out of the yard and onto the fork
Kitchen gardens are as old as the first hunter-gatherers who decided to settle down and watch the seeds grow. Walled medieval gardens protected carefully tended herbs, greens and fruit trees from marauders, both human and animal. The American colonists planted gardens as soon as they could, sowing seeds brought from Europe.Call them survivor gardens.
Now, they are being discovered by a new generation of people who worry about just what is in that bag of spinach and how much fuel was consumed to grow it and to fly it a thousand miles.
why bother?
But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.
2 comments:
I started my garden last week. It's fun to show Grace how veggies grow, and follow all the steps from just a tiny seedling to something we chop up and eat.
if only my kids would be as enamored with my garden as cami's child seems to be...they have fleeting interests in what's growing out there, but the main sentiment is "eww, zucchini, we don't LIKE zucchini." maybe if there was a way to grow chocolate or cupcakes from seedlings i could really get their attention. :)
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