Saturday, May 26, 2007

How does your garden grow?

We've gotten past Shavu'ot, and the weather is beautiful.

From a historical perspective, this Jewish festival celebrates the Israelites receiving the Torah at Mount Sinai. But it's also an agricultural festival, marking the season of the first fruits of the harvest.

The major Jewish holidays, Passover, Shavu'ot, and Sukkot, all have agricultural roots to them, but I feel that we rarely stop to think of those roots, perhaps because we're so removed from the importance of that cycle. We generally focus instead on the historical associations with the holidays. Don't get me wrong-- those associations are critically important, too. But I do feel that getting back to the agricultural meaning of the days might just help us reconnect with the earth in ways it seems we've also forgotten.

We are eagerly trying to be organic gardeners, so, like Farmer Rich, we've been counting the days since Passover, watching as our garlic, tomatoes, carrots, and green pepper have gone from seeds to tiny plants in our kitchen window, and then into the ground in our backyard. They've endured benign neglect from the Mosbacher Family, late frosts from Mother Nature, and an early attack from our resident ground hog. At the risk of jinxing the whole enterprise, things seem to be going well, so far:


Left to right: tomatoes, green pepper (mystery plants in back), carrots




In the bed: Heirloom Garlic



The garlic, planted last October, appears that it might actually make it!

We even have a couple of mystery plants in the bed behind the pepper plant; Elyssa speculates that these are pumpkin plants sprouting up from some pumpkin seeds that must have made it into our bionic compost. Oh, we're so organic, I can't stand it!!

Fair Trade for Nine-Year Olds

My bright nine year old and I headed to our favorite donut-shop-that-must-not-be- named this morning. As we were exiting with our purchases, my son was nearly trampled to death by other impatient coffee-starved patrons as he stopped to read every decal on the exit door. You know, the ones that tell you the store hours and which credit cards are accepted.

As I yanked him (gently) to the relative saftey of the parking lot, he looked up at me with those bright eyes and asked, "Aba, what does 'We sell only Fair Trade Coffee' mean?"

This led to a great discussion about who makes/grows the food and drink we consume, and how much they do (or don't) get paid. The best part of the discussion was when he said, "Aba, that reminds me of The Story of the Pizza!" (Yeah, us!!)

He generously offered that if he owned the shop, he'd charge 4 dollars for a cup of coffee and give 2 dollars to the farmer. Praising him for his kindness, I reminded him that, from his remaining 2 dollars, he'd need to buy coffee cups, pay the electrical bill, pay someone to serve the coffee in the shop, and pay the rent on the shop itself. Leaving little or no money left over for the generous owner to buy Bionicles or Pizza for his family.

The talk then turned to a consideration of capitalism, roughly entitled, "Why Can't the Owner of the Donut Shop Charge 8 Dollars for a Cup of Coffee so that She Can Give 2 Dollars to the Farmer and Still Make a Profit?"

I'd say I handled the lecture on "Intro to Market Forces for Nine-Year-Olds" quite well, especially when you consider that the caffeine hadn't yet reached my nervous system!