A Vegetable Plot To Be

IT IS TIME TO CHANGE THE PLOT

  The worldwide farmers’ suicide crisis was the tip of the iceberg.  Wanting to know more about it led me to discover agribusiness, multinationals, mono-crop cultivation, high-fructose-corn-syrup, genetically modified organisms, terminator genes, global warming, disappearing honeybees and on and on.  The horror-movie-type-reality is that our species is destroying the Earth!   It is time to change the plot.

  And this why in the past year I have gone from simply being interested in sustainable development, to wanting to take what concrete steps I can, big or small, to help save the Earth by reducing my family carbon foot print.

  I am lucky enough to have my own backyard and while I am no master gardener, I do manage to grow a few herbs such as basil, parsley, mint and thyme for use in my kitchen.  I have been collecting all biodegradable foodstuff generated in my home and returning it to the soil for quite sometime now.  Also, since this past April I have started hanging my washing outside and I reckon that I’ll be able to continue drying it al fresco well into the autumn.

Of course we recycle paper and plastic, though I am looking for ways to use less of it altogether.  But in a quiet, meditative moment, I felt that there must be more I could do to lessen my impact on the environment and that is when  I came across a piece by Steven Hopp in Barbara Kingsolver’s “ANIMAL,VEGETABLE, MIRACLE.” It gave me the inspiration to expand the scope of my save-the–earth-efforts.  What those proposed efforts are, I will explain in a minute, but first let me quote Hopp:

Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars.  We’re  consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen- about 17% of our nation’s energy use – for agriculture, a close second to our vehicular use. […] But getting the crop from seed to harvest takes only one-fifth of total used oil used for our food.  The lion’s share is consumed during the trip from the farm to your plate.  Each food item in a typical U.S meal has traveled an average of 1,500 miles. […] If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of local and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by 1.1 million barrels a week.  That’s not gallons but barrels.

         

And this is what I want to do — reduce the amount of fossil fuel-thirsty-foods my family consumes by using local products as much as possible.  I have also given myself — and my family — the challenge of turning part of our small suburban backyard into a vegetable plot, and growing our own dinner.  Hence the title of this endeavor:

A NEW PLOT

 Efforts To Help Save The Earth, One Home Grown Meal At A Time

I would welcome advice and help wouldn’t go amiss either.  In fact I would love for other kindred spirits to take up their spades and join me.

Esmeralda Williamson-Noble

ps. I would like to try making my own mozzarella. Apparently it can be made in the kitchen in half an hour, the basil I have already, all I need for the salad now is the tomatoes. I'd better get busy.

Please email me at: esmeralda.newplot@gmail.com