Emerging from Fallow Season requires an exit strategy…

Our farm doesn't look like this right now, but it will...

Think about those picturesque farms that are fields of green, then crops, then harvests, and then winter comes and everything shuts down. Land is frozen and everything pauses for a while until the soil thaws.

Well, in Houston we have the opposite. We have an incredibly long growing season, but it’s hot as Hades July and August. Fallow season is a necessary component of People Care — a principle of permaculture. Lenie and I have to remember that we’re people to be cared for, too.

This year, we instituted fallow season during our hottest months. This gave us a chance to travel, do administrative work, re-assess business decisions, create new ones, and move forward. I firmly believe that the reason we’re so busy with business right now is because we took time to prepare for that this summer.

While this was wonderful for us, we also have to have a plan to emerge from this season of doing less. We were graced with a grant from Urban Harvest to implement permaculture principles in our new community garden, so we had a hard start to working the land again. This proved to be a winning strategy to get going on things because we really needed some help to make some long term decisions in an area that was a weed-fighting annoyance 6 months out of the year.

What did we learn? The strategy requires an external pressure or reason to get moving again. Especially if you’re working against the natural energy of a season. The natural energies of the seasons are:

• Fall = slowing down

• Winter = rest

• Spring = cranking up

• Summer = run like hell

Because Houston is hot and only getting hotter, we need a little spring energy in our Fall so we don’t miss crucial planting and sowing seasons. This is one of my personal principles of blooming where you’re planted. Acknowledge the energy of the season, and recognize that the logistics necessary to thriving in it might require you to do things a little differently.

Here’s to doing something different this season — cultivate the opposite to maximize balance.