From hand to mouth: thoughts on gardening, food poverty and giving a fig*

Straight from the tree. Today’s fig harvest. Image: Su Leslie, 2017. Edited with Snapseed.

According to contemporary sources (The Free Dictionary, Merriam Webster, The Cambridge Dictionary), the term “living from hand to mouth” is used to suggest bare survival — getting by on the minimum.

My 25 year old copy of Brewer’s Concise Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (Cassell Publishers, London, 1992), adds a moral dimension with the following:

To live from hand to mouth. Improvidently, without thought for the morrow. The phrase implies the ready consumption of whatever one gets.

I can’t find a reliable source for the phrase (suggestions welcome), but with or without the whiff of moral censure, the term is positively dripping with negative connotations.

Without diminishing the very real suffering of millions of people who are doing it tough and barely surviving in a world of increasing inequality; for a gardener, living hand to mouth can mean something positive — a celebration of the fruits of our labour.

Yet the ability to cultivate a garden is beyond the reach of many, if not most, people. Access to land, tools, seeds — even water — is limited. And those who most need that regular, if small, supply of fresh food, are those most denied it.

So as I give thanks for my handful of figs, and for the beetroot, brassicas, herbs and citrus fruit to come, I also want to acknowledge the efforts of countless individuals and organisations working across the world, in a multitude of innovative ways, to grow and/or distribute fresh food within their communities.

Here are just a few of the initiatives I am aware of in my small part of the world. If you know of such groups in your community, please tell me about them in the comments, or post a link to their websites.

Community Fruit Harvesting. Auckland-based, but increasingly working across NZ to collect surplus and unwanted produce, and distribute — either fresh or as preserves — to charities.

Garden to Table. A New Zealand-wide programme that works with schools to create gardens and teach children to grow, harvest and prepare fresh produce.

Compost Collective. Auckland initiative to reduce organic landfill waste through composting, has become involved with a number of gardening initiatives.

Kelmarna Gardens, Auckland

Wellington City Council Community Gardens

Written for Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge at Lens and Pens by Sally.

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* For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term “to not give a fig”, The Free Dictionary defines it as to not care.

“Always the bough is breaking …”

Milkweed seed head. Image: Su Leslie, 2017. Edited with Snapseed.

I’ve become a gardener. Not just in the literal sense of having a garden; but more in the way that my garden has become a filter through which I see the world.

I grow flowers for the bees, set beer traps for snails, chase wasps from the swan plants and am the Big T’s eager accomplice in Monarch butterfly husbandry.

When I grow hungry, the contents of the  vege patch are as important as the contents of my fridge.

And when the annoying TV weatherman casts impending rain as a villain swooping in to spoil the party, I want to shout “sod off! Think of the plants; think of the gardens.”

The thing about gardening is that you become part of a cycle; birth, life, death, decay, re-birth. Compost as metaphor!

I have become connected. Though my little patch of cultivated dirt, I feel a sense of belonging to the Earth that is not only new, but surprising in its intensity.

Milkweed seed head. Image: Su Leslie, 2017. Edited with Snapseed.

I found this poem yesterday and realised that where once, if asked about my attitude to life and death, I’d have quoted Dylan Thomas’s Do not go gentle into that good night. 

Now I think Willam Soutar‘s Song might be more apt.

Song

End is in beginning;
And in beginning end:
Death is not loss, nor life winning;
But each and to each is friend.

The hands which give are taking;
And the hands which take bestow:
Always the bough is breaking
Heavy with fruit or snow.

— William Soutar

Found at the Scottish Poetry Library

Written for Sally D’s Mobile Photography Challenge, at Lens and Pens by Sally.

DP Photo Challenge #3:

Image: Su Leslie, 2016

“Garden as though you will live forever.” — William Kent

Gardening is both an act of faith in the future, and an investment in it. At a personal and a global level, we need plants to sustain life.

My little garden is flourishing right now and giving me enormous pleasure, as well as putting food on our table.

Image: Su Leslie, 2016

As the Big T and I plan our escape from the city, there is quite a lot of uncertainty about where we will g, but top of my wish list (along with high-speed Internet and a good local cafe) is space for gardens and maybe a little orchard.

Image: Su Leslie, 2016

It’s taken me a long time to grow a real connection with the food I eat, and the environment I inhabit. That is something I want to carry into my future.

This post was written for the Daily Post Photo Challenge. The theme is future.

Luscious

One of life’s greatest pleasures. Going to the garden and harvesting fresh food, grown at little or no cost, and with beneficial impacts on the environment. Image: Su Leslie, 2016

 

A green green goes green … or something like that.

Ailsa’s “Green” theme  (Where’s my backpack) got me thinking about how the word has so many connotations; the colour, the sense of environmental responsibility – and also “green” as in inexperienced. And that got me thinking about my garden.

Last November, lots of seeds and seedlings.

Even though I’ve owned my house for 12 years and wanted a vegetable garden for about that long, this last year is the first time I’ve had one.

And it’s been wonderful. It’s lush and green – despite the drought in Auckland. It’s great for the environment – food miles have become food metres and my plants thrive on the compost we’ve been creating from household waste.

Yesterday’s harvest

And although I’m totally “green” as a gardener and have made lots of mistakes (note to self – courgettes take up a lot of space and although they look great, they’re still courgettes), I have also grown a lot of fresh tasty organic food for my family, friends and neighbours.

Finally, if green is the colour of calm, then my garden has achieved another purpose. The time I spend planting and thinning and weeding and just generally pootling around eating the tomatoes and radishes and bell peppers is perhaps the most relaxing time in my life at the moment.

The radishes and courgettes are gone. Cucumbers are just hanging on and tomatoes are having a second crop. But the herbs and peppers are still thriving.

In praise of peaches and living local

Golden queen peaches; my perfect breakfast.

This is my favourite time of year. The weather here in Auckland is generally pretty fantastic; warm, sunny, settled, and way less humid than January. Add to that, we’re about to celebrate both my partner’s and son’s birthdays and (should I admit this), even better, it’s peach season.

I love peaches.

Actually that’s not quite true; I love Golden Queen peaches. And I love them best when they come from my favourite orchard – Boric Food Market in Kumeu, Auckland.

Boric is one of the central landmarks of my cognitive map of Auckland map. I remember as a child being driven there in the back of our old Vauxhall on what constituted a major day out. These days, Boric is a 15 minute drive from home along our snazzy new motorway, but when I was a kid in Bayswater, it was WAAY out in the sticks.

But still we went there at this time of year and bought peaches. In those days, they came in little rectangular wooden boxes that would be turned into “canoes” later that my brother and I would paddle around the lawn on our “last of the Mohican” adventures.

On the way to Boric, I pass six or seven other old style fruit and veg shops. Actually, I shop at quite a few of them on a regular basis and I’m pretty happy with the produce and the service. In some I’m well enough known that the women on the checkout can guess what’s for dinner that night in my house on the basis of what’s in my basket. We even trade recipes.

But although it’s further away and I know I’m burning fossil fuels to get there, as long as I live in Auckland and Boric stays open, I will shop there. It’s partly because it is such a part of my world and even though the old shed has been completely revamped into a fairly upmarket grocery shop, it’s still kept the same feel. That’s probably because it’s been in the same family for generations (since 1942 I think) and the current generation still works there. There are even staff members who I remember from 12 or so years ago when I came back from the UK and used to take my then toddler son shopping with me.

It’s a family business that has remained true to its community. It might look flash and sell gourmet meat and chocolates these days, but the fruit and vegetables are still fresh, affordable and best of all – in many cases grown on the property.

And that’s the other reason I will continue to shop at Boric. They grow stuff and sell it where its grown. Apples, peaches, plums; varieties you can’t find in supermarkets and shops that just buy in whatever is available at the wholesale markets. When I was a kid Auckland was full of orchards like Boric. In Albany, near where I now live, there used to be three fantastic orchards and a strawberry garden that let you pick your own berries. Most of the apples and pears I ate as a child came from land that is now home to several schools, housing estates and an industrial park. The junior high school has displaced the strawberry farm, and my son’s old preschool stands on the site that used to grow the best Braeburn apples – ever!

Sometime in the 1980s and 1990s, Auckland stopped growing food. Land that had sustained generations was subdivided and families moved onto their little piece, covering their yard with decks and patios and not even planting the odd fruit tree. More and more people have moved to Auckland and at the same time, the food needed to sustain us comes increasingly from other parts of New Zealand – and the world.

There are still ghosts of the old orchards. At the end of my street there is a reserve with 30-40 plum trees. Every January they produce masses of sweet, succulent fruit. Most of it falls to the ground and is eaten by birds. But every year some of it finds it way to my kitchen and the jams and sauces I make to remind me of how precious local resources are.

I’d like to say that the some of the Golden Queen peaches I bought yesterday might make a similar transition, but honestly – I’m more likely to just eat them fresh.

Toast and homemade plum jam; for when there are no peaches for breakfast.

Around the world, people are starting to realise the value of growing the food they eat – where they live and eat it. I applaud that, but at the same time lament the fact we ever forgot in the first place.

 

Local food:

http://www.localfoodgrants.org/about

http://brisbanelocalfood.ning.com/

http://www.communitygarden.org/

 

© Su Leslie, 2013.

Disclaimer: It occurs to me that some of this reads like an advertorial. It’s not. I’d like to make it completely clear that the only relationship I have with any of the businesses (or families) mentioned in this post is as a normal paying customer.