Kitchen Gardeners International: KGI featured in the Washington Post
KGI harvested a bumper crop of media coverage and public awareness this past summer. We were featured in two local papers in Maine, the Maine Sunday Telegram (Maine's largest in terms of circulation), Maine television, two garden radio shows (WXTK - Boston and KDKA - Pittsburgh), calendar listings in many places including the Chicago Tribune and the American Gardener magazine, the progressive website CommonDreams.org, and - as the cherry on top - in Barbara Damrosch
A Shrinking Homegrown Crop
By Barbara Damrosch
Special to The Washington Post
Thursday, September 7, 2006
One of the Web sites I check out regularly, Kitchen Gardeners International ( http://www.kitchengardeners.org), is the work of an American named Roger Doiron. His stories are always interesting, but his news is not always good. In March, he posted a U.S. Department of Agriculture chart showing the decline of homegrown food from 33.45 percent of total consumed in 1894 to 1.5 percent in 2004. Undiscouraged, Doiron continued to rally his troops. "We know a good thing when we plant one," he cheered.
I knew I'd feel better if I reread one of my favorite books, "Paradise Out of a Common Field: The Pleasures and Plenty of the Victorian Garden," by Joan Morgan and Alison Richards. It portrays a lost age in which the great country houses of Britain were self-sustaining horticultural units, complete with game park, pastured livestock and many acres of fruits and vegetables grown within a brick or stone wall. This wall did more than just keep out prey; it also absorbed the sun's heat, thus speeding the growth and ripening of plants trained on it or grown near it. Additional heat from stoves could be introduced via chambers within the masonry. Lean-to glasshouses were arrayed along the property, one to a crop (the "fig house," the "apricot house," the "vinery"), and every horticultural trick was employed to produce an extended season of produce -- cold frames, manure-warmed "hot beds," pit greenhouses.
The result was garden produce of rare quality, not only because of the skill with which it was raised, but also because of its freshness and immediacy. During the 19th century, public markets were well stocked, and out-of-season fruits and vegetables were available, but these did not always meet, in the authors' words, "the essential country house criterion of surpassing anything commercially available."
To provide the best of flavors for an endless parade of guests, there had to be a seasonal (and often out-of-season) supply of asparagus, sea kale, globe artichokes, peas, asparagus, French beans, radishes, cauliflower, young carrots, salsify, cardoons, celery, celeriac, savoy cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cucumbers, beets, lettuce, endive, chicory and all the important herbs and fruits -- including pineapples and bananas. It was said that a head gardener's career might stand or fall on his continuous supply of fine celery, or his ability to produce strawberries for Easter and new potatoes for Christmas. For the end of a meal, just-picked fruits were arrayed like jewels, with the dewy bloom still on them. Shipping even as far as a family's London residence was an exacting task, requiring special boxes and hampers. Asparagus and beans were packed in spinach leaves, fruits in grape leaves or soft paper.
Few mourn the passing of the near-feudal social structure that produced these luxuries, but the discriminating palates that commanded them are an inspiration. It is fascinating to visit the few remaining examples of these estates -- such as West Dean, near Chichester -- that are open to the public. I've also noticed a movement in this country, among those with means, to set up self-sufficient farms at their own homes, born of the realization that superb fresh food is valuable, that what you put into your body is at least as important as what car you drive and what you pour into its tank.
There is also a small but growing sector of city dwellers who raise food in community plots, and surely some rural families who never lost their food-raising skills and can thereby survive better than most on little money. And what about the new health-conscious eaters, striving for their five fruits and vegetables per day, or all the gourmet foodies cranking out linguini by hand? Don't they want fresh-picked tomatoes to go on top? Some foodies are also gardeners, to be sure, but most regard themselves as highly skilled shoppers and, to be fair, there are excellent farmers markets to supply them.
Recently I came across a study by USDA agricultural economist Susan L. Pollack titled "Consumer Demand for Fruit and Vegetables: The U.S. Example." People are eating more fruits and vegetables, she says, and more of it is fresh, but she ascribes much of this trend to "convenience" produce -- bagged salad mixes, easy-to-peel clementines, and those baby carrots called "grinders" in the trade because they're actually big carrots cut up and tumbled to look like small ones. If people aren't ready to chop up a head of lettuce, are they ready to grow one?
On July 26, Doiron posted an update. The 2005 table was out, and homegrown food had sunk to 1.26 percent. Who's growing it? The rich, the poor, Doiron and I, and anyone else who knows what it's like to pick an ear of corn and scrape the living kernels into pancake batter as I did this morning. And if I have learned one thing in life, it is that good things do not remain secret forever.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company
Posted by KGI on September 19, 2006 5:41 AM to Kitchen Gardeners International
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