Planning for the Season: Growing for Food, Medicine, and Community

This is the time of year when I start diving more deeply into planning. I used to begin earlier, but over time, I’ve realized that I do better if I plant my earliest spring crops in the fall and then focus on seed starting and planning in February. I’m someone who feels the weight of short, dark winter days, and I really need longer days and more sunlight to feel motivated. So if you’re already a month into your planning, good for you! But for the rest of us, let’s get to it.

This year, I’ll be sharing my entire planning process as I work through it—weekly updates on what I’m organizing, planting, and preparing. I’ll cover everything from seed starting to garden layouts, direct seeding, succession planting, seasonal tasks, and more. I’ll also share my calendars, tracking sheets, selected plants, and everything else I’m growing and preserving.

But beyond just the usual planning, I’ve been feeling the weight of the bigger picture, too. A lot of policies and executive orders are impacting access to healthcare—including my daughter’s. I’ve found myself wondering whether we’ll need to move to another country. It might sound dramatic, but if her healthcare is cut off or she faces threats to her safety, we’ll have no choice. (More on that later!)

The thing is, policies don’t just impact healthcare—they also shape our access to natural food and medicine. You could say I’m a bit of a leftist prepper in addition to my mutual aid work, and I see the impacts of climate change, tariffs, retaliatory import/export policies, government programs shutting down, inflation, and agricultural funding shifts that may be coming. These changes don’t just affect large-scale farms; they also hit small farmers—especially women farmers, BIPOC farmers, and LGBTQIA2+ farmers. They hit our neighbors and our communities. Those impacts might dribble down to grocery store access or local markets. I plan to grow more to help mitigate the impacts that all that is happening might have on supply chain and access. More people may find themselves needing mutual aid programs, fresh produce, herbal free-clinics, self-care packs, or disaster relief. And as public assistance programs become harder to access—or disappear entirely—there’s an even greater need for community-driven solutions and mutual aid.

So, my planning this year is about more than just growing food and herbs for my family. I’m expanding food production, growing more medicinal herbs, expanding native and pollinator plants, and increasing food and herbal preservation for my community work as well. When I plan for giving, I start with perennials first, native wild plants second, and then focus on the crops that are most needed and best used fresh. I also review what didn’t thrive last year and where I need to increase plantings. Every year, I expand our forest gardens, plant more fruit canes and trees, and add more Asian medicinals. I plan to grow a bit more of everything and will continue to expand perennials as well.

But growing our own food and medicine isn’t just about self-sufficiency—it’s about being in touch with the land and our environment. We are a part of that environment. Creating a life that allows us to live with the seasons, grow and preserve our own food and medicine, craft and create our own handwork, and feel connected to all of the living things around us is just as important to me. Whenever someone tries to force me back onto the gerbil wheel, into that artificial busy-ness, I feel myself rejecting it—choosing instead to slow down, to observe, to move with the rhythms of the natural world. I want to be aware of the cycles and processes around me, not disconnected from them.

I also grow for my creative work. As a natural perfumer, I appreciate sustainable sourcing, but there’s something deeply fulfilling about growing my own aromatics—crafting perfumes that include elements created from plants and resins I’ve nurtured, harvested, and distilled or extracted by hand. It connects me to the land and to the craft in a way that store-bought materials never could. I also grow plants for weaving, textile art, dyeing, paper-making, cut flowers, pressing, and pottery. I love plants and all of their uses, and this year, I’ll be sharing more about what I grow for each of these purposes and share some of this work with you! I also hope you will share your work and what you are growing to sustain, support, create, and craft.

So, if you want to follow along make sure you are subscribed or share this to people you think might want to subscribe. I’ll be posting updates every week or so on sustainable and permaculture-based regenerative agriculture here at Wholly Rooted Farm. I’ll be sharing not just the technical aspects of planning and growing, but also the flow of the seasons, the awareness that comes with working in sync with the land, and the process of creating a life that feels rooted, intentional, and connected. It is impactful if we all do this together and share our knowledge, experience, and insights.

Let’s plan, grow, and build resilience—together!