The Joys and Benefits of Growing Your Own Food

Claudia Ebel
The Paw Print

Have you ever tasted a real tomato? Nibbled on a carrot, crisp and sweet from the cool fall soil? Digging into gardening has opened me up to food quality I never before knew existed, and I’m not alone.
The buzz around food issues, from food miles to organics, has brought along a new blossoming of organic fad foods on store shelves, along with  shifts in our consumer choices and the sometimes-bitter battles that ensue. But beneath the surface lies the vast roots of the food movement, which is not just about loving food, but also growing it.
One important piece is in how we reclaim the one thousand-plus miles that stand between the average American and the origin of their dinner plate.
Tomatoes, for example, are harvested green and left to ripen in the back of semi-trucks as they travel for weeks to your local grocer, when the fact is, fresh food tastes better. Also, the amount of fossil fuels being burned, and the number of highways expanded for that tomato to reach your grocery store, is wholly unsustainable. It’s embarrassing to think that the watermelon I bought from the grocery store has travelled more of the world than I have!
Alamosa Community Gardens, in partnership with the Food Bank Network of the San Luis Valley are here to link the food movement with actions we can all take right now in our own backyards and communities. Whether or not you consider yourself someone with a real green thumb, learning to grow food is an endlessly useful endeavor in life.
Organic gardening not only offers a space to be creative and to relax, but also allows the gardener to interact within a larger landscape of ecological and social patterns and issues. It’s empowering to address the way we care for the health of the planet and for our own humanity through the work of our hands. The gardens and local food movements popping up around the country really are making a difference. If more people were to connect with their own ability to grow food, we would be well on our way to reversing a myriad of issues, including the sharp rise in preventable disease caused a fast food culture of calorie-rich but nutrient-poor menu items.
Today’s industrial farming operations have truly disconnected us from the agricultural heritage that our country was founded on. Currently, less than two percent of Americans farm for a living, which is a dramatic drop from the early twentieth century, when subsistence farmers were commonplace.
Not only are fewer farmers managing larger acreage, creating a huge disconnect between person and plant, but these farming practices are also largely detrimental to the environment, with record-high fossil fuel energy use and contamination of soil and water sources by pesticides and chemical fertilizers. On top of that, almost half of the food we produce is falling by the wayside, literally, ending up in landfills as opposed to feeding people who go without access to the food they need.
Reclaiming our food is a great way to address all of these greater environmental and social issues that result from our current system. Getting back to our roots by growing our own food is not only more enjoyable, but empowering, because it allows us to turn the course of events away from a system that isn’t serving the people or the planet.
Here in the high alpine desert of the San Luis Valley, harsh temperatures and scarce water resources create a difficult growing climate, yet we host a hugely active agricultural sector and a heritage of hundreds of years of farming and ranching Despite multiple challenges, hundreds of thousands of pounds of produce are grown right here in the Valley. Did you know that Grizzly Country is also the second largest production region of potatoes in the country? Alamosa Community Gardens and other local non-profits are here to help our community face challenges by growing our own and supporting those who do the same.
Have I enticed your appetite for gardening? A good place to start digging in is the upcoming Organic Gardening Workshop series we at the Alamosa Community Gardens are hosting on “The Basics of Home Garden Production. These lessons will be taught by a local Valley expert gardener, Paul Niebel, over three Saturday sessions, each focusing on specific topics designed to help you grow a successful garden right here in Alamosa. So join us and impress your friends by growing the tastiest tomatoes they’ve ever had! The classes are all free, everyone is welcome, and light food and beverages will be provided!
Come to the Trinidad State Junior College auditorium at 10am on any or all of the following dates:
February 23: Soil fertility, composting, cover cropping, and crop rotation.
March 9: Garden design, site selection, seed bed preparation, plants for the garden, seed selecting and sourcing, planting tables, and planting.
March 16th: Irrigation, pest control, weeds and weeding, maintaining garden growth, harvesting, tricks, gadgets and shortcuts.
Hope to see you at one or all of these exciting upcoming sessions! + ADD CONTACT INFO for questions/if anyone wants more information or to be involved with ACG. Please don’t hesitate to contact us, we will be more then happy to help. Alamosa Community Gardens is a non-profit organization that teaches gardening and nutrition to kids and operates gardens and events in the greater community. Call us at 719-589-4567 or email us alamosacommunitygardends@gmail.com to get involved.