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Vote for a Victory Garden at the White House!

Change.org (not to be confused with president-elect Obama's official website, Change.gov) is hosting a competition called Ideas for Change in America, which was "created in response to Barack Obama's call for increased citizen involvement in government." Anyone who registers with the website gets 10 votes to cast on projects spanning categories from Social Entrepreneurship to Peace in the Middle East. The 10 project ideas receiving the most votes will be presented to president-elect Obama on January 16 at a National Press Club event in DC.

Earlier this week, Michael Pollan sent Chris Stevens' post at Liveable Future to his mailing list, encouraging readers to vote for Victory Gardens 2.0. I would like to do the same. Understandably, an organic Victory Garden at the White House may not be the most pressing issue even for the strongest agricultural policy advocates right now, given what else is happening in the world at the moment, but luckily you get 9 more votes to address your other concerns, too.

Register with Change.org
See the other Ideas for Change in America
TheWhoFarm
Eat the View

Of Seeds, Weeds, Concrete, and Compost

So I already owe an update on what I'm about to post since this happened nearly three weeks ago, but I can't let it go unmentioned that Eric's backyard garden has officially been planted with the first of lots of delicious things, which promise to make this summer's barbecues all the better.

I took the day off on Friday a few weeks back and headed over to help do some planting, not realizing at all that the list of things a person can plant in one afternoon is actually quite long. After maybe 3 hours, during which Eric took on the unenviable task of digging out foot-long rhizomes of Japanese Knotweed from the end of his yard, I'd planted oregano, dill, three kinds of basil, Chioggia beets, Forellenschluss lettuce, Amish snap peas, black beauty and golden zucchini squash, and swiss chard.

The bonus was seeing all the sprouts from the seeds Eric had planted a couple weeks before that; they were springing up all over the place.

Briefly, Dan Barber's Op-Ed in the Sunday NYT

Having gone home for Mother's Day to the land of the Boston Globe, I missed Dan Barber's insightful op-ed piece in Sunday's New York Times. Check it out here.

I'm Back, Almost

To any concerned parties: I am alive. I've just been in the throes of event-planning hell at work, which combined with personal events has left me with no choice but to neglect this blog. My apologies.

As I work to catch up on the many things I've had to report in the last two weeks, here is a brief recap in pictures to tide you over:

That's the garden in Eric's back yard, nearly three weeks ago (and Ricky, way in the back, wrestling with the Japanese Knotweed). I spent a very productive afternoon over there, planting things. It was wonderful, and it took three days for my hamstrings to recover.

And here is Dan Barber, petting a pig. On a recent visit to Stone Barns, Dan kindly invited my friend Chelle and I to tag along for a stroll around the farm's livestock with him and his meat guy from Blue Hill here in the city. Top it off with some treats at the Blue Hill bar, and that's a good day.

Having now bought my first official asparagus of the spring, I also spent some quality time saying goodbye to hearty winter greens. I love them, but I am ready for PEAS.

And finally, as I continue to be a neurotic mother to my plant babies, I have to proudly share the current state of my basil sprouts. They've come up so successfully, I'm now in the process of thinning them by occasionally plucking a couple delicious, spicy sprouts from the pot and eating them like candy.

More to come this week, as I wrangle my ducks back into a row.

Thinking Little For Big Change

This week's New York Times Sunday Magazine, its Green Issue, features an essay by Michael Pollan that speaks powerfully about the climate crisis and the seeming disparity between its scale and what we are told we can do as individuals to help mitigate it. Change our lightbulbs? What good does that do to eliminate the hypoxia zone at the mouth of the Mississippi or slow the rate of melting at our Poles?

I am terrified. I know this is not a unique sentiment to throw out there - many of us are - but one thing that essays like Pollan's and the work of individuals and organizations both in New York City and beyond have helped me realize is that, in a twisted sense, we are lucky. We are at a point in time where our agency as individuals can effect massive change in a way I certainly haven't felt in my lifetime.

Sure, it's easy to feel defeated at times. We try to do good by recycling our junk mail, but what about the diesel-fueled truck that comes to haul away that puny pile of envelopes (or, in the burbs, the fuel you use to drive your recyclables to the dump)? We turn the light off in the kitchen when we're not in there cooking, but who do we talk to about turning off the lights at the top of the Empire State Building? Well, if we pose our questions like that, it certainly does become easy to think our actions are futile.

What we really need to do is, as Wendell Berry so brilliantly put it, Think Little. Don't measure your actions as an individual against the cumulative actions of a corporation, municipality, or society; measure your actions today against your own actions from yesterday, last year, or five years ago. Think about it.

Five years ago:

• I did not have recycling bins in my apartment.
• I had never been to a Greenmarket
• I brought all of my groceries home in double-bagged plastic
• I bought and drank from a different paper coffee cup every morning

Now add those things up. A year of using my beloved OXO coffee mug has probably saved about 250 paper cups from entering the waste stream. If I was coming home with twelve plastic bags from each grocery and bodega trip, I've likewise probably kept from using about 300 bags a year. This is not insignificant. And certainly if you combine my 250 cups with those of my coworkers, my friends, and my family - a tiny microcosm of this hugely populated world - our thousands of paper cups are nothing to sneeze at.

As the pull quote from Pollan's essay highlights, "For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do." So, while I have this platform from which to speak, I ask you (yes you!) to consider the moves you can make today that you did not make yesterday. No matter how small, no matter what you did yesterday that was better than the day before. Be selfish in the best way possible and concern yourself only with yourself, as an agent of change. We may be terrified, but we are not helpless.

For my part, I am taking a day out of the office tomorrow to dig in Eric's back yard, spreading compost and planting summer vegetables. Feels little, right? Maybe a little luxurious? Well sure, but it feels good, too. And that's nothing to underestimate.

New York Times: Why Bother?

Windowsill Herb Garden: Opal Basil

I've never grown anything from seed in my life. Well, I do have a vague recollection of growing something in a single-serving milk carton when I was little, but I don't even remember what it was or what I did with it when the science project was over. So it doesn't count.

That fact makes it all the more exciting that the opal basil seeds I planted last week have started poking their tiny purple heads out of their pot on my windowsill. Gardeners talk about how rewarding it feels to nurture something from seed, watch it grow, and reap the fruits of one's labor (whether literally or spiritually), but it's another thing entirely to experience it first hand.

I planted a palmful of seeds last week and placed them by my sunniest window. This worked out well, because it also happens to be on top of a heater; it's essential that soil be fairly warm for the seeds to germinate. It's also important not to over water, but between the four or five hours of sunlight and the heat at night, this little guy has still needed a little watering every two days or so.

In my typical impatience, I started checking for sprouts the day after starting the seedlings. Finally, on Monday, victory was mine. Observe:

What, you can't see it?

MoMA and P.S.1 To Present PF1 (Public Farm One) This Summer

It's been a couple of years since I last braved the throngs of scenesters at P.S.1's summer program Warm Up, but I've just gotten reason to give it another try this year. As winners of MoMA and P.S.1's Young Architects Program, WORK Architecture Company will be building PF1, a.k.a. Public Farm One, at the entrance to the Long Island City museum. It opens June 20.

From P.S.1's press release:

PF1 will work as an interactive bridge between outside and inside, creating multiple zones of activity including swings, fans, sound effects, innovative seating areas, and a refreshing pool at its center. The installation will be a living structure made from inexpensive and sustainable materials recyclable after its use at P.S.1.

And from WORK's statement on the project:

[PF1 is] a magical plot of rural delights inserted within the city grid that resonates with our generations' preoccupations and hopes for a better and different future. In our post-industrial age of information, customization, and individual expression, the most exciting and promising developments are no longer those of mass production but of local interventions.

The bottom line: PS1 will be home to a working farm for the summer, and I've heard from a good friend on the inside that the museum may open a small farmer's market to sell what's grown on PF1 to the public.

Courtesy WORKac.

New York Times, via Architecture Lab: Betting a Farm Would Work in Queens 

Community Farm Profiled in This Month's Atlantic

The Atlantic has a nice piece on Nuestras Raíces, a community farm in Holyoke, MA, in its April food section. A particularly moving passage:

"We have nine community gardens in some of the toughest neighborhoods in the city if not the country," [Nuestras Raíces  Executive Director Daniel] Ross said, "and the incidence of vandalism has been almost zero." Joel Cortijo, a colleague along for the tour, said simply, "It’s ours." Cortijo, 30, grew up in Holyoke and spent six years in the Army before returning to run a high-school basketball league; he is now co-coordinator of Holyoke’s Food and Fitness Policy Council... Harming a garden, he said, "would be like vandalizing your own car."

The Atlantic: A Papaya Grows In Holyoke

Project! And DIY Food

These gray days in Brooklyn put my brain into overdrive with ideas for the spring. Most of them end up falling victim to my distorted idea of how much free time I have, but I'm determined not to let that happen this time around. This year's project, I've decided, will be container gardening.

Without a yard, a fire escape (it's cool... we can jump), or roof access from my apartment, it's been difficult to see this as a feasible project in the past, but I'm actually a little embarrassed at this point that I don't even grow my own herbs. So I've been reading up about window boxes and indoor containers, figuring out what can be expected to grow in this climate and in the small amount of space I have.

Fuel for this fire has come from reading about some admirable DIYers from Martha's Vineyard and Vermont in recent New York Times and Boston Globe articles, respectively. While growing (or trading) of that magnitude is basically impossible for the Brooklyn apartment-dweller, there's no good reason to discount the tiny victory that accompanies each successfully grown window box tomato. And believe me, now that I know there are several varieties of heirlooms that can thrive in window boxes, those are number one on my growing list.

On a side note, what does it say about my neighborhood that at least half the books in the bookstore's container gardening section are about successfully growing weed?

Rhetorical question.

New York Times: On Martha's Vineyard, Using Scallops As Currency
Boston Globe: The Do-It-Yourself Approach 

Small World

While I finally took some time last night to catch up on my foodie reading, I was moved by Tana Butler's entry over at I Heart Farms to revisit Wendell Berry's essay, Think Little.  Berry is prolific, to say the least, but I think this essay has to be the single most powerful piece of his writing I've read.  And lucky for you, the full text is here on the internet for your reading pleasure (a little unwiedly, yes, but you can use that as an excuse to buy yourself the book).

It recently occurred to me that, over the last year or so, my interest in food has sort of morphed from a fairly superficial love of a good eating experience to something decidedly more political.  As happens with a lot of things, once I examined my food choices closely, I found that feeling good about what I eat involves much more than I originally thought.

At first, the idea was to treat my own body better -- more healthy, whole foods and fewer artificial ingredients and chemicals.  Okay, but it raised an important question: what is the good of taking care of my body if I don't recognize its place in space?  That is, is it necessarily better to eat things that might be good for my body if they're bad for the world my body inhabits?

I think it was right around the time I started asking these questions that I picked up The Omnivore's Dilemma and first saw reference to Berry's essays, Think Little in particular.  Needless to say, the piece struck a chord.

...the change of mind I am talking about involves not just a change of knowledge, but also a change of attitude toward our essential ignorance, a change in our bearing in the face of mystery. The principle of ecology, if we will take it to heart, should keep us aware that our lives depend upon other lives and upon processes and energies in an interlocking system that, though we can destroy it, we can neither fully understand nor fully control. And our great dangerousness is that, locked in our selfish and myopic economics, we have been willing to change or destroy far beyond our power to understand. We are not humble enough or reverent enough.

Reading about the effects of our industrial food chain on the population and the environment had upset me almost to a point of paralysis, where I thought there was no possible way my weekly grocery trip could really affect change.  But reading this essay made me feel a bit better about my smallness.  How could I not find comfort in Berry's simple but profound belief that "a person who undertakes to grow a garden at home, by practices that will preserve rather than exploit the economy of the soil, has set his mind decisively against what is wrong with us"? 

So I have started owning up to my choices, and food has acquired an important secondary significance.  it's not just a means of nourishing myself, but it can (and should) also be a tool to nourish the planet.  It's overwhelming sometimes to try to circumvent our conventional means of cultivating and purchasing food, but I think the idea behind the Think Little philosophy is to embrace our agency as individuals and teach our peers by example, because when a lot of people think little, it can create big change.