Liz Reitzig is best known as a founder of the Raw Milk Freedom Riders and the Farm Food Freedom Alliance. She has written previously here and on other sites about food rights. In this article, she explores larger connections associated with planting a vegetable garden.
By Liz Reitzig
Over the years, staring out my back window at my muddy, grassless yard with tree roots snaking their way across the naked ground, I felt that barren hopelessness of not meeting my own, quite limited, expectations of gardening. A few years ago, my children and I finally planted herbs, tomatoes and other vegetables and my gardening adventures had begun. Each year, the children and I added to what we had the previous one. First it was planting a whole bed of potatoes, then many tomato plants, kale, chard and an array of beautiful culinary herbs. Thanks to a loving friend, a birthday gift provided the front garden with a mosaic of blooms to attract and keep butterflies.
While our garden was still quite small, nothing could compare to the excitement and fun we had that summer and fall proudly harvesting our vegetables. There were tender lettuces to enjoy in the spring. Potatoes, hidden underground until late summer and autumn added to our adventure as we dug each one out of the ground, treating it like the treasure it was, excited to see each unique shape. Even the seeming failures taught us something. The cilantro really didnt do too well, and the following year, I managed to kill my favorite herb, the sprawling lavender plant that I loved! But, consolingly, the mint took over, as mint does, and we had mint tea, mint bouquets and mint everything. The summer my fifth baby was born, the garden was completely neglected and all we saw was the perennial herbs and a few volunteer squashes that never amounted to much. I cried over the blueberry bush given as a baby shower gift that I failed to transplant for too long causing its death. But every year that the children and I have put anything into the ground has been a year of cultivation, learning and adventure! The beauty of gardening is that we have each grown along with our garden and its fruitfulness.
In planning my garden this year, I am reminded of the stories from World War I and II era about Victory gardensthe gardens that Americans were encouraged to grow to promote the war effort and to secure victory. The government advertised the multiple benefits of a victory garden including how people growing their own food would help ease the burden caused by rationing during the war. These gardens were about countering food shortages brought on by a world at war.
In some eco-agricultural circles that I witness, I’ve heard a resurgence of this talk of Victory gardens. While I fully understand that my peace-loving friends mean victory garden as an allusion to a time when many people grew their own calories, I am at once shocked and disappointed that anyone refers to Victory at a time when we are engaged in multiple preemptive wars in several countries.
Todays multiple wars havent reduced food availability in the least, thus leading our politicianseven our cultureto believe wars can be fought with little cost to the population at large.
I suggest, as we go about planning our spring planting, we reconsider the need for victory, and consider that what the world really needs is peace. We have the opportunity to transform our language and begin the talk of a new Peace Garden movement to promote peace and harmony over strife. As we plant seeds in the soil, we can begin to plant the seeds of ideas in the minds of our friends, families, and neighbors.
Cultivating the land, restoring our own soils and growing our own food will do more to restore freedoms than any war! Picking up a shovel and some seeds and getting our hands dirty may do more than any protest to restore peace both overseas and here at home! With peace gardens, imagine the revival of urban landscapes as bare lots transform into community food hubs and food deserts repopulate with homegrown goodness.
Imagine the neighbors greeting each other with armfuls of extra vegetables and the inevitable bartering economy that will naturally spring from such abundance. Imagine the landscape in the world of suburban lawns where suddenly growing food becomes more important than growing grass and neighbors compare gardens instead of gadgets. Imagine the national landscape we could cultivate in a single growing season. Imagine the revitalization of rural economies, as those who have cultivated the earth for generations become the new experts that the beginners turn to for seeds, soil, and sage advice.
With the estimate that the average meal travels 1500 miles from farm to table, the choices we make in where and how we procure our food can help bring about harmony. It is more important than ever that we each engage in any level of food production we are capable of. Clearly, our current system of food production promotes the use of and dependence on foreign oil, domestic roads and excessive travel. In contrast, cultivating food in our own yards or communities increases our interdependence on each other, our community vitality, individual self-worth and local bartering economies.
According to a 2012 government budget report, agriculture subsidies range from about $10 billion to a high of $30 billion per year depending on grain costs and disaster payouts. This is a staggeringly high cost in an already hemorrhaging economy. Additionally, highly toxic farming methods used on commodity agriculture destroy the environment and human health. In contrast to the economic and environmental destruction caused by commodity agriculture, growing a peace garden this season could easily be the single best antidote to the increasing toxicity in our land, plants, animals and our own bodies.
Each of us is capable of regaining our independence from such an agricultural system. While I am the first to admit that it can be overwhelmingly daunting to start a garden, we can start small. Millions of resources are here to guide and encourage us along our garden path.
Cultivating gardens, even one plant in a pot, means less food coming from industry. It brings us each something that weve grown and it teaches us how to do more. Even for the most experienced gardener or farmer, producing food is more than just food; it is always a journey, always an opportunity to learn. So wherever you are, I encourage you to begin it. Whether you grow one basil plant, or a yard full of vegetables, you are invited to the Growing revolution. Like the potatoes silently plumping just below the surface all summer, the multitude of treasures are hidden but abundant! This spring, join millions of other peace activists in planting seeds, growing community and harvesting peace in your very own peace garden.
My biggest pet peeve with our American culture is that we (they) somehow managed to instill a prevailing public mentality and vanity that you should be judged, by yourself and your neighbors by how big and luscious your lawn is. It’s pretty damned useless, it does not sustain wildlife or human life and we definitely need to work in our communities to change that perception.
Where I grew up, we didn’t have any supermarkets or even convenience stores, so people truly lived off the land using wisdom passed down through generations. Trust me, there is nothing more soul satisfying and rewarding than growing your own food, even if you don’t own a plot of land: get a window planter and start small even indoors. If you don’t already do this, you will be surprised at how much it improves your quality of life, self-esteem, and last but now least your health. And the way things are going, it may not be long that transportation systems may shut down or are heavily reduced due to politicians and corporations taking financial advantage of everything they can without regard to the long term effects on the people, including their own grandchildren.
I will follow your peace garden concept….I will also say that you have planted so many more peace gardens than you will ever count in your back your. The seeds you have planted will grow and feed all the children of a healthier America. Your food access and food freedom movement is your legacy and the huge garden of peace that you envisioned, cultivated, fertilized, irrigated and will definitely harvest.
With deep respect and big hugs. Mark
http://blog.ted.com/2013/03/06/a-visit-to-ron-finleys-la-garden-plus-5-more-ted-talks-about-growing-your-own-food/
Great stuff!
Twenty years ago when my son was 4 I had a job that was based in the Prudential building, almost across the street from the atrocities. For years I would bring my son to work on marathon day and we would sit on the sidewalk cheering the runners on. There were no metal fences in those days or hundreds of police officers, yet it seemed so much safer back in those days. It is a really emotional sporting event, we did not go to see the elite runners win, but instead to cheer on the many people that came hours later and were struggling to finish. But it was never as emotional as it was this year.
http://shine.yahoo.com/shine-food/french-mimolette–the-hardest-cheese-to-get-your-hands-on-201743901.html
http://www.medicaldaily.com/articles/14692/20130416/america-supermarket-meat-contaminated-antibiotic-resistant-superbugs-bacteria-illness.htm
http://www.ewg.org/meateatersguide/superbugs/
And this: http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-animals-that-selfmedicate-no-booze-but-some-cigarettes-20130411,0,4154844.story
Animals know how to take care of themselves when they’re in their own habitat, even if it’s just a cow on pasture. A cow will eat certain weeds and avoid others for a reason. Animals are smarter than man in many respects but we refuse to listen to nature’s operating instructions. Apparently having a higher IQ doesn’t make mankind the sharpest knife in the drawer. The Native American people knew enough to pay attention to the animals for predicting the weather, what foods to eat and what foods to avoid (such as in poisonous stuff). When will the current species ever learn? We can’t handle life on earth but now they want to try to take on mars?? Oh, that should go over real well . . .
Well, just in the last two years, EU researchers have performed several QMRA’s on listeria, campylobacter and ecoli 0157h7. Their findings conclude: raw milk is a very low risk food. Raw milk brings many benefits to pregnant moms and their babies. Raw milk is not associated with listeria…pasteurized milk and cheeses are associated with listeria and deaths. The FDA says exactly the opposite but has no data to make its case….
The FDA has been caught in a huge lie….
I am preparing a new citizens petition and it is loaded with new data and information. Information that the FDA will be forced to review whether they like it or not. Cause the court will force them to look at the facts and even their own data at the CDC.
The advent of the Internet brings the truth into light. The dark secrets of the corrupt FDA will now see the light of truth. What was once hidden can not be covered up any more and Food Inc heads will roll. The souls of lives of 3800 kids that die each year from asthma will be visited upon the sickness of the FDA. PARSIFAL, GABRIELA, AMISH, and PASTURE cohort studies are now serious ammunition in this battle.
http://www.scienceworldreport.com/articles/6258/20130416/western-style-diet-makes-you-die-young-study.htm
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/18/food-poisoning-bacteria/2093697/
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5g9fvq5eLPqHMUzHRBrLu-cgddmIw?docId=71f34e9c967d4a1ca92cca353ede39f7
That fertilizer plant north of Waco, has a history of safety violations. Guess the regulators are in bed with them too.
http://www.peacegarden.com/sights.htm
It’s going to be one of those fights, however, where the “little guy” (that’s us) will have to be ready to stand up one more time than he’s knocked down.