Joe Wirtheim - Notebook

Recently, someone emailed me who works at a garden center, and they showed the folks at the center the Victory Garden of Tomorrow poster and tried explaining the concept behind it. The garden center people didn't get it. I guess we could just shrug and say its just "visual art". Which it is.

But that's only part of the story, and doesn't honor the American history and tradition of rolling up the sleeves and DOING something in a crisis situation. Today, there are people in crisis situations who need better nutrition, better ways to save, and creative solutions to basic household expenses.

The original campaign was all about supplementing rations in a time of food/money scarcity (it was WWII). Recently when I look in the media there are stories of people of all walks of life in very tight situations often relying on a food bank. What's in the foodbank? Canned and processed food. From a health standpoint this is bad, and in economic terms we are relying on the industrial, mass scale food producers to give us something we could make ourselves at several times greater the quality and nutrition. Salty, conventionally grown, preservative laden canned vegetables is no way to feed a family, we now know. Neither is processed foods made with corn syrup and white flour. Supplementing your rations is a genuine expression to have for ourselves fresh greens and vegetables from the thing that we are so desperately trying to hold onto: our own backyards.

Some Victory Garden slogans are coming to mind:
Make those yards work for you! Supplement your Rations. Better Nutrition Means Better Gardens.

See also Slow Food USA.

And this is very exciting: NY Times: Obamas Prepare to Plant White House Vegetable Garden and finally, from MSNBC: