I grew up rural Hungary during the late 80s and the 90s. My paternal grandmother always cherished her garden, to which, during my toddler years, I would be an existential threat. She used to grow enough fruit for the entire family: apples, cherries, nuts, strawberries and more. As I was growing up I gradually became more interested in gardening, and eventually I was allocated a roughly 5 sqm mini-garden in my grandmother’s yard. Needless to mention, I started my work by fencing off my newly acquired plot of land! Over the years I ended up planting and successfully cultivating onions, raspberries, strawberries and lettuce. Years later while an undergrad ecology student during the early 2000s my lecturer helped me open my eyes about the urgency for action to avoid a major environmental catastrophe. The notion of “subsistence farming” began to move away from the orbit of poverty as the concept of sustainability crystallized in my mind. As an active Facebook user I came across Rob Greenfield’s page in 2018. In Greenfield I “met” a man who dedicated his life to servitude. Not to the servitude of a country or a church - an artificial entity - but to the servitude of Nature and, consequently, humanity. (Nature and humanity are inherently inseparable like a leaf and the tree that produced it.) I have always been more of an introvert and as such I have never been an “active follower“ of Greenfield’s. I have not regularly contributed to his posts by commenting or engaging in conversations, although I have frequently shared posts and comments by others to my network of contacts via Facebook. Yet I have learnt both practical skills that have helped use and reuse materials (anything from a doorframe to build a vegetable bed to using organic waste to grow potatoes) in a more sustainable manner. Thus I have grown as a practitioner of sustainable practices even though I haven’t engaged with the community as much as I could have. All these experiences have led me to wonder what the true potential of Greenfield’s page, or of any Facebook CoP on sustainable farming skills was, and eventually come up with my research questions for the H818 project.
Have you ever traced back your choice of a Master’s project to your childhood interests? Have you ever reflected on how your understanding of a concept developed over the years? Have you ever participated in a social media community and learnt real life skills from it? Feel free to answer these or any related questions in the comments section below.
