VICTORY IS UPON US
August 19th, 2008 adminThe following story ran last week in the Austin American Statesman.
Ten years ago, Becky Barsch Fischer’s husband James suggested she try growing vegetables and herbs in their Georgetown yard. After all, both Fischers worked as the kind of chefs who seek out fresh, organic produce from local sources. Becky said she was too busy, and besides, it was too hot. The grounds of their 1919 house already sustained cool green lawns, big pecan trees and plenty of ornamentals. But she finally agreed to plant a few seeds.
“Next thing I knew, I had lettuce and arugula all winter long,” she remembers. “Next thing after that, our own vegetables.”
The arugula was particularly persuasive-there’s something about growing your own version of produce that may cost a fortune at a grocery store, but doesn’t taste as good. (Figs. Snow peas. Heirloom tomatoes. Arugula!)
Hooked, Becky became a true four seasons gardener, growing successive crops in a cycle that ranged from winter greens to summer squash, and spending more time in the herb gardens at Hudson’s Bend, where she worked as executive chef. When her interest in home-grown produce edged out her passion for cooking, she reinvented herself as The Culinary Garden Hoe, a designer and installer of mostly edible gardens.
Since then, she’s worked for such high-profile clients as Central Market and the Dell Children’s Medical Center, but “not as many residential clients as I’d like,” she says. “Individual clients are so happy to be started off with a design. They don’t have time to put in the garden, so I do it for them and then they take over. It takes gardening back to the family.”
It was about time. Growing up in San Angelo, Becky had just one distant relative who still gardened-at the age of 98. Her part-time teaching job at the Texas Culinary Academy exposed her to a younger demographic whose connection to the earth was even more remote.
“I brought in some peas still in the pod, and a student asked me what they were,” she says. “I realized that even culinary students don’t always know where real food comes from. But they’ll try to impress you by taking food and turning it into something it’s not.”
“What I’d really like to see,” Becky finally decided, “is the return of the Victory Garden.”
Others-from slow food devotees in San Francisco to garden bloggers to custodians of a few historic victory gardens-were coming to the same conclusion. In a time of rising food prices and newly converted locavores, the nearly ninety-year-old Victory Garden concept sounded less like a nostalgic relic and more like good idea.
Begun during World War One, the plots known as “war gardens” or “liberty gardens” were promoted as a patriotic measure in which citizens responded to food shortages by growing their own. They were an unqualified success. By 1944, the Pennsylvania State Counsel of Defense estimated that ten million home gardeners had managed to grow 40% of the nation’s produce. Eleanor Roosevelt was impressed enough to start her own victory garden at the White House. (Today, bloggers at eattheview.org are circulating a petition encouraging the next US president to do the same.)
Victory gardens appeared not just in backyards but in vacant lots and schoolyards, where committees oversaw a group gardening effort. They promoted ideas now thought of as modern–sharing seeds and labor among neighbors, donating excess harvest to food banks and using organic soil amendments. They could also be dictatorial-one manual offers no-nonsense techniques for dealing with “lazy gardeners.” But lazy or not, 1940s Victory gardeners came together over food.
“And that’s how we know our best neighbors today,” Becky says. “I take them lettuce and squash, and they share their persimmons, dewberries and pears. I tell my students food is the purest expression of love, whether you’re pulling it out of the ground or the sauté pan.”
A 1940s gardener may have been thinking less about love and more about war, but the Victory Garden message remains constant: Growing food isn’t as hard as you think. Give it a try. While you’re at it, save the nation’s food supply. And though the Alice Waters cartel has been doing an arguably rarefied version of this for decades, victory gardening, Becky says, is something any Joe can do.
“For sure I spend less on groceries,” Becky says. “And my garden is survival of the fittest, kind of an experiment. If I do something that works, I tell my clients. On the other hand, one of the tomatoes I grew this year was Green Sausage, and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone.”
Becky’s garden looks almost as free-form as her philosophy sounds-completely unlike the string-marked row plantings of the 1940s.
“Honestly, it might be easier to grow vegetables in a rectangular plot,” she says, “but I’m not much of a rectangle person. Perfection is overrated and boring. I like to mix things in.”
On a recent afternoon at Becky’s place, beans grew up cornstalks, a massive old rose had climbed the fence and was headed for the street, artichokes were dotted among exotic flowers, and lamb’s ear crowded a hedge of thai basil. “It’s way more basil than I need,” she said, “but pests don’t like it, so I plant a lot.”
A few crops had failed the heat test-”would you like my recipe for fried cucumbers?” Becky quipped-but tomatoes were flourishing under shade cloth, paprika peppers soaked up the sun, and the complex smell of multiple herbs hung in the air. In a breezeway filled with actual breeze, bromeliads hung in wall sconces and tropical container plants lined the walls. Something crafty was underway at the old workbench Becky’s husband salvaged and converted into a potting table.
But all was not random. A designer at heart, Becky could look at the few edibles that flourish in heat-hoja santa, cardamom, ginger, a topiary fig tree-and imagine one season ahead.
“As soon as this tropical bed dies back,” she said, “I’m re-working the soil and putting in greens for fall.”
BECKY BARSCH FISCHER’S LEMON BASIL LIMEADE RECIPE
1 C Lemon Basil leaves, loosely packed (substitute Lemon Verbena, Lime Basil, Lemon Grass or Sweet Basil)
3 C Water
3/4-1 C Sugar
Juice of 4 limes
Combine water and sugar and bring to a simmer until sugar dissolves. Remove from heat, and add the herb leaves. Steep 15 to 30 minutes to infuse flavor, strain leaves. Add the fresh squeezed lime juice and enjoy
as is. Or add a shot of an adult beverage.
