Back-to-the-land Redux
About a week ago we drove by a nearby Chevrolet dealership with an unusually large sign attached to the fence next to the road. In large lettering it advertised a “Learn How to Grow Your Own Food” campaign followed by some contact information. Even though weirdly out of context and out of season (mid-November as this is being written) I wondered if this could this be a sign of a renaissance of the backyard gardening movement?
Gardening has been part of my life for almost as long as I can remember. When I was a child of three or four, home delivery by horse-drawn van was common because gasoline was rationed during the Second World War. Also, since some food was also rationed. many families, including my own, cultivated “victory gardens” – and so as not to make me feel left out of the war effort my parents gave me a tiny vegetable plot near the house. At that age I certainly had no idea of what war (or a garden) was, but I do have a vague recollection of peeling dried up horse manure from the middle of the road to use as fertilizer.
A year or so later we moved to a larger house with a deep lot that extended behind the houses of three of our neighbors. My father planted the mother of all victory gardens and also let our neighbors use some of the land for theirs. For the next few years my job was to help with the weeding and other gardening chores, most of which I remember not being in favor of. After the war, our neighbors abandoned their borrowed war-time allotments and my father took over the space with a larger garden that included formal European elements – vegetables along with perennial and annual flower beds of varying size and shape, mostly separated by grassy paths that it was my job to mow and edge.
Years later, Raquel and I were married while I was in grad school and she finishing her senior year – and one of the first things I did, almost as a biological imperative, was to plant a vegetable garden behind our first house in Syracuse (NY). Even though we liked Syracuse at the time, city school policymakers decided our unborn children would not be walking to the elementary school around the corner, but instead would be bused to more distant schools in order to conform to the new social agenda. We saw where all this was headed and so in 1963 we moved out of the city to the village of Fayetteville where we opened our first bookshop that we ran for a year before moving to a fixer-upper in the smaller village of Cazenovia in nearby Madison county, with a yard large enough for a small garden. (In later years we would learn that our decision to move out of Syracuse was an early sign of the demographic shift that would change cities forever)
At any rate, attempting to make a go of running a small bookshop (new & antiquarian) in a rural village meant our horticultural ambitions took on more of a “victory garden” urgency and Raquel began part-time teaching in local schools to help make ends meet. Almost from the beginning our garden planning focused on growing vegetables we liked best – in our case it meant asparagus, strawberries, beets, all sorts of greens (especially swiss chard), leeks (for vichyssoise), egg plant, butternut squash, sweet corn, etc. Our flowering annual and perennial gardens would become more important to us in the years to come, especially after we moved to a larger home with more land just outside the village.
It was during the summer of 1967 that we stumbled onto something the likes of which we'd never seen – Expo '67 in Montreal was the first and only world's fair we've ever attended, and as we later learned the most successful World's Fair of the 20th century. We spent days there and returned the following year when it was re-branded “Man and His World.” At any rate, at the east end of the Île Notre Dame, and connected by a miniature train, was La Ronde, the amusement park that continues to this day. An open-topped miniature train meandered its way slowly through a magical garden landscape before reaching the La Ronde destination. In my opinion, the train ride to La Ronde totally upstaged the amusement park itself.
Naturally, a lot of people would expect to see massed bedding plants or flowering annuals in gardens designed for ornamental effect – but there were none. Instead, all along the way were well-spaced plantings, both beautiful and useful. I remember egg plants in bloom, tomatoes, swiss chard, green beans, a variety of peppers, cabbage, and other vegetables that remain among our favorites.
We borrowed as many ideas as we could remember when planning our future gardens, always adopting and adapting those we liked best. An interesting outcome of all this was that the cost of food became an incidental household expense. We're not vegans or vegetarians – just people for whom meat or fish is the side dish.
In the early '70s, the National Observer, a weekly newspaper that lasted until 1977, hired me to write a back page article on mini-gardens (for city folk), that even upstaged Hunter S. Thompson who was a regular at the time. This was not long after The Mother Earth News had me do a feature article on almost the same subject when the back-to-the-land, granola movement became popular
At any rate, back yard gardening or mini-farming is something that reinvents itself almost on a regular basis in times of war or economic hard times. During the first American Civil War a book by Edmund Morris entitled Ten Acres Enough: a Practical Experience Showing How A Very Small Farm, etc. (New York: James Miller, 1864) went through at least ten editions, and a few years after the war and the return to general prosperity, Ten Acres... prompted Robert Roosevelt to write the parody Five Acres Too Much... (New York: Harper, 1869). Five Acres and Independence by M.G. Kains was published in 1935 during the Great Depression and by 1942 (during the Second World War) it had already gone through fifteen printings. For all I know it may still be in print. As you might guess, books like this make up a respectable part of the gardening section of our home library.
Food shortages and affordability have been much in the news of late, but what some folks might not yet realize is that problems of this sort are sometimes caused by the actions of public policymakers.
There's a food pantry at the edge of our village which has been active for many years. Run by a staff of dedicated volunteers it's supplied by food donated by individuals, super markets and bought from the Syracuse Food Bank with money raised locally. On fresh food distribution days there are sometimes cars lined up along US Route 20 for nearly a quarter mile, so the need must be great.
Several years ago one of the volunteers, a self-described philanthropist, came to me with what seemed like a wonderful idea — there was a large parcel of unused farm land next to the food pantry and he thought it would be perfect for growing vegetables for their clients who would appreciate fresh produce – especially sweet corn and strawberries – in season. He knew of my interest and involvement in all things gardening, and asked if I'd volunteer to head up his project. Assuming I was being recruited to act as a consultant or “gardening coach”, my first question was how many people would be taking part in the project. Since planting and caring for a half acre vegetable plot is no small chore, I also asked if any of the fresh food beneficiaries would be willing to help out. It turned out that both he and the “clients” would probably be too busy and not really interested in the hands-on part. The plan, as he explained it, was for me not to be the gardening coach but in all likelihood the only gardener. And so... that was the end of that idea. (Note: As of this writing, a new mega gas station and convenience store is nearing completion and about to open on what might have been a community vegetable garden next to the local food pantry)
I first met Francisco Vadillo when he moved from Cardenas (Cuba) to our area in 1970. Francisco (Paco) had originally emigrated from the Basque region in Spain to Cuba in 1924. His family in Spain had originally been farmers and after having worked at a hardware and farm supply store in Cardenas for a while, he decided to do what he liked best – cultivate the land and grow a variety of vegetables for local and regional markets. Having come from Spain he knew potatoes and so beginning with a small parcel of land, potatoes proved to be the first of many successful crops. As the years went on he bought more land and gradually expanded his farming operation to include a dairy farm, beef cattle, horses, hard woods (including teak for sailing boats and yachts) and a program of reforestation. By the late 1950s his farm had grown to about 3380 hectares or roughly 8352 acres.
Some time in the late 1950s he thought about retiring, received a very substantial offer, but turned it down because he realized he wasn't yet ready to give up what he really loved. Fate, however, stepped in when Fidel Castro and a group of revolutionaries seized control of the government and nationalized nearly everything including farms, homes, businesses and personal property of any value. Almost immediately his farm was taken without compensation, but the apparatchiks in charge of agricultural affairs said as a favor they'd allow him to stay on as manager in exchange for a small salary. Replying thanks but no thanks, Francisco walked away and moved to Minoa in upstate New York to live near his two daughters.
A week or so ago one of his daughters located what had been "La Union" (the Vadillo farm) on Google Earth, zoomed in and discovered it had all but disappeared and reverted to what looked like uncultivated woodland scrub. Even with an annual growing season of 365 days, food in Cuba remains in short supply and rationed to this day.
