Where I’m At

You’ll have to pardon me as I reflect on my past a bit here.  I grew up in Chicago, and while I haven’t been there since I was young, decades ago, I still like to have a little smile at people’s accents there from time to time.  Maybe it’s particularly fitting now that I speak a couple of other languages besides English, I appreciate how special regional accents can be.

Where you at? [sic]

Anyway, this is the local question, as people sometimes ask it there.  Given it’s context, it can mean just about anything.  It can refer to location, mental state or even how much money you have.  By design, it’s totally ambiguous.

So I’m going to let you know where I’m at.

I started blogging almost exactly 5 years ago.  Right away I started talking about the extreme loss of biodiversity the world was facing, and I encouraged people to start growing their own food, as well as saving and sharing their own seeds.  I spoke out sharply over the years about Europe’s oppressive seed laws, above all trying to educate people that these laws exist.  I spoke out about the GMOs the seed companies were spreading around the world, which wasn’t a secret to anyone.

This year, the president of the United States announced he was going to tear up part of his lawn and plant a mostly heirloom vegetable garden.  To say I was astonished is a huge understatement.

Seed laws in Europe are beginning to fall apart.  Denmark started allowing sales of unregistered seeds under certain circumstances, and a number of other countries started with low cost registration of varieties.  Because Europe is fragmented in the way it is, it’s sometimes hard to get information on what’s going on in other countries, but it’s clear the tide is changing.

While it’s too soon to let our guards down, the indications are GMOs as they are presently available, are simply not going to be accepted by consumers, and are being phased out.

It’s too early to say we are reversing the losses to agricultural biodiversity, but things are looking a lot better than a few years ago.  The number of gardeners trading and saving seeds has become phenomenal!

I’ve spoken out against aspartame sweetener, and there’s now increasing awareness of the dangers associated with this product.

Even in the US, high fructose corn syrup seems like it’s on the way out.

As one of the more popular gardening blogs writing about these topics, it’s been an emotional and stressful time.  It’s made me realize I was both doing a good job predicting the future, but also playing a role in the changes as they were occurring.  People were listening to me, telling others and things were changing.

At the same time these things were changing, the popularity of my blog was increasing.  You have to understand, it’s the nature of the Internet, popularity of this nature does not occur with a few extra readers at a time. It increases exponentially.  When readership of my blog increases, it usually does so by doubling over the course of a few months, and continues to do this over and over.  It’s worth pointing out that it goes down sometimes too.

As the popularity of my blog increases, I can quickly find myself dealing with a lot of responsibilities all at the same time.  Answering emails and comments, fielding requests for seeds, planning events like the meeting in Oxford this year, and so on.  These kinds of things can lead to hours of work per day, and when they are increasing at the same rate as the readership of my blog, something eventually has to give.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining.  I value these things all as an important part of my blog, but I haven’t found a good way of automating and managing the growth of them yet.

Aside from all of this, I have a personal life too and other responsibilities to deal with too.

So all of this came to a head a few months ago, and this is why I’ve been so quiet lately.  An unexpected holiday as it were.  Lots of people have been waiting for things from me, and have been disappointed.  I have stacks of unanswered emails, and lots of seeds and other plant materials waiting to go out.

I hope to start getting back into the swing of things over the holidays, and I will soon contact as many of you as possible who are still waiting for me for some reason.  If I don’t get in touch with you, please contact me again.  I’m sure a lot of things have just fallen through the cracks.

I’m now faced with the task of totally reinventing things, both because the world has changed so much and I need to find other topics to write about, and because I need to priortize better and figure out ways of managing the Internet growth cycles.  I thank you in advance for your patience, and also appreciate any suggestions you may have.

Above all, thank you everyone for reading this blog and caring about what have turned into some of the most important topics in today’s world.