*This essay by Janisse Ray appeared in the anthology book "All We Can Save"*: Agriculture has created in us a story-based, community-reliant, land-loving people. It has given us a head start on what I call the Age of Bells, the time when bells—cowbells, dinnerbells, bells of flowers—will again be ringing across the hills and plains. We are coming to the new age of agriculture better prepared: knowledgeable about growing, able to do with less, happy in our communities, firm in gender and racial equality, healthier. I believe that the organic and local-food movement is leading the way to re-creating cultures that are vibrant and vital. What we are witnessing in agriculture is no less than a revolution. It also means we are on an edge—lots of edges, in fact. When I think of the edge, I think first of a literal one, the fencerow, which modern chemical agriculture has been destroying. This is the place where birds pooped out wild cherry seeds and wild cherry trees grew; and the place where, tired from the row, workers sat in the shade and told stories. It’s where a lone farmer watched a mockingbird sing. We occupy an edge between forest and field, the most exciting place in the world to me. We are on many edges: balancing the needs of the wild with the need to nourish people, balancing urban life with the need to eat, balancing concerns about human health with the need for productivity, weighing input against output, and making decisions based on both ecology and economy. There is also a psychological edge we’re all living on. We know that we’re living in a world that is being devastated but also one replete with the beauty and power of life. We live on the boundary of deciding to make positive contributions although we know we are complicit in the destruction. We skate between apathy, because the truth of what’s happening is painful to think about, versus action, any kind of action; and we skitter between the paralysis caused by grief and fear versus action. Every decision we have to make, whether it’s a life-sustaining or a life-destroying one, is an edge. Our very psyches are on the edge, between dropping out and dropping in, between selling out and fighting back. Every single one of us. The verge is a dangerous and frightening place. It’s important to know that one is not alone on it. The edge holds a tremendous amount of ecological and cultural as well as intellectual power. I believe that we have to get comfortable with it. How shall we live? As if we believe in the future. As if every one of us is a seed, which as you know is a sacred thing. In my wildest dreams the seeds of every species are speaking to me, calling out: In all the bare spots on earth plant us and let us grow. On all the edges, plant seeds.