Community Gardens

[UncaRay]

Your absolutely right, trying to ram lifestyle changes down people's throats by legislative fiat isn't going to work.

No the only way you can educate your neighbors is by example.

They must see you living on, and benefiting from, your garden.

If everyone in this project immediately committed to creating their own garden, turning lawns into gardens, or supporting community gardens, we would be a "movement." Arguably the ONLY movement so far with a real answer to the problems that plague us.

Allow me to share a short list of the potential benefits of a mass local foods/family gardens movement.

1. Currently large corporations control our food, shipping it in trucks from central warehouses to our local supermarkets. Supermarkets never have on hand more than a few days of food supplies, they and we are completely dependent on that continuous stream of trucks. A natural disaster, or terrorist attack that stopped that flow of trucks for even a short time could turn into a major catastrophe . By returning to local, small holding agriculture we can solve this threat to America's food security.

2. Every cucumber grown at home is a cucumber that wasn't grown on a monster farm using huge farm machines powered by petrochemicals, pesticides, and fertilizers based on natural gas, and petroleum. It is a cucumber that hasn't been shipped across the continent in a truck, or refrigerated in a large expensive building, or brought to our table by a trip into town. Also it is a dollar or so that we didn't spend on a cucumber and that we can spend elsewhere. So it's like growing a raise.

3. Every time we make something for ourselves and grow food and trade with each other is a time when wealth is created and shared but does not go through the current system or support it. Our "Economic Vote" has always been the greatest source of People Power.

4. The current system is based on giant agrifarms which in essence "mine" the soil for nutrients. The system's heavy use of tillage and agricultural chemicals have left vast areas of America's soils arid, and lifeless. Carbon dioxide release from tilled soil is the single greatest source of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. If we are to survive at all we must rebuild the soils and make them productive again. Without chemicals. Organic farming is labor intensive, but it is the only growing system that can reliably take crops from the soil for generations and leave it in better condition.

5. Gardening is regarded as such healthful exercise that hospitals use it as therapy for traumatized or recovering patients. Most of the people of Western Civilization would benefit from the stress reduction of some daily gardening activity.Eating fresh vegetables, with no burden of chemicals, has known health benefits that will result in fewer catastrophic doctor bills and illnesses. Doctor bills are currently the single greatest cause of household bankruptcies in America.

Question is; Can we do it?