Le Potager (The Kitchen Garden) and the Slow Food Movement

I am working in a garden that is close to 500 years old. The romantic gardener in me believes it's as if I can feel the sweat and hands of the countless other gardeners who have tilled this earth. The biologist in me, however, rations that the beauty of this soil stems from its intensively worked structure and high cation-exchange capacity, resultant of year after year of soil amendments, beneficial root exudates, and a rotational cycle of ever present Rhizobia nodules helping to convert atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia, via nitrogenase and the process of hydrolysis.

In short, this is some of the richest soil I have ever worked with, and I have worked with many different soils. Host to over one thousand different types of fruits and vegetables, the 15^th century design of the kitchen garden at Châteaux Valmer is classical in nature. Tall walls covered in espalier pruned fruit trees - an ancient agricultural practice of controlling woody plant growth by pruning branches to a frame (often along a wall or fence) – surround the garden, whose interior is laid out in geometrically pleasing designs. Rounded edges and plant growth fringe the more rigid structures of the pathways and trellises, creating a beautifully balanced design.

Flanked by the grand canal and a forested hillside, and to the North by the beautiful view of the châteaux's gardens, le potager is breathtaking. On one hectare (107,639 square feet or approximately 2.5 acres), four squares lined with boxwood are subdivided into plots, surrounding a circular basin and fountain. Beneficial wildlife are strongly encouraged as honey-bearing perennials border each and every patch, giving homes to both pollinators and predators. Bees, ladybugs, birds, hedgehogs, and frogs scamper everywhere, and throughout my working day I have the pleasure of being visited by them.

My day begins early caring for the chickens. They run free in a large netted area opposite the garden's most Western wall. They seem to have adjusted to me interrupting their morning schedule, and will now follow me around their yard as I scan their roosts for eggs. Chickens are one of the gardener's best friends, and serve as a great link in the garden food chain. They eat pests, provide manure, and integrate food waste into their diets. It is just one example of how, as with all organic agriculture, it seems other animals sometimes play the most essential roles. Realistically, human gardener's themselves are more like conductors, orchestrating a symphony of other non-human, living, and interconnected parts.

For the rest of the day I work with whichever crop demands the most attention. With so many varietals and specific crop requirements for optimal growth, gardener's are very busy people, and our work is never done. The potatoes must be mounded, the tomatoes must be pruned, the squash must be trellised, the grass must be cut, the hedges trimmed, the tools sharpened, the rows and pathways weeded, the leeks harvested, this pest tended to, that pest tended to, and so on. Here in le potager we do this all by hand, without the use of motorized equipment or chemical inputs.

This is one of the many reasons why the organic food movement is slow to replace it's newer, industrial counterpart – the issue of labor. Three farmers aided by tractors and chemicals can properly tend to a few thousand acres of a conventional crop, while one acre of organic plantings would require three if not more laborers. It is partially how such revolutions as the “Slow Food Movement” earn their name. Slow, however, is not always a bad thing. Slow Food is an international movement promoted as an alternative to “fast food,” that strives to preserve traditional and regional cuisine by encouraging the farming of plants, seeds, and livestock characteristic to the surrounding ecosystem.

With goals of sustainable foods and the promotion of local small businesses, the Slow Food movement began in 1986 in Italy by the organization Agricola, which worked to resist the opening of a McDonald's near the Spanish Steps in Rome. In 1989 the founding manifesto of the international Slow Food movement was signed in Paris, France, with delegates from 15 different countries. Today there are Slow Food branches all over the world, slowly but surely gaining footing. Slow Food USA is the second largest. You may recognize the names of Alice Waters (the owner of Chez Panisse and an activist, author, and creator of the Edible Schoolyard) or Michael Pollan (author of The Omnivore's Dilemna and a self-proclaimed “liberal foodie intellectual”) as two of the Slow Food USA's most notable members. If you are interested in becoming a member or discovering more of what the Slow Food movement is doing near you, click on the link below.

http://www.slowfoodusa.org/

I have often wondered how the term “conventional agriculture” can call itself that, when it is in fact not historically customary. Organic permaculture based agriculture has been practiced around the world for centuries past, essentially since we adopted agrarianism into our human makeup. Not until the beginning of the 1900s did we shift to such a mechanization and industrialization of our agricultural systems. While conventional agriculture has comparatively not been around for very long, we can already see from the 100 years of its adoption that it has both short-term benefits and long-term consequences.

The consequences of industrial agriculture are what makes the Slow Food movement and organic farming efforts a necessary course for today, especially if we have an eye towards the future. We must re-learn how to produce food in ways that resist replicating the historical, environmental, social, economic, and health oriented consequences of industrial agriculture. As Madame Alix de Saint Venant, the landscape architect I am working with in le potager says, “the ingredients for a thriving kitchen garden are time, curiosity, and passion.” If we can manage to regain our curiosity for the agricultural methods practiced throughout history, while developing generations that are passionate about doing so, we will be able to revolutionize the way we eat, and in turn, make a very broad and lasting effect on the world we live in. For food is a most powerful human common denominator, in that everyone must eat, and so can be used as an incredibly far-reaching and revolutionary tool.