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[bobf <bobford79 AT yahoo.com>]

>From this am Wash Post.  Personally, I am unsure of the importance or 
>effectiveness of a symbolic act like a garden at thwe White House.  But, 
>someone on the list, maybe Lynn?, brought it up a while back .  I suppose it 
>wouldn't hurt and if they use it for 'teaching', maybe it might 
>help.............

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On the Road For Change
The Goal: A Farm At the White House


By Jane Black

Washington Post Staff Writer 

Wednesday, January 7, 2009; Page F01 

Daniel Bowman Simon and Casey Gustowarow didn't really have a plan when they 
set off on a cross-country drive in a topsy-turvy school bus with herbs, 
greens and root vegetables planted on the roof. But they didn't think they 
needed one. Their cause seemed so pure, so obviously righteous: to persuade 
the next president of the United States to grow food on the White House lawn. 

But that was August. The days were bright and hot. And the only obstacle to 
an abundance of spinach and Swiss chard were 60-mph headwinds and highway 
fumes. In December, it was a different story. On one day when they were 
parked at the edge of Penn Quarter's Thursday farmers market, sheets of rain 
lashed the bus. It was too cold to sleep in the bus, too cold to grow 
anything on the roof, too miserable for anyone to stop and sign the White 
House Organic Farm (WHO Farm) petition. 

Simon and Gustowarow have traveled through 25 states and collected 10,000 
signatures. But they've yet to hear whether President-elect Barack Obama will 
consent to transform the South Lawn into a working farm. 

Simon, 28, and Gustowarow, 27, aren't the first, or the most famous, to lobby 
for a White House garden. The idea became a cause celebre for food lovers 
during the presidential election campaign. Chez Panisse chef-owner Alice 
Waters and author Michael Pollan, gods of the sustainable-food movement, 
called on the new president to plant organic fruits and vegetables to feed 
the first family and stock local food pantries. In February, Maine gardener 
Roger Doiron launched an online campaign, dubbed Eat the View, with the same 
goal. Advocates say a first family garden could set an example for millions 
of Americans and, by promoting sustainable food, help tackle the awesome 
challenges of climate change, food safety and energy conservation. 

The pair have made great sacrifices for the cause. Gustowarow left his job on 
a farm near Annapolis to make the cross-country journey. Simon paid $42,000 
for a yellow school bus with half of another bus welded upside down on its 
top. Topsy Turvy, as the bus is known, was owned by Ben Cohen of Ben and 
Jerry's fame, who had it purpose-built to demonstrate what he saw as the 
country's upside-down budget priorities. The pair's four-month-long, 
11,000-mile journey coincided with record prices at the gas pump -- and the 
bus averages only seven or eight miles to the gallon. "I'm in a lot of debt," 
Simon shrugs. "But it's what I'm excited about." 

In a time of war and recession, a garden might not be at the top of the 
executive agenda. And it's not clear whether Simon and Gustowarow can put it 
there. They have little in common with many of the ambitious staffers who 
come to Washington. They're dreamers: soft-spoken, humble and more interested 
in their cause than in connections. 

The friends met in 2003 while working in the Philippines for the Peace Corps. 
After returning home, Gustowarow went to work on a farm; Simon went to New 
York to help develop green roof projects. 

In February, Simon attended a conference at Harvard University. There, Waters 
was honored and gave a speech in which she said that her two dreams were to 
create gardens at schools across the country and to see food grown on the 
White House lawn, as it had been in the past. Simon was inspired: "I thought, 
this is an idea that deserves a grassroots movement. Alice Waters is someone 
who deserves to have her dreams come true." 

Before setting off on their journey the pair contacted Waters, who blessed 
the venture. They set up a platform bed in the back of the bus, decked the 
ceiling with American flags and stocked the "kitchen" shelves with spices, 
oil, grains and ready-made soup. They planted herbs and root crops in 
lightweight soil on the roof, and on Aug. 4 they set off from New York to San 
Francisco. They had three weeks to make it to Slow Food Nation, the country's 
largest food festival, held on Labor Day weekend. 

There, Simon and Gustowarow parked the bus alongside the "victory garden" 
planted in front of San Francisco's City Hall, where they solicited 
signatures from thousands of like-minded food lovers. Pollan came aboard the 
bus for a chat. The pair even drove to Berkeley for lunch with Waters at Chez 
Panisse. They don't remember what they ate; "she picked the menu," Gustowarow 
says. 

>From there, they traveled organically across the South. Simon says they set 
>their sights on places "where we would be preaching to the choir, then 
>seeing where the choir led us." They visited schools in Oakland and 
>Berkeley. In Arizona, they stopped in Flagstaff and Sedona, where they drove 
>out to Republican presidential nominee John McCain's ranch, only to be 
>shooed away by the Secret Service. 

In Lubbock, Texas, they hooked up with cheesemaker Nancy Patton of Haute Goat 
Creamery. "I was having drinks with my father at the retirement village when 
the phone rang, and this kid told me he was driving across the country in an 
upside-down school bus. The first thing I'm thinking is, 'How did you get my 
number?' " 


 
Daniel Bowman Simon paid $42,000 for the bus that made the 11,000-mile 
journey. "I'm in a lot of debt," he says. "But it's what I'm excited about." 
(Dominic Bracco II - for The Washington Post) 
 
Crops were planted in lightweight soil on the top of the traveling bus. 
(Dominic Bracco II - for The Washington Post) 
 

Patton, a self-described conservative Republican, was impressed, however. "I 
thought it was a different stop for someone to pitch a cause like that. We're 
pretty cowboy here," she says. Patton put out a local press release and 
booked Simon and Gustowarow on the local Fox morning news program. Then she 
called a friend and asked him to design some T-shirts for them. 

"My approach is a little different than theirs," she says. "But I just 
appreciate what they are doing. My question is: Who would be against this?" 

Good question. There is a history of agriculture at the White House. Its 
first tenant, John Adams, planted a garden shortly after taking up residence 
in 1800. Woodrow Wilson brought in sheep to mow and fertilize the White House 
lawn in 1918, an effort to conserve resources for the war effort. In 1943, 
over the objection of the Agriculture Department, Eleanor Roosevelt planted a 
victory garden, inspiring millions of Americans to grow their own food. 

Since then, however, only herbs have been grown at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. 
Jimmy Carter, a Georgia farmer who extolled the virtues of gardening during 
his campaign, declined calls in 1978 to plant a vegetable garden at the White 
House. The issue has not been raised again seriously until now. 

The WHO Farm petition goes further than other similar calls to action. Simon 
and Gustowarow want schoolchildren and disabled Americans to work in the 
White House garden, a request that might pose a tricky security challenge. 
(Simon says including more participants in the project will make it more 
viable.) They also ask, among other things, that the gardeners plant heirloom 
seeds and use compost made from food waste from the kitchens that serve the 
White House, congressional buildings and Supreme Court. 

He and Gustowarow plan to upload their petition to http://www.change.gov, the 
Obama-Biden transition Web site, before the inauguration, then send it to the 
White House by mail. (The petition will remain open, Simon says, until there 
is a garden on the White House lawn. It can be signed at 
http://www.thewhofarm.org.) 

In the new year, Gustowarow is hoping to find a piece of land to farm. Simon 
will continue on his quest. "I'm not terribly optimistic this will happen the 
day [the Obamas] move into the White House," Simon says. "I think we've 
planted a seed -- no pun intended -- that opens up the possibility." 

Coming tomorrow: Adrian Higgins contemplates what a White House vegetable 
garden might entail, in the Home section. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/01/06/AR2009010600523.html?hpid=smartliving