This makes me want to barf. I mean, it's great to have a vegetable garden, and it's very cool that people are growing their own food, but do they have to be such self-congratulating twits (look at the comments!)? Ech. It's like when someone writes a personal essay for the college paper about how they met a very nice Real Change salesman and decided to give him $5 instead of $1.Farmers have to get up every morning at 5 a.m. to do the chores, then go to their day jobs because the farm that they love generally does not pay the bills, then they go back to work on the farm after most urban people are already home from work, sitting on their patios ("my own piece of urban heaven"), drinking wine, and toasting themselves in congratulating gestures over the spicy basil. I know this organic basil, I have it on my patio, but I don't call myself a homesteader. Farmers are actually connected to the land (not the dirt in a planter), some since birth, and they are the people who will still be interested in "the land" after it's been relegated to the dustbin of good-causes past. Talk to me in 40 years and we'll see how your urban homestead (read: condo/townhouse; read: temporary) is doing. You will have moved on, and in the meantime many rural families will have to sell their homesteads because urban consumers, while we do our best to buy as much local food as we can, can't really support the farmers in our region under the current system. Congratulate yourself, then, you bandwagon-jumping jerk. I know you worked really hard to put in that tiered garden; I just ask that you have some perspective. And humility. There's a lot of change that needs to happen to fix our food system, and it sure ain't happening out of your vegetable garden.
I love Grist, normally. They have some really great, smart, informative posts. But this is just straight-up horseshit.
