June 2006 Newsletter
Dear Kitchen Gardener,
Meet Maxim and Sebastian, the unofficial poster boys for our new "We Grow Food" sign campaign and, more importantly, my two kitchen gardening sons.
I love the graininess of this picture because it harks back to days when color photo processing was still touch and go and when kids grew up with gardens in their lives. While this picture may offer an aesthetic wink to the past, it is all about the future and the type of food we'd like our children and our children's children to be eating.
My sons, ages 8 and 6, have been fortunate in that they have always lived in close proximity to the production of food. When my family and I lived in Brussels, Belgium, our boys spent their weekends at their Belgian grandparents' house in the country chasing after chickens and eating impromptu snacks from the garden.
Now that we're in the US, Maxim and Sebastian spend their time in our yard chasing after each other (Chickens, you see, aren't allowed in my neighborhood. Large barking dogs, yes. Noisy lawnmowers, of course. Tire-screeching teenage drivers, you betcha. But, please, no chickens...we're a civilized, upwardly mobile community!) and looking for something good to eat. These days, for Maxim, it's strawberries and, for Sebastian, sweet peas.
When they're not grazing, they are my first line of defense against potato beetles. I realize that my sons are not your typical American kids, unfortunately. These days, in my town, the average boy knows more about debugging a computer than he does debugging a garden.
Here's where you and our sign campaign come in. Recently, members of KGI's advisory board had the clever idea that if kitchen gardens are not as popular with kids as SpongeBob sweetened cereal, maybe it's because we're not advertising them as much and as creatively as we should. One person conjured up the slogan used by Paul Newman for his line of food products: "shameless exploitation in pursuit of the common good."
So, here's how the KGI sign campaign works. Anyone sufficiently shameless can participate. All you need to do is create a sign that advertises kitchen gardens, gardening, food self-reliance, etc. in your own special way. You decide on the slogan or jingle. You choose the artwork. If you want to include the web address igrowfood.com or wegrowfood.com as a way of connecting it to the campaign, that would be great, but it's not required.
To spice it up a bit, we'll make it into a contest. The makers of the best signs (as judged by the KGI advisory board) will win valuable prizes including:
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a copy of the famous "Ball Blue Book of Preserving"
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a $40 gift certificate to Johnny's Selected Seeds
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and 15 minutes of international fame through the KGI website
This package may not be as much as Kelloggs pays Spongebob for his advertising services, but you've got to start somewhere.
Signs will be judged on the following criteria:
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Message (5 points): How well does it communicate the message of regular people growing food? Does the sign include the web address igrowfood.com or wegrowfood.com on it as a way of connecting new people with KGI?
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Creative expression (5 points): How creative is the sign in terms of shape, colors, artwork, etc?
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Visibility (5 points): Where is the sign located? How big is it? Who and how many people can see it? Has the sign received any local press?
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Overall effect (5 points): How well do the elements come together to form a harmonious and effective whole?
To enter, please send us two photos: one of your sign and one of you standing proudly with your sign. If your sign is in a foreign language, please include an English language translation. Deadline for entries is the end of the day Friday, July 21st. Photos can be sent digitally via e-mail or by regular mail (to Kitchen Gardeners International, 7 Flintlock Drive, Scarborough, ME 04074). Please include your name and where you live.
Thanks for having some fun with us via this new project.
Remember: where will the next crop of kitchen gardeners come from if we don't plant them ourselves?
Happy summer,
KGI Donation Request: 1 piece of paper, 5 drops of printer ink, and 10 minutes of your time
We have updated our flyer. Could we ask you to print it out on your computer and post it in your community where you think gardeners and local food lovers might see it? We've had good luck posting it on public bulletin boards in town halls, natural food stores, and libraries. Thanks!
Comments
I live in the inner city, Leeds in England, we grow as many of our vegetables as possible in our small garden and for the last few years have kept a couple of hens. A recent new neighbour, two doors away, is complaining in objectionable terms about the noise our hens make, he says they keep him awake (he works nights).
Well, as you say, he doesn't object to mowers, vehicles, dogs, chainsaws or any of the other sound horrors of modern life (we only use hand tools and have no other pets).
It's very sad, he's threatening us with 'taking advice'. I think he's on a hiding to nothing because the hens' occasional cackling (after laying) is way below the 85 decibel level which is considered unreasonable.
But it's sad that people are like this :-(
Posted by: Mary | June 20, 2006 4:22 PM
Hi Roger,
I read your article about signs (good idea for most, although we hardly need one, since our gardens fill the front yard), and I'm sad that you don't have chickens. Those stupid local ordinances need to be challenged, and the time is right to do so. We have 6 laying hens over a year old now, and our town has a similar "no livestock" ordinance.
Our city councilwoman has toured our gardens, noted the chickens, and said nothing against them. I guess the city policy is to ignore them if there are no complaints, and no one has complained about ours. If they had complained, I was ready to go forward with a first amendment argument that our having chickens is a powerful statement in our (non-profit corporate) mission to promote self sufficiency, bolstered by the fact that they obviously do no harm to the community. They are contained in a roomy pen, odorless, and far less noisy that the neighborhood dogs, not to mention the weed whackers, leaf blowers, or our neighbor who seems to have a lifetime commitment to sanding his boat. They earn their keep recycling garden waste into wonderful compost and the far better than money can buy eggs are merely a great bonus.
A gardening friend has 3 chickens, and one of her neighbors complained, so she is now in the process of working on the city to get a change in the ordinance, so my great argument may not be necessary in any event, but I think it is a winner. Maybe you'd like to give it a try.
Jean
Posted by: Jean | June 22, 2006 2:10 PM