Founding Gardeners

"The other founding fathers shared his belief.  Agriculture and the independent small-scale farmer were, in their eyes, the building blocks of the new nation.  Ploughing, planting and vegetable gardening were more than profitable and enjoyable occupations: they were political acts, bringing freedom and independence."    

The greatest hope for this blog series is that it never becomes just one thing, or at once too many things.  The inspiration comes from a life long interest in history, cooking and the prospect of gardening or even perhaps farming.  Of the first two I can reliably claim experience that I am 

quote above from Andrea Wulf, Founding Gardeners

somewhat proud of. The third, though, needs more work.  Like any good prospective gardener, I have dabbled in my readings of permaculture, made my attempts at apple trees, blue berry vines, wild strawberries, too-thin carrots, tomatoes, a feeble little wooden fence "to keep out the creatures of the night," and a herb garden that got tunneled by a chipmunk so severely I nearly hired it on the spot to do my harvesting for me when the time came.  This is to point out that history and cooking can 

become serious subjects while, I suspect anyway, gardening will always be my source for humor.  I also hope that it will be a source of coming inspiration as we have recently purchased a house in Madison, WI that has been for the past hand full of years well landscaped and nicely gardened.  A novice about to receive a pro's work is only terrifyingly daunting if the novice thinks he is going to master the art without much care or work; luckily I'm now too old to think that anything undertaken worthwhile will not cause either ulcers or hysteria eventually.  Or, if one is fortunate, the great salve of humor might lubricate the sure to arrive bounty of mistakes.  

Historical thinking might very well be one of the greatest generational absences we face.  To be able to see any given problem and solution in the real world in historical time alleviates far more anxiety than a quick fix of a sitcom or video game.  To think even briefly that generations past – most certainly our founding mothers and fathers of the American Revolution – grew their own food not merely out of the sake of decoration (although this too), but, as Washington would remark about his great upper and lower gardens at Mt. Vernon (kitchen garden pictured above) for the sake of feeding the estate, it forces an interested observer to wonder what a young person today who now spends more time on media than he or she sleeps, might get out of the possibility of planting something and taking care of it.  The relationship between our founding mothers and fathers and nature in general, then, allows us to see through a useful microscope the connection between the notion of democracy and growing things.  If a modern day urbanite needs a reason to commit, this might be as good a one as any.    

We might follow that homegrown fruit and vegetable to our table where we eat.  Little "plates of democracy?"  I don't know, but need to find out.  After Jefferson and Adams's long and very inspiring ride together 

Monticello

viewing the grand gardens of England, Jefferson believed gardens in particular were important for Americans.  "They might have failed to negotiate a trade treaty with Britain and the Barbary States, but they had discovered how Important America had been in the creation of the gardens of the old enemy. Now it was easy for Jefferson to admit that the English garden 'surpasses all the earth' – he 

could wholeheartedly embrace them without feeling unpatriotic because they were populated with American plants and shaped by ideas of liberty."  Very heady stuff.  Yet you wonder if a simple civics course in learning simultaneously the dual texts of the Federalists Papers and a good garden book might not be just enough to help roll culture up the hill a bit faster.