Why I will grow a garden and why you should too
December 9, 2007 by Big Ass Belle
Garden? We’re much to busy, all of us, protesting and ranting and agonizing over the destruction of this democracy. But hear me out. If corporate control of government is one of the problems, one of the solutions is to opt out of participating in that slow motion disaster, and rebel, if only a little bit, by stepping back from the real horror of factory food.
Few of us still live on enough land to accomplish wholesale self support by feeding ourselves. But even city dwellers can, in the planting of a windowsill garden or the renting of a small community garden space, manage to produce something for sustenance. City dwellers can, too, seek out local provisions of food. You might be surprised how many small market gardeners and mini farmers are producing groceries right close to where you live. If you think the farmer’s market is for restaurateurs and gourmands, you’re missing out on a growing and active movement of people who are eating locally grown foods for health, for national security, as an act of patriotism and rebellion.
Disgusting does not begin to describe the shameful state of American grocery store food, most of which comes to us by way of processing plants or production farms in China, Thailand and Chile. Although we’ve never, in this land, had a strong food tradition like France or Italy, like Mexico or Jamaica or just about any other country on earth, we at least tended to cook and eat at home up until the last 20-30 years. Consider that the issue here is far more than quality and taste, though those are factors for many of us.
It is, in fact, an issue of 300 million+ people being unable to sustain themselves. It is an issue of a nation producing an excess of soybeans and corn and poisonous disease-riddled meats which lead us along the deadly path of malnutrition and a fattening of our citizens similar to the fattening that takes place when cattle are shipped to a feedlot (and fed soybeans and corn and meat byproducts and blood). It is very much about a corrupt system, political and corporate, that will destroy not only the land itself and the environment we inhabit, but our very bodies. We cannot eat trash and survive.
The issue, too, affects our integrity as an independent nation. How secure can our country be when we can’t even feed ourselves? How energy sufficient can we be when the average grocery store product travels thousands of miles from field to shelf? How the hell did we end up this way and what can we possibly do to disrupt this disaster? And most important, what can we each do, on a personal level, to make a difference? That’s the key. Each one of us making a decision to opt out of corporate food on even the tiniest level. It will be babysteps, but each tiny step will take us closer to a better life and a better world.
It sounds dramatic and when we’re used to worrying about George Bush and Dick Cheney and their deadly thuggery, it seems absurd to think about food. But
those same bastards who have shredded the constitution, who threw away habeas corpus as if it were a used tissue, have subsidized the new big business of food production with never a thought given to the end result of what ends up on our tables and in our mouths. Stepping away from the big business of food, considering the ramifications of buying bananas in Tulsa in December, thinking about the reality of where food comes from can only result in better health, better tastes on our tables, and a return of sanity to the business of sustaining life. If, in the process, we restore the family farm to its rightful place in this economy and give a black eye to Dow and Monsanto and the rest who control what we eat, all the better.
This is an enormous topic, far too complex to discuss in a single post. It is about safety, self sufficiency, national security, health. It’s about fat and food and eating and what has happened to us. It’s about agriculture and community and a way of life in danger. You’ve just read Part I ~ hear me out and hang with me for Parts II and III and probably more. This is deadly serious and I will convince you why we must, each of us, care and why a garden ~ even one in a pot on a city patio ~ can be the beginning of salvation.
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i agree! i also advocate eventually becoming vegetarians because the meat issues in this country are appalling. i live in the city limits and i composted this summer in a rubber maid bin with a lid. i poked holes in the top and bottom- and my compost was beautiful. got rid of much junk mail that way. i intend to put veggies in my small front yard and on my porch. i am going to freeze and learn how to can my veggies like my mom used to. the more self sufficient you can make yourself- the better. bad days are ahead for us.
BAB
I use to exclusively grow, rease, and preserve, 100% of my food. Milked cows and pastuerized fresh milk every day. Beef, Pigs, smoked our own bacon, Raised 30,000 broilers every 9 weeks and ket 25 to butcher to eat. I also raised turkeys and use to butcher both during the holidays for extra money
I am the one who raised the crops and we wintered potatoes, carrots, onions, and squashes.
I still garden a bit and would love to teach people how to survive. I use to be the student foreman at the Aggie I lived at and managed. It enabled me to go around the couny and teach and help the people
Today I grow a few potatoes onions and tomatos but will never lose all the knowledge I have gained over the years. Everyone can grow patio tomatos and should just for the pleasure of watching them grow to fruition. It is also easy to harvest your own seeds. People can learn but they do not realize their lives will depend on it.
We only have a third of an acre and I don’t garden much but my next door neighbor does. If he didn’t have four four hundred pounders living with him he could raise his own veggies at least, with a little bit of teaching. but most I am afraid are going to be in trouble. I hope I am wrong but I am not!
I garden every year, but the soil here is just awful-and the rain problems of the past 2 years haven’t helped either.
I don’t rake my leaves in the hopes that eventually that organic matter will work its way back into the soil. I am thinking next year I’m actually going to sift rocks out of it as I dig it up, and hope for the best.
betmo ~ i have pondered the vegetarian thing myself; have been looking at the data on sustainability. there is definitely no way i ever want to eat another bite of factory-produced flesh. it is repugnant and i can hardly bear the thought of being any kind of participant in an animal’s misery. on the other hand, animals who live their lives in a wholesome healthy environment, who are well fed and tended and humanely harvested, that might be a different story. still on the fence about that one. but i’m definitely with you on preserving and conserving. it’s just insane to keep living this way.
Jim, I bow to your great wisdom
I bought my house in 1989 because I wanted to raise goats, make cheese, have some chickens. I did none of that, but I have been a fiendish gardener ever since that time. I was looking at Europe’s response to WWII and the urge to grow food and how successful it was. In this country too. We could do that here ~ so many of us do have small bits of land, there’s no reason why we couldn’t. But we’re at the malls or the movies or picking out new cars or new shoes. We are so far separated from what it really takes to sustain life, it’s almost absurd. It’s late . . . I’m not sure there’s time for most folks to get it. I have a lot of fears about the future, hope they will not prove to be true. Meanwhile, I’m planning the garden and my preservation of my own food and local sources.
JollyRoger ~ soil enrichment is a trial. I live in Tulsa and our growing season is six months long. It’s hot and dry after June, and it’s almost impossible to get enough organic matter in the soil to keep it in good shape. I’ve kind of given up trying, but that’s crazy. Keeping after it, making an effort, working with what we have . .. i think it’s really important to try.
I used to take part in a communal growing plot when I lived in Boston back in the 70’s. It was a great experience and homegrown food tastes a hundred percent better!
I live in the San Joaquin valley, so I get most of my produce and dairy locally.
yep and yep, vegatarian here, for all the reasons stated above and then some. My soil here is awful but gardening is as i see it a political act. I try to support the farmers market. When the collapse comes and it will we will need to have local food supply systems set up. This is really critical. This food transporting , importing, and of course the factory farming of animals is not sustainable - not healthy. So count me in on the gardening thing..even if its in window boxes or large pots, we all need to be closer to our food and support those who can do this on a larger scale. Another thing too, ethonal is a horrible alturnative fuel. Corn is a food. We also need industrial hemp. Anyone seen that toyota commercial for the bio degradable car ? i snicker when i see it…as Henry Ford built an entire car out of HEMP. HEMP good for the soil and a wonder crop, for building, for foods , for clothing, you name it. It is the earth’s greatest gift to us.
I have had a garden for over 30 years,but the last 5(a long story goes here) there was none..this spring I plan to rebuild,replany and renew myself with at least one plot.I do an double dug/intensive method that came out of San Jose U.C. For my mental,physical and spiritual health~it is the least I can do.