Heritage, Food and the Future

Picture from here

Isn't this the most gorgeous vegie patch you ever did see?

I love to wander over to Casaubon's Book, the blog belonging to Sharon Astyk.  She has fled the farm and is off to this vegie patch at Thomas Jefferson's Monticello to do something useful -  like low-energy food preservation, complete with tastings.  She will also be speaking about Jefferson's idea of a nation of farmers under the title of A Nation of Farmers: coming home to our land.  Here follows an abstract of her talk.  Her abstract and that of others can be found here.

Our present agricultural system depends on heavy inputs of increasingly expensive and scarce fossil fuels, and is exacerbating our current world food crisis. It warms the planet and depletes soil and water and contributes to every major problem we face. Meanwhile, 100 million people have joined the starving and one in every 10 Americans requires food stamps to sustain them. But that doesn’t have to be the case – agriculture could help us regenerate our society. We explore the possibility – and urgent necessity of creating a truly sustainable food system.

Now I'm sure the patch is not maintained by part-time gardeners.  It displays investment of labour, knowledge and dollars.  In many ways, it is a garden that is not easily replicated.

 And I have to confess.

I love the lushness of the jumble of things growing together -

be it ever such a humble and ill-informed project.