Speaker 1: So in the middle of March, with COVID pandemic and
Speaker 1: full swing in New York City, I started to get
Speaker 1: nervous about I was nervou spent a lot of things.
Speaker 1: I was nervous about my restaurant's closing. I was nervous
Speaker 1: about the health of myself and my family, and and
Speaker 1: what my kids were going to do in terms of school,
Speaker 1: and and But I also, and maybe because I spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time of thinking about the food system,
Speaker 1: I kind of started, you know, wondering whether or not
Speaker 1: our entire food system was going to come to a halt,
Speaker 1: whether farmers would continue to grow crops, whether people farm
Speaker 1: hands were gonna get out there and pick and process food,
Speaker 1: whether or not the distribution channels to get that food
Speaker 1: into the supermarket was going to break down. What was
Speaker 1: going to happen if the entire system came to a halt.
Speaker 1: My thoughts turned towards my garden in my home. I
Speaker 1: have a small little house in North farkh Long Island,
Speaker 1: and I started gardening about six seven years ago, and
Speaker 1: I started thinking, I gotta get out there, I gotta
Speaker 1: start planting team because I may have to use this
Speaker 1: garden to survive and feed my family. In fact, I
Speaker 1: remember having this conversation with with my wife and because
Speaker 1: we were talking about, right, let's figure out what's essential
Speaker 1: in terms of going forward for the next couple of months.
Speaker 1: And I said, I gotta go out in the garden,
Speaker 1: and yes, I cook from my garden, so that's also enjoyable.
Speaker 1: And I turned and said, no, this isn't about enjoying something.
Speaker 1: This is about survival. I think we may need this
Speaker 1: food to few of our family. My privilege here is
Speaker 1: showing because I had the property and I had a garden.
Speaker 1: What if you don't. What if you are going through
Speaker 1: the same struggles, and maybe you have a small little
Speaker 1: bit of land in your backyard. You've never garden before,
Speaker 1: you've never thought about gardening before, where do you start?
Speaker 1: A lot of people started with those seed companies. People
Speaker 1: started gardening, and they started turning to the soil to
Speaker 1: take back that sovereignty. And so so for this episode,
Speaker 1: we're going to explore this people who are new to
Speaker 1: gardening and a whole system of and years of not
Speaker 1: being able to farm for their communities and what they're
Speaker 1: doing to take back that food sovereignty. Let's jump in
Speaker 1: so during this time, when people started to grow their
Speaker 1: COVID gardens, they turned to seed companies. That's where it
Speaker 1: all begins. You had these websites crashed. In fact, Burpies
Speaker 1: I think sold more seeds in March than any month
Speaker 1: in their hundred forty four year history. Food gardening is
Speaker 1: up quite a bit. People want to One local plant
Speaker 1: shop is seeing demand rise. Johnny's Seeds saw sales jump
Speaker 1: two hundred and sevent the week after COVID was declared
Speaker 1: a national emergency in mid Mark. Victory gardens played a
Speaker 1: big role on the home front during the dark days
Speaker 1: of World War Two. They're back. So we're just gonna
Speaker 1: check in and uh see if people are actually um
Speaker 1: planting more gardens and um buying way more seeds than
Speaker 1: they need, kind of freaking out about the food supply
Speaker 1: in general. Let's hear from journalists Morgan Levy who talked
Speaker 1: to farmers and business owners in Montana about the pandemics
Speaker 1: effect on their business. Um so so, Morgan, who did
Speaker 1: you an interview from Triple Divide Seed co Op. I
Speaker 1: talked to Leslie Klein, who was the manager or who
Speaker 1: is the manager of Triple Divide Organic Seed co Op
Speaker 1: and I interviewed her at their seeds storage room, so
Speaker 1: it was pretty quiet room. That wasn't great background audio
Speaker 1: to hear see. Those seeds don't make a whole of them.
Speaker 1: They don't. But I did ask her to read the
Speaker 1: names of some of these seed packets because they are
Speaker 1: sort of beautifully named and it it sounded like poetry
Speaker 1: as she was reading them. Um. But yeah, Leslie and
Speaker 1: I had a great conversation about the uh crazy popularity
Speaker 1: of organic seeds this year. Yeah you know, I didn't.
Speaker 1: I didn't recognize the name. But when you told me
Speaker 1: about the crazy names and I now I know you're
Speaker 1: talking about. Um I I kind of, you know, started
Speaker 1: gardening a few years back, and I kind of joke
Speaker 1: around that, uh I started reading seed catalogs like I
Speaker 1: used to look at Playboy. I guess when I was
Speaker 1: sixteen or so. Names, well the names in the ritals,
Speaker 1: and um, you know, you realize that there's so many
Speaker 1: possibilities and so what what what what did you learn? What? What? What?
Speaker 1: What is going on? Is I know that you know
Speaker 1: a couple of seed companies like Johnny's and Baker Creek,
Speaker 1: they actually had a shut down for a period of time. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what did you learn? So Triple Divide is a
Speaker 1: smaller seed co op. They're not one of the really
Speaker 1: big ones, and they are a small company, but they
Speaker 1: are growing consistently every year. However, usually most of their
Speaker 1: sales come from racks that are in retail stores. Um.
Speaker 1: But when COVID hit and in Montana we really shut
Speaker 1: down at the end of March, there online sales skyrocketed.
Speaker 1: I think in March last year they had eleven online orders.
Speaker 1: This year they had eighty, and most of them came
Speaker 1: in the last two weeks of March. And uh, it
Speaker 1: was an overwhelming amount of growth, so much so that
Speaker 1: Leslie said she had to shut down the website a
Speaker 1: couple of times, and then in mid May they actually
Speaker 1: shut down the website for the summer um. And that
Speaker 1: was because Leslie is a farmer herself, she is, you know, busy,
Speaker 1: and it was it was overwhelming, and because of COVID,
Speaker 1: she had to be doing the fulfilling most of these
Speaker 1: orders on her own. She couldn't have a lot of
Speaker 1: people in there together. Um. But it was such an
Speaker 1: overwhelming um number of sales that even they ran out
Speaker 1: of seed packets even because across the country, organic seed
Speaker 1: companies were you know, having these explosive sales, and the
Speaker 1: seed packet company was you know, slammed, so they had
Speaker 1: to be hand labeling packets and it was I think
Speaker 1: I think she was grateful for the sales, but also
Speaker 1: overwhelmed by them, and so she is, Um, these are
Speaker 1: seeds for for gardeners, not farmers. She's not doing bulk
Speaker 1: seeds for corn and soy. They do have different amounts
Speaker 1: they sell to. I think they sell to both, but
Speaker 1: they have no way of really differentia differentiating on their
Speaker 1: in their online sales, so she just wasn't tracking who
Speaker 1: specifically she was selling to. UM. She did tell me
Speaker 1: that I think some of the bigger companies sort of
Speaker 1: stopped selling to home gardeners and just sold to bigger
Speaker 1: farmers just so they get fulfill those orders. All right.
Speaker 1: Did she know whether the increased traffic was from recent
Speaker 1: our new gardeners and UM, I'm wondering if she had
Speaker 1: a helpline for those gardeners like me that I planted
Speaker 1: I planned my you know, my peppers and they're not
Speaker 1: growing and what do I do right? Help me? Right?
Speaker 1: And she she doesn't really have a way to check,
Speaker 1: but she does know where who, where geographically people are
Speaker 1: ordering from. And these are seeds that are produced in
Speaker 1: Montana and do really well in Montana. They might do
Speaker 1: well and somewhere else in the country that has similar
Speaker 1: weather to us, but we have a really short growing season,
Speaker 1: so she would seeing people ordering different seed varietals at
Speaker 1: a different part of the country way late in the
Speaker 1: season and saying, oh, gosh, I hope they're not planting
Speaker 1: these now, and hoping they'll grow. I did talk to
Speaker 1: a woman named Genevieve Jessup Marsh who as a community
Speaker 1: outreach director of farm and educational center here in Missoula
Speaker 1: called Garden City Harvest, and they have four urban farms
Speaker 1: and they provide food for the soup kitchen and the
Speaker 1: food bank, but they also have land for community gardeners
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, they normally sell out of their
Speaker 1: community garden plots and normally they have about forty people
Speaker 1: on the wait list. This year they had a hundred
Speaker 1: people on the wait list, so they were totally overwhelmed.
Speaker 1: And the big difference though, besides that, was that, you know,
Speaker 1: every year there's some abandonment rate, right people farms are.
Speaker 1: I mean, garden plots, any kind of growing is intensive
Speaker 1: and it's hard. It takes time. People start traveling and
Speaker 1: they're saying, I don't have time for this, or they
Speaker 1: start growing things and they're just failing left and right
Speaker 1: and get frustrated and abandoned it. And she said this
Speaker 1: year they had hardly any of their plots were abandoned.
Speaker 1: That people were there all the time. It was really
Speaker 1: safe activity. People could be outside, they could tend their garden.
Speaker 1: It probably felt really good. Um, and people new gardeners
Speaker 1: were really really relying on people who had had plots
Speaker 1: for a long time. There was a big community knowledge
Speaker 1: share that was happening. People were talking about pests, talking
Speaker 1: about varietals, and helping each other out. So I think
Speaker 1: people were, you know, community gardeners were getting help from
Speaker 1: other community garden members. I think that's really where people
Speaker 1: were sharing knowledge and chatting. Yeah, yeah, that that makes sense.
Speaker 1: You know, I I know, just from my own personal experiences.
Speaker 1: You know, when pests attack, um, you know, it's it's
Speaker 1: pretty sad. I'm getting used to it now. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have, uh, this borer warm problem on my zucchini,
Speaker 1: and so when the zucchini's first come up, they look
Speaker 1: great and there's plenty of fruit, and then one day
Speaker 1: they just looked sick and they wither and I can
Speaker 1: go right to the stock and pick it up, crack
Speaker 1: in half, and there's that worm sitting right in the
Speaker 1: middle of the stock. And I can't seem to get
Speaker 1: rid of them. I don't know how to get rid
Speaker 1: of them. Um. I had a white fly problem. I
Speaker 1: had all kinds of problems this year. Um. The other
Speaker 1: thing that a lot of I think first garden, like,
Speaker 1: my first season was amazing and I planted about eighteen
Speaker 1: years so five by seven boxes and it was all
Speaker 1: irrigated and it was all ready to go and it
Speaker 1: was amazing. And someone, you know, it's second third year
Speaker 1: wasn't as good. And someone said, well, in the first year,
Speaker 1: the bugs really haven't found you yet, and they will. Um,
Speaker 1: and uh they will, Yeah, they'll find you. Um. But UM,
Speaker 1: it's you're right, it is. It is tough, you know.
Speaker 1: It's I have to spend at least two hours a day. Um,
Speaker 1: are the weeds just right now and I haven't been um,
Speaker 1: And so the weeds just U just overcome everything and
Speaker 1: you end up you know, and I think also people
Speaker 1: don't realize that when things serve, you know, So if
Speaker 1: you plant I don't know, peas, and you have a
Speaker 1: great spring of peas, you gotta cut them down and
Speaker 1: get rid of them. I don't kind of don't triple
Speaker 1: to go away work. It's it's it's a lot of
Speaker 1: hard work and labor and then you get you know,
Speaker 1: of course you go down the rabbit hole hall of
Speaker 1: buying tools. Right. It's labor intensive and expensive and you
Speaker 1: can spend a lot of time. And in Montana we
Speaker 1: have a really short growing season. I think our average
Speaker 1: last frost state is mid May, so you really have
Speaker 1: to get the timing right in order to you have
Speaker 1: a small window of planting and you have a small
Speaker 1: window of growing um and so it's easy to miss that.
Speaker 1: And you know, I think in June we were having
Speaker 1: four day degree nights, so you need to pull that
Speaker 1: tarp out and cover your tomato plants. And last week
Speaker 1: we had kale. So it's easy to go wrong really quickly,
Speaker 1: and I can see it being frustrating. Um. You know,
Speaker 1: this woman Gendervieve I spoke with. They garden City Harvest
Speaker 1: provides a lot of educational materials and usually that's all
Speaker 1: done in person, but this year they transition to online.
Speaker 1: But they were relying on their local community to sort
Speaker 1: of spread knowledge. And the other thing I think most
Speaker 1: people that that when they they're new to gardening um,
Speaker 1: when when harvest time comes for a particular crop, there's
Speaker 1: a lot of it. It's not like you get one
Speaker 1: or two you know, you know a couple of zucchini,
Speaker 1: A lot of zucchini, are you? A lot of green
Speaker 1: beans are and so you have to figure out what
Speaker 1: to do with it, and you can obviously eat, But
Speaker 1: then I find myself canning a lot um. And so
Speaker 1: in your experience, are they giving these cooks where they
Speaker 1: getting lessons on canning as well and preserving the harvest? Yeah,
Speaker 1: So Garden City Harvest provides a lot of materials, especially
Speaker 1: on um preserving your food because this is what they
Speaker 1: don't want, right So Garden City Harvest also they have
Speaker 1: a c S A program that they have thrown a
Speaker 1: lot of money into for the past few years to
Speaker 1: try to get people to to buy these c s
Speaker 1: a s. But c s a s are tricky and
Speaker 1: that it's kind of a lot of money upfront for
Speaker 1: some people, um, and then you're not necessarily getting to
Speaker 1: pick the produce you're getting, and it can be a
Speaker 1: lot of produce, so these can be sort of overwhelming
Speaker 1: things for people. And they've never sold out of them
Speaker 1: before except for this year. This year they sold out
Speaker 1: of it for the first time, and it's wildly popular.
Speaker 1: They have even a wait list, And it was really
Speaker 1: just because people wanted to take control over where they
Speaker 1: were getting their food from, and they I think in
Speaker 1: a crisis, people felt like they couldn't rely on the
Speaker 1: grocery store, so they went this way. But with that,
Speaker 1: you know, there's a lot of produce, and so you know,
Speaker 1: they're trying to provide a lot of lessons to people.
Speaker 1: How you can preserve your food so you don't just
Speaker 1: end up with a lot of wilted and rotten vegetables.
Speaker 1: How can you make this food last longer. I found
Speaker 1: the same. Not only was it difficult getting seas, I
Speaker 1: had a heart on getting plants because I don't do
Speaker 1: my own starts. And there's an organic farm, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple miles from my house where I purchased a
Speaker 1: lot of plants, you know, and so I couldn't get
Speaker 1: you know, certain peppers that I was looking for that
Speaker 1: I know I got the last couple of years, cucumbers.
Speaker 1: I could get cucumbers, UM, I couldn't find parsley. UM.
Speaker 1: There were like certain things. Why did why sir? Run on?
Speaker 1: You know? And partially I spoke with a man named
Speaker 1: Josh Slotnik, who is the owner of a farm called
Speaker 1: Clark Pork Organics, And he's also a county commissioner in Missoula.
Speaker 1: And uh, Clark Pork Organics typically sells to restaurants. UM
Speaker 1: and COVID hit really during our planting season in Missoula. UM,
Speaker 1: so farmers weren't having to plow under vegetables, but they
Speaker 1: were having to plan ahead and say, oh, should I
Speaker 1: should I plant as I typically would to sell to restaurants,
Speaker 1: or should I change my whole operation and plan to
Speaker 1: sell directly to consumers. And what Clark Fork Organics did
Speaker 1: was they had a farm stand that they never really
Speaker 1: paid a lot of attention to, and this year they
Speaker 1: sort of doubled down on it. And one of the
Speaker 1: big sellers for them early in the season was bedding plants.
Speaker 1: Because because people all had their their own gardens and
Speaker 1: community garden was way up and all these new gardeners
Speaker 1: and home gardeners, and they were they were actually, um,
Speaker 1: you know, making some money off of these bedding plants,
Speaker 1: which they typically wouldn't have been selling. Their herbs were
Speaker 1: really popular and people were just really excited to have
Speaker 1: access to bedding plants. I was a first time gardener
Speaker 1: myself this year, and I was really all about my
Speaker 1: tail and my egg plant. And the second I turned
Speaker 1: planted outside, they died. And I was like, well, no,
Speaker 1: this is citizen Chef and I'm Tomic Colichio and we
Speaker 1: are talking about homegrown. That's right, homegrown food. Victory gardens
Speaker 1: are COVID gardens or community gardens, whatever you call them.
Speaker 1: There's been a huge resurgence in people growing their own food.
Speaker 1: So this is your first year, Yeah, awesome, Um, why
Speaker 1: did you start planning? So I started planning really because
Speaker 1: I actually have the land. This year. I own a
Speaker 1: house for the first time and have a yard. We
Speaker 1: had one raised bed, but we built two more. Um.
Speaker 1: But then I think it's spent a lot of time
Speaker 1: there because I was just spending a lot of time
Speaker 1: in my house and at my house, and it was
Speaker 1: a great way to be outside. I wasn't super concerned
Speaker 1: about relying on the garden two feed myself, but I
Speaker 1: was really upset when things failed. It's really hard. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's hard to do. I say the same thing
Speaker 1: every year too. And I had help. When I first started.
Speaker 1: There was a restaurant that I was involved in on
Speaker 1: the south Fork of Long Island Um and we had
Speaker 1: an acre um that we were planting in ground, and
Speaker 1: so I had that farmer helped me out. He had
Speaker 1: a much better handle on when to plant, how much
Speaker 1: to plant. But it's it's you know, I agree, when
Speaker 1: you lose something like I have melons growing right now,
Speaker 1: and you have to keep them on the vine is
Speaker 1: as long as possible to ripen up. And they get
Speaker 1: to the point where you're just ready pick and you
Speaker 1: see the stem starting to dry out, and you'll let
Speaker 1: them go another night and the bugs get to them,
Speaker 1: and it's like it curse these bugs. Yeah, it's tough.
Speaker 1: It's that happens. It is, And I know a lot
Speaker 1: of people who are first time gardeners in Missoula, and
Speaker 1: we're all sort of in it together a little bit.
Speaker 1: And I think it was like, oh gosh, I really
Speaker 1: overplanted my greens, and now I'm drowning in greens, and
Speaker 1: now I can't give them away to anyone. So the greens,
Speaker 1: if you harvest them right, just rough, rough, chop, blanche
Speaker 1: them in boiling water, shock mc cool water. Put him
Speaker 1: in his zip block bag and freeze them. You're fine.
Speaker 1: I'd heard this and I did do it, so we'll see. Okay, good,
Speaker 1: But you know, but now there's still overwhelming amounts of green.
Speaker 1: I need to do another I actually made. I made
Speaker 1: a lot of rugle a pesto at one point, which
Speaker 1: you know, it seems great, but now I'm going to
Speaker 1: be eating on everything for the next six months. Um.
Speaker 1: Do you compost, it's not a total waste. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: we get our compost picked up by an organization in Missoula. Um,
Speaker 1: we don't have our own compost pile because I live
Speaker 1: in a canyon and there are black bears. Uh. So
Speaker 1: you really want to limit uh the amount of rotting
Speaker 1: food on your problems? Yeah, I imagine you do. I
Speaker 1: don't have that problem. We have. We have raccoons. The
Speaker 1: people that I knew who were either expanding or garden
Speaker 1: regarding for the first time, and this happened in New York.
Speaker 1: It was you know, March April, UM, and so people
Speaker 1: just really thought that the food system was going to
Speaker 1: gonna completely fall apart, and that's what they're They were
Speaker 1: just concerned they weren't able to get fresh food, and
Speaker 1: so so many people started gardening. And I think other
Speaker 1: people also started realizing, well, yeah, it didn't fail and
Speaker 1: you can't get produced. But still they realized that this
Speaker 1: is a great opportunity to get outside, um, do something new.
Speaker 1: And you know, at the same time, I think just
Speaker 1: the act of digging around in the dirt, um it
Speaker 1: does something for your mental health. That's just being in
Speaker 1: the in the dirt, get in your hands in the soil,
Speaker 1: has a way of ground you I know did for
Speaker 1: me when I first started. UM My wife would always
Speaker 1: say she could tell the difference when I was out
Speaker 1: in the garden. You know, at the end of the day, Um,
Speaker 1: the little edge was taken off. I think it's about
Speaker 1: caring for something other than yourself too, especially during a
Speaker 1: time of a lot of anxiety. You know, Plants are
Speaker 1: a fun thing to at least for me, it was
Speaker 1: really it was really fun to you know, to take
Speaker 1: care of them and try to figure out what they
Speaker 1: needed and take some of the the focus off myself
Speaker 1: and my own exact anxiety. All right, listen, great talking
Speaker 1: to you, and uh, I'll get back to your garden.
Speaker 1: My grandfather he used to I guess he was an
Speaker 1: urban gardener where when we grew up, and he used
Speaker 1: to grow in five gallon buckets and just mostly tomatoes
Speaker 1: and zucchini, some peppers, and mostly summer crops. So I
Speaker 1: was interested, but I had no idea how much work
Speaker 1: it is going to take and how often crops fail.
Speaker 1: It's not a simple thing to start growing your own food.
Speaker 1: But one thing I gotta say it does is you
Speaker 1: get a real sense of accomplishment. It's somewhat therapeutic in
Speaker 1: a way. When I get out there in the morning,
Speaker 1: especially five time, where I'm not rushing, and I have
Speaker 1: a good you know, hour and a half even two
Speaker 1: hours earlier morning sist o'clock and I'm morning before it
Speaker 1: gets hot, and you're in there digg into the soil,
Speaker 1: and even if you're weeding, it's just a good start
Speaker 1: of the day. And you feel at the end of
Speaker 1: the day when you're harvesting and then you're cooking and
Speaker 1: putting food on the table for your family. There's a
Speaker 1: real sort of sense of accomplishment and and I think
Speaker 1: we all needed that's into the college because when you're
Speaker 1: dealing with a pandemic that you can't you have no
Speaker 1: control over other than staying inside wearing a mask, but
Speaker 1: you really have no control over it. Where family members
Speaker 1: I haven't seen. I haven't seen my mother since the pandemic.
Speaker 1: This is one area where you think you can. You
Speaker 1: have some control over your life. You're growing your own food.
Speaker 1: When you think about that, that's that is the ultimate
Speaker 1: sense of control. You have complete control over what you're growing,
Speaker 1: what you're eating, and how you're growing. Yet, and so
Speaker 1: when you think about the unknown, this sort of COVID unknown,
Speaker 1: can kids go back to school, will things get back
Speaker 1: to normal? How long are we going to have to
Speaker 1: go through social distancing? All these unknowns create anxiety. And
Speaker 1: I think that one time I don't feel that anxiety,
Speaker 1: it is when I'm in my garden. So this is
Speaker 1: our last episode of Citizens Chef in season one, and
Speaker 1: I thought this would be a really good way to
Speaker 1: end our our season, a good way to really illustrate
Speaker 1: that change when people are growing food and creating a
Speaker 1: change for themselves. COVID nineteen changed the course of our
Speaker 1: first season. The issues we originally wanted to talk about
Speaker 1: had a new public health lens we couldn't ignore. But
Speaker 1: we're going to continue to dig up these new stories
Speaker 1: and look at them through a food lens and UH
Speaker 1: when we return next season, we hope to hear from
Speaker 1: more people around the country and journalists with their ears
Speaker 1: to the ground. I want to thank everyone for listening
Speaker 1: and tuning in, and a very special thanks to our guests,
Speaker 1: producer and novice gardner Morgan Levy, and as always, a
Speaker 1: big shout out to a place at the table. Citizen
Speaker 1: Chef is a production of iHeart Media. Christopher hauci Otis
Speaker 1: is our executive producer, Jescelyn Shields is our researcher, and
Speaker 1: Garielle Collins as our producer. We'll see you back in
Speaker 1: season two.