A couple pictures of my family from this summer; me cutting down our junebearing strawberries for renovation,
my kids and a friend washing apples (not mine unfortunately) for our yearly saucing
my wife and son, at a friend’s wedding
My two daughters pitting sour cherries we got from our CSA:
I am an electrical engineer at a solar technology company, and I love to build stuff in nearly any context.
I was also noticing it seemed like a pretty high asian content in member’s families. Just a coincidence of who has posted? According to wikipedia, the 2010 census put those individuals identifying as asian or part-asian at 5.7% of the US population, pretty concentrated in a handful of urban areas. My wife is 1/2 Vietnamese (second generation).
It is a little amazing to me how uncommon it seems to want to grow a bit of fruit or veg in your yard. Sure, out in the country you see farms, but it is the rare house that has a visible garden or fruit tree that looks taken care of or harvested. Where I live is pretty urban, and we have some community gardens which I hear have muti-year wait lists. But many houses have a little space in the front yard at least that could support some edibles, yet you still don’t see many taking advantage of the space. Probably less than 1 in 10. I think mainstream American culture does not include an impulse to grow food on a small scale. Even people that are into gardening are more focused in general on ornamentals and flowers.
In other places though, I think mainstream culture does embrace this. So it may be that immigrants from such places, (or those who have been influenced by them) are more inclined to want to grow some vegetables or fruit. There is a wonderful book from Novella Carpenter called Farm City which is super entertaining and was an inspiration to me about how much you could do in a small space in the city. She says her neighbors in Oakland, CA, many of whom were asian or hispanic immigrants thought it was normal for her to keep a few chickens and a garden even though they were in the city. I don’t know what they thought when she started keeping pigs though!!
It is not a phenomenon that is restricted to what we might think of as being poor or developing regions either. For instance, my wife and I spent part of our honeymoon in Slovenia (central europe). It seemed to me that most yards had a couple little fruit trees, some vegetables, and often some chickens. Chickens and apples was a combo I remember seeing in many locations. I’m sure many of us white americans can remember our grandparents or greatgrandparents being into growing food. My grandmother’s family emigrated from Italy, and they definitely had a tradition of growing vegetables on a small scale, even if it was difficult to put into practice in tenements in Brooklyn.
So anyway, there is my tenuous theory supported by thin data on why we might see a disproportionate representation in our ranks of those influenced by asian culture…
I am usually behind the camera but my hubby took the picture this time. This is from a few years ago.
