Waiting For Growth

A reader writes:

I loved the View from Your Recession email from the gardening software developer. I too put in a garden this year, and bought a chest freezer and froze part of my harvest, as well as dabbling a little in pickling (with mixed results; I’ve got a lot to learn). He’s right; it’s incredibly fulfilling to garden, and to generally have more of a hand in the food you eat.

I learned you can freeze tomatoes whole and, months later, just pop them into stews and soups. I always feel absurdly glad and proud when I do this, but why not? Growing our own food is a key accomplishment of the human race, and connecting to that feels great. We’re eating better AND cheaper, and will definitely keep it going even when the economy perks up.

In the current issue of the Atlantic, Caitlan Flanagan has a much different take on the subject - that gardening in California public schools is undermining education standards. Money quote:

If this patronizing agenda were promulgated in the Jim Crow South by a white man who was espousing a sharecropping curriculum for African American students, we would see it for what it is: a way of bestowing field work and low expectations on a giant population of students who might become troublesome if they actually got an education.