How does your garden grow

Since living on our own, the hubby and I have really taken to gardening in the yard while we let the rabbit out to frolick in the sunshine and fresh air. It has really made us more into the urban farmer trend. In our little apartment yard, we're already the proud cultivators of several strawberry plants that have been quite prolific, two blueberry bushes that would be doing better in the spring had not stunk this year, rosemary, chives, mint, and a surprisingly fast growing lavendar plant. Our experiments in the two years we've been here have taught us that when we one day have a home of our own, the yard will be full of edible things, like fruit trees, medicinal plants, and herbs instead of ornamental things that just look pretty but serve no other purpose. It has also led us to pay much more attention to the food we purchase, especially things like the salt content and additives that neither of us college educated people can pronounce easily. Nothing is sadder to me than a child who does not know where their food comes from, except perhaps an adult who still unaware.

 Pico getting his home grown daily vege

I've never read any of the Michal Pollan books or seen the movies "Food Inc" or "SuperSize Me" or any other such documentary on the subject of modern agribusiness. All I've really been immersed in is my mother's vegetable garden while a child, my own forrays into gardening for produce, and my anthropological studies which touched on domestication of food crops and the affect of diet change at the rise of agriculture. For many years now I've been a promoter of a Hunter-Gatherer style diet and exercise pattern. While specific cultures have different diets depending on what is regionally available, our current food system makes this provision increasingly difficult to follow, since it is always growing season somewhere in the world. Seasonality is lost on us, except for the fact that you have pumpkins around Halloween and cherries around Independence Day. If you don't know where your meat came from you shouldn't eat it, and if you can't handle the fact that those little baby chicks grow up to be butchered and turned into fried chicken, you shouldn't eat them either. (Side note: I'm super excite about the local independent butcher shop that is going in a few blocks away. Talk about really making the connection between that steak and the part of the cow!)

I can pet a goat at the county fair and have a lamb gyro for lunch the same day without guilt, but I don't get militant about it. I think that is the key: militancy. While I choose to grow my own blueberries and chives, I don't look down on you for buying the non-organic kind for cheap at the store. While in college I pretty much stopped drinking pop and adding salt to my food, mainly because I didn't want to pay for it (who wants to move every six months with an open salt shaker, anyway). Now when I drink pop or eat really processed foods, the first think I exclaim is how salty it tastes.  I have friends and family who span the food gathering spectrum, from hunters and fishers to vegetarians and vegans. We all get along as long as we don't attempt to convince the others that our way is supreme. And then there is the scientific fact that every body has different needs. For instance, I feel better when I eat red meat and dark green leafy vegetables; I get fewer headaches and have more energy. Luckily for my acquaintencese, I recognize that not everyone feels better eating that way. Gluten intolerance, lactose intolerance, even rice intolerance is becoming more common as we limit the strains of each product that we eat. Instead of a wild rice blend we all eat basmati or jasmine rice because they are cheaper to produce in large scale.

A garden in the yard for food production is great in many ways - its economical, it provides exercise and a sense of accomplishment, and it is a great teaching tool for families. I love to eat, but everything tastes better when you grow it yourself. And besides, who doesn't love the octopus carrots that results from too many seeds being placed in the ground in one spot?