Why are we at Eden Streets fully committed and engaged in supporting you as urban farmers with social missions? Our answer: “To connect people with Nature - the great healer and teacher.” Nature has the power to change us, even to transform us.
We view the farmer as the orchestra director of the most amazing realms of living things. What a masterpiece the music of the abundant, fertile farm plays for the whole community of all living things! Those working on the farm feel this. Keeping this marvelous aim in mind motivates each of us forward in this important work.
Nature is unfolding dynamic creation for those ready to experience it. To confine Nature to words is a cheap substitute for an experience with the divine. The following quotes help us remember why we do this work. Among other things, the farm brings healing, connection, peace, satisfaction, gratitude, abundance, occupation, and joy. May these quotes and expressions inspire you, too.
The Ultimate Goal of Farming
“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.”
- Masanobu Fukuoka
Holistic Agriculture
An agriculture that is whole nourishes the whole person, body, and soul.
- Wendell Berry
Aligned with Nature
The best methods of food cultivation are those aligned with nature.
- Masanobu Fukuoka "The One-Straw Revolution"
The way we grow changes Society
When we change the way we grow our food, we change our food, we change society, we change our values.
- Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Re-creation
When we immerse ourselves in creation, we are created anew. Life and creation in all its forms radiate the Creator: His love and glory. This experience is the ultimate in re-creation and transformation.
- Farmer Karl
Caring for Earth
The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.
- Wendell Berry
Soil: The Great Connector
The soil is the great connector of lives, the source, and destination of all. It is the healer and restorer and resurrector, by which disease passes into health, age into youth, death into life. Without proper care for it we can have no community because without proper care for it we can have no life.
- Wendell Berry
Be repairers of creation
No matter what our particular job, especially in our world today, we all are called to be Tikkun Olam—repairers of creation. Thank you for whatever you do, wherever you are, to bring joy, and light, and hope, and faith, and pardon and love to your neighborhood and to yourself.
- Mister Rogers, Tikkun Olam, and Thinking Like a Mountain
Keeping off three evils
“I have no more than twenty acres of ground," he replied, "the whole of which I cultivate myself with the help of my children; and our labor keeps off from us three great evils — idleness, vice, and want.
- Voltaire, Candide
Successful farming
Successful farming is about realizing more leisure in which to experience the richest of relationships, about living in ways that are “gentle and easy”... Ultimately, it is not the growing technique which is the most important factor, but rather the state of mind of the farmer.
- Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Natural Farming
When it is understood that one loses joy and happiness in the effort to possess them, the essence of natural farming will be realized.
- Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Farming is Healing and Purification
Natural farming proceeds from the spiritual health of the individual. The healing of the land and the purification of the human spirit are one process.
- Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution
Who we are
We are the living links in a life force that moves and plays around and through us, binding the deepest soils with the farthest stars.
- Paracelsus
Horticulture - the Greatest of All Crafts
Nature is the ultimate governess and source of art, and horticulture is the greatest of all crafts, the art of creation of God… the gardens leads into the whole of the vision of Nature.”
- Alan Chadwick, Performance in the Garden
The Future Garden is Eden
The future garden is Eden. We can only go back to our place of emergence. The angels always stand ready to swing open the gates.
- Alan Chadwick, Performance in the Garden
From the Zodiac
From the zodiac come the veritable secrets of God. The star angels are transmitters and flowers become symbols of their communications. The closer our communication with the angels, the greater will be our sense of the mystery of the plant kingdom. And the greater our realization of the spiritual ministry of the world of flowers.
- Paraccelsus
Connection with the Cosmic
And now suddenly, this coming up of Nature of the garden enters your diaphragm and connects again with the cosmic, and your spiritual image is lifted again into a realm that no verbosity, no ordinary study through words, through books, can give you.
- Alan Chadwick, Performance in the Garden