Not Just A Vegetable Garden

We learn from our gardens to deal with the most urgent question of the time: How much is enough?” – Wendell Berry

Last summer after attending the Puyallup Farmer’s Market nearly every weekend for 4 months I caught the bug…the vegetable gardening bug that is.  Piles of fresh, colorful, local produce began to invade not only the Schaefer family dinner menu (Jamie Oliver would be proud), but also my thinking on resilience, sustainability and health.

I soon began skipping the merchant stalls to spend my time firing flurries of questions at four nice ladies manning the gardening help table.  They seemed excited that a random 26-year old suburban hack seemed so interested in their hobby and assured me that despite my complete lack of knowledge or cute gardening hats, I too could produce something edible.  “It’s all about the soil,” they nodded in zen-like unison.  Thus, I’m planting vegetables in our backyard this Spring.

Rather than weaving some beautiful, Wendell Berry-esque narrative on what has driven me to take a crack at growing my own food, I’ll try to give you a few snapshots of random thoughts I’ve had that led me to a conviction that planting a vegetable garden is such a worthwhile endeavor to pursue.

- Growing one’s own food is a path to resilience. What do I mean by this?  Without sounding too alarmist, we have never before seen so much of our food controlled by so few companies…this is incredibly risky.  Any small variations in the industrial food system could have massive consequences, unintended or otherwise, leading to scarcity, huge price increases, disease, etc.  By growing your own food, no matter the scale, you are going “off the grid” and insulating yourself from the volatility of the globalized food market.  **For more in-depth discussion on building resilience see John Robb’s blog here.

- Potential long-term cost savings. Notice two key phrases, “potential” and “long-term.”  I’ve done enough research now to pop any idealistic bubbles that planting a vegetable garden will immediately lead to massive savings.  Seeds, equipment, water, fertilizer…these are all costs that add up and often push the savings on down the road a couple years.  However, if done successfully, there’s no reason you can’t eventually save a substantial amount on your monthly grocery bill and have fresher, more healthy food to boot.

- Buying and eating locally re-connects us with our food.  As Michael Pollan so eloquently points out in his book, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” it is startling how disconnected we have become from something so intimate to us as our own food.  We purchase thousands of dollars of it off the grocery store shelves each year and have no idea where it comes from, or many times, what is actually in it (try pronouncing the ingredient list on any processed food and tell me if I’m wrong).

I long presumed that my ignorance equated to a moral pass on agricultural issues, but became convicted that I was voting with my wallet three times a day for a particular food system and I’d better know…really know, just what I was feeding myself and my family.

- Healthy eating for my family.  Obviously a no-brainer, but eating more vegetables is great for your health.  I spent my life avoiding them as much as possible, but was subsequently doomed when I married a woman who cooked them…and quite well at that.  It’ll be something I’ll comment on once we get into the swing of things, but my hunch is that we’ll consume a great deal more veggies as we begin producing them ourselves.  To top it off, we have two beautiful kids.  I want them to grow up in a family that eats healthy and grows its own food.

So there you have it.  Those are just a few of dozens of thoughts floating through my head when it comes to growing my own food, but hopefully this can be a good conversation starter.  If you want more good resources to check out see the following:

“Learning How to Grow Vegetables and Herbs in a Home Garden” by Jason Morgan

For those in the Pacific Northwest, The Westside Gardeners Timetable

Get Rich Slowly’s Gardening 101

What do you think?  Do you grow your own food?  Have any tips as I get started?

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Related posts:

1. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” and America’s National Eating Disorder
2. 10 Steps to Increasing Your Financial Resilience

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