Participation in occupation 2

image retrieved from permaculturehi.wordpress.com

My chosen activity is gardening to produce food

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Which involves running a garden or areas over a year to primarily produce food. Including roles of soil conditioning compost green manures.weeding making structures to grow thing up etc .sowing seeds transplanting wtering pruning etc.(and of course many other roles).
The activity is one that is debatedly one of the oldest occupattions and has been taken part as long as huimans have settled in areas the activity is one that has been written.

What does it mean to me!!
To me it is a strong part of my identity . Gardening is one of the ways to lessen your carbon footprint (especially if its organically grown) decreasing amount of fertilizer pesticides ,miles on transport, packaging etc,composting back into the garden.
To eat  food that you have grown seems to taste better and it  is different than veggies sold in the shops.I mainly try and use heritage i.e dalmation beans ,lady finger potatoes and or interesting varities.Also being a stuent it allows my family to eat some organic food as I cant afford shop prices for most organic food.
To be able to have a relationship with your garden.There is a huge feeling of stisfaction if you have improved the fertility of an area through soil and composting. I follow many principles from permaculture that tries to work with nature and have been slightly influenced by bio dynamic gardening that harnesses more obtuse forces such as the moon . These principles allow you to work with nature ie growing thing that help each other close to ech other (companion gardening, i.e. nastutiums take bugs away from cabbages).Permaculture has a broader reach than just gardening and is seen as a design process to work with nature and live as environmentally as possible,which again reflects how i would like to live my life.

Earlier in my life to live a simpler life to grow most of my own food defined a lot of whom i was, including living in Spain and having my own land . At this period of my life my gardening is quite minamal, although at this time of year i am easily spending two hours a week preparing my garden for the spring rush of planting.
I cant deny for me there is a strong spiritual  element for me in gardening. Neil from the young ones(1982) summed it up nicely "we sow the seeds nature grows the seeds and then we eat the seeds then we sow the seeds etc".
This sums up the beautiful cycle of life'.

Ways that the occupation of gardening can be  used in occupational therapy.
To start in this section gardening is an occupation that is vitally important to many people .There are many ways that the use of gardening can be used in occupational therapy which is only limited by our knowledge and imagination.

image retrieved  from www.disabled-world.com/entertainment/hobby/gardening/

When people are physically limited from gardening ie being in a wheelchair modifications can be made to the garden i.e heightened beds, container gardening, putting your garden in easier to access area things, being grown up wall and down from containers.As an ot the environment can be assessed and changed for the person.
Adaptive equpment can be used that helps minamise a persons physical deficits .i.e easy hold tools .
the use of gardening as theraupeutic tool used by an occupational therapistin mental health and learning difficultie programs is immense.
Some examples would be for some the environment of gerdening is freer then other environments and it is used in many groups ie back  to work schemes i.e youth gro,or existing companies that will take on peole to work . I worked with an anthrosphical group tht had regular input from an OT. This group was one of mixed learning , it did gardening and community compost. The roles and work that this group filled an important gap for occupations for this group of peole where everybody found a role working out sid had a less constricting environment.People had found work afterthais and similar groups and some 15 years on have found a group and occupation that they enjoy and satifies them.
Gardening as an occupational therapist is atool that has many uses it also allows people to have an interest in the food they produce which naturally moves in to cooking etc .It is an occuption tha works on many different levals i.e labour producing food ,spirutuality which in my view work well with the holistic approach of occupational therapy