Another Lehigh Community Garden

Link to an article about another community garden on Fillmore Street.

This Post Doesn't Need 200 Words

In Gardening, There is No Winner

My competitive drive is untamable. My friends all sabotage our taboo and scrabble games because they love to see how completely disconcerted I become when I realize that they are breaking the rules or that I am losing. I would not say that I am a particularly sore loser, but I will admit that I love to win. I am an extremely hard worker, and I like to always keep my goals in sight. Yet, as a gardener, my competitiveness made me a failure.

Ed kept telling me that gardening is not a race. Regardless, I kept trying to make each aspect of the experience into one. I had each of my peers pick a plant, and we wanted ours to grow the fastest and the highest. I wanted to put the seeds in the ground as soon as possible, thinking that the faster they grew, the quicker we would reach the finish line.

I quickly learned that there is no finish line in gardening, and that if it could be considered a sport at all, it would be a team one. Gardening is all about quality – the quality of the vegetables as well as the quality of the experience. Moreover, to attain this quality, one needs time, patience, and acceptance. I have learned that trying to “win” at gardening is setting one’s self up for failure because nature is not perfect. Plants will die, bugs will infest, and weather will do whatever the hell it feels like doing. There is more to gardening than having the perfect garden.

I realized that with our garden, and with life in general, I attempt to make everything a race that should really just be a journey. I went to the garden at sunset today to reflect on the garden experience thus far. The conclusion I came to was that I got as much out of just visiting the garden as I could out of eating its vegetables. I feel centered when I am there, and I love how grounded I feel so close to nature and her most magical of processes. I do not need the most luscious vegetables in order to get something out of gardening.

At the garden tonight, I could not help but reflect again on how lucky I am to have this application of learning in the real world. I cannot wait to continue working with my classmates and caring for the garden this summer. I know that the eating and nurturing of the garden will vary greatly from the prepping process, and I cannot wait to learn even more then.

Staring at the sunset at the garden tonight, my mind instantly went to Leslie Marmon Silko and the conclusion of her novel Ceremony. This book is very special to me, and it informs how I live my life and connect with those around me. The final words of Silko’s novel perfectly reflect how I feel about this entire experience: “Sunrise, / accept this offering, / Sunrise” (244). Although I was taking in the garden beside a sunset rather than a sunrise, I felt like I was on the brink of a new beginning.

I am about to graduate and start my adult life. Who I am from here on out is completely on me. The garden represents the future that I foresee for myself because I want to live a life where I am a conscious consumer and really connected to the world around me. I want to grow my own food, spend time outside, and really connect with those around me. I think that as a society, we have lost a lot of our connection to the physical world and intimate connection with each other. The garden is the antithesis of this, and that is the life I want for myself.

Just as Silko points out, a new beginning also means that I have to give something up, an “offering.” I love this Silko quote because I have learned to completely give myself up to the garden over the past few weeks. I have learned to enjoy the journey, be in the moment, and to be patient. I leave my phone on the side when I enter the garden, and I try to become a part of my surroundings as much as possible. In giving up some pieces of myself, I have learned to become a part of something larger. I am a part of a larger cycle of life and death, as well as community, when I am at or tending to the garden. Sometimes, letting go of ourselves is a good thing. And if I have to learn to let go, I am so happy that it is at this garden and with all of you!

out with the old, IN with the NEW

For some reason the hobby of gardening only appeals to the older generation. And as life becomes more complicated by the innovations in the technology and software industries, our generation has never caught on to our grandparents or parents time in the yard. Simply put, why would we spend a sunny afternoon digging through dirt and tending soil if we could go to the nearest mall or entertain friends? And to add to that, gardening just isn’t in the category of what makes people ‘cool’? As nature changes and adapts through evolution, our generation needs to bring back the importance of urban agriculture at a local level.

My uncle has established a store called Terrain (at Styer's), which is located in Concordville, Pennsylvania. The store is the latest brand of the Urban Outfitters, Anthropologie and Free People family. With the young, trendy college student being the target market for Urban, my uncle hopes that with the introduction of Terrain, Urban’s shopper will help keep the garden community alive. When entering the store, one feels as though they are in a state of a natural high. Shop for eco-friendly growing supplies or even locally sourced and prepared artisan food at their cafe.  There are around 50 more stores planned to go up across the United States over the next few years, so don’t hesitate to check it out. Continue the movement and represent the sustainable eco-lifestyle! Showing off what your garden produces to your friends is cool. Providing people with locally grown fresh produce will add to their day and enhance a contagious sense of community within their souls.

I am looking forward to the upcoming summer months and harvesting our many crops. I am also extremely excited about my research and experiencing the taste of gardening in three local domains: Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Avalon, New Jersey; and Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

Thank you so much for making this course the most enjoyable I have had in my undergraduate career. I look forward to my relationships with all of you growing in the future. No pun intended.

           

On a side note:

Since I will be at Lehigh over the course of the summer, feel free to visit our garden and take anything with you! Also, I will be spending various hours of the week at Horns. John offered me a job, so if your hungry maybe you can even bring some of our produce and they can add it to your order.

If you are interested in a television series, I highly recommend Aftermath: Population Zero on the National Geographic channel. The series features how scientists speculate the Earth, animal life, and plant life would recover if humans abruptly vanished and left everything behind, untouched. This series goes hand-in-hand with the book I chose to read at the reminder of the course, The World Without Us by Alan Weisman. 

The Garden

Kim Campbell

Post #1

April 26, 2012

Lunch at Horns – ‘It’s not about the journey, its the destination’

The last day of class was my second time going to Horns, but my first time paying attention to what the restaurant actually does.  It is really impressive how much the owners do and how dedicated they are to eating locally.  In a past interview, co restaurant owner John Silvestern said, “We’re using all local farms and trying to keep the money in this area.”  Thus, there are health, community, as well as economical benefits to eating locally (Huth).  The owners of Horns strive to make every part of their restaurant local, eco friendly and organic in some way.  They only use fresh foods from nearby farmer markets and orchards, and their take-out containers are sustainable and compostable (Huth).  The ingredients are listed on the chalkboard menus up overhead, so you know exactly what is in your food.  All of the meat that is served is “grass-fed, nitrate free, injection-free and comes from local farms” (Huth).  Everything is made each morning and all of the restaurant food scraps are saved for compost.

The whole atmosphere of Horns is earthy: there are dark wooden picnic benches as seating, chalkboards on the walls that list dining options, minimizing the need for paper menus, and there are no bottles of water, but rather “Super-Duper Filtered Water” in a glass Mason jar that is sold for 50 cents.  Another thing I noticed about Horns is that they have pour-over coffee.  Every few minutes or so while we were eating, I kept seeing one of the employees pour hot water into a series of metal funnels on the counter.  At the time, I didn’t realize what she was doing, however, when I read a few articles about Horns afterwards, I realized that this was a different way of making coffee.  Coffee grounds and a filter are put in this funnel and the hot water is then poured through to produce the coffee that drips into a cup below.  Though I have not done a lot of research on this way of making coffee, it seems more eco friendly as the process uses less electricity and is more natural than using a coffee maker.

            It does seem that people recently have become more aware of eating locally and organically.  Perhaps this is somewhat in my head since, as a class, we have just finished reading very economically conscious and pro locally grown food novels such as Ecotopia and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I do feel like people want to be more healthy.  It seems that people are more willing to be eco friendly now than they have been in the past because there has been a lot of change and problems associated with our climate that is due to global warming.  Though I think people can learn to be more eco friendly, recognizing that we are, as a community, making strides to be environmentally conscious and eat more locally is important and something to be proud of. 

After reading these books, I, at least, have talked to my parents about buying more from our local famer rather than buying what we can get from him at the grocery store.  Also, during this year, my sorority house got a composter, and we have saved a huge amount of food that would have otherwise been added to the garbage disposal.  Recognizing special places, such as Horns, and helping them with their business is a great place to start helping the community become more local.  Though it is a bit more expensive than McDonalds, you definitely get a lot more for your dollar in taste, freshness and experience.

            Going to Horns before starting the garden got us in a more environmentally conscious mindset and boosted our confidence in starting the project.  Similar to a restaurant like Horns, but on a much smaller scale, a garden requires hard work, dedication, and desire.  Though this is not the most cost efficient way to run a restaurant, the owners, perhaps, are not solely focused on the monetary issue.  The effects you can have on people, as well as the local community, are, in the long run, more substantial than the effects you could have on yourself by making a lot of money.  I have no idea how many vegetables will be produced in our small earth beds, but I think it would a nice thing if we could help out places like Horns by giving back some of our locally grown produce.  It was their mindset and other people’s mindsets like theirs that made us want to start a garden in the first place.

Huth, Kelly. "Restaurant Profile: Horns." The Express-Times. 16 Sept. 2011. Web. 07

May 2012.

<http://www.lehighvalleylive.com/food/index.ssf/2011/09/restaurant_profile_horns.html>.

Post #2

April 26, 2012

First Impressions Are Often Times Deceiving

After lunch at Horns

Today was the first day I went to the garden.  I’ve never gardened before, so on our walk from Horns to our plot, I didn’t know what to expect.  As we walked down the street of South Side Bethlehem, past Wendy’s, scattered beer cans, and broken glass strewn about, I could not imagine where this small garden could be.  It seemed as if there were only worn out homes, battered by years of college students living in them, squished next to each.  I love Lehigh, but the South Side that surrounds Bethlehem is not a pretty sight and I don’t feel safe walking in certain areas by myself.  Everything feels dirty, polluted, and, like any other small city, there is very little plant life.  As we turned up Carlton Avenue after passing Montclair, my jaw dropped.  For the first time in the South Side, I saw a plot of grass with shady trees looming overhead.  Amidst a city overcrowded with hopping fast food chains, honking cars, and ever blinking traffic lights, I spotted the city’s secrete green treasure tucked behind a row of homes.  I couldn’t believe that there was small community garden nested between all the streets and rows of buildings.  Though it is not very big, compared to the open land of a park, the plot of green grass was more than enough to be satisfied with in the South Side.  For the past three years I have been giving the South Side a lot less credit than it deserved as I have always assumed that there was nothing worth going out and exploring in this part of town.

Walking up to the garden, I felt like a kid again: there was a swing set, exquisitely shaped concrete benches that begged to be climbed on, and a fenced in mosaic garden which contained nine garden beds, two of which we would be working on.  For some reason, I always associate mosaics with magic and charms.  Seeing this as I entered the garden just made the experience, for lack of a less cheesy phrase, more magical. 

It was as if the city stopped moving around us.  Everything felt so fresh and clean.  It felt good to breathe in a full gulp of air that was not contaminated with car exhaust and dirt particles.  It was a very freeing experience to be in the garden, and I felt really safe for the first time on the South side, not on Lehigh’s campus.

Walking up to one of the garden beds, I bent down to feel the soil.  It’s moist dampness clung to my hand like a glove while the dirt bits and mud clumps gathered under my fingernails.  I thought about Will’s first paper that I read in class.  One of my favorite passages in it was about the time he felt the soil and how it’s consistency changed over time as he cleaned out the bad parts of the bed.  It was a cool experience reading what the soil felt like to him, and now, I was given the chance to have this experience as well.

I was excited to be apart of growing a garden since the idea was first proposed and more so excited to begin the project on our walk over to the garden for the first time. However, I was the most ecstatic to begin gardening when I first felt the soil in the garden bed.  I wanted to grow a vegetable for the first time in my life and truly get my hands dirty.  I could not wait to start planting….Let the growing begin!

Post #3

April 26, 2012

Weeds or Not Weeds?

On my first day in the garden, I spend a lot of time just walking around and observing the other beds because it was too cold to plant our seeds.  I noticed that some of the plots besides our own seemed to be worked on with weeds in them, while other plots seemed to be growing tall grasses.  Little did I know!  The plots that looked more dug up with what I thought were weeds, were not actually weeds at all.  Sarah squatted over a bowl sized green plant with white fuzziness on the underside of its leaves.  To me, this was a weed.  However, she corrected me and told me it was sage.  Pulling off a leaf, she told me to crinkle it up in my hand and then smell it.  Suddenly, what I had taken to be a weed, was a plant with a powerful smell.  This leaf was an edible ingredient that people use as a seasoning in tomato sauce and put on their pizza.  When I looked up from smelling the crushed leaf in my hand, I started to look at all of the “weeds” a little differently.  In a different bed, on the right side corner of the garden, the long thick green stems that I wouldn’t have look twice at earlier, I now paid attention to: they were onions.  In the same bed but on the opposite side, Sarah again pointed out another vegetable that was growing beneath green canopy leafs.  As I knelt down to get a better look, I saw a dark red radish starting to pop out of the soil.  I was excited to see all these vegetables growing, yet did not understand how someone could know if something was a weed or not a weed?  It was in this moment that I gained a lot of respect for gardeners.  They not only had to tend to what they were planting, but also had to recognize all of the different stages of life that plants go though.  Gardening, it seemed, the more time I spent learning about the process, was a big time commitment. 

There is something so exciting about growing your own food, but I am not sure exactly what that emotion is yet since I have only started in this arduous process.  All I know is that I am hooked.

Post #4

April 26, 2012

The Planting

As I crouched down by the middle bed, I played with the soft dirt in my hands.  Although Sarah had her hesitations, we were planting a few of our plants today.  As it happened to work out with the number of plants and the number of people that were ready to garden, each of us was fortunate to have a plant to own.  Everyone squatted down next to the bed of earth, plant in hand, and ready to begin.  First we loosened up the soil with the gardening tools.  As I proceeded to dig my hole in the dirt, I felt the soil become more damp and claylike with each scoop. Digging, I found small pieces of glass and hidden stones that I thought were clumps or mud.  Soon I had a hole deep and wide enough for me to place my basil plant inside.  Everyone was chattering and asking questions: “Is this whole big enough?  Do I stick the plant in with the plastic bottom still on?” Listening to the answers of these questions, I excitedly wiggled the plastic cup off the bottom of the basil.  As instructed, I loosened up the soil of the base that had molded to the shape of the plastic container, hoping this would allow the roots more space to breathe.  More mangled looking now with the soil not squished into a perfect cylindrical shape, I placed the basil plant into the small hold I dug and covered the uneven ground with the extra soil I had put on the side.  I stepped back and examined my work: the little basil pant was standing strong in the soil.  It’s leaves were a vivid green, and its sent was crisp when smelled up close.

Multiple people kept referring to the plants that we just planted as ‘our babies.’  In a

sense, they were our babies.  We were excited for their arrival before we even saw them, ‘oohhed and ahhhed’ over them at Horns, made a home for them in the soil, planted them in the holes we had dug, patted the soil down around them so that they would be safe, and then backed up and felt like proud parents who had just sent their kids off to school for the first time.  We didn’t know what would happen to ‘our little babies’ but we would check on them everyday and nurture them to grow into something great.  I felt like we walked away saying what every parent believes: ‘our kids are going to do great things.’

Post #5

April 28, 2012

An Inexperienced Gardner

            After my first day in the garden, I called my mom to tell her about the project and my experience so far.  I told her about the secrete spot of the garden, the childlike mosaics that decorated the wooden polls, and the two garden beds that we would be planting in.  She surprised me when she started telling me about how we used to have a garden at our old house.  I have no recollection of this since it all happened before I was three, but my mom told me that in our little garden we grew strawberries, broccoli, string beans, and carrots.  Unfortunately, as inexperienced gardeners, we pulled the carrots too soon, let the broccoli flower accidentally, and moved before the strawberries were ready after three years.  My mom liked gardening and said we had a fun time doing it, but it got to be too much of a hassle.  The birds and the rabbits were constantly eating everything we planted.  Rather than feeding our family, she said, we were feeding all the animals in the neighborhood. 

I started to complain that we didn’t have a garden after we moved into our new house and where my two siblings and I grew up.  Her response to this was: “You tell me how it goes maintaining a garden and raising three kids.”

            My mom’s comment reminded me a lot of what Kingsolver has mentioned in her novel.  Though people may want to garden, realistically it becomes close to impossible to garden, maintain a household, drive kids to their million activities, and then have some ‘me’ time so you don’t go crazy.  Perhaps it is not realistic to have a full garden of all the food you eat on a daily basis, but being more aware of buying local and less commercialized food can go a long way.  Buying locally would not only help keep money within the community, but would help with our health as individuals and prevent us from being contaminated by the harmful chemicals that mass food growers spray on their crops to keep off pests.

One of my favorite points that Kingsolver brings up in her novel is that we don’t care what we are eating; the only thing that matter is that we still get credit for eating it:

Storage and transportation take predictable tolls on the volatile plant

compounds that subtly add up to taste and food value.  Breeding to

increase shelf life also has tended to decrease palatability.  Bizarre as

it seems, we’ve accepted a tradeoff that amounts to: ‘Give me every vegetable

in every season, even if it tastes like a cardboard picture of its former self.’

You’d think we cared more about the idea of what we’re eating than about

what we’re eating. (Kingsolver 54-55)

This quote, in particular, stuck out to me when my mom made the comment about gardening and raising three kids at the same time.  I feel as though a lot of busy housewives feel the same way.  Although my mom liked gardening and would enjoy growing vegetables and fruit for us to eat, she doesn’t have time to do this and to get my bother to baseball practice, my sister to swim team, and me to my soccer game.  The green peppers and carrots at the grocery store may not have the same nutrients as it did before they traveled hundreds of miles to reach their destination, but my mom would rather have her kids eat some form of a vegetable than not eat any vegetables at all.

            After telling my mom about everything that Kingsolver has done, she was impressed.  She told me to bring home some of the vegetables from the garden so we can taste test them with the pesticide ridden vegetables I’ve been raised eating.  She also promised me that she would try and buy vegetables more locally.  During our conversation, I shared with her a passage from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that I knew hit home with her as it did with me: “Over the last decade our country has lost an average of 300 farms a week.  Large or small, each of those was the life’s work of a real person or family, people who built their lives around a promise and watched it break” (Kingsolver 113).  Growing up in Hunterdon County, specifically in Delaware Township, I’ve seen the rolling fields of farmland gobbled up and turned into houses.  At the corner of our neighborhood, there is a big grass pasture where our local farmer’s cows used to graze.  Everyday when I was little my Mom used to say to us, “You guys are so lucky to see those cows!  Appreciate them, they won’t be here for much longer.”  Her saying this never actually hit me until the day that I noticed they were not there.  I used to play in that cow field with my friend, and even got to watch a baby cow be born there.  Now, they were gone.

“Where did the cows go Mom?”

“Shop Rite”

That is an amazingly scary figure: that an average of 300 farms a week over the past decade have been lost.  Especially seeing how quickly so many of the farms I have grown up living next to have shut down, I do not doubt this number for a second.  It is terrifying to think that one day, like my mom used to tell me about the cows, there may not be any farms left.  Perhaps when I have my own kids, I’ll have to say, “You guys are so luck to see these farm fields!  Appreciate them, they won’t be here much longer!”

Post #6

April 30, 2012

Am I doing this right?

            In the hours before the day of planting, I had not slept for a night, handed in a paper, went to a review session, and had not changed my clothes since the previous day.  It was an understatement that I looked like a crazed college student running off coffee and my desire to make it to the garden.  At the garden, I knew I would find myself very as ease.  Outside, I feel like I can breathe and calm down from the hectic atmosphere that happens during exam time at Lehigh.

            Walking over to Carlton, I felt like I was getting farther and farther away from the stress and structured thinking.  Out here, thinking is involved, but it is much different than the thinking we are expected to do as students in school. 

It was an overcast day.  The sun was out earlier, but when I finally reached the garden, it looked like it was about to rain.  By the time I arrived after my review session, mostly everyone was there.  Sara had brought the seeds that we were about to plant.  I was surprised by how many things we were planting: marigolds, tomatoes, string beans, carrots, and sunflowers, just to name a few.  Adriana and I took on the duty of planting the marigold seeds, which would, when grown, help fend off pests that normally would eat the vegetables.  In the space between where we had planted the pepper plants and basil in the center bed, we now planted the seeds for our new flowers.  At first we loosened up the soil with Countey’s pronged hand tool, and then we started digging a small trench for our seeds.  Marigold seeds are black on one end with a straw color and texture on the other end, which is where the flower will start to sprout.  We carefully planted the seeds six inches apart, and added the topsoil back on.  Once we finished meticulously placing each seed in their exact spot, six inches apart, we looked up and observed Will who seemed a lot more relaxed than we were.  He was putting multiple seeds in one spot rather than just one single seed every six inches.  Feeling a little dumb, we dug our trench back up, and proceeded to add in a few more seeds to ensure that at least something would grow.

After we finished planting the marigold seeds, I walked over to observe the basil plant that I had planted a few days prior.  Its leaves, now a pale brown, had wilted and shriveled.  The soil seemed fairly crusty and dry, so, perhaps this was the reason for the plant’s sickly look.  Next to the basil, however, was the Yolo pepper plant, which was still striving and green as ever.  Just in case, I added some water to the plants’ soil, and was consoled in the fact that rain would be coming soon and these little plants would have more than enough to drink.

            While we were planting, someone made a comment that they wanted the soil to light up to show them if they were doing it right or not.  I felt the same way.  After Adrianna and I finish planting the seeds and patted the soil down, we stood up and back up a bit, both staring down at the bed, expecting something to happen: And…GO!  Nothing happened.  How do you know if you did it right?  The answer was, we wouldn’t know right away.  In fact, Sarah said it would take five to seven days for the seeds to germinate.  If something eventually popped up, we would know that we did it right.

            It was a good thing that we had Sara to show us how to plant the seeds and direct us to where we should put each different kind of plant.  It seemed a little funny though that all of us were sophomores, juniors, or seniors, and none of us, besides Will I think, knew how to garden.  We are halfway done with our college careers, some of us almost completely done, and yet we do not know how to garden.  It seems like something we should all know how to do.

            As Adrianna and I make the walk back to campus together, I thought about how, now, after spending a good amount of time in the garden, I understood why people loved it some much.  It was relaxing.  There is a certain element of life out here that doesn’t exist on campus.  At Lehigh, landscapers force plants and flowers to look and grow a certain way in order to create a specific aesthetic appearance.  In the community garden, however, plants grow whichever way they want.  To me, the more wild and free they are, the more beautiful they become. It is fitting to find them in a charmed mosaic garden, full of hopeful students who are excited to learn more about the magic of a garden.

           

Post #7

April 30, May 1-May, (At the Garden & Reading Eating Animals)

The Glories of Fast Food

Every day that I walk to the garden, my mouth waters when I pass Wendy’s and I have an urge to buy french-fries.  I can’t help it; something about the smell of salty fried food is irresistible.  However, as I fight my urge day in and day out and finally reach the garden, I realize I am a lot happier knowing that I didn’t just down greasy fries that are probably 2000 calories fully of saturated fat.  Reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle was eye opening for me in realizing how much our country is affected by the fast food industry:

As a country we’re officially over the top: the majority of our food dollars

buy those cheap calories, and most of out citizens are medically compromised

by weight and inactivity.  The incidence of obesity-associated diabetes has more than doubled since 1990, with children the fastest-growing class of victims.  (The name had to be changed from “adult-onset” to “Type II” diabetes.)  One out of every three dollars we spend on health care, by some recent estimates, is paying for the damage of bad eating habits.  One out of every seven specifically pays to assuage (but not cure) the multiple heartbreaks of diabetes-kidney failure, strokes, blindness, amputated limbs. (Kingsolver 116)

Though people may not necessarily want to know these things, I feel like it is something they need to know.  It is an understatement to say that we truly are the source of our own problems.  Even though we know fast-food is bad for us, we still eat it.  Why?  Because it is fast, easy, and purposely engineered to make our mouths water and crave the bad food.

            Though people may not want to know what is happening in the food industry or realize the tolls that fast food is taking on our local communities or on us as individuals, it is something that is necessary to know.  By refusing to learn about these issues is the same as putting a blanket over them and saying “They are not there because I cannot see them.”  We do, in fact, put a blanket over a lot of issues that we do not want to face.  In another book I am reading called Eating Animals, the author spends a lot of time describing how we think certain words mean one things, when they actually mean something different.  Free-range, cage-free, and natural are all words we are used to seeing printed as labels on various food products.  However, they do not actually mean what we presume them to mean.  

“Free Range”

A common phrase that is often seen on certain egg cartons is “Free Range.”  Consumers feels good about buying these cartons with the “Free Range” label because these eggs are from chickens who lived a good life in a natural environment and were able to roam about outside.  This however, is largely not true:

Very often, the eggs of factory-farmed chickens-chickens packed

against one another in vast barren barns-are labeled free-range. 

(‘Cage-free’ is regulated but means no more or less than what it

says-they are literally not in cages.)  One can reliably assume that

most “free-range” (or “cage-free”) laying hens are debeaked, drugged,

and cruelly slaughtered once “spent. (Foer 61)

This goes along with what Kingsolver was saying about Free-Range chickens and how, realistically, most of these chickens never see daylight.  Though they are locked in a shed, farmers have gotten away with calling this “Free Range” because the shed has a small door for the chickens that may or may not be occasionally unlocked.  Even if this door is opened at times, the chickens are so packed in the shed and are not used to going outside, and thus would have no way of knowing if this door was open.

            Not only are the chickens never allowed to go outside, but they are also purposely kept indoors so these factory farmers have total control over every element.  Chickens are purposely kept in the dark and fed sparingly for weeks at a time so that they will think it is winter.  Then the famers turn the lights on all day and night long so that they chickens will think it is spring and produce eggs.  Essentially, these farmers speed up the chickens’ internal clocks in order to create faster results: more eggs (Foer 60).

            However, the things we do to chickens whose eggs we don’t want are even worse.  To give an example, there are two types of chickens: boilers and layers.  Boilers are for meat.  They have been “Engineered to grow more than twice as large in less than half the time.  Chickens once had a life expectancy of fifteen to twenty years, but the modern boiler is typically killed at around six weeks.  Their daily growth rate has increased roughly 400 percent” (Foer 48).  Layers are the chickens that lay eggs.  However, since females can only lay eggs, what happens with the male layers?  To a factory farmer, the male layers serve no function, and thus are destroyed: “Most male layers are destroyed by being sucked through a series of pipes onto an electrified plate…Some are tossed into large plastic containers.  The weak are trampled to the bottom, where they suffocate slowly.  The strong suffocate slowly at the top.  Others are sent fully conscious through macerators (picture a wood chipper filled with chicks” (Foer 48).

            I took Eating Animals with me to the garden and read it while sitting on one of the concrete benches.  I was happy to sit close to the little seeds we had planted, far away from Wendy’s and the poor massacred chickens that were formed into chicken nuggets.  Even though I may have become a somewhat of a vegetarian after each time I read the book, I am glad I learned and am continuing to learn about the meat industry.  People need to know what is happening to the food that they put in their bodies.  Maybe if they were aware, they would be more conscious and start asking for locally grown food, something that Kingsolver suggests doing in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.  By having everyone know what is occurring in the food industry and stopping the general population’s ignorance, a huge change could be made that would benefit our society for the better.

Post #8

May 6, 2012

Inspiration

Everyday since April 30^th I’ve gone and spent time alone in the garden.  Though there have not been significant changes and we do not have fully grown tomatoes yet, it’s been nice to simply walk around in the garden and look at everything that is growing.  I’ve gotten into the routine of going to the garden at random times in the day with a sandwich and my book, Eating Animals (Usually I bring tomato and mozzarella on a sandwich, since it is too disturbing to eat any kind of meat while reading this book).  Typically I would rather be around people than not, but during the week of finals especially, it is nice to find some peace and quiet by myself. 

The other day while I was eating, I thought about how I couldn’t remember the last time my whole family sat down and had a meal together.  I remembered in Camille’s section “Growing up in the Kitchen,” her saying that what she missed about home when she was at school was family dinners (Kingsolver).  Dinnertime is the only time during the day families have to sit down with each other and discuss the events that are happening.  During recent years, I feel, American families have developed the habit of not sitting down with each other and eating alone because everyone is off doing different activities.  Now that I am reflecting on it, I too miss the times when both my brother and I were home, and when my dad didn’t have to work so late.  Though we didn’t see each other during the day, we were all able to come home for dinner and regroup.  Rather than asking my little sister how her day was over spaghetti and meatballs, I now have to ask her over the phone or via text message.

I have learned a lot by spending time in the garden.  I’ve not only learned about gardening and the commitment that comes with this process, but I’ve also learned how to better appreciate locally grown food and all the individuals who farm without injecting their cattle with hormones or squeezing 20,000 chickens into a tiny shed to produce the most eggs.  I’ve thoroughly enjoyed spending hours just reading, thinking, and journaling the South Side’s community garden.  Spending time in nature is probably the best remedy to cure a stressed college student during final exams.

            Gardening with my classmates has given me the confidence to garden on my own.  Though I will not be here for parts of the summer, I plan on coming back to our garden and maintaining it throughout the year to come.  I cannot wait to see how our garden progresses over the summer and eat tomato and mozzarella with one of our own locally grown tomatoes!

It's all a cycle - the importance of preparing a bed and sustaining compost

Returning home, I am welcomed by my parent’s two garden beds. I decided not to cover crop the beds, since there were various herbs that remained of good health with such a mild winter (especially thyme). I just pulled some thyme off to enjoy with my dinner tonight! However, when I first introduced myself back to the two beds’, the soil was covered with dead pine needles that fell from neighboring pine tree’s and evergreens. Although pine needles are organic materials and decompose, they tend to break down slowly because of the waxy layer that resists bacteria and fungi. Similar to other fallen leaves, pine needles have an excess of carbon in relation to nitrogen. The acidity of the needles would cause a decrease in the pH level, which over time would rise so that the acidity of the composted material becomes neutral, but I simply found more value in dumping the pine needles in my compost pile and introducing it to the beds at a later date.

I thought of the easiest, most efficient way to get ride of the pine needles. A leaf blower? No chance! Even the hint of gasoline on my garden and I felt that I would be exposing all future growth of produce to cancer. In other terms, I would not let my garden smoke a cigarette. I skimmed the top of both beds, picking up as many pine needles as my hands could hold. I added the pine needles to the compost pile that I am developing with organic material and food scraps. Since I was unable to pick out all of the pine needles, I decided to cut up the remaining needles so that there is more surface area for bacteria and fungi to chew.As I loosened the soil, my fingers ran into numerous worms and even a frog!

Preparing a garden bed is the most difficult part of gardening. A well-prepared bed will help to increase garden yields and make tending the garden easier in the future. If one spends a portion of their day preparing the bed for their garden, they will be able to enjoy the fruits of their labor in the months to come. Knowing this, my combination of ADD and OCD kicked in. After I took care of the pine needles, I then loosened the clods of dirt and the entire area of the beds by digging through the soil with a garden fork. I plan to form rows with small ditches between each row for deep root watering to reach each vegetable and herb that I will plant in the garden. I have yet to decide what I will harvest, but am in the process of figuring that out over the coming week.

           

The best part about my parent’s garden bed is the value of the soil. When buying compost last year, I researched for the most valuable and true organic compost. I found was that most high-quality compost could be bought by at Stenger Landscaper's and contains leaf mold, yard waste, and animal manure.  Since it is a landscaping company, and numerous pesticides and herbicides are applied to lawn scraps, I decided to test the soil potent herbicides, such as Clopyralid. Essentially, these inorganic materials applied to green our lawns don't break down during the composting process. The harm is that can destroy everything in your garden. So, a planted a few lettuce seeds in the compost. Germination was great, but if it was poor then it could be a symptom for herbicides being located in your compost. When buying compost in a store or from a composting site, one should look for the lightest, darkest, and most earth-est smelling soil.

I hope that I will be able to add my own compost to the beds in the future. Using compost simply produces food. Channeling organic matter into productive use is much more then just giving waste a home outside of landfills. Think of how many organic apple cores, banana peels, or coffee beans you have put in the trash. When you find value in the continual movement that removes waste and creates new fertility, we move away from the linear thinking that has lead to depleted soils and oceanic gyres of trash.

For whoever else pulled up the cereal rye and helped to prepare the beds, thank you. I am sure that you can now appreciate the hard work that you put in to ensuring a sustainable environment for our produce. I hope to create a shared common knowledge concerning the importance of composting over the following year at MLK garden. I have contacted Roledale regarding their compost, but have yet to hear back. Knowing their reputation and the earthy texture and smell of the compost pile, I would be surprised if the soil was not of high nutritional value.

Since my parent’s garden beds are situated near pine trees and evergreens, it seems to be a frequent landing area for climbing squirrels. I am in the process of designing and constructing a transparent roof for the beds that does not retract sunlight. I have thought of wire as a material, but am still at the drawing board for the best possible solution. 

What have we done? The answer lies in the zoning ordinance

The biggest catastrophe we humans have put on ourselves is how we have developed. From traditional neighborhood developments where one could walk to work, the grocery store, and a local pub, we now live in a massive metro apocalypse (LA is a great example of where we went wrong). Soldiers that came back from World War II were in search for housing and attaining the ‘American dream’. The main component of this clouded vision was a single-family home on an acre lot. This home is surrounded by a white picket fence, in a neighborhood that is solely residential.

Ill equipped to deal with sewage and pollution of the industrial age, the American upper middle class fled to the countryside to seclude themselves in a private family life, but ended up adding more stress to the nuclear family. Soon enough, our workplaces, are just that: office parks. Our industries are located in an industrial park with no signs of commercial or residential exchange. Taking single-use zoning to an extreme, we have become dependent on transportation. With no viable regional mode of mass-transit, the automobile is a highly sought after amenity. 

We have based success off of land ownership. What we have done to this land is not natural. From bringing in outside architecture to planting exotic species, what we have developed is not sustainable without human maintenance. With owning private land in suburbia, one is succumbed to more services and expenses, such as gas. Highways have essentially cut through our rich farmland and real estate developers have found value in undeveloped land, putting up strip malls and continuing enhancing sprawl.

It has been the attempt to blend country and the city through the suburban movement. There is no point to dwell on past farmland because once developed it is near impossible to provide the nutrients back into the same soil. We now must develop other ways to grow our own agriculture at a local level. We must re-zone our neighborhoods and create a comprehensive plan to re-design the cookie-cutter suburban nation into neighborhoods of mix-use. The towns must have a defined edge, making the distinction between the countryside and town. Portland, Oregon is a perfect example of how a city instituted a boundary that construction is not allowed to exceed, in effort to conserve the natural environment.

The city of Boston, Massachusetts is the perfect example of a community that re-zoned for urban agriculture. The current zoning code details for land uses is usually divided into three categories:

-Allowed by right use: a land use permitted as a matter of right.

-Conditional use: a land use permitted by the Zoning code provided that it is not harmful to present conditions.

-Forbidden use: A use that is not permitted because of harmful impacts, such as pollution.

Zoning applies to agricultural uses because if a particular use is not mentioned in the zoning code, it is forbidden. In order for urban agriculture to thrive the code must be revised. Bethlehem is moving in the right direction with the Ullman garden, MLK garden, Maze garden and most recently the Greenway.

As urban environments seek to become more sustainable, food and agriculture will play a critical role. If one is able to walk to the local farmers market to trade locally grown food (hopefully organic too!), then we are on our way to re-designing and re-zoning suburbia into traditional neighborhood developments. The desire and commitment to engage in one's local surroundings through any means, but especially food develops a place worth caring about and a healthy community.