The weekend Wall Street Journal’s OFF DUTY section ran a lead story, “Is Your Food as Virtuous as You Think It IS?” One of the new buzz words is Regenerative Agriculture. Here’s the definition; regenerative agriculture describes a holistic approach to farming focused on continuously improving biodiversity and drawing greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and into the ground. But what does that mean? One example was from a rancher in California. For him every blade of grass is a solar panel. His cattle are sustained by grasslands, which they in turn fertilize it as they graze.
Sounds good to me, but why has it taken so long for this to occur. Of course, we all really know the answer. It’s unfortunate that all these great new concepts of helping our planet survive, only happens when we’re on the brink of disaster.
I viewed some interesting ideas on FB concerning food growth. One was planting fruit trees in your front lawn, next to the sidewalk, so homeless persons, and others could have free fruit. There have been people advocating, plowing up those expensive lawns, and planting vegetables. There were examples of many people doing that already.
Then I started think about the children in our inner-city schools, and even those in posh suburban communities. Are they getting the rounded education, and survival skills? I’m sure that children in rural communities have a better chance to learn these skills. I’m not even sure they are exposed to cultural subjects, but I maybe wrong.
I thought about my grade school education. The school was large, taking up about a third of a city street. It was five or six stories high, and the grades went from kindergarten to the sixth grade. It was located almost in the center of Brooklyn, a borough in the city of New York, in a working- class neighborhood. Besides the regular subjects, english, math, science, geography, history, we were given cursive writing. Something I know is not taught now, especially when I view the handwriting of young adults. In addition, we had a class in music, and art appreciation. Across the street was a small park, and playground. A portion of the park was set aside for teaching gardening. Now this was not required, but on a voluntary basis, they would assign you a small plot of land, which reminded me of a grave site with no headstone. So, one spring school semester, and into the summer I was taught the basics of growing vegetables. It was both fascinating and hard work. Now I had another skill.
Many years later, in the early 70’s, I left working for advertising agencies on staff, and wanted to pursue a career in film, and television. At that time, I was living in Staten Island, another borough of New York City. I was renting a house in a rural section. This was the first time I experienced living in a house. My neighbor had a large piece of property, and had planted a magnificent vegetable garden. I asked the owner of the house if I could plant a small garden. With his approval my neighbor helped me with the garden. All I wanted were the vegetables to make a salad for dinner. My instructions were to get seeds for chives, radishes, and Romaine Lettice. He told me that I needed to get small plants for the tomatoes, since seeds would take too long for them to grow with the other vegetables. They came in flats, and all I needed were five. When I came back from shopping, he said, “why did you buy so many tomatoes?” I replied, “you said I needed five?” “Yes, five plants, not five flats.” Ok, so now I had twenty-five plants. Now what?
I planted the five I needed, but I refused to throw the others away. It was time to become creative. Luckily it was a corner house. I had two sides of the house facing the roads, all with beautiful shrubs. Now those beautiful shrubs, had tomato plants hiding behind them. There was a small garage, that had space around it for the remaining plants. I tended my garden every day, enjoying a fresh salad with dinner, and keeping my other twenty plants watered.
It was only in the fall, that I saw the error of my ways. Twenty-five plants were now producing, dozens, and dozens of ripe tomatoes. I spent an entire week, picking them, and making tomato sauce. But it was an experience I’ll always remember.
