§Field Note · Nº 05 · Food & medicine

The medicine cabinet used to be out back.

Dorian Dégagé · the Hill Country · June 2026

Before the cabinet over the sink, the first place you looked was the ground — the herb by the door, the plant a grandmother could name, the food that grew where you stood. We didn't move all of that indoors because the outdoor version stopped working. We moved it because we stopped tending the ground that grew it.

Put the ground back and a yard quietly becomes a pantry and an apothecary again: same plants, same few steps, just remembered. That's the whole idea behind total organic living — not nostalgia, but the original infrastructure, sitting a few feet from the kitchen door.

It changes how you read a property. A landscape stops being decoration you maintain and becomes a system that feeds and mends the people on it — and the more of it you grow and make on site, the less you drive to the store for, and the more of your life traces back to the source.

Reads alongside Edible Landscape in the Hill Country · the premise behind it · all field notes →