YOUR TURN: It's time to nurture Mother Earth
If you followed last week’s goat-scaping, know it’s not for the faint of heart. We let the goats move on to their next job a little early after they goat-escaped on Thursday evening. They did a fantastic job of clearing out three-quarters of an acre, but found the num-nums more exciting outside of the fence. How did they get out? I forgot to plug the fence back in after a snack session, and there was a tiny gap that Spot, the instigator goat, escaped through and showed the others. There was some sweat (wrangling seven of the 10 back into the fence) and tears (my son was very sad to see them go) but overall, I would recommend goats for your plant removal needs and gingko biloba supplements for plugging in fences.
Tending goats, good ones and those that stray, is like tending children. You might set boundaries and tell them what they should do, but they may have other things in mind, and sometimes it's worth rethinking how their plans line up with yours. Also, leading with treats and praise gets a lot more favorable results than shouting and waving your arms. Since becoming a mom I have learned a lot of things from my kids: the first is that the world they are growing up in is not like the world I grew up in. Their world is hotter, the weather more unpredictable, and we are at a critical moment to develop policy and put boundaries in place to keep it from getting worse. My children have taught me to give simple, clear direction, value fairness, show mercy and forgiveness, and they remind me to have fun.
The world is our mother. It gives us everything we need to thrive: food, air, water, amazing cycles of nutrients. Yet how are we treating her? Sadly, humanity is taking over our planet like an ungrateful teenager. We want to take and do very little to clean up our messes. There are things that our Mother Earth is telling us we need to do, but will we continue to keep the door shut and turn up the volume of our music? We can do better. It doesn’t take much to put litter in its place, recycle when it’s available, or ask the question “how can we recycle this?” and follow up to find out the answer.
The verb “to mother” is to nurture, tend to, care for, to grow, to heal. We meet a lot of mothers in our society, but they don’t always have children. Some have ideas: “it’s their baby” some run businesses, or programs, some choose those children that will grow into missions to make society a better place and their time and energy is spent on growing and tending that mission. Some people mother plants, and others mother pets. No matter the kind of mother you had growing up - present or absent - you can choose what kind of mother you want to be and who and what you are going to spend your precious time and attention on. We are blessed with brilliant minds and the capacity to fix problems, but we have to undertake the challenge together.
So, to be clear and direct: Let’s honor our planet and our families by working together to create a sustainable future. To value fairness: let’s hold each other accountable, including corporations and governments which we vote for with dollars and “hollers.” To be merciful and show forgiveness, we can all learn to do better, despite making past mistakes. And to have fun, let’s celebrate the good that we are doing and enjoy that we are here today, together.
Becca Hurd is the recycling coordinator for Gaston County.
This article originally appeared on The Gaston Gazette: YOUR TURN: It's time to nurture Mother Earth
