All Spice: Remembering My Roots

What Can I Offer in Return?

I used to think harvesting was about getting. Getting the most from a plant or tree, getting it to market, and getting enough to pay the bills. When I was a co-owner of Edible Acres, an organic market farm, that was the reality. Harvesting was about having something to sell our customers and getting as much as we could from each plant or tree. There was a why and a need behind it, and when I look back now, I understand that. We were growing food, making a living, feeding people, and doing our best to care for the land while also making a farm work. But somewhere along the way, something in me began to change.

Through taking time to listen and finding teachers who have brought me back to remembering, I have come to understand harvesting differently. It has become something much more than “getting.” I have learned to slow down, to listen, to build a relationship, to honor the plants and trees, to see my own role, and to ask where I can give back. The question is no longer simply what a plant can provide for me, but how I might enter into a relationship of reciprocity with it. What does it mean to take something while also remembering that I am not separate from the life I am taking it from?

That shift has changed the way I approach even the simplest act of gathering food. I find myself thinking about the plant before I harvest, noticing where I am, what the plant has given already, what else might depend on it, and whether I am approaching it with gratitude or simply with the desire to take. I am learning that there can be a different pace to harvesting, one that allows room for listening and relationship before the act of taking begins.

So, before I approached the All Spice tree, I prepared my offering: a river stone. Yet as I held it in my hand, I asked myself if it was enough. That little voice in my head—the one I have come to recognize as my Ego—wondered if I should be offering something more. Perhaps something more beautiful, more meaningful, more impressive. But I reminded myself that this wasn't about making my offering impressive. It was about offering something with intention, prayer, time, and beauty. It was about coming to the tree with something of myself rather than arriving only to take something from it.

I offered my stone to the tree and then stood for a moment before approaching it. I asked if I could harvest some of its berries. Then I sat quietly. I listened. I didn't try to force an answer or decide what I thought the tree should say. I simply waited and paid attention to what I was feeling. There is something humbling about allowing yourself to wait without knowing what will happen next. Eventually, I felt that I was welcomed to harvest.

And this time, before I harvested the berries from the All Spice tree, I found myself asking a different question: What can I offer in return?

That question feels very different from the way I once approached harvesting. I now know that, for me, harvesting one third is what feels like right relations. It feels like a way of taking what I need while leaving enough for the tree, the birds, the land, and whatever else may be part of its life. It is not a calculation I expect everyone else to follow, but a practice that helps me remember that the berries do not exist solely for me. They belong within a larger web of relationships, and I am only one part of that web.

There is something about taking that time that has changed the way I approach harvesting. I am learning that I don't need to rush to take what I have come for. I can pause. I can listen. I can allow the relationship to come first. In that pause, the act of harvesting becomes something different. It is no longer simply an exchange of labor for food, or a way of gathering what is available. It becomes an opportunity to pay attention to the life around me and to remember that I am participating in something much larger than myself.

As I began to harvest the berries, something unexpected happened. I unknowingly began singing songs, humming an old tune that my great-grandfather used to sing while outside tending to his garden. I wasn't consciously trying to remember him or summon a memory. The song simply came through me as I gathered. And as I heard myself humming, I realized that I was not only connected to the tree and the land in that moment, but to my ancestors as well. I thought about those who had backyard gardens, those who knew the seasons, tended plants, gathered food, and had a deep relationship with the land, plants, food, and all that was around them.

In that moment of connection, I saw the white picket fence that was along the side of the house, a beautiful archway covered in green leaves, and my grandfather tending to his garden. And there was a little girl right there beside him. I don't know whether this was a memory from the past, something I had forgotten, or something being created in the present as I stood there with the tree. Perhaps it doesn't matter. What mattered was the feeling that came with it. I felt so much love for all of it—for the garden, for my grandfather, for the little girl, for the generations before me, and for the land that had held all of these memories and relationships.

I thanked the All Spice tree for assisting me in taking the time to remember my roots. I had come to the tree thinking I was there to harvest its berries. Instead, it gave me something I didn't know I was looking for: a connection to the land, to my ancestors, and to a part of myself that had been waiting to remember.

Perhaps this is what happens when we slow down enough to listen. We begin to realize that the land is not simply something we take from. It is something we are in relationship with. Harvesting can become an act of relationship, reciprocity, and remembrance when we allow ourselves to approach it that way. And sometimes, when we offer something of ourselves—even something as simple as a river stone—we receive far more than we ever expected.