NAME:

Jennifer Love

HOME:

Wilmore, KY, USA

PROFESSION:

I raise miniature Jacob sheep, chinchillas and geese. Most of my time is dedicated to raising and home-schooling my three sons, Zachary, Tristan, and Theodor.
 

INTERESTS:

Knitting, reading, tole-painting, drumming, and cooking.
 

KGI: Why do you keep a kitchen garden?
JL: Primarily to feed my family fresh, organic foods that actually have vitamins and flavor intact. It doesn’t hurt that the price of grocery store food is getting so high that we’ve found garden food is actually less expensive too. I’d love to grow most of our produce someday. And it’s even great exercise. Plus my oldest son and I are allergic to gluten (a.k.a. wheat, barley, malt). So many processed foods list wheat or gluten in them as fillers. We rely more heavily than most Americans on vegetables and fruit rather than grains. An independent streak and fond memories of gardening as a child in my father’s garden motivates me too. I’m absolutely addicted to the calm satisfaction of watching plants grow.
 

I want that for my kids. I want them to know where food comes from and understand our connection with nature.
Then there’s the environmental impact of having the store produce driven here form Florida and California which makes me more responsible for pollution than buying or growing locally. And if that wasn’t enough, now I’ve read that certain companies are developing genes to make even non-hybrid plants produce infertile seed so those companies can cash in further on gardeners. So I have become concerned for the future of food production globally. I feel compelled to grow many varieties of vegetables and now save seed.
 

KGI: How and when did you get started?
JL: As a toddler I would go out and watch what my dad was doing in our garden. I loved helping water. We also had a mulberry tree and a cherry tree. I’ve always known where vegetables and fruit came from and that fresh food tastes the best. My grandparents grew a few tomatoes and rhubarb. All the neighbors had gardens. I thought everyone grew food. I was in 4H for years and took vine crops as a project. I even won second place at the county fair one year. Through that I met many people who grew gardens.
 

KGI: Who or what has had an influence on you and your gardening?

JL: Obviously my parents, grandparents and neighbors influenced me growing up. Both my parents and grandparents grew up on farms though we didn’t when I was young, but I head their stories and thought I was meant to live on a farm someday, too. I went on to study biology in college and especially my Anthropology professors influenced me by teaching the way people used to live. I learned about primitive tribes gardening styles, and learned about my own western civilization’s heritage. I realized in the grand scope of human history we haven’t been away from subsistence farming for more than very few generations, and many people still do. My husband also grew up with a backyard garden and fruit trees and is very supportive of our having a big vegetable garden now, and he has plans for planting an orchard starting this fall.
 

I have read so many books on gardening I think I have literally read every one in the local library. I’m sure many things I’ve read influenced me, but the ones that motivated me to really grow so much and such variety as I do know would be: My subscription to Countryside& Small Stock Journal published by Dave Belanger The Encyclopedia of Country Living by, Carla Emery Five Acres and Independence by M. G. Kains Lasagna Gardening by Patricia Lanza has really helped me understand sheet composting. And even the Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck – which showed me the major shift from family farms to industrial farms that took place for my grandparents’ generation. I see how poor with a farm is so much richer than poor with out. I’ve only traveled a bit within this region of the US, but I always look to see how other’s gardens or field crops are doing. My sons thinks commenting on the height and lushness of corn we pass is normal travel conversation.
 

KGI: Tell us about your garden or gardens. How large are they?
JL: We increased the vegetable garden greatly this year to 112 feet by 80 feet, but it is about half grass paths and half 5 foot wide rows tilled in a spiral. So there’s approximately 4,500 square feet. I planted about 3, 500 square feet this year and the rest is where we put compost.

KGI: What fruits and vegetables did you grow this year?

JL: I plant 99% of it from seed right in the ground myself, with some help from the kids. Nearly all varieties are heirloom type. This year I planted: white proso millet (for grain for us), marigolds (for pest repellent), Alaska snow peas, spinach, radishes, red beets, broccoli, Wando and Oregon Trail shell peas, Leafless-a bush shell pea, black oil sunflowers (animal food, might try to get oil out), black garbanzo beans, head and leaf lettuce, white and red and yellow onions from sets, Danver half long carrots, Giant sunflowers (seed for our eating and the animals), burgundy amaranth (for our grain), buckwheat, a bit of 6 row barley, a bit of oats, Silver King and Kandy Korn hybrid sweet corn (doing poorly due to lack of nitrogen in newly tilled soil), pink eyed peas, black eyed peas, red beans, kidney beans, crimson sweet watermelon, scalloped summer squash, Indian red flour corn, yellow wax beans, Brandywine and Early Girl, and Better Boy red tomatoes, cherry bell peppers, leaf celery, Big Max pumpkins, butternut squash, edamame soybeans, milo (a.k.a. grain sorghum) for our eating, BlueLake bush greenbeans, bushel basket gourds (to grow more ‘baskets’ to carry food in), California Wonder bell peppers, Black from Tula tomatoes, White Parchment tomatoes, Zucchini, Roma and Yellow Pear paste tomatoes, a mini-seedless watermelon, Purple Peruvian hot peppers, Love Lies Bleeding Amaranth (also good for grain), True Platinum heirloom sweet corn and a few Lima beans. I planted a few more varieties of peppers and beans, but a heavy rain drowned them early on. And now the heat is taking it’s toll on the melons, cucumbers and pumpkins.
 

I also have a front raised flower bed with about 60 square feet for herbs. That has: basil, oregano, just a few garlic, dill, sage, blue bread poppies for seeds, garlic chives, pineapple sage, lemon balm, more amaranth and St John’s wort which I heard was a good tea but haven’t tried yet. We also have two other flower beds, but I keep planting extra seed in them and getting volunteers from seed in the compost. So my other flowerbeds are growing more sunflowers, buckwheat and some summer crookneck squash among the perennial flowers and hostas. I think vegetables, grains and herbs are just as pretty as any flower.
 

And lastly, we have mulberry, elderberry and choke cheery trees and some wild blackberry vines. Other than eating the fresh fruit, I have made a bit of wine from the black berries and choke cherries. I dry the elderberries for tea and to add to other dishes. I made mulberry jam this year. I just used a blackberry recipe and added the extra step of putting the cooked berries through a food mill to remove the stems and part of the seeds before adding the sugar and finishing cooking. It did need pectin added, but turned out quite delicious.

KGI: When does your garden year start and stop?
JL: We till and start planting peas about March 1st. Then the fall frost which kills is about October 15th .
 

KGI: What are some of challenges you face in your garden?
JL: Much of it was new ground broken this spring. The slightly clayish soil is in need of more organic matter. Fortunately here in "the horse capitol of the world" finding horse farmers to give us manure has been easy. Sadly, the family we bought our house and land (9 acres) from got away from farming in the last two generations and used the land as an illegal dump. We have cleaned it up so much in the five years we’ve owned it, but when we plowed we had to clear out not just rocks but broken glass, soda cans and car parts.
 

Also in our county, we can dig down 1-2 feet and hit solid limestone, so composting and building up the soil if of paramount importance. The water drains out so fast in the shallow spots. There’s a lack of honeybees, so my buckwheat is poorly pollinated. Hand pollinating is often necessary for pumpkins and squash.
 

KGI: Do you preserve any food through canning, pickling, freezing, root cellaring, etc?
JL: I’ve never pickled. I do remember seeing my mom can (jar) tomato sauce when I was very little, but she never taught me as she got away from doing it and started freezing. So I freeze just about everything. I blanch when necessary and freeze individual foods, but I also cook spaghetti sauce and freeze it. And I make large amounts of food when I cook certain dishes, like stews, soups, and taco meat. Then I freeze some of these meals for winter and much of the vegetables end up frozen that way, too. I dry most of the herbs, but I freeze the leaf celery. Beans and peppers are dried. Butternut squash does well set in the back of a cabinet for many months. Many things are eaten fresh and there’s no leftovers. I need to plant more! The crawl space under our house may be just the thing to put a root cellar in. I’d like to learn more about that and canning. I need to put up much more than the freezer holds.
 

KGI: If you could choose another place to visit and garden in, where would it be and why??
JL: I would go to Transylvania, Romania. Our church has a partner church in the village of Nyomet. Others I know have visited on church business and their minister recently came here. So I saw some pictures of how they live. But I want to see their gardens! The communist regime went through and tore out the people’s ancient grape vines and made all the men leave home and abandon their personal gardens to work on community farms, giving them back very little. Communism is gone now, but only for about 25 years. Now they are trying to recover and they rely on their backyard gardens and some village grain fields for all their crops. If I have a bad year for a crop, or if I don’t grow enough, I can go to the grocery store. If they have a bad year for something, then they just don’t get to eat it that year. If they don’t grow enough, they go hungry. I long to go and see what it’s really like to be truly self reliant. They must have many gardening tips and techniques out of necessity. They must have much to teach.

KGI: Do have a favorite recipe you'd like to share using a garden ingredient?
JL: We try to eat the vegetables as close to fresh as possible. Cucumbers we just slice and top with shredded Monteray Jack cheese and add salt and olive oil to taste. Also we eat corn on the cob, boiled, and served with butter, salt and pepper to taste. These together is a common meal in summer. But the kids’ favorite is my taco recipe, much of which comes from our garden.