Why I Grow Food
May 13, 2003
I’ve never met another guy my age that shares my passion for growing food. When people can buy New Zealand apples or Mexican tomatoes year-round, those that grow stuff in their backyards are seen as a bit eccentric, no matter what their age. And I know plenty of dudes (including myself, at times) whose only vegetable intakes are incidental, as pizza or sandwich toppings. Why bother with veggies when you can take vitamins, right?
So why would an average 26-year-old guy decide to have a vegetable garden? I could cite a variety of health, social, economic and environmental reasons in support of gardening, but those have been covered elsewhere. And to most people, those reasons aren’t totally compelling. They make sense in theory, but not enough to drive a person to serious “growing experiments”. I think the real allure of gardening is much more personal.
Why do I grow food? I believe it’s in my blood. As American homesteaders, my ancestors ranched and farmed the plains of South Dakota and Iowa. Even today, my Grandpa Smiley fondly recounts tales of driving cattle and working on the farm. As a child, I remember visiting my grandparents in Iowa for fresh sweet corn and rhubarb pies. Here in Illinois, my own parents raised a giant rasberry patch that made all the neighbors jealous.
Even on the outskirts of Chicago, my childhood was surrounded by working farms. I used to trespass into the cornfields to pick blackberries from a neglected streambank. And build tree-forts in the wooded edges of soybean fields. Scattered throughout town were many stately farmhouses, sheep pastures and other symbols of rural life. Over the years, I watched farms self-destruct one-by-one to make way for suburban sprawl.
With memories like these, how could I turn my back on agriculture? It would be an insult to my own history.
This history is the shared history of all Americans (and people everywhere). We all have farming in our blood. For many—like me—it’s only a matter of one or two generations.
So why do I grow food? It comes naturally to me. I follow my impulses. Am I the only one? I suspect there are many guys my age with similar impulses—only they choose to ignore them. Even so, I don’t feel so eccentric when I think about this fact. Yeah—I’m the only guy I know with a “growing experiment”. But there are many generations behind me, and many ahead.
