Building sustainable edible gardens | Portland, OR | Independence Gardens LLC

The more things stay the same. You know how that one goes. But it boggles my mind that we can be nearly 3000 miles away from home and yet be scheduling  consultations, making cultivation recommendations, updating our website, and having similar sorts of interactions (albeit with different people and in different types of homes and gardens) as we would in Portland. It’s kind of fantastic!

Along the way, we do miss home. But we have each other, our usually-remote-but-close-right-now friends and family, and a little home-on-wheels known as the GardenMobile. (Well, we don’t actually call it that–I just made it up a cute nickname. What do you think?) And getting some distance from the good ol’ PNW makes us appreciate our life there even more. The trees. The familiar terrain and wildlife. And the water–by golly, the amazing Portland water!

We are currently in Washington, DC, visiting my little brother. Before this, we stayed in Princeton; we didn’t spend much time on campus, but our wonderful hostess did take us on a tour of developing school gardens all over town. We stopped in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware on the way here to connect with an awesome Pton friend and briefly swim in the ocean. Very briefly. As one might expect with an itinerary as jam-packed as ours has been, most of our activities have happened phenomenally quickly!

As we travel from friend to friend and place to place, I am struck by the power of connections between people and place, over time. We feel connected to people, despite the passage of time; visiting places we’ve been before brings back strong feelings. And we miss our own gardens, even as we appreciate the ones we see where we are. We’ll be home again, harvesting and sowing, soon enough. But in the meantime…it’s off to Atlanta (via North Carolina) we go!

I am not a travel writer, or a food writer. Despite a few attempts at academic writing, that hasn’t really done it for me either. I’m a navel-gazer. And what I see when I gaze into my navel these days (which rests atop a very satisfied belly) is the hub of a unique web. Relationship-wise, place-wise, time-wise…and food-wise.

Relationships and place-timing will have to be explored at a later date: there’s just too much to remark upon in those departments, and my thoughts will probably fill a book. But food–that’s worth a quick mention here.

It’s as much a sign of the times (as fresh food becomes ever-more-popular) as a compliment to us and our garden-building business that so many of the folks with whom we have visited have fed us locally, seasonally, and from scratch. Excellent food from their gardens, CSA shares, farmers markets, and even (via company cafeteria) preserved farmland around their new corporate campuses.

A couple of recent examples of this web in action: we were offered (and gratefully accepted) fresh CSA onions and peppers to spice up a late road-trip-food dinner in Eagan, MN. We fixed up eggplants grown by Stefan Meyer, an urban farmer friend in Minneapolis in Madison, then made pesto from local farmers market basil and cheese there. In Pittsburgh, we ate from-scratch tomato soup with a straight-from-the-garden salad and homemade garlic bread. And we dined sumptuously on local pork with pan-fried fresh potatoes and tomatillos and a Rose tomato-mozzarella salad upon our late arrival at our current happy home–a farm just south of Ithaca, New York.

In short, we’ve been bowled over by the welcomes we’ve received over 3500+ miles of proud ground. We’ve been treated like royalty: describing some of the dishes makes me remember feast scenes in the Brian Jacques Redwall series. (Anyone else recall being impressed by those?) One special mention, along those lines, goes to the Wills family in Crawfordsville, Indiana. They fed us Good food–and a really-lot of it–on short notice: it was a true feast, prepared with love and received with thanks.

Anywhoo, after sharing a few pictures, I will stop for now. I can’t say enough thanks on this trip, even though everyone deserves it. There’s way too much more to comment upon…and I am working on preparing my remarks. Questions, comments, or topical requests?

Farmers Market in Madison, WI

Local Food Wheel in Ithaca, NY

Herb Garden at Cornell Plantations

This is a quick post, spreading the word that we’ve created a Picasa album for our on-the-road photos. These aren’t even an eighth of the pictures we’ve taken, but I wanted to make sure to share the visual representation of what we’re doing. There are quite a few different gardens, adorable people (some in Chicken Shirts!), and lots of amazing scenery. So, one day before we’ve officially been on the road for a week, I present “Road Trip – Week One”! Enjoy.

Road Trip – Week One

I am not going to write much tonight, because we’re leaving tomorrow afternoon…and (but of course!) we’re not all the way packed. I had a lovely breakfast date with my grandma this morning, though, and that started a train of thought that needs to keep on rollin’.

So, Gram told me that when she was my age, no one would have thought it possible for young women to take a road trip like we’re about to take. She thinks it’s great that we’re doing it, but she couldn’t think of anything in her past that compared. We kept talking, however. And it turns out that when she was ten, she and her recently-widowed mom drove a Model A Ford from Birmingham, Alabama, to their new home in Los Angeles. They even stopped at a relative’s ranch in Texas on the way, she told me. “Hmm,” I thought. “Road trip!”

Karen and Gram: Road tripping across the generations

True, the personal and cultural contexts for my grandma and great-grandma’s journey in the mid-1930s were radically different from the ones in which we’re embarking. But I like to find the similarities between apparently dissimilar things–finding ways to fit them together. And along those parallel lines, here’s my thinking:

That was the Depression Era, and there weren’t too many years between Gram and Nana’s road trip and the Victory Gardens of World War II. We’re currently in the midst of the worst recession since, and I can see the food self-sufficiency movement heading in the same direction: a garden in every yard! (I just hope we don’t need continued armed conflict to bolster the movement’s sense of urgency.)

In any case, Isabel and I are heading out to see what people are doing with their spaces nationwide. To see firsthand, and hear from friends and family, the effects of the present state of economic affairs, and to begin to consider alternatives–with a focus on urban ag, although not an exclusive one–for ourselves and those close to us. It’s a project that will in all likelihood take years, not weeks, to wrap up.

Independence Gardens "Tomato Tree"

I’m especially looking forward to seeing what tomorrow’s drive to Spokane and visit with my talented artist cousin Annie brings. (Back in the day, she designed our “Tomato Tree” logo!) I’m thankful that my conversation with Gram today gave me a chance to start considering the past(s) that make the present possible, and the connections between then and now.

And now that I’m thinking…we’re going to start driving.