RSSA few days ago, a friend sent a link about voting for the White House Farmer. I thought, for a moment, that the only thing in question was which organic farmer was going to be chosen. - And what an amazing reaction I had! Tears ran down my face, even as I researched and discovered that it was still only an idea (though a VERY good one!)
I spent a chunk of my childhood close to Washington, D.C., in nearby Maryland, where I went on the White House tour with my grade school class. To imagine THAT girl (me!) seeing a gorgeous garden of produce, growing right there on Pennsylvania Ave….
Our mothers, in the ’50s and ’60s, valued canned peas and frozen carrots and “instant” potatoes and powdered milk (they were new-fangled). Not a mother I knew growing up had food she picked for dinner. That was old-fashioned, growing things. I was so unused to home garden produce that, in one of our military “home” incarnations, my mother grew mint on the side of the house, and I found that quite exotic and wonderful.
What a potent message it would be for hordes of school children to see Obama Organics during their tour! Children hear us blather about what we believe we’re all about, what we’d like to believe our values to be. But they SEE what we DO. Having an organic garden on the White House lawn would be the biggest statement of our TRUE values that we could possibly make to the children. (They understand food so much better than they do fuel, banking, and the like!)
- It would say to them that food is more important than lawns (it IS);
- that healthy soil, the soil that grows our food, is of concern to us all, ALL the way up to the top; and
- that small scale, organic farming is not a thing of the past, but is having a resurgence with this resurgence publicly on display for tourists with cameras, who though they may not speak English, will need no translated signs to show them what that garden really means.
Thanks to Michael Pollan, whose idea which has inspired so many…
I was watching 60 minutes last night. There is a chef in California that has gone into the schools and has got children growing gardens and then teaching them how to cook what they have grown. She wants to plant a huge garden at the White House. She is trying to get it to be a reality.
In Seattle on Capital Hill a lot of people have dug up their lawns and are growing gardens.
I tried last year to grow tomatoes and peppers and zucchini on my patio (I had done it in apartments in the past). Our area does not have enough flowers to encourage the bees to come in. So, although I had wonderful plants, I got no crop. Maybe if I plant more flowers next year i will get a crop. But I have heard reports about bees going scarce. Most people don’t take the time to think about it. I know I had always been around gardens. I didn’t think about needing bees to get crops!!!!!
Comment by Katestar — March 16, 2009 @ 10:19 am
Some years ago I found an old book on how to plan your yard. The interesting thing was none of the plans had a lawn. The book was printed in the late 1800’s. Seems that the grass lawn is a more recent invention. Almost every suggestion in the book was for things you could eat, the only exceptions being flowers for cutting, but there are also lots of edible flowers one can plant.
It got me to thinking about all the differences between then and now, like the so called easy and convenient world we have created, but is it really or just designed to let us work more for someone else. There is a huge difference between picking your dinner ripe from the earth and buying things that never ripened and have no real smell. Oh you can buy so called organic food, for about twice as much, or more, ironic I think since it doesn’t contain all the expensive chemicals and additives plus pesticides etc. etc.; so why does it cost more without all those things?
The good thing is food is easy to grow, all you need is seeds, soil, sun, water, and some fertilizer, depending on how good your dirt is of course. But there are also plants that enrich poor soil, often called green manure plants, alfalfa is a good one. One ancient method for planting corn is poke a hole with a stick, drop in a small fish, or parts of a bigger one, add three seeds, one for the earth, one for the birds, and one for food. Dust off all those old copies of organic gardening and the [early] Mother Earth issues you bought way back when, it’s all still there and oh so simple. There are flowers to mix in that attract bees and other ones to repel the flies and skeeters, a little something for everyone all in the same row. If the bees don’t come, you can always self pollinate, with a q-tip, it’s slower but it works, I once worked as a professional Bee. Don’t have much room, check out companion planting, for example string beans grow up the corn stalk, pumpkins and squash grow up the apple [or ??]tree. No yard, plant in pots, or anything that holds dirt.
Our ancestors did it for thousands of years, grew their own food, so can YOU.
Comment by FarmerJon — April 11, 2009 @ 1:58 pm
Yes! I once read (many, many years ago - or I’d look it up now!) that our obsession with lawns is due to its association with cattle. Those were the people, at one time, who had the most money. So others wanted to have expanses of green, indicative of their wealth!
And now it’s become what we’re used to - what we’re “supposed” to do. I’ve never valued lawns myself, but I sure have dug up a half dozen of them, in order to make flower and vegetable beds!
Comment by Shanti Mai — April 11, 2009 @ 7:09 pm