Season 2 – Episode 21. Released on July 14, 2015.
Foodscaping Your Future (with Jeremy Lekich)
INTRO
Today I’m chatting with Jeremy Lekich who, through Nashville Foodscapes offers creative food solutions through landscaping. Jeremy talks about how he went from being a kid who spent too much time playing video games to finding his passion of growing food. He is now turning lawns into bountiful living spaces that please the eyes and taste buds and helps people connect with their food source. He also has a band turnip the beat.
BUMPER
I am Tajci.
At 19 I was a superstar and I was lost inside. I left it all behind, switched continents and started all over. Years later I found myself lost again. This time in the American dream.
This is a story about awakening. About living the life you were created for. About going inward and discovering the joyous and purposeful person you and I are both meant to be.
This is “Waking Up In America.”
TAJCI
Here we are in Green Hills, right, this is a neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee, and I’m talking to Jeremy Lekich. What a pleasure to have you on Waking Up in America…
JEREMY
Pleasure to be here…
TAJCI
Yeah, for one place where, you know, I think we can all trigger the Awakening; whether we want to trigger some big shift in our lives that might be harder, because it’s harder to tap into, you know, maybe spiritual awakenings, or even, you know, getting out of some habit that we’ve been in for a long, long time, or maybe a situation, or maybe even depression, or things like that, and it’s harder to tap into the triggers that can help up make that shift…
JEREMY
Yes…
TAJCI
One place that I think we have this gift that we forget about where we can trigger that connection is: Earth, Nature, the beauty, because we see the creation, see the life in it, and that’s why I’m so grateful that you are on the show, and I’m grateful for what you do, because that’s what you bring to our world. This opportunity to reconnect, with what feeds us… I want to know, how did you find… How did you get into it… Tell us your life before this shift that happened…
JEREMY
I grew up in suburban Nashville, suburban America played a lot of video games, went to public school, and just sat in a classroom for hours on end, you know, being asked to regurgitate a bunch of information.
I really didn’t come out of school with any special skills, or much knowledge of the outdoor world, you know, I couldn’t of named one bird or plant, probably… And so I grew up as a lot people now are growing up, and have since the last, you know, the last couple of decades…
TAJCI
Yeah, you’re basically describing what my kids’ reality is, a lot of people, school, indoors, video games, hours of video games, internet…
JEREMY
Yeah, exactly, hours and hours, I think about how i spent those hours doing something, like learning carpentry or playing music, I would be an amazing carpenter or an amazing musician, but you know, I beat a couple of video games…
TAJCI
But there’s a lot of video gamers out there that do say there’s great benefits of it…
JEREMY
Sure…
TAJCI
Like, so…
JEREMY
Yeah, I mean certainly, you know, I’ve learned some strategic stuff from playing video games, but you know…
TAJCI
But it’s really, I think what you’re saying, and correct me if I’m wrong, the balance…
JEREMY
Oh, totally the balances, and I mean we can justify playing video games in saying there’s benefits to it, but really there’s not many, you know…
TAJCI
Right…
JEREMY
There’s a lot of disadvantages to it…
And really it’s just comes down to, you know, when you are old enough to not play video games anymore, and you look back on that time spent, what do you have to show for it, like when I say “I’ve beaten this game and this game.” You know, there’s only a handful of people who would be like, “Wow, that’s cool!” You know, and it’s not going to really do much for my livelihood, you know…
TAJCI
That’s a great point, great point, thank you. Thank you for saying that, you know that we look back and it’s the time spent on what…
JEREMY
Exactly…
TAJCI
And we keep the kids in the schools, all right, so here you are… That’s a good life on the outside, there’s nothing wrong, there’s a good kid, your grades were good…
JEREMY
Yeah, my grades were real good…
TAJCI
Good grades, beat the video games, so you probably had good friends…
JEREMY
Yeah, totally…
TAJCI
Life looks beautiful on the outside like a really nice, ripe tomato, the perfect one in the pile in the store…
JEREMY
It was good, it was a good life, I enjoyed it…
TAJCI
Were you aware of anything then, that… Was anything missing, or no… You were very young we’re talking…
JEREMY
Yes, in high school i felt the need to, I felt the need that I needed to do something more, you know, that there was something not quite right with the way that humans were treating the Earth, you know, and I wasn’t aware of the details, but the patterns were starting to emerge, you know and the patterns were starting to say, hey maybe, maybe start thinking about how you want to be involved with Earth care…
TAJCI
Oh, interesting, and you parents influenced…
JEREMY
Yeah they did, they were of the hippie generation, you know, of the sixties and the seventies, so we didn’t have gardens too much, but they had that in their background, and there was definitely an attitude of like, you know, hey we need to treat nature with respect, like you know, we are nature…
TAJCI
Yes…
JEREMY
And there was a consciences in what we ate, you know…
TAJCI
By the way your great grandmother comes from Serbia
JEREMY
That’s correct!
TAJCI
What a great connection we have, so maybe in, yes, I mean… naturally in us we all have this awareness, we just disconnect from it…
JEREMY
Yea
TAJCI
So tell us the point where it shifted for you…
JEREMY
I was in college. And I went to a small college called Warren Wilson College near Asheville, North Carolina, little town called Swannanoa, in Western North Carolina in the southern Appalachian Mountains, the Blue Ridge Chain actually.
TAJCI
Oh it’s beautiful there, isn’t it?
JEREMY
So, it’s a work college, so every student has to work fifteen hours a week as part of their education. And the students run the school. They clean the dishes, the clean the dorms, they run a lot of the administrative offices.
TAJCI
Why did you pick that school?
JEREMY
Ah! I liked the idea of going to a place a) that was beautiful. You know, you walk through the campus and you have to walk through the forest to get to class, which I just thought was amazing. And I liked the idea of having, you know, go to class, then you go work. And then you go to class and you go to work. Because I was already tired of my high school experience which was, you know, eight hours of sitting in the classroom with, you know, an hour of….
TAJCI
Recess.
JEREMY
Recess, yea.. So I was already getting tired of that, so I was like, oh what an awesome opportunity to be somewhere, that can shift a little bit. So… I went to this school and ended up getting on a landscaping crew…
TAJCI
We are talking about nature and here we actually had to move our set a little bit because the sun moved… So we are moving with the sun, respecting our environment. So, here we are, you are in college. You pick the college because it was beautiful and you are studying bio-chemistry and what was your, what were you thinking you were gonna do when you envision your future, did you have any?
JEREMY
Yea, you know, my vision of my future was getting a bio-chemistry degree and then going to graduate school. I actually wanted to go to Denmark and, you know, be in a lab and study bio-chemistry and do bio-chemical research.
TAJCI
Interesting. And that would put you right back inside.
JEREMY
It would. Yea. With a lot of machines. And so, as I started studying bio-chemistry more and spent more time in the laboratory, I was like, okay, is this really for me? And then, I would get out of class and I would go work. And I was working landscaping, I ended up taking care of an eatable landscape in front of one of the dorms.
TAJCI
When you say edible, yes…
JEREMY
Yes, it got everything from almond trees, to blackberries, to kale, to tasty eatable and medicinal plants, flowers and so I’m taking care of this garden and I’m just happier being outside in that garden, in that landscape.
Now going to class, and I’d be in laboratory and I’d be around all these machines, and I’d be like, ooh… I don’t know if I can do this. And so, finally I was like, I think I need to switch to a different major, something that’s going to allow me to be outside. Because I loved getting my hands dirty, I loved having the sun on my skin, and l loved feeling the wind blow, I loved hearing the birds chirping and singing…
And I loved seeing the plants grow. And I loved learning all these new plants, and so, I ended up switching to biology as a major. But then keeping chemistry as a minor, because I’d already taken so many chemistry classes. And I figured, you know, whatever I get into it’d be nice to have the science behind me. So I did that.
TAJCI
Yes. You were already aware of how you feel, which is something a lot of people struggle with. Because even if they feel something then, our minds are gonna tell us, well, it’s not important how we feel, it’s important to get that degree, get to that position, because it’s a lot ‘better’, looks better to be a scientist or doctor, or whatever than work with dirt. How did you make that… how did you… were you able to follow what your soul was telling you.
JEREMY
Yea… I struggled a lot.
TAJCI
You did.
JEREMY
I did, yea. I went through a very turbulent time. About sophomore going into junior year in college. And I went and talk to the campus therapist a lot, you know like.. what? I wasn’t sure what it was… I had, I was like, maybe it’s this and maybe it’s that.
I was having a hard time figuring out why I was feeling so turbulent inside. And, as I pushed through, I realized, because, you know, I needed to shed the ideas of what society said I should be, and I just had to be myself.
TAJCI
Oh. beautiful!
JEREMY
It was good.
TAJCI
Yes. So part of is that you were willing to work through it, part of it is that you had support.
JEREMY
Totally. Yea, and talking about it with friends, with campus therapists, you know, with family… just talking about it.
Because the more I talked about it, the better I was able to articulate it what was going on and then once I was able to articulate what was going on, I could then understand it an move forward with the understanding. And then, eventually compassion for myself…
TAJCI
Oh, so important! Thank you for bringing that up. Yes compassion for yourself! That’s one thing we so… so many of us fall short on. We are just so hard on ourselves.
JEREMY
Yea
TAJCI
So, tell me, now you’ve made the decision. Tell me about that connection with earth, with force, with nature, with food.
JEREMY
It’s very unusual for humans to not be aware of the natural surroundings, what birds are around us, what plants are around us, what animals are around us. It’s very unusual.
And it’s only in the last, you know, 50-100 years that all of a sudden we haven’t had that connection. And at least for myself, when I go into the forest and I’m like, oh, that’s a cardinal, or oh, I hear a whippoorwill in the distance, oh, that’s a sassafras tree. Or, oh that’s a ginseng plant.
There is this connection, this, like euphoria within me that’s like, you know, oh these are my friends. And it’s really hard to describe something that, you know, once people experience, I think, they feel it.
And I see it with a lots of my clients. Once they become familiar with a plant in their yard, or garden vegetable or fruit tree, there is this relationship that forms.
TAJCI
Yes, and there is such disparity… you know a lot of my viewers from Croatia or different parts of the world, where that connection still exists, they will say, what do you mean? I don’t know what you are talking about. But then our kids in the States… there are so many kids, I know, who go to the grocery store, produce and they don’t even, can’t even identify what’s there, what we eat. And, I mean, lets not even talk about how, the food that we eat don’t even look like, doesn’t even look like food, right? It’s not food. A lot of it is not even natural food, which I have a huge, how do you say it, I have a ‘beef’ with it (laughs)
JEREMY
Perfect!
TAJCI
It’s a little pun…
JEREMY
It’s a good one, actually!
TAJCI
So now what you do is you brought your awakening, you brought your passion, this connection to what you do today. And tell us about “Nashville Foodscapes.”
JEREMY
So we, at the foundation, we educate people, our clients on, you know, on a superficial level how to grow food, on a deeper level on how to reconnect with nature. Because I think that growing food is a great step in reconnecting with nature. Because it’s something you can actually, like, you can get your hands dirty, you can see these plants grow, they feed you, they provide physical sustenance. And through that, when we have a full belly, we can start to go deeper into things.
And… so we do design of not only gardens, but full landscapes. Because a large part of our mission is that food can be grown outside of the contest of a farm, or a garden. It can be incorporated into our every day landscapes.
And there is this idea, when people, especially here in the United States think about growing food, they think about, you know, rows of vegetables on a farm, or they think about raised bed gardens, that’s regulated to some part of your yard that nobody can really see. And really, there is so many beautiful food plants that can be incorporated into our everyday landscapes. So a lot of our work is to try to incorporate that in the front yards and the back yards, to the point where, some of your neighbors might not even realize you’re growing food, until they see you out there picking blueberries or apples, and they are like, Oh my gosh, I didn’t even realize that was an apple tree there. So, saying that food, growing food is beautiful, you know. It’s not this weird thing that we need to put behind us ’cause it’s a part of this past that we are trying to get away from. No, it’s part of what it means to be human.
TAJCI
Absolutely!
JEREMY
We’ve strayed away from being human beings, now we are human doings.
TAJCI
Yes… So I want to, I want to put a garden in and I always had, wherever I lived, I always had my herbs, even if it was just in a little pot in a sunny spot in my kitchen, so it’s not that difficult, but then there is, there are some questions that I don’t have answers for, and, I can always look you up online, right, even if I don’t live in Nashville.
JEREMY
Yea.
TAJCI
I do, but a lot of my viewers don’t.
JEREMY
Yea.
TAJCI
Because there are so many resources we just… I think a lot of us get so intimidated, like you said, it’s for farmers, it’s for people who really know how to… I don’t have a ‘green thumb’, so I’ll kill my food. Then I’m gonna even be more traumatized…
JEREMY
Yea, and see… whenever I hear people say, I don’t have a ‘green thumb’, I always say, you know, that’s not true at all. It’s a number of factors that have contributed to you thinking you don’t have a green thumb.
Everyone has a green thumb.
It could be that you’ve gotten low quality soil, which a lot of people do because that’s what’s being sold at most big box stores. They are selling you bad soil that has no life in it, that comes from probably raw resources that weren’t that great to start with.
And so when you try to put that plus, probably low quality plants, you’re kind of bound to not have a great experience. And so, it’s not you, it’s the products that are being sold.
TAJCI
Oh, you are set to fail.
JEREMY
Exactly! And then, there is this idea that it is so difficult and so people go into it and they plant these plants with, “oh gosh they are going to die”… Well when you are thinking that and you are planting that, you know, what do you think is gonna happen? And so if you have good quality soil, good quality plants and you are confident, I mean, it works!
TAJCI
I think there is something that you just said… that confidence, which is also connection with that plant. Because my mom always says: “I grow plants with love.” It’s… I think, and this is again, this is how we are connected with everything. It’s all a part of the same creation. And when we allow ourselves that flow, then, I believe we are a part of the same system, same energy, same love that brings life, no matter if … it’s a plant, really. And there are some, in Croatia, there are some communities that incorporate growing food as a part of addiction recovery process and healing.
JEREMY
Yea, totally! We did a big project, actually one of our biggest projects to date, at a Fort Campbell military base, which is near Clarksville, Tennessee and Fort Campbell, Kentucky and it was a 8,000 square foot therapeutic garden for soldiers.
TAJCI
Oh, beautiful!
JEREMY
Because they were returning from war and pretty traumatized. And it’s hard to find, it’s hard to go back to normal life, once you’ve been in a war situation. And so, this garden was a) to be therapeutic garden for these soldiers and b) to produce food for the cafeteria on base. And it turned out to be a really beautiful space. And hopefully it will help heal a lot of the soldiers coming back.
So the same idea that growing food and being around an abundant place full of flowers and scents and life and butterflies and bees, and birds, this helps us heal from whether it’s depression, anxiety, or from post traumatic stress from war.
TAJCI
Yes! Music was the first thing for me that really connected me with the divine, with some bigger knowledge of something bigger, of some bigger force, God, however you want to call it, give it a name, really was a strong… it induced a strong awakening in me and connection. And you are also a musician!
JEREMY
Correct, yea. Yup!
TAJCI
Which is, just makes perfect sense. I’m not surprised.
JEREMY
Ha ha, yea right on! Yea, I mean it’s, it provides that similar euphoric feeling to being in a forrest. It’s that connection to something that our ancestors have been doing for millennia.
TAJCI
And talking about ancestry, you know, in our part of the world, Croatia, Serbia, we have… and Italy, and lot of cultures… we eat and then we sing and dance. It’s always connected. Always connected with any kind of life events.
JEREMY
Yea! One of my favorite stories here especially in the southern United States, square dancing came about. One of the reasons for square dancing is because you would have a family build a home and then they would have, at that time dirt floors and they would need to be tamped. Well, what’s more fun, tamping, you know, or having a dance? And so they would call a dance inside of house and they would tamp the floor.
TAJCI
I never knew that!
JEREMY
And so people were having a great time while getting things done!
TAJCI
Brilliant!
JEREMY
Yea!
TAJCI
And you are going to play for us?
JEREMY
Yes!
TAJCI
I want to challenge the viewers, you, to really go out, you don’t have to go far, even a city park will do, and connect. And practice that. And through that practice, we promise, Jeremy and I, we guarantee
JEREMY
Yea, I’m there, I promise!
TAJCI
There will be a shift in your own heart and soul. Thanks for watching and thank you Jeremy!
JEREMY
Thank you!
(music)
TAJCI
To replay and share Jeremy’s story or any other stories featured here on our show visit us at WakingUpinAmerica.net and please join us on our Facebook group. See you next time and thank you for watching!
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