a way of turning the cultural norms of December upside down, making lots of space to see and value what is already there.
In our garden, the corollary of this clearing process is that if we can clear the extra shoots, the unnecessary or diseased leaves, all the food ready for harvest, we create airflow and line of sight for predators to harvest insects on our behalf.
And if we can spend enough time looking for what is already there, we can avoid overshooting and finding ourselves with way too much to water, maintain, eat and sell/gift. We can keep things at the correct scale for our lives.
How are you faring this December? What is bringing you joy, and what is your process? I’d love to hear from your experiences and wisdom, as always.
Workshops
Some 2026 workshops: |
Hana’s fist Lino cut.
Keep walking. Rest up, and walk again. Fall down, get up, walk on. Pay attention to the landscape. To the ways it changes and the ways it stays the same. Be alert to surprises and turn with the turning of the seasons. Honor your body, train your mind, and keep your heart open against all odds. Say yes to what is, even when it is uncomfortable or embarrassing or heartbreaking. Hurl your handful of yes into the treetops and then lift your face as the rain of yes drops its grace all over you, all around you, and settles deep inside you.
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