WILLIAMSVILLE — Our kids recently gave us a copy of Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma and urged us to do our part to reduce global warming by growing our own food.
“We've actually already tried this,” I tell them, “when you were small.”
Indeed, when our kids were young, we had a giant garden, which I preserved by freezing and canning; we annually raised and butchered a pig; and we kept chickens and bees. We also drove only 7,000 miles a year.
When they were little, the kids' interest in the garden was limited to planting the beans followed two months later by snacking on cherry tomatoes straight from the vine; they resented the time my husband and I spent in the garden. In those middle school years, we also found ourselves spending more time in the car - driving the children to their different play dates, competitions, and lessons - and less in the garden.
We finally gave up growing our own food, joined a CSA, and started shopping at the farmer's market. Last year, with four drivers in the family, we put nearly 40,000 miles on our cars. In addition to thousands of dollars spent on gas, these miles represent hours and hours away from home. Gardening, I learned the summer I planted a garden and traveled, cannot be done from a distance.
So, I welcomed the suggestion that we try to grow more of our own food - on the condition that the kids help, meaning they would have to spend the summer at home. To my amazement, they have agreed.
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In addition to growing our food, we've also begun planning on how best to preserve it, and as I write this, we're testing the temperature and humidity in different corners of the basement to determine the best location for a root cellar. Furthermore, in response to Pollan's calculation that it requires 57 calories of fossil fuel energy to produce and deliver a single calorie of organic California baby greens to Vermont in the winter, my husband has started an indoor lettuce garden next to the furnace.
We have yet to harvest a salad, but the total investment is small enough to absorb should we experience crop failure. He and I are not willing to incur the risks of raising sheep and chickens for meat, however, or keeping a milk cow, despite our children's desire for us to do so. While I like the idea of keeping farm animals, I'm not yet prepared to be home morning and night to care for them, and I know our kids - after a summer of improving their parents - will return to their respective schools and school farms, which thrive with student labor and institutional support.
As our children try to turn us into radical locavores, I'm reminded of my own, similar, attempts with my parents 30 years ago, when I read Kenneth Cooper's Aerobics and Frances Moore Lappé's Diet for a Small Planet, two books that were instrumental in forming my beliefs and changing my life.
When I gave a copy of Aerobics to my father (who was then the age I am now), he was a prime candidate for heart disease: in addition to gender, his risk factors included smoking, being an executive, and carrying at least ten extra pounds. To my amazement, he didn't just read the book, he bought a hundred copies and passed them out to everyone at work. He started running, and he quit smoking.
Diet For a Small Planet was a more problematic title for my parents, as was my conversion to vegetarianism. First-generation Americans raised during the Depression, my parents delighted in being able to serve meat at every meal as a sign of their rising prosperity. And my working mom, to whom the responsibility of all meal preparation fell, found the conveniences of frozen potatoes and dried onion-soup mix essential aids to putting dinner for six on the table every evening.
But we ate well, my mother having been influenced by her mother, a devotee of Carlton Frederick, one of the first to warn the American public about the hazards of modern food processing. Frederick advocated vitamin and mineral supplements to replace nutrients lost in processing. My grandmother eschewed anything that came in a pill, however; instead, she cooked with whole grains and laced her recipes with cod liver oil and wheat germ. My mom, as a result, was somewhat wary of food faddism, and responded to my newly acquired knowledge about essential amino acids and complementary proteins with skepticism. I couldn't convince her that we should eat lower on the food chain or substitute tofu for brisket.
I wish I could say I was more accepting of my parents' skepticism than my children are of ours. But the truth is, I'm now embarrassed by my intolerant advocacy back then, and I am grateful to my parents not only for putting up with it, but also for doing so graciously. I'm pleased and awed that my college-aged children are kinder to their parents than I ever was to mine at the same age. But I'm even more struck by the persistence of food as a subject central to one's coming of age.
Usually, we associate the discovery of sex with coming of age, but it may be that food is even more elemental. Eating is essential: What we eat - where and how it has been produced and brought to market - is tied up in the world economy and the politics of oil. How we eat is imbued with ritual and meaning. With the help of my children, the experiences of my foremothers, and the information from a few good books, I'm willing to take on global politics and personal health in a single, small, good way. If I'm successful, I will not only produce food for my family, but I'll also reduce my carbon footprint by leaving the car in the garage.
If all goes according to plan, I'm spending this summer in the garden - and next winter at home.