Whip up a pot of borscht, braise some chard with feta and walnuts, forage for some lambsquarters, or sauté a pound of spinach with garlic and butter because it’s time for the final installment of the Learning Garden Series.
Here we are, at the intersection of overworked and underpaid. We’re in good company, with 60% of Americans currently living at or below a “minimum quality of life” due to income disparity. The only other living thing that works harder than the working poor of America must be the plants of the Amaranth (Amaranthaceae) family: “weeds” like lambsquarter, pigweed, poverty weed, and such vegetables as beets, chard, and spinach.
Most of us have been underserved economically for very for a long time. Generations-long. In 2025, agricultural workers are still exempt from the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour. I’ve worked for less, but even that is cushy compared to 400 years of chattel slavery or today’s prison labor system, the modern version of it.
Despite that, I am here to tell you that the legacy of exploitation of land workers has not succeeded in crushing the human desire to grow and eat good food. Over the last decade, I’ve worked with a lot of people pursuing ethical, sustainable food production, farmer advocacy, and education despite many economic and social barriers.
When I was 16, I started my first garden. It was a 4’x4’ square of packed clay in my late grandparents’ backyard. I watched most of what I planted produce precious little, while the unidentified weeds thrived. The wild plants outperformed my peppers and spinach like a team of elite athletes competing against an asthmatic nerd like me. I thought maybe this gardening thing might not work out for me after all.
Then, at the end of June, I got a gift card to a local book store for my birthday. While browsing the shelves, I stopped in front of a copy of Edible Wild Plants by John Kallas, PhD. The cover featured some of the plants I’d been pulling out of my garden bed. There was dandelion, curly dock, chickweed, even day lily that had been growing in my grandparents’ neighbors’ yard for as long as I could remember. When I flipped through the book, there was Lambsquarter. Spinach’s wild mother. I happily charged the gift card for the $25 and it’s fair to say that my whole life changed because of it.
That summer, I ate more weeds than garden vegetables. I started recognizing those plants everywhere I went: while riding my bike on the bike trail, or getting lost in the woods, or eeking up through cracks in the pavement.
Years later, Lambsquarters, in all of its super-calcium-rich glory, stood tall and proud in front of the tiny house called “Blue Wolf Castle”, where my now-husband Caleb lived when we first met. We harvested and ate it often, and he even showed me that crushing the leaves into a poultice and rubbing them on mosquito bites helped quell the itch.
The trail I have followed to my current life’s work has always been paved in goose-foot shaped leaves.
“I do not have a dream job, I do not dream of labor.”
- James Baldwin
The beloved James Baldwin may not have dreamed of labor. But he did it anyway. His was a radical labor, of love and liberation. A grueling, tireless job that offers no retirement or benefits, only joy and solidarity. We are all better for it, and he could have never known just how much of the world he saved.
To withstand the storm of scarcity, we have to envision and prepare for a future that’s worth fighting for. I’m going to share a list of ideas I have for available niches in our current Milwaukee-area local food system. I hope that someone reading takes this as a sign to keep working on their corner of the tapestry we are all weaving together.
The simple fact that we are here to fight another day is the proof and precious fruit of the labor of hundreds of thousands of activists, parents, mentors, farmers, chefs, caregivers, teachers, and artists. Many of their names may not appear in any book or website, and like the recently martyred Palestinian journalist Saleh Aljafarawi, their work may even be suppressed from public knowledge. The simple existence of survivors of genocide should assure us that if billions of dollars of bombs can’t erase them, then economic constraints and political repression can’t stop us from building a better world that we all know is possible.
My point, and the point that each part of this Learning Garden Series comes to, is that our lives are both finite and infinite. We only have power to take action for the duration of our lease on these bodies. And yet, the actions we take are a part of a long lineage of coevolutionary history. That lineage includes plants, mushrooms, animals, and people, whether we get to know them or not. Each day we have to live is a result of millions of years of molecules, energy, minerals, and microbes transferred from one life form to the next. Like a tiny quinoa seed, each moment we’re alive presents an opportunity for nourishment and growth.
So, what do we do with this life we’re given, if we have a commitment to not destroying the Earth and its ecosystems, let alone its people?
Cottage food industry opportunities for Wisconsin (and beyond):
Direct-to-consumer farms (like ours)
Green burial (see my previous post all about this)
Basketry and woodworking
Carpentry and natural building
Locally sourced textiles: wool and hemp
Fermented foods like sauerkraut and pickles, canned goods
Flower farming
Seed saving
Edible mushroom production
Radical, AI-free art and music
Animal husbandry: Poultry Centered Regenerative Agriculture, rotational grazed livestock, hatcheries, animal-centered diary production
Healing modalities: massage, yoga, etc
Bars, breweries, and cafes that feature local and in-season offerings
Churches and spiritual spaces for worship and ceremony
Composting operations
Animal processing, curing, and sausage making
Distribution of local goods (deliveries are always a struggle for small farms!)
Local politics - often, there is no one to vote for who stands up for progressive policies that protect people over profits.
Agrotourism - making space for visitors to get a taste of agrarian life
Skill sharing and education - potential for this in all industries, or may be supported by a nonprofit structure
Added value local food products:
stocks and broths made from discarded poultry feet and spines
elderberry/aronia/mulberry syrups and frozen goods
baked goods
“Third spaces”, available for free for children, parents, and people of all ages and abilities
School food and garden programs
There are a lot of people-powered businesses and entities already doing this work in the Milwaukee area and everywhere throughout the US. However, the need for these skills to be applied in service to the community rather than corporations is overwhelming. There are huge gaps to fill. There are opportunities listed that may be someone’s true calling, but they haven’t approached it yet. This is your sign to pursue that.
We don’t need permission to create pandemic-proof climate havens. This is how we stop enabling billionaires to profit from our data and destroy the land in the process. This is how we prevent famine. This is how we de-incentivize war and imperialism. We, as the latest model and therefore most highly-evolved version of humans who have ever lived, we have the ability and responsibility to decide what all these hundreds of thousands of years of evolution have come to.
In life, we get one chance to learn from history and not repeat atrocities. One chance to refuse to cower to psychopaths who would destroy the planet and all its inhabitants for profit, and call out the cowards who do their bidding. However, it’s not enough to identify the causes of harm. We also have to create the solutions.
We were made for so much more than to watch helplessly as millions of people starve on the screen of our iphones. The comfort of home is only an illusion while industrial agriculture, big tech, and the “Department of War” poison the air, land, food, and water all around us. We can’t drink, eat, or breathe data, fossil fuels, or plastic.
This is my invitation to you, dear reader, to come out from under whatever burden you’re under, and take that skill or interest you have to the next level.
If profiteers of war and climate disaster are persistent, let’s be relentless. Like poverty weed growing roots in the dust bowl, we have the power to make something where there was nothing. We have everything to lose, and everything to gain. Let’s work with whatever we have, wherever we’re at.
Land access might seem an impossible barrier for most aspiring landworkers, but the truth is, there is more than enough land to go around. These land prices are artificially inflated by a predatory economic system, and class solidarity among the ultra-rich. If we exercised the same level of solidarity with the working class, who knows what we could accomplish. Even if we inherit the most abused, compacted soil imaginable, we can still bring it back to life. Hell, Amaranths thrive in disturbed sites. They turn barren, salinated soil into a dietary source of salt. Let’s risk making our first mistake, and the second, and the third for a chance to do the same. This is what radical labor looks like.
It can be live-saving. It saved mine. When labor is aligned with a deep, justified, and effective purpose, it is power. The labor movements over the last couple hundred years have shown that this power is to be revered. It is the only source of real fear that the ruling class has. It has produced all the wins we have had thus far with civil rights.
It’s worth the work. With each bite, each brick, each seed, and each song sung aloud, it’s about defining our humanity as the keystone species we evolved to be.
Tell me in the comments if any of the cottage industry niches are calling to you, or if you have any that I left out.
Thanks for coming along on the Learning Garden journey with me. I look forward to connecting, learning, and growing with you all into a better future.
It's interesting how you connected past and present labor exploitation to the core idea of agrarianism. Do you see technology playing a role in disrupting these entrenched inequalities?
long live the Learning Garden Series! cottage industry niches that appeal to me are agrotourism with a focus on healing, community education, skill building, and gathering spaces.