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livingontheland - Re: [Livingontheland] What Alice Waters is Missing

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  • From: Pete Vukovich <pvukovic1@yahoo.com>
  • To: Healthy soil and sustainable growing <livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] What Alice Waters is Missing
  • Date: Fri, 27 Mar 2009 12:00:29 -0700 (PDT)

Been watching this thread for the last day and I think it brought up a few topics which will have to be bridged by the general public soon. As usual I've listed my stream of consciousness here.

1) Eating properly will require lifestyle changes and priority changes. One or two more 'good' crashes in the market may convince people that wishing real hard for gold to fall from trees won't make it so, but it will take a bigger cultural shift for governments and people to cotton on to the depths of the ramifications and requirements for living sensibly. It will require a concept of personal responsibility, something that is a rare commodity today. Enlightenment seems to require a long courtship with ignorance, lets plan the honeymoon and get down to the good stuff already.

2) Weve spent decades teaching people not to attempt to grow food, and spent decades assuring them that this business is best left in the hands of the experts. We all know how that sermon went, but most people still want to believe in them. After all, they have titles, publications, and big vocabularies. Unfortunately this is a reality show, not academia.  I believe this re-education should start with children, how expensive can school gardens be compared to blue grass infested lawns? It won't be hard to justify when schools budgets drop at the same rate food prices rise, but whether people will accept the idea that litigation, regulation , and personal responsibility are unrelated is unclear. At least to me.

3) Alice waters may have an elitist or bourgouise opinion of our eating habits, but I still think she's playing for the right team. (I've never eaten at chez-pannisse, but her little coffee shop on san pablo was creative - love the latte bowls). Compared to a stream of gm worshipping government leaders, industrialist wolves dressed as sheep USDA chiefs, and a vaste sea of concrete loving dirt hating techno zombies, she's practically Wendell Berry or Wes Jackson.

4) I don't see much farming being done in houston (plenty of cattle, a few pigs and horses, but not much of anything else), texans may want to educate me here. All my family was able to grow in that texas super glue - (by making deals the soil couldn't refuse) outside of a native jungle, were a few bannana trees and some ginger. We did learn that you need the natives to help enforce a microclimate beyond the two texas mandates (frozen wasteland , and steam bath 5th circle of hell) but thats another story. They managed to do this while raising a teenage daughter and working full time and commuting. There is no excuse beyond slavery, ignorance, laziness, or ill health for not having a garden or at least trying to. And three of them should have given her serious pause. The garden free writer lady lost me when she said she didn't have a garden, nuf said, talk to the hand. Talk of elitism is a horesefly in my ear these days (I hear it all the time). Annoying, misleading, and a time suck. Ok fine, taking care of the land is elitist, sign me up and get me one of them fancy exclusive stewardship platinum cards. All those years of wearing a tux out to our organic beds and compost holes in the midwest have apparently numbed my sense of entitlement and left me without proletarian standing. In my defense I dressed that way out of respect for the ants, not just to put the neighbors to shame.


Just like therapy, only cheaper. Thanks.


--- On Fri, 3/27/09, TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net> wrote:
From: TradingPostPaul <tradingpost@riseup.net>
Subject: Re: [Livingontheland] What Alice Waters is Missing
To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
Date: Friday, March 27, 2009, 11:06 AM

Yes. In our area the vast majority of homes have at least an acre to work
with, but little rain. And you could hunt around all day and never find any
home gardens, tho many have their own wells as we do. Of course I support
the intensive bed approach, since it's water conserving, easily mulched,
and way more productive for the space it takes. And I strongly believe the
biggest problem with home food growing is people don't get much out of it
for the time and effort. Bed growing can change all that. Furthermore, it
can be done without the cost of a tiller, and concentrating amendments on
the beds saves at least half the money or time on amendments.

We haven't seen rain since December but got 8" snow last nite, this
late.
So my back gets a couple days off from the garden prep. Through a friend we
lucked into free loaded horse manure, aged nicely, near enough to haul
pickup loads. I put it through a 1/4" screen and tarped it against the
wind
and weather, must be enough for years to come since the garden we fenced
off is less than 1/4 acre. It also makes nice mulch so when it does rain
the beds get another soaking of manure tea.

I guess someone else will have to do the free classes ;-)

paul tradingpost@lobo.net

*********** REPLY SEPARATOR ***********

On 3/27/2009 at 8:40 AM Pumpkin Lady wrote:
What people need are free classes in
>how to make an intensive bed garden at home for cheap or
>free and how to grow stuff in them as well as how to prepare
>and/or cook them after they've grown them.
>
>Morgan


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