The First Lady is planting vegetable gardens on the White House lawn. Just like another First Lady in 1943 inspired 20 million Americans to plant a Victory Garden as part of the war effort, this garden is hoping to inspire people to get back to healthy foods.
Nowadays our war is against obesity and contaminated food sold to us by corporations. But I also think we are fighting a culture of ignorance, in that we eat millions of pounds of food every year, with no appreciation of where it came from or what it costs to produce it, either in effort or environmental terms.
Like the poster says: YOU CAN MAKE THIS KIND OF AMMUNITION! Plant a garden with your child, let them work up a sweat turning over the soil, make sure they are the one to drop the seed in and cover it up, remind them to water, and then watch the look on their faces when they actually pick that first ear of corn, or perfectly red tomato. See if they don't want to try sugar snap peas off the vine, or sit in the middle of the strawberries and stuff their faces full. 
Besides teaching your child that time and effort go into producing food, you'll save a ton of money on your groceries, and you won't have to worry that someone has sold you food full of salmonella. 
Find a nearby cannery, or teach yourself how to can or freeze your extra produce. Voila! Now you have a safe food supply for this winter, and it's already paid for.The Obama's have a huge front lawn, but it's not necessary: you can produce enough fresh food for a family of four out of container gardens. They can sit on your apartment balcony, on your roof, to one side of your driveway, or inside your livingroom by that big picture window.
There's really no reason not to grow a modern-day Victory Garden -and there is nothing in the world better than that first ripe tomato off the vine!
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More & more people in the UK are growing their own veg - in fact there are waiting lists for allotments - kind of like your Victory Gardens - land which people can rent from the council for a nominal amount to grow vegetables. For many years allotments were the preserve of retired gentlemen but nowadays all sorts of people, young & old are involved.
ReplyDeleteVery similar to our Community Gardens - I've seen vacant lots in cities turned into community gardens where everyone gets a patch -and lately I've read of one family farm in our area that took a huge field and broke it down into garden plots and rented the individual plots to families. The farmer plows it up, turn it under but the renting family is responsible for planting,maintaining,etc.
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of Victory, Freedom, and Community Gardens. I've seen (online of course, hopefully one day in person) neat things that Guerilla Gardeners have done in the UK. I love all the artwork you found for this blog Carole - wonderful!! I might have to get you to share links with me (if you wouldn't mind) so I can print them out into posters. :)
ReplyDeleteHere you go Carrie:
ReplyDeletehttp://tvh.bfn.org/gardens.html
You can also just doubleclick on any one of the posters, and it'll come up HUGE.