Rural Europe on the move English_chap7_13 | Page 79

Civil Society against a hidden superpower
OPPOSITE
6. Lavender, a star of Porto di Terra’s
Mediterranean garden
7a. New rurality at Porto di Terra:
agroecological practices to harvest cereals
7b. Porto di Terra rents the land to elderly
landowners: here olive trees
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8. Serra Guarneri, an environmental
educational center
9. The organic garden - and its
compost bins - a pedagogic tool
Seeds and cycles
In saving seed, you are saving
understanding Liliana and the Misak
biological and cultural heritage. You people, mentioned by Camille in
are also working toward the future, chapter 3, have of circular time.
final evening together, “what’s our next you are involved in creating rich Seeds and their stewards both
project?” She would like to work on culinary and natural landscapes for operate on these cyclical timescales,
seeds, because it is the beginning and generations to come. When you save moving forward and incorporating
the end of all. This theme follows on seed in spring for collecting, cleaning, adaptations, the past and future
well from a collective writing project. storing or then sowing at the end of enfolded.
And it is something that touches me. the season, you operate in cycles.
“So what now?” Simone asks on our
A seed is quite a miraculous thing.
Much of the natural world operates
It is seemingly inert, dead even, but on a more cyclical temporality than
within it is embedded the ‘potential we are accustomed to: it relies on
for life’. It waits for the optimal diurnal, monthly, seasonal cycles
intersection of soil and temperature along which growth and death and
and moisture before bursting into life. regrowth occurs.
In a certain way, it straddles life and
death.
I think of these cycles as a kind
of looping forward, not unlike the
“In saving seed, you are working toward
the future, you are involved in creating rich
culinary and natural landscapes for
generations to come.”
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