LIVE GREEN, LIVE BETTER

The Grocery Garden

I grew up knowing where my food came from. It came from the animals inside the barn and the massive grocery garden that existed in our backyard. When I visited my grandparents and aunts, their food also came right from the backyard. When dinnertime neared, all we had to do was pick or pluck something that grew in the tidy rows out back, or in winter head down to the pantry to grab something from the shelf or inside the freezer.

My mom made sure we got in our swim time every afternoon at the local pool, but only if my brother and I got our garden time in every morning. The garden was my least favourite place to be as child, it seemed all I did was weed or gather. My least favourite plant was the black currant. They had to be handpicked one by blessed one. No self-respecting family of Dutch heritage would think of having a grocery garden without these little gems. They were preciously turned into jams and frozen for future use for an ethnic dessert stew made with barley and raisins. While I enjoyed both of these dishes, I discovered a much more important use for these berries when I too, planted my own currant bushes. Black currant liqueur. Sipping on my own homemade liqueur was a much richer reward for me than was a jar of jam or a sweet, ethnic stew.

When I began my own household, there was never a thought of ‘should we plant a garden?’ it was more of a ‘where will we plant the garden’. Being Dutch, I would have to admit that it was partly to save money, but, truly, it was also the joy of admiring a freshly emerging row of vegetable seedlings and the satisfaction of gazing at a pantry full of colourful jars of pickles, relishes and fruits. Funny how what seemed liked an endless chore, as a child, became so much more rewarding as an adult.

I believe there is going to be, and needs to be, a resurgence of grocery gardeners. These harder economic times are causing people to rethink how their funds are best spent. We are double washing all of our store bought produce to rid it of any residual chemicals. We are beginning to understand that food that is transported for thousands of miles is leaving a negative footprint on our earth. Locavore and one hundred mile diets are words and phrases that are common in our lexicon.

I would like to encourage everyone with a back yard to begin their own grocery garden. Instead of relying on food that has been transported hundreds or thousands of miles, rely on food that can be collected just footsteps from your kitchen door. Instead of wondering what chemicals are lurking in the folds of your salads, pick organic greens right from your backyard. And when you pay $2.75 for one meal of fresh cut beans at the store, consider how you could have had dozens of meals for just a 99-cent package of seeds.