Hipster Supported Agriculture, Part III

Hipster Supported Agriculture is part of the KinderGardens project over at Inadvertent Farmer. Check it out to see how everyone's been gardening with kids all summer!

I spent the afternoon today at Peterson Garden working with three teens from Jewish Child and Family Services on the last empty plot in the garden. I'll be meeting with them and others from the program a few times each week after school and on weekends.

Today they got a tour of the garden, learned a little bit about what a community garden is, and harvested lettuce, giant zucchini (which I had somehow missed harvesting, so they got a little big), tomatoes, tomatillos, cucumbers, and chard from our "Farm2Give" plots. They planted some short-season seeds (radishes and lettuce) and broccoli starts. We talked about the importance of keeping the plot watered until the seedlings get established, and got them all to get their hands in the dirt.

I'll be helping them with the project through mid-October, and hope to get to talk about organic gardening, a little backyard botany, and eating your veggies. One girl categorically refused to eat a cherry tomato because "I don't eat vegetables." You just want to cry. How have we raised a generation that doesn't eat vegetables? She wanted me to come to their facility to teach them how to make pickles though.

So I've kind of run the gamut of city kids at this point-- I had my old student Katie in my own backyard, a girl from a well-off, even privileged background for whom the back story on gardening was unnecessary. Her parents, former hippies, had already indoctrinated her! and the idea of urban gardening was nothing new.

In July I worked with a Service Learning Group from the nearby high school. This group was very diverse racially and economically, but motivated and used both to creative thinking and interaction with engaged adults.

Today's group is from an at-risk population from very troubled backgrounds, with little stability in their lives. I went into it a little nervous; as a sports coach I've had lots of interaction with teens, and with disabled kids, but I have to tell you, you don't get a lot of "at-risk" children in an ice rink.

But they were just that-- children like any teens, on the brink of womanhood, asking intelligent questions, making excellent leaps of imagination based on some very cursory plant information I gave, and using knowledge from school to draw conclusions about what they were seeing in the garden.

All in all a very rewarding afternoon.

If you'd like to help Peterson Garden with projects like this, please visit the website and click on Donate in the menu bar. And thank you.

Victory

I spent most of my gardening life, which goes back a couple of decades, digging the dirt in solitary splendor, with even close friends not entirely aware of how much gardening I do. Then three years ago I broke my ankle right at the start of the gardening season.

Unable even to get down my back steps, I started "gardening" on line and discovered an amazing world of connectedness, of dirt-under-their-nails enthusiasts, of people with so much passion and knowledge and desire to make the world better through gardening. I had had no idea that there were other people like me, who wouldn't eat tomatoes in January or strawberries in October. Who never went to the farmer's market, not because there wasn't one, or it was inconvenient, but because I didn't need it. Who believed that gardening in your backyard, or on your porch, or around the corner, could change the world.

With time on my hands from a downsized job, this year I increased my square footage by a third, and joined the revolutionaries at the Peterson Garden Project; we're determined, in the words of founder LaManda Joy, to inspire everyone to grow their own food. (Growing is the easy part, it's getting started, so we're going to make that easy, too.)

We started a garden on the site of an old World War II Victory Garden on Chicago's north side, so I've read a lot about what the term victory means and meant in that context. Because my parents were Greatest Generation parents I've always known what a Victory Garden was, and how it related to the war effort.

But a lot of people now don't make that connection.

So I'm challenging you help us redefine the term. Let's start Victory Gardens to celebrate victory over nutrition-poor factory food. To announce a victory over the idea that our every whim must be satisfied, like tomatoes in January, at the expense of our planet and our health. It's a victory to teach children that tomatoes are sweet, not yucky (it breaks my heart when I hear children say they don't like tomatoes). A victory when neighbors meet for the first time at the community garden. A victory to see the smile on the face of a new gardener the first time she picks a bean that she grew herself.

We've been saying at Peterson Garden that "it's not a garden, it's a revolution." I'm declaring here that it's not a garden, it's a victory.

How do you define victory in your garden?

Victory!

Just to warn you, this is post is full of shameless self-promotion. (Oh, wait, ALL blogs are shameless self-promotion. Right. Carry on!)

However, it is also an invitation to a party!

Come join me on Saturday, July 3, for music and a celebration of Independence Day and the re-dedication of the Victory Garden at Peterson and Campbell on Chicago's north side. The project is called Peterson Garden, and it is a testament to what enthusiastic people can when they set their minds to something (create vegetable gardens for 140 families out of an abandoned plot), and to the power of social media, because everyone involved pretty much got connected on line through Twitter, Facebook, and Chicago's wonderful garden blog community.

Come join me, LaManda Joy, Alderman Pat O'Connor and a few hundred (we hope) of our closest friends.

We will not be serving this, but there will be plenty of typical Fourth of July potluck (in fact, bring something yourself!)

Parsnips with chard and bacon
Adapted from Good Housekeeping's "Little Rock" stuffing. I made it as a side dish, without the bread stuffing, but it was so delicious it's on this year's Thanksgiving menu as a stuffing.

1/2 pound bacon, cut into small pieces
1 pound parsnips, peeled and diced (about 4 large parsnips)
3 stalks celery, diced
1 large onion, diced
large basket full of swiss chard (remove stems and cut into 2" pieces)
chicken broth (1/4 to 1/2 cup)
seasoning (I used dill today, because it was ready in the garden)

Saute the bacon until crisp. Add the diced parsnips, celery and onion and cook about 15 minutes until they are soft and have started to carmelize. Add swiss chard; cook 2 minutes or until the chard is bright green and has wilted.

Add 1/4 cup of broth and bring to a simmer, then dredge with about 1-2 tablespoons of flour and stir until it thickens. Add more broth until it's a consistency you like.

Serve as a side dish with chicken or steak.