Grad studies Essay part II

The Big Move

When I was 10 years old we moved to Fountain Valley, California. We drove across country in our Jeep Wagoneer, all 3 kids in the “back back” for over a week! We played and slept and watched as the landscape changed from grey, damp hills, to mountains, to vast green and brown plains and endless sky. The moving truck broke down every day, which gave us time to see a lot of the countryside. We picked cotton that was growing along the side of the road. I didn’t believe my mom’s explanation that it was really cotton…it was too dirty and full of sticks and seeds.

When we got to our new home, it was such a dramatic change! I spent my teenage years climbing over the concrete walls that surrounded every house in southern CA to get to the fruit trees. There was so much fruit that people would use only as decoration! We ate fresh pomegranates, oranges, lemons, limes, avocados and bananas. I’d never seen a pomegranate and it was so exotic to me! We didn’t have a vegetable garden in California, but the flowers, foliage and fruit were very significant to me.

A Different Way of Life

In college I studied art and spent a semester in Bratislava, Slovakia (Czechoslovakia at the time). It was a simple place and it really opened my eyes to how out of touch Americans have become with each other, with their wastefulness and with their food. Food shopping was hard to get used to because every product was sold in a separate store! Meat at the butchers, vegetables (when you could find them) at the open markets, bread at the bakery, cheese and milk at the dairy shop and eggs at what I can only describe as the Chicken store, with freshly harvested chickens hanging all around and lots of eggs. The open market was full of home-preserved items like dried meats, sauerkraut in large wooden barrels, even wine and beer!

“With Bowl and Spoon”

I was invited to a party my first week in Bratislava. The invitation said “…with bowl and spoon”. It was an art show so I wondered what they would do with all those bowls and spoons…and since I wasn’t able to read the invite myself I wasn’t sure that it wasn’t a joke on the American girl: ”Oh look, she did it, she brought a bowl to the party!!” Once I got there, I realized that it was simply practical. They were serving goulash and bread, and since there were no disposable plates or silverware, and there were no catering companies, everyone brought their own. In most of Eastern Europe, there was no “to-go” food or drink either, so any time we wanted a coffee we would have to go to a shop and sit. At first it made me crazy, but I grew to appreciate the slower pace.

Cooking

When I got married I started cooking for two every day. No cereal-for-dinner-because-I’m-too-tired-to-cook meals. I discovered that I like cooking! I started reading about different kinds of diets, learning about “perfect proteins” and nutrition. I was intrigued by wild edibles and took a class at the Frick Environmental Center. I bought a book and started identifying edible and non-edible weeds around my neighborhood.

Intro to Nutrition

Around this time I opened a juice shop in downtown Pittsburgh. I did a lot of research on the benefits of juicing as well as vitamins, minerals, general nutrition and health. Raw whole food seemed like such a luxury! There was no grocery store in downtown Pittsburgh at the time and when I closed my shop I realized that the residents, many of them senior citizens, would have no place to buy vegetables, so I worked with the Market Square Association and created a Farmers Market…the first time vegetables had been sold in Market square in almost 50 years!

A Yard of Our Own

In 1999 we bought a house and I took an office job. The house had a little backyard that was overgrown. We spent the first summer removing plants and weeds from the yard and I spent the winter going through seed catalogs, picking out plants and planning for the spring. We put in lots of perennial herbs and flowers, which I loved, but also because we wanted a low maintenance garden. A vegetable garden was out of the question in our small space. I did manage to integrate peas and some salad greens, but the slugs didn’t leave much for us. I explored my interest in herbal remedies, attended garden swaps and took every opportunity I could to get my hands in the dirt.

A Real Farm

My employer participated in a “Day of Caring” and I had the opportunity to volunteer at a food bank farm. Our task was to dig potatoes. It was magical! My coworkers thought I was crazy being so excited about potatoes, but the thrill is still there to this day every time I harvest potatoes! I enjoyed my day at the food farm so much that I started visiting with my husband. The farmer was an Irish man named Patrick. We would spend cold Sunday afternoons walking the fields, pulling carrots in the snow, carrying wood, playing with the dogs and goats, and riding horses. He was the first real farmer I ever knew, and by that I mean I learned a lot about the realities of the land from our visits. The dogs ate moles and voles right in front of us and when the rooster was violent one too many times he ended up as dinner. In the spring Patrick forced a hen to brood by keeping her and a pile of eggs in a 5-gallon bucket with a brick on top! He let her out a couple times a day for food and water and then back on the eggs. A few weeks later we watched a baby chick hatch!

A Garden of My Own

Since we didn’t have room in our yard for a vegetable garden I started a garden in my neighbor’s yard just a few doors down. He was in his 80’s and had to hire someone to cut the grass every couple of weeks, so as long as I maintained the area he was happy. That summer I created a garden with a group of neighborhood kids whose ages ranged from 4 – 11 years old. They helped me with some tasks but mostly asked questions. I grew everything from seed either directly or under grow lights. I learned about companion planting and had tomatoes with marigolds and basil, sugar snap peas with nasturtium and spinach, pumpkins and beans in between corn plants that made up a swirl across the entire yard. I transplanted some of my perennial herbs and flowers to pretty up the yard and used the “Lasagna Gardening” method to make my life easier! It was interesting to see how the parents reacted to the fresh veggies. I’m not sure all the produce I sent home got eaten.