Fear not to sow because of the birds

Against efficiency

Recently, a friend came to visit our community house. We moved in a year ago, and I have become obsessed with the garden. I have thrown myself into learning to grow food, for various reasons I will write about elsewhere. I excitedly showed him my first, pale strawberries, the tender shoots of dark green kale. He didn’t look as delighted as I’d hoped.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“I’m afraid for you” he said. “I worry that the birds and the bugs are going to eat everything you’ve grown, and it is going to be heartbreaking.”

He had once spent a summer trying to net a whole cherry tree to stop the birds eating the crop. It didn’t work. All he could see in my budding produce was risk and the potential for disappointment.

My dear friend has a melancholic bent, as you might be able to hear, but it stuck with me.

Also recently, I visited Toynbee Hall in East London. It is a place with a fascinating history, founded by Victorian vicar and philanthropist Samuel and Henrietta Barnett to be a hub of social reform. Clement Attlee and William Beveridge both spent time there, as, unexpectedly, did Lenin. Many of the ideas, both theological and sociological, that went on to drive the founding of the Welfare State were discussed first in those rooms.

On the wall of a corridor is a quote from Samual Barnett.

“Fear not to sow because of the birds”.

The Barnetts were not farmers or gardeners. This phrase was adapted from the Parable of the Sower in the New Testament, which reads to me like the antidote to efficiency thinking. Jesus tells a story in which he compares spreading the gospel - the good news of God’s love - to sowing seed in a field. In his telling, large amounts of seed goes to waste, failing to root, scorched by the sun, choked by weeds and yes, eaten by birds. But some of it grows, and produces “a harvest beyond [the sower’s] wildest dreams”.

The Barnetts carved “Fear not to sow because of the birds” over the mantelpiece in their study. They used it to refer to the fight for social reform, motivated by their faith, that they and the residents of Toynbee Hall were so committed to. The list of social projects they solely or jointly founded and sustained is enormous, covering welfare for children in health, education and holidays by the sea, improving the lot of servants and women workers and even preserving swathes of Hampstead Heath from the expansionist ambitions of Eton College. You can see just Henrietta’s here.

What we can’t access is a list of all the projects which never got off the ground or collapsed into ignominy. We don’t know about the seed that was eaten. I can’t imagine a legacy of justice like this came without frustration and attack, without seeing years of work go down the drain because of other people’s opposition or incompetence. Or, indeed, their own failures And yet. Look what they did.

That day in the garden, my friend’s worry made me feel loved, but it also clarified something. I want to be relaxed about the birds. Maybe because I read this parable fairly early in life, maybe from experience. The more I surrender the illusion of control, the more fruitful my life gets.

At this stage in learning to grow food, I would be astonished if I got a bumper crop. We are so deeply privileged that we don’t currently rely on what we grow to nourish us, though we might one day. Right now, I am just experimenting, delighted by the strange exploding magic of every seed that does find its way to the surface. How can so much life be contained in such a tiny thing? So much beauty?

Of course the birds want their share, and the slugs. They like strawberries too. Gardener Poppy Okotcha encouraged me by quoting this old proverb: “Sow 4 seeds in a row, one for the rook, one for the crow, one will wither and one will grow.”

The outcome of what I offer into the world is not in my hands. I want to stop agonising about getting stuff right, spend less time worrying about what I might lose. It took me a long time to start gardening, longer still to think of myself as a writer. In both cases, I worried about getting it wrong. Now I know that getting it wrong is all part of the process, but the more you sow, the more comes up. My writing, my gardening, my gesturing stumblingly towards a different kingdom, it is all just a handful of seed. Freely given to me, freely (I hope) given away. I can cast it with playful ease and see where the wind takes it. And if some of it goes to feed the birds? Good.

Photo: Deborah Lee Rossiter/Shutterstock