Why Sometimes, Against All Sense, I Grow Food

It's bizarrely warm in Maine. The ice on our pond broke up a month early, and we haven’t had a snowstorm since January. The only remnants of snow and ice are deep in the woods. So on a 60-degree March day, I decided to work in the garden and prepare it for spring (I know it’s officially spring, but spring in Maine is in May). There was lots of work to do: removing the straw mulch, pulling up the black cloths that have served as walking paths, yanking out the deep roots of the brassicas and sunflowers that were too strong to pull up in the fall, all in preparation for adding compost and tilling it in next month.

In the past few years, I’ve considered whether growing my own food is worth it. The amount of time and money I put into the garden is significant. In fact, there’s no question that it would be less expensive in time, and perhaps sometimes even in dollars, to simply frequent the farmers’ markets or join a CSA.

Last summer, for example, I lost our entire corn, tomato, and winter squash crops to, respectively, a pillaging wild animal, a fungus, and insects. The brussells sprouts never sprouted. Half the asparagus was eaten by one of our dogs (she would often get to the asparagus just hours before I). Our potato crop was also struck by a fungus, so while we had potatoes, they were tiny – more like fingerlings. When I think about how many hours I spent, from choosing the seeds in the winter, to starting the seedlings in the spring, to preparing the beds, transplanting and direct seeding, adding nutrients to the soil, buying straw to cart home for mulch, and then endlessly weeding, it made me pause. Was this really worth it?

And yet here I am, doing it all over again.

I can’t abandon my garden. There is something so fundamental about growing food for my family. I love that every summer evening I can walk out the kitchen door and gather food for dinner. And the hard work of producing food – and its miraculous origin from a small seed – keeps me humble and grateful for all the food that others grow, cultivate, harvest, and transport. I know what it takes to produce food because I participate in the process, and this makes me profoundly appreciative for what I eat, whether I or others grow it.

I guess that when I ask myself whether it’s MOGO to grow my own food even though it keeps me from other work I might do and often produces many failed crops, I keep answering yes.

Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm, Claude and Medea, and Above All, Be Kind

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