FRED OWENS writes at his blog, Frog Hospital:

I have worked at community gardens quite often. They depend on volunteer labor. Planners consistently overestimate the supply of volunteer labor. They begin projects with a burst of enthusiasm and discover a weed-choked mess several months later.

The garden where I volunteer has wisely learned from those experiences. We use volunteer labor on a sustainable basis. We have lots of wonderful ideas and things we like to do, but we talk ourselves out of it. I serve on the board of this garden, and I have been known to say, “I’m not willing to do any work on this. I might do a little bit of work, but not much.”

My fellow board members often agree with that assessment. You might say we are lazy. We have designed an orchard of fruit trees, choosing projects that require the least labor — that gives us time to sit in the shade and enjoy the view.

And money. I am opposed to any project that will cost money. In order to get money we have to do fundraising and that is an irksome task. “But we could spend a little money on that. Yeah, that might be okay.”

Conserving labor and money generates harmony. Since we are not over-worked or over-spent, we enjoy ourselves more and do not squabble. This is the best way to run a community garden.

I should say that I do not speak for the garden board, just for myself.

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Food comes from the Grocery Store

You know where food comes from? The grocery store. That’s where I get my food. And they get if from farmers who grow it. We have a lot of food in America and it doesn’t cost very much. Most of our agriculture is mechanized and done on a large scale because most of us don’t want to be farmers. We buy our food at the store because that is what we like to do.

There’s a few of us who enjoy getting our hands in the dirt. And there’s a large number of us who talk about the wonders of rural life and simple farm-folk. But it’s talk. Only talk. You can’t build a sustainable policy based on talk. We buy our food at the store and we don’t want to pay very much for it. Any sustainable policy needs to be built on that fact. The rest is just air.

It’s been a phony message since Thomas Jefferson praised the yeoman farmer. Thomas Jefferson never did a lick of field work in his life. It was talk and you can’t build a better policy based on talk.

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