This reminds me of something I swear I read on You Grow Girl
This reminds me of something I swear I read on You Grow Girl recently (perhaps it was somewhere else) about gardening changing one's mindset - you become a producer, not just a consumer, which is pretty subversive in a culture that's all about consuming. Here is another interesting idea, also from the NYT. A children's shelter in Texas is preparing to care for the kids from that fundamentalist polygamy sect.
Forget bologna and white bread for lunch, too. Because the children, from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or F.L.D.S., have never eaten processed foods, the new shelter mantra is whole grains and fresh vegetables.
Then there is the issue of prairie dresses for the girls.
“Wal-Mart doesn’t sell them,” Mr. Downey said.
It may not matter how many of us grow a garden and feel like producers and change our "sense of dependence and dividedness" when shelters and schools only use what can be bought cheaply, whether from the government or Wal-mart.
So it seems the answers to "How do I fix my crappy food supply?" and "How do we fix our crappy food supply?" are going to be different.
Gardening season has begun, here in my little corner of Zone 5a. I finally got around to starting my tomatoes. Speaking of parties I'm late to, I also learned what a good idea Square Foot Gardening is. Where I had previously dismissed it as a silly gimmick, I now realize that it's a silly gimmick that gets you to pay attention to exactly how you're using the space in your garden. One or more of my gardens this year may be square-foot gardens.
My whole crazed what-I-did-today story is over here on my myFolia journal, if you'd like to read exactly what I'm growing.
Once again, I'm trying to grow as much of my own food as possible, but this year I think I have a chance of actually succeeding! I learned a lot last year, including how to tell the difference between weeds and tasty plants when they are still young. Also, the importance of mulching.
My husband and I are gardening three plots this year:
a 20x25 foot plot on Freese Road
a plot about half that size at the Ithaca Community Gardens
a collection of containers and raised beds in our front and back yards