May 15, 2026 • 42 mins
Samantha and Anney dig into the history of women and gardening, and discuss what it would take to grow a more sustainable food system.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Okay, this is Annie and Smitha and welcome to stuff.
Never told you apprecsion to buy her radio, and.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to a new episode. And because I am on
my kick about gardening. And by the way, quick update
my tomato plants. They're not doing great any No one
of them look really bad. I'm very sad about the situation.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I am too because I wanted some of those tomatoes.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Don't get me wrong. I've got four more and they're okay,
but this one failure is really starting to hurt my feelings.
And I will say though, my peppers look really good.
The herbs are looking nice. I got a lot of
basil this year. We got different variations, by the way.
I have some Thai basil, some purple basil, some lemon basil, okay,
(00:58):
and then the radio basil. Yeah basil. So at the
very least I would have basil. I don't know. I'm
gonna put it in ice cream and such, put it
in on like strawberries and like whipped cream. It's my
favorite thing. And I've discovered I think we have boys
and berries in our backyard, not blackberries because they're not
as big. And I was like, oh, but I have
to fight the animals and and bugs for these, so
(01:22):
like the squirrels and the birds, so I don't get
a lot same thing with our faces, essentially like they
went out because they eat parts of it, and you
know you can't eat parts of it. Yeah, Dan animals anyway,
But with that, I thought we would take a look
at gardening and women, and this is a very very
(01:44):
condensed episode with that, So just think of this as
an introduction to a very big episode that I will
not make a multi part episode because I haven't thought
of it, although I could. I think we are going
to come back with later subjects about things because they
these conversations, especially when it comes to gardening, when it
(02:04):
comes to growing, cultivating, and using lands, is very intersectional,
is very political, and it's a lot of activism and empowerment.
So there's a lot of conversation we can have about that.
We can talk about the suffragettes and the gardening club.
I do not talk about gardening club in this episode,
So if you are a part of one, or if
you wanted me to get into it, not in this one.
(02:24):
We've probably come back because there's a long history of
garden clubs and what that kind of represent and how
affluent it was and it is still but also with that,
how it turned into an empowerment thing. So that's the
caveat We are focusing a little specific on these conversations
because again I'm really caught up in vegetables right now
(02:46):
and herbs edible things. Although I've got some really pretty
wild roses. One died that I was already here at
the house. I'm very unhappy about the situation and I
don't know what's happening this year. And then we have
some that my partner's mother sent for us to have,
so she gives us little starters and they were really
(03:08):
pretty purple flowers and we have some lilies as well,
so a lot of good stuff. But with that, I
focus a little more on vegetable so I feel like
if I can eat it, that's my reward. It's a reward,
and I need that reward, even though the flowers are pretty.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Oh yeah, and there's just something about like growing something
and then getting to eat it.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I don't know, making a master like level of a
caprici salad. Yes, yeah, that's one of my favorite things. Anyway,
I'm apparently hungry going moving on, so guardling here, we're
going to specifically again talk about guarding and not farming,
which is not true. We are going to talk a
little bit about farming, but we're not going to go
in depth because when it comes to farming, there's a
(03:48):
lot of politics behind that as well that we're not
necessarily going into. Although the differences are small in my note,
it comes down to really size, quantity, and production. So
that's why I'm saying gardening instead of farming, because we
are talking more about the small scales. Even though when
we talk about some of the gardening, because we are
going to mention about indigenous women and the enslaved peoples
(04:10):
and what they brought to the US specifically and how
they really influenced gardening today, this does obviously lead to
actual farming and agriculture and productions. But again, like I said,
we're just kind of staying away from that. We are
going to come back and have a bigger conversation about
farming and women and farming. I do believe Any just
(04:30):
told me that there is an episode about farmer Jane
and their history. But I want to talk a little more,
especially with recent stuff coming out also about sustainability and
all of that. Because it's a big So we'll go
back to that at a later time, but again today
we'll stick to gardening. And USDA seem to qualify farms
(04:52):
by this definition any place from which one thousand dollars
or more of agricultural products were produced and sold. So
obviously I'm not gonna make a thousand dollars off my
small four by six feet garden.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
You never know one day.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Maybe Also included in farming are animals, although some argue
those who say have gardens may also have some chickens
or goats roaming about as well. I would like some
highland cows. Please, somebody give me some highland cows. Really,
they're so cute. I know there could be smelly, but
(05:30):
also you could bathe them. Apparently there's places that you
can go to where you can bathe and groom highland cows.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Okay, how do you think Peaches would react to a
highland cow?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
She would be scared of them, so that's the good news.
So she wouldn't invess with them.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Okay, Peaches, that's Samantha's dog. I always feel like people
know this, but just to me.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Just because Peaches will go after smaller animals. But the
first time that they like, a cat has smacked her
in the face and she was like, oh, I'm afraid
for all cats. Now, okay, so you know it's according
to how tough they are. Again, go back to so,
for the sake of this very simplified definition, we are
stinking with just gardens for the most parts, with a
(06:10):
little conversation about how agriculture really came to play in
the US. So and for the most part we are
talking about all kinds including veggie, fruits, flowers, herbs, and
so much more. A little less flowers, although it is
going to be like in this conversation because they do
talk about how different gardens have both and how they
(06:32):
really embrace that life. So again this is a simplified
version because we do eventually want to come back to
the whole women and farming and garden clubs and as such,
because again that's a lot and also a food preservation
I think we need to come and talk about that
we kind of had mentioned about holding a showy community
(06:52):
and how they really have been preserving their crops and
going back to old school crops that are no longer available.
I loved this so like preservation, food preservation, plant preservation
all of that. I think it's important and we would
definitely want to come back and have a bigger conversations
about that, hoping to have some guests on that eventually,
because we know people do.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
My friend doctor Julius Skinner, Yes, so.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
We gotta figure out how to get those done. But
all that to say is we are well be talking
about this is very small, low key conversation. So let's
talk about the history of the garden. And this is
thanks to Vetrogarden dot com and the Celticfarm dot com
for giving some of this research as well as a Smithsonian.
We had some timelines that I could look through with
(07:38):
the research about the history of gardening and women in gardening.
So gardening has been around since the beginning of time,
let's just be real honest, linking it to human survival
and even spirituality. It was in every part of the world,
found in Mesopotamia, China and beyond, there were gardens that
provided food, medicine, and guidance. It could be a place
(07:58):
of balance and calm, or even a place of honor
and status. And it was during this time that in
places like Mesopotamia, women were most likely given the responsibility
to cultivate and care for these gardens with the goddess
of fertility in agriculture behind them. Isis they managed the
areas and make sure the community had all they needed
through these harvests. And we also know even today we
(08:20):
talk about foods as they may help in specific things.
Whether it's to help your sex life, whether it is
to help your hormones, whether it's to help you have
good reproductive things. All those things apply, and that's been
since the beginning of time in things like Mesopotamia, with
isis being like, I'll bless you with these things, and
this is for fertility type of conversation. It would soon
(08:43):
lead up to places of worship and dedication. Monasteries had
gardens sanctioned off to help maintain the villages or communities nearby.
They were kind of responsible for helping with that. Kingdoms
and royal areas had enclosed gardens known as hortis conclusives,
which simple purity and protection, and in convents, many of
the nuns were responsible in keeping up with the produce
(09:05):
and plants that were in their gardens, and these nuns
were known as some of the first horticulturalists in history.
So I thought that was interesting. However, gardens weren't just
at convents and monasteries, but outside of little you know,
little homes and cottages that are still around today. So
women made cottage gardens popular with the blending of different veggies, fruits,
(09:29):
and herbs and flowers, not only for their practical use,
but the esthetics, with the bright colors and blooms surrounding
a quaint home. It has become a picturesque symbol of
the perfect home. So you know what I'm talking about.
That white picket fence with a trellis with all of
the flowers and even grapes, and the little veggies on the
side like they This became a thing around this time,
(09:49):
so very lovely to see. Also, I have a feeling
you had to have money for that, But you know.
Moving on, and as the timeline continues, we see a
little competition rising in the world of gardening. And this
is again more I think, with the flower gardens that
we were talking about, first France and Italy having to
show off with their fountains and perfectly trimmed hedges and
(10:13):
overly elaborate statues. Then it would spread onto the English gardens,
which they added groves of trees, ponds like I think
they had they said specific snakelike shaped rivers or water
properties to add to it. And then the Victorian style
that they decide would be easier with some little technology
(10:37):
added to it and its way of creating their gardens.
So with the new advancements we see the additions of
greenhouses and conservatories add to the landscape. I feel like
when I see greenhouses, especially nice ones, I'm like, yeah, you're.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Rich, rich, Yeah, listen. I could go into a whole
thing about pineapples and what they represented in the greenhouses,
but oh, yes, ahead, I love it.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
What did they represent.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Well, because pineapples were so hard to get outside of
where they grew, if you could afford to have a
pineapple greenhouse, and Europe particularly, it did represent like, oh,
this person has a lot of money. And people used
(11:21):
to rent pineapples if they couldn't have a greenhouse to
show off how much money they had but they didn't
have it, but they would rent pineapples and bring them
to parties and just carry them around.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Just one ate them to just carry them around.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
No, but that's why, like sometimes you'll see like the
pineapple has been used as the kind of sign of
good luck fortune. You'll see it in a lot of
homes and on mailboxes. I see it. But yeah, it
was a it was a flex for Europeans. I don't
(12:00):
want to outside of that, not necessarily, but for Europeans who.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, well again with the Victorian age, it was they
would add to that whole allure with exotic plants. They
were like, oh, the more exotic the plants. They would
bring things in to show off how much they had. Again,
this can be controversial on so many levels, especially when
we talk about sustainability, native plants and all of that,
and also colonization. Yeah, but again that's going to be
(12:27):
pinned for another episode. We're trying to make this one light, y'all,
all the towards the end it becomes less light.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So it always happens, you can't.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Again, when we talk about farming and gardening, it is political.
It does become a little pin and like in every
bit of conversation, especially when we talk about how the
land is used, talk about colonization and who deserves and
what is right, so who deserves food essentially, and as
(13:04):
during this time we had the botanists and the designers
really leading the way, women like Jane Colden came through
and cataloging as many plants. She became the first American
woman botanist in seventeen fifty and was the first to
use the new system created by Swedish botanists Linnaeus to
help identify the different plants. And in the nineteenth century,
women really came to the forefront of gardening. Books like
(13:26):
The Ladies Flower Garden written by Jane Louden really pushed
more women to jump into the gardening world. We have
past feminist first highlights in az Mehea, who became one
of the first Mexican American botanists to travel around Americas.
Go listen to that episode. Blue put it up as
a classic while ago, great episode. And here we also
have Gercher Jekyl, a renowned garden designer who really changed
(13:49):
the style of the English garden. She used seasonal changes
as an influence in her design as well as understood
the coordinating of color and texture into the garden. It
was credited with designing over four hundred gardens in her time,
so she was pretty big. She was a big wig.
I'm sure she wore wigs. And soon comes the war
garden or better known as Victory gardens, so the history
(14:13):
of Victory gardens really became a legend in itself. These
gardens first started popping up around the First World War.
The American government at the time called on the people
to start taking up the self sustaining practice of gardening
as possible and actual food shortages could affect the country,
of course, with an underlying manipulation of calling it patriotic duty.
(14:34):
There was a lot of propaganda with this, a lot
of propaganda, and it worked. The people joined the movement
by turning their open lands into vegetable gardens, the front yards,
the schools, and the community open areas. And women were
the focal point in this movement because you know, the
men were at war, so women had to take up
the lag and women did a great job. But moving on,
(14:55):
Author Cecilia Goudi Wygant and I really hope I said
her name right. If I didn't, I apologize, wrote this
about that era in her article Women's History and Gardening
for Victory on blog dot front Range dot edu. Quote.
During both World War I and World War II, the
US government targeted women in their advertising of wartime agricultural programming,
(15:16):
and women use the opportunity to put their labor, both
at home and on farms, at the forefront of natural
conversations about the imbalance and equalities of their labor and
their political voice. Their labor helped win the long movement
for suffrage, aided in carving out places and spaces for
women in education and agriculture, and ultimately provided opportunities for
women to form personal identity based on their work to
(15:39):
help others. So this really did open up World War One,
really did open up a lot of opportunities for women.
I wouldn't say it changed anything, but it did show
that women could do it. Don't get me right. It
did change things, but you know what I mean, it
was slow rolling because when the women came back, they
were like, Okay, women go book to that kitchen. Men
have got it now. So we did see things change.
(16:01):
We're going to get back to activism, gardening, and women
later in this episode, not a lot, because again, like
I said, it could be really a lot bigger, but
just a little more in conversation. But for now, we're
going to finish our conversation about the Victory Gardens. So
the background motive on how these gardens came into play
has a lot to do with politics, with a need
to support our allies across the way and ourselves. The
(16:23):
government encouraged the families to start growing their own food
and cut out things like meat and wheat as a
way to hoard the supplies from other farmers. Back to
Goudi Wiget's article, she writes, keeping the allies from starvation
became an important goal of the US involvement in the war.
Americans believe their safety depended upon a victory of their
trading partners and cultural allies. Therefore, as war loomed across Europe,
(16:46):
American political and social leaders looked for ways to send
aid to food insecure soldiers and civilians in Europe. Official
rationing programs discourage American citizens from consuming too much and
to accommodate for some of those losses of agricultural programs
encouraged Americans to produce more food at home in backyards,
window boxes, rooftops, and vacant lots. There was also a
(17:08):
big seed program that we don't get into in this
conversation that happened. There's a lot of propaganda. There's a
lot of interesting things that happened within this time. I'm
not going to get into maybe any will in a minute,
I don't know. And they made money off of this.
They made one point two billion dollars to be exact
by the end of the war, and they were able
(17:29):
to send four million tons of food to the warfront,
although the original goal was twenty million, so it wasn't
as much, but you know, some some headway. And like
a lot of the industries and jobs at the time,
women stepped up as the men again were gone to war,
and this included farming. In the UK, they were able
to successfully keep up with their farming and agriculture thanks
(17:51):
to the WLA or Women's Land Army, who were also
called the land Girls slash land Lassies.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
The land laugh.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I just had to add that because I was like,
we would oh no here land lessiek and he who
works out no anyway. They were put together to help
keep up with the needed work on the farms and
to continue to feed their communities. Of course, after the
war ended they disbanded, but thanks to World War Two
they were revived to do the same work with a
(18:22):
new generation, and by the end of World War One
they renamed their War Garden to Victory Gardens and the
tradition was picked up again during World War Two with
more encouragement from the White House and the administration even
having registrations for the gardens across the country, and they
started contest to celebrate the largest gardens and the gardens
(18:44):
who had the most harvests. So they were real bit like,
we're gonna make this fun, We're gonna make this a competition.
It really does feel like when you're in middle school
and you're like, we had to do the most of
this and you can have a pizza.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Party accelerated, reading accelerated and.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Which is back, by the way, pizza Huddond family is
doing it again. Oh yes, moving on, and they were
breaking records again from that front Range blog. Approximately ten
million victory gardens were planted in nineteen forty two, and
that number increased to twenty million in nineteen forty three.
The USDA estimated that those twenty million gardens produced ten
(19:19):
billion pounds of food and forty percent of the nation's
vegetable supply. So that's a huge amount of numbers and
I'm sure it saved a lot of people. And as
a side note, this also led to the beginning of
the practice of canning which I'm sure any you also
have a lot of information about that. Speaking of which
I know you covered these subjects in your show other show, Saver.
(19:39):
What can you tell us about Victory gardens.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
I can tell you that victory gardens had a huge
impacts on how people viewed certain foods. And we're not
going to get into this today because it's not gardening,
but it also, like certain things like eminem like World
(20:02):
War One and World War two just completely changed a
lot of our viewpoints on food. But when it comes
to victory gardens, there were some unfortunate what i'll call victims,
vegetable victims, because you would grow hardy vegetables like kale
(20:25):
or coal robbie, and there was this very patriotic push
behind it, like you've got to do it for your country,
and so people did it. But then because it you
were eating it all the time, you had these other
rations that were impacting your meals and how you can
(20:46):
make them taste. People just didn't like kale anymore. They
didn't like col robbie anymore. So that's why, like in
the nineteen nineties, kale was the number one purchaser of
kale was Pizza Hut, hey, pizza hut in one episode,
and they use it as a garnish. They didn't use
it as a food because it was viewed as like,
(21:07):
and they kind of hate that we do this, but
we do as humans. It was viewed as a food
for people who didn't have a lot of money. It
was viewed as like, oh, you're in rationing, you're eating kale.
But it was something people were passionate about, and then
it had that lasting impact on the certain foods that
(21:28):
were being grown, right, yes, skilled back in, well it
kale is back in, but it took It was that
kind of clipical thing of people being like, oh no,
not Victory Garden kale. And then people were like, wait
a minute, let's think about this kale. Do we have
just have it as a garnish a pizza that I
(21:49):
don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
I really didn't know it was edible, because I'm very
confused about the situation. It's not in one of those
brown container cans where you yes, like cucumbers for your salad. Interestingly, yeah,
so I did read that after the Victory Garden, after
the World War, after the Great Depression, people stopped gardening
(22:12):
because they were so scarred and traumatized by the Depression,
the Great Depression, and doing those things just felt like
reliving that era. Yeah, which I find interesting because it
like it makes a lot of sense when you don't
understand what it is and if you don't have the
variety the ability to make food taste different. So if
(22:34):
you don't have butter, which I'm sure that was like ration,
like nobody's business, you don't have the seasonings and all
of that, it makes it makes a giant change. And
if you're not eating meat, which makes a lot of
the vegetables tastes great. Sorry vegetarians and beacons. But like
you know, one of my favorite things is doing like
beef stock or like chicken stock to block choi and
(22:55):
I make sure you're like with lots of garlic. But like,
if you don't have that.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And the US government did try really hard, this is
a whole rabbit hole. You can go down listeners if
you want to. But they were like, no, Cole Robbie's great,
here's all ways you cook it. So they would release
like these pamphlets yes that were just like please eat
(23:21):
it and here are the ways you can cook it.
But yeah, if you don't have the ingredients to make
it good or honestly, sometimes if your soil isn't good
or whatever it is, and you've got kind of a
wilty kale, nobody wants a wilty kale.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, sure, wilted kell people eat that anyway. No, but
it is interesting to see the effects of that because
it was a lot of like community pride. But then
it lasted a lot longer than they expected. The need
was a lot longer than they expected. The government made
a lot of money on rationing people in an odd way,
(24:01):
like one point two billion dollars to send off. It
seems suspect in that, especially during that time. And again,
this is an interesting conversation today because it's kind of
coming back and people are talking about the needs to
have more of it. We're gonna talk about that a
little bit more later. Part of the reason I started
gardening is kind of being motivated about what happens if
(24:22):
we are in the apocalypse, So that is that whole
level survival. Oh and I was gonna ask you, what
do you know about canning? Because if we don't, we're
not It's not about gardening. But it is interesting because
my like it's a very southern thing to do to me.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
I have a whole book right here that just shows Samantha,
I know a lot about canning through the work of
what I've done on Safer. Napoleon he's really the one
that that little guy, Yeah, because again we're talking about wars.
Wars been such a push in finding ways to get
(25:01):
food to soldiers, and so Napoleon like he listed a
reward for whoever could figure out a better canning system
a way to preserve food to send to soldiers during
the French Wars, the Napoleonic course, and I think it
(25:24):
was Nicholas Upier he figured it out. And it's obviously
such a big thing because if you can make food
last longer, especially before refrigeration, right, that was a big deal.
That was a huge deal. I've personally never done it,
and I'm kind of terrified of it. My friend I
mentioned doctor Julia Skinner. She's told me it's not as
(25:46):
scary as I'm making it out to be.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
You're afraid of the popping.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
I'm afraid. I've got a lot of fears on this sleep.
But I do know it's a big I have friends
from the South who make like scuppernog jam or like
they'll can Yeah, they'll do specific preserves or something that
(26:10):
do feel very Southern to me.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, Like I just remember jars and jars of green beans. Yeah,
that would be set aside because I was one of
the biggest crops in the South. Here. It is those
green beans, and I love good fresh green bean. So
I loved seeing that okra would be jarred. That was
not my favorite because if it didn't eat it took
(26:33):
me a while to like okra texture. I will say
my partner has scared me because he bought a giant
box of cans, like the glass Mason jars, and I'm like,
are we about to start canning? We probably need to,
but that means I have to learn something that I'm
not gonna be real good at. I have a book
I can get I might be calling you, But I
find that stuff interesting because it is talking about preservation
(26:55):
of food and keeping those And that's the reason they
brought canning was because they were growing such a substantial
amount of vegetables that you can't keep forever, so they're like,
how do we preserve these? So yeah, this gardening movement
really opened up the world to grow and cultivate more
of course, like I said, there was a moment of like, yeah,
we're not doing that anymore. We're not in the Great Depression.
(27:15):
No thank you. But it did bring into mind like, oh,
that we can do it. It actually is possible. It's
not as difficult. It's not a fun thing. If you
lived in the direct Great Depression. I know, people have
like habits that they had formed that it was hard
to let go of. Like I remember my great grandmother
saving all these types of things that you don't need
to You don't need to do that anymore. But because
of the Great Depression, they really learned to like stretch
(27:38):
out their dollar rightly. So but with that, as that
hadn't passed, people started to come back to gardening and
be like, Okay, this may be a sustainable thing. This
is interesting. And also with climate change, they really took
on gardening as a conversation piece. They had gardening into
schools to teach children about responsibility about nature, and they
(27:58):
also opened up urban community gardens. So this is kind
of like all you know that era after World War Two.
During World War two is when they started really doing
a lot more like school gardening because they're like, we're
going to take advantage of the space child labor laws.
There wasn't that really wasn't a thing much. I mean
it kind of was, but it wasn't. They're like, yeah,
make them do this, but also it's enjoyable, like get
them out in the yard, get them out and play
(28:19):
in the dirt, and this is this is something they
can learn, and that kind of kept going into the schools.
The type of gardening specifically in schools really helped students
become more interested in gardening science than nature. It also
again helped bring up issues about climate change and in
environmental advocacy within the schools. This is one of those
conversations where we were like, we talk about climate change.
(28:39):
A lot of people don't want to talk about it now.
Even then they probably like it's not a big deal.
But there were a lot of those who did get
really caught up in understanding this is a thing we
need to see what's happening, and we need to teach
the children, and gardening was way to do that. In
movements like the Victory Garden, community gardens and garden clubs.
Again something we're going to touch on later, not in
(29:00):
this episode. It really pushed for women to be in
the gardening world and with that activism in gardening. So
during times of oppression and discrimination, many communities use gardens
as a way of empowering but also of survival. There
was one conversation during World War two about the Japanese
internment camps and how they actually had their own gardens
and those internment camps not only as a way to survive,
(29:23):
not only as a way to get through the day,
but they actually did it to preserve their culture. They
would grow a lot of things that was dear to
them from Japan in order to keep their culture alive,
especially during the time that they were being persecuted. So
they really brought that as a way of activism and
continue to thrive and empower themselves at a time of oppression.
(29:44):
Also with that one clear another example would be of
the enslaved people, specifically the enslaved women, who would have
small gardens or provision gardens near where they lived, so
here they would grow food, medicinal herbs, and so much
more in order to continue to survive even though they
did not have time honestly obviously, but they knew that
(30:07):
they needed this for themselves as a way also to survive.
As a way also to preserve their culture. This is
from gardening know how dot com. These gardens were some
of the few spaces that black women felt as if
they had some aspect of autonomy. Caring for them became
a way to maintain family bonds, passed down familiar food traditions,
(30:27):
and keep healing practices alive, all under a system designed
to strip people of autonomy. And it is through this
that the US have some of the different types of
crops that we have today that originated from Africa. Judith
Karney led a lecture at UCLA talking about these specific
moments in history, which you can find her lecture at
(30:47):
International dot UCLA dot edu just look at her name.
She says this food insecurity was a brutal fact of
daily existence on plantations during the Transatlantic slave trade. Overworked
and underfed the slaved to growing their own food in
the small yards around their dwellings. In the article, they
talk about how she was using first person European accounts,
(31:09):
so they were able to get all this information drawings
and from paintings in oral history, so she was able
to get a lot of this information. So she uses
the term subsistence agriculture, and she said it was hiding
in plain sight within plantation monoculture. And she goes on,
after the abolition of slavery, this subalternate agricultural strategy evolved
into Afro descended small holder farming system widely practiced even
(31:33):
to this day. A defining feature of this alternative food
system is the number of plants that are African in province.
And she added including sorghum, millet, yams okra, the oil
palm and cola of Coca cola, and black peas. So
all these came through. Also, they apparently had brought some
plants that originated in Asia but had made its way
(31:54):
to Africa, including taro. I was like, oh, that's interesting,
but that was brought and introduced here. So they go
on to say all of these food plants were domesticated
in Africa. So we talk about a lot of things
started in Africa. It truly started in Africa. It's not
just the same. And during the civil rights movement, legends
(32:14):
like Fanning low Hammer not only was at the forefront
and advocating for women's rights and voting rights, but she
paved the way in food security during that time as well.
So this is from an ap news article about women
in gardening. A civil rights and agricultural activist, Hammer founded
the Freedom Farm Cooperative in the late nineteen sixties to
provide land, livestock, and vegetable growing resources to poor black
(32:37):
families and farmers in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The cooperative facilitated
crop sharing, self reliance, and financial independence. Participating families were
also loaned a piglet to raise the maturity, after which
they would return it for mating and give the cooperative
two pikelets from each leader to continue the program. If
you have a pig in your backyard, if you have
some vegetables in your garden, you can feed yourself and
(32:59):
your family and nobody can push you around. Hammer said
her cooperative became one of the earliest examples of modern
community gardening and a precursor of today's food justice movement.
I didn't know that about I needed a little bit
about Famielu. Hammer didn't know that part. And I love
that as a conversation because she and many others understood
(33:19):
the basic human rights really has to be here. But
with that that includes food justice, food security, which is
still not solved. No, and we couldn't finish this episode
(33:41):
without talking about the importance of the indigenous people when
it comes to cultivating and growing food. We talked a
while ago about the Juna Shoni community and their leadership
for women's movement, an overall great example of the matriarchal leadership,
so it isn't too surprising to see that they would
also be leaders and teachers to our modern standing of
agriculture and sustainability. But with that, they had the three
(34:06):
Sisters who were the sustainers of their community. But it
wasn't just a way to honor them, but a whole
intercropping system. So this legend, the spiritual practice became a
system that really helped grow more food. So this is
from the National Agricultural Library from the USA. According to
Shavanda Jacob's Young, PhD. Administrator, Agricultural Research Service, US Department
(34:30):
of Agriculture. Quote in agricultural parlance, three sisters are crops
planted together in shared space maize, beans, and squash developed
through indigenous agricultural practices. These three plants protect and nourish
each other in different ways as they grow and provide
a solid diet for their cultivators. The intercropping method of
(34:50):
planting corn beans and squashed together, commonly called the three sisters,
have been studied and described by scholars in anthropology, history, agriculture,
and food studies for many years. While this practice is
often cited in current sources as a way to improve
small gardens for individual use, its historical value lay in
larger implementations designed to nurture and sustain entire communities. So
(35:14):
this practice was successful, to say the least. Through this
they were able to have such diverse varieties and healthy
harvests that spread throughout different types of environments. But of course,
due to colonizations, many of these amazing variants were lost. Yeah,
which makes me sad because I couldn't imagine. I think
about some of the things that we missed out on
(35:34):
because of bad practices. And just in case you wanted
a definition of what intercropping is, this is what the
USDA article says. Intercropping is an all encompassing term for
the practice of growing two or more crops in close
proximity in the same row or bed, or in rows
or strips are close enough for biological interactions. Mixed cropping,
(35:57):
companion planting, relay cropping, interceding, overseating, underseeding, smother cropping, planting polycultures,
and using living mulch are all forms of intercropping. Technically,
I'm doing that with my urbs in my plants.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Thank you. Indigenous communities and they are trying to they've
been trying to research this practice as a way to
sustain food around the country. Around the world. There's also
the conversation about saving seeds and creating better seats for
the following year, creating better crops, creating variants, which is
a real good idea. Outside of the US today, Indigenous
(36:34):
women around the world have been leading food sovereignty initiatives.
Indigenous women from countries like Philippines, Indonesia, and Bangladesh have
come together to organize and teach people to not only
grow food, but also to keep their culture and way
of life. And to add to that, they were working
to teach more about self reliability, climbing solutions, and also
for communities to take part in local and territorial government
and policies, because yes, farming food is political. And with that,
(37:00):
new practices like permaculture, which we talked about a little bit,
has been something that the indigenous community have been practicing
before colonization way before when. So this is from PBS
SoCal from their article titled The Indigenous Science of Permaculture.
The foundations of parmaculture rest on two concepts, and understanding
and acceptance of the diversity of whole systems as opposed
(37:20):
to the soil degrading effects of industrial monoculture, and on
the relational, slow, yet dynamic practice of observing the land
and its many complex ecosystems. Both of these principles have
also been the core tenants of relating to and working
with nature by indigenous people the world over for millennia.
That permaculture arose as a vital response to the dangerous
(37:41):
environmental and human degradation of industrialization and its toxic farming
and agricultural practices is undeniable. So the article goes in
depth in the sciences and practices that the indigenous people
use in their farming and gardening. Permaculture they say is
fundamentally then and indigenous science. This framework is a design
system that incorporates core principles and practices from indigenous knowledge
(38:05):
around the world, assimilating it with sustainable new technology that
is making strides towards harmonizing this traditional wisdom with pioneering
modern quantum science. As such, it can restore valuable ancient
knowledge while steering our industrialized society towards a more viable
future based on regeneration and reciprocity. So what we do understand.
(38:28):
What we do know is that a lot of these
practices were kind of killed off by colonization, by war,
by the death of the indigenous people, by the conquering
and of the indigenous people because they actually would burn
down crops in order to push people out, push the
indigenous communities out, which is why all this happened. Not
only that they would actually try to steal their stuff
(38:51):
without actually researching what it was. So what once it
was helpful because we know the lore is that they
were the colonizers were giving some tips. We're taught how
to grow in this land in this area, and so
they took that. But then all the wars and they
wanted more, and the greed happened and they just kind
of burned everything down. They lost a lot in this moment,
(39:13):
and instead of finding smart, sustainable ways of getting food
and providing food, they did their own thing, which causes
a lot of havoc of where we are today, Oh man,
if only.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
So there's a lot we need to look at beyond
just the joys of gardening and the fact that we
have been at a point where Benny families are still
struggling with food securities today, and the conversation about whether
the government is going to actually provide a solution or
it's something that we're going to have to do. A
lot of this comes back to where we are today.
(39:50):
This affects us today, was just going to teach us
today and whether or not we can continue on. It
is interesting to see how we went from the beginning
of one thing to the and now understand when need
to go back to that beginning.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Because communities are the ones that have been providing the
most food when they come together and are able to
be sustainable, but also teaching each other to learning from
those who already knew how to do this in a
responsible manner, that's a bigger conversation. So it's a lot.
So what I thought would be a very short episode
kind of grew bigger. There's a lot more to the
(40:25):
subject that we can come back to. I will give
you all updates about my plants, yes please, I now
just have lots of basil.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Hey, I love basil every time my dog sit for peaches.
I give you my grocery list, and I'm like, basil.
I'm excited about this because I usually don't get the
type of basil I want because they don't sell it
at the grocery store. But I think you've got the
one I want.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I've got four to varieties right now.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yes, because I want my ramen fa basil.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
So I got that tie basil exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
That's not what I normally get. I'm always kind of like,
this is close enough, but it's not what I exactly want.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yes, I got you. I got you on the basil.
But for listeners, if you liked this episode and learning
all about the nuance of women in gardening, and you
want to have a big conversation about other topics, you
should join us on our voyage on October second through
the seventh of twenty twenty six from New York to
(41:25):
berminaz on Virgin Voyages with Stuff at c Yes, we
are going to do a live podcast that you can join.
Other podcasters will be there, not as important as us,
of course, but you know we love them as well.
So if that's something that you're interested in. You want
to learn more about women in intertational feminism and you
(41:46):
want to talk about it on a voyage out at sea.
This is the perfect opportunity.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yes, and you can learn more at Virgin Warges dot
com slash stuff. It'll be really fun. We hope to
see you and we hope to hear from you. Listener.
Tell us about your garden. We want to know. You
can email us at Hello at Stuffmannever Told You dot com.
You can find us a blue sky at mopsusuff podcast
or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff I Never Told
You for us on YouTube. We have merchandise at Coppureau
(42:14):
and we have a book you can get wherever you
get your books. Thanks as always to our superducer Casey
and our executive producer Maya.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Thank you and they see you for listening Stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
In nevertial Respect from my Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, you can check out the heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
Okay, this is Annie and Smitha and welcome to stuff.
Never told you apprecsion to buy her radio, and.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to a new episode. And because I am on
my kick about gardening. And by the way, quick update
my tomato plants. They're not doing great any No one
of them look really bad. I'm very sad about the situation.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
I am too because I wanted some of those tomatoes.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Don't get me wrong. I've got four more and they're okay,
but this one failure is really starting to hurt my feelings.
And I will say though, my peppers look really good.
The herbs are looking nice. I got a lot of
basil this year. We got different variations, by the way.
I have some Thai basil, some purple basil, some lemon basil, okay,
(00:58):
and then the radio basil. Yeah basil. So at the
very least I would have basil. I don't know. I'm
gonna put it in ice cream and such, put it
in on like strawberries and like whipped cream. It's my
favorite thing. And I've discovered I think we have boys
and berries in our backyard, not blackberries because they're not
as big. And I was like, oh, but I have
to fight the animals and and bugs for these, so
(01:22):
like the squirrels and the birds, so I don't get
a lot same thing with our faces, essentially like they
went out because they eat parts of it, and you
know you can't eat parts of it. Yeah, Dan animals anyway,
But with that, I thought we would take a look
at gardening and women, and this is a very very
(01:44):
condensed episode with that, So just think of this as
an introduction to a very big episode that I will
not make a multi part episode because I haven't thought
of it, although I could. I think we are going
to come back with later subjects about things because they
these conversations, especially when it comes to gardening, when it
(02:04):
comes to growing, cultivating, and using lands, is very intersectional,
is very political, and it's a lot of activism and empowerment.
So there's a lot of conversation we can have about that.
We can talk about the suffragettes and the gardening club.
I do not talk about gardening club in this episode,
So if you are a part of one, or if
you wanted me to get into it, not in this one.
(02:24):
We've probably come back because there's a long history of
garden clubs and what that kind of represent and how
affluent it was and it is still but also with that,
how it turned into an empowerment thing. So that's the
caveat We are focusing a little specific on these conversations
because again I'm really caught up in vegetables right now
(02:46):
and herbs edible things. Although I've got some really pretty
wild roses. One died that I was already here at
the house. I'm very unhappy about the situation and I
don't know what's happening this year. And then we have
some that my partner's mother sent for us to have,
so she gives us little starters and they were really
(03:08):
pretty purple flowers and we have some lilies as well,
so a lot of good stuff. But with that, I
focus a little more on vegetable so I feel like
if I can eat it, that's my reward. It's a reward,
and I need that reward, even though the flowers are pretty.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
Oh yeah, and there's just something about like growing something
and then getting to eat it.
Speaker 2 (03:27):
I don't know, making a master like level of a
caprici salad. Yes, yeah, that's one of my favorite things. Anyway,
I'm apparently hungry going moving on, so guardling here, we're
going to specifically again talk about guarding and not farming,
which is not true. We are going to talk a
little bit about farming, but we're not going to go
in depth because when it comes to farming, there's a
(03:48):
lot of politics behind that as well that we're not
necessarily going into. Although the differences are small in my note,
it comes down to really size, quantity, and production. So
that's why I'm saying gardening instead of farming, because we
are talking more about the small scales. Even though when
we talk about some of the gardening, because we are
going to mention about indigenous women and the enslaved peoples
(04:10):
and what they brought to the US specifically and how
they really influenced gardening today, this does obviously lead to
actual farming and agriculture and productions. But again, like I said,
we're just kind of staying away from that. We are
going to come back and have a bigger conversation about
farming and women and farming. I do believe Any just
(04:30):
told me that there is an episode about farmer Jane
and their history. But I want to talk a little more,
especially with recent stuff coming out also about sustainability and
all of that. Because it's a big So we'll go
back to that at a later time, but again today
we'll stick to gardening. And USDA seem to qualify farms
(04:52):
by this definition any place from which one thousand dollars
or more of agricultural products were produced and sold. So
obviously I'm not gonna make a thousand dollars off my
small four by six feet garden.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
You never know one day.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
Maybe Also included in farming are animals, although some argue
those who say have gardens may also have some chickens
or goats roaming about as well. I would like some
highland cows. Please, somebody give me some highland cows. Really,
they're so cute. I know there could be smelly, but
(05:30):
also you could bathe them. Apparently there's places that you
can go to where you can bathe and groom highland cows.
Speaker 1 (05:36):
Okay, how do you think Peaches would react to a
highland cow?
Speaker 2 (05:40):
She would be scared of them, so that's the good news.
So she wouldn't invess with them.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
Okay, Peaches, that's Samantha's dog. I always feel like people
know this, but just to me.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
Just because Peaches will go after smaller animals. But the
first time that they like, a cat has smacked her
in the face and she was like, oh, I'm afraid
for all cats. Now, okay, so you know it's according
to how tough they are. Again, go back to so,
for the sake of this very simplified definition, we are
stinking with just gardens for the most parts, with a
(06:10):
little conversation about how agriculture really came to play in
the US. So and for the most part we are
talking about all kinds including veggie, fruits, flowers, herbs, and
so much more. A little less flowers, although it is
going to be like in this conversation because they do
talk about how different gardens have both and how they
(06:32):
really embrace that life. So again this is a simplified
version because we do eventually want to come back to
the whole women and farming and garden clubs and as such,
because again that's a lot and also a food preservation
I think we need to come and talk about that
we kind of had mentioned about holding a showy community
(06:52):
and how they really have been preserving their crops and
going back to old school crops that are no longer available.
I loved this so like preservation, food preservation, plant preservation
all of that. I think it's important and we would
definitely want to come back and have a bigger conversations
about that, hoping to have some guests on that eventually,
because we know people do.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
My friend doctor Julius Skinner, Yes, so.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
We gotta figure out how to get those done. But
all that to say is we are well be talking
about this is very small, low key conversation. So let's
talk about the history of the garden. And this is
thanks to Vetrogarden dot com and the Celticfarm dot com
for giving some of this research as well as a Smithsonian.
We had some timelines that I could look through with
(07:38):
the research about the history of gardening and women in gardening.
So gardening has been around since the beginning of time,
let's just be real honest, linking it to human survival
and even spirituality. It was in every part of the world,
found in Mesopotamia, China and beyond, there were gardens that
provided food, medicine, and guidance. It could be a place
(07:58):
of balance and calm, or even a place of honor
and status. And it was during this time that in
places like Mesopotamia, women were most likely given the responsibility
to cultivate and care for these gardens with the goddess
of fertility in agriculture behind them. Isis they managed the
areas and make sure the community had all they needed
through these harvests. And we also know even today we
(08:20):
talk about foods as they may help in specific things.
Whether it's to help your sex life, whether it is
to help your hormones, whether it's to help you have
good reproductive things. All those things apply, and that's been
since the beginning of time in things like Mesopotamia, with
isis being like, I'll bless you with these things, and
this is for fertility type of conversation. It would soon
(08:43):
lead up to places of worship and dedication. Monasteries had
gardens sanctioned off to help maintain the villages or communities nearby.
They were kind of responsible for helping with that. Kingdoms
and royal areas had enclosed gardens known as hortis conclusives,
which simple purity and protection, and in convents, many of
the nuns were responsible in keeping up with the produce
(09:05):
and plants that were in their gardens, and these nuns
were known as some of the first horticulturalists in history.
So I thought that was interesting. However, gardens weren't just
at convents and monasteries, but outside of little you know,
little homes and cottages that are still around today. So
women made cottage gardens popular with the blending of different veggies, fruits,
(09:29):
and herbs and flowers, not only for their practical use,
but the esthetics, with the bright colors and blooms surrounding
a quaint home. It has become a picturesque symbol of
the perfect home. So you know what I'm talking about.
That white picket fence with a trellis with all of
the flowers and even grapes, and the little veggies on the
side like they This became a thing around this time,
(09:49):
so very lovely to see. Also, I have a feeling
you had to have money for that, But you know.
Moving on, and as the timeline continues, we see a
little competition rising in the world of gardening. And this
is again more I think, with the flower gardens that
we were talking about, first France and Italy having to
show off with their fountains and perfectly trimmed hedges and
(10:13):
overly elaborate statues. Then it would spread onto the English gardens,
which they added groves of trees, ponds like I think
they had they said specific snakelike shaped rivers or water
properties to add to it. And then the Victorian style
that they decide would be easier with some little technology
(10:37):
added to it and its way of creating their gardens.
So with the new advancements we see the additions of
greenhouses and conservatories add to the landscape. I feel like
when I see greenhouses, especially nice ones, I'm like, yeah, you're.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
Rich, rich, Yeah, listen. I could go into a whole
thing about pineapples and what they represented in the greenhouses,
but oh, yes, ahead, I love it.
Speaker 2 (11:00):
What did they represent.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Well, because pineapples were so hard to get outside of
where they grew, if you could afford to have a
pineapple greenhouse, and Europe particularly, it did represent like, oh,
this person has a lot of money. And people used
(11:21):
to rent pineapples if they couldn't have a greenhouse to
show off how much money they had but they didn't
have it, but they would rent pineapples and bring them
to parties and just carry them around.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Just one ate them to just carry them around.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
No, but that's why, like sometimes you'll see like the
pineapple has been used as the kind of sign of
good luck fortune. You'll see it in a lot of
homes and on mailboxes. I see it. But yeah, it
was a it was a flex for Europeans. I don't
(12:00):
want to outside of that, not necessarily, but for Europeans who.
Speaker 2 (12:05):
Yeah, well again with the Victorian age, it was they
would add to that whole allure with exotic plants. They
were like, oh, the more exotic the plants. They would
bring things in to show off how much they had. Again,
this can be controversial on so many levels, especially when
we talk about sustainability, native plants and all of that,
and also colonization. Yeah, but again that's going to be
(12:27):
pinned for another episode. We're trying to make this one light, y'all,
all the towards the end it becomes less light.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
So it always happens, you can't.
Speaker 2 (12:37):
Again, when we talk about farming and gardening, it is political.
It does become a little pin and like in every
bit of conversation, especially when we talk about how the
land is used, talk about colonization and who deserves and
what is right, so who deserves food essentially, and as
(13:04):
during this time we had the botanists and the designers
really leading the way, women like Jane Colden came through
and cataloging as many plants. She became the first American
woman botanist in seventeen fifty and was the first to
use the new system created by Swedish botanists Linnaeus to
help identify the different plants. And in the nineteenth century,
women really came to the forefront of gardening. Books like
(13:26):
The Ladies Flower Garden written by Jane Louden really pushed
more women to jump into the gardening world. We have
past feminist first highlights in az Mehea, who became one
of the first Mexican American botanists to travel around Americas.
Go listen to that episode. Blue put it up as
a classic while ago, great episode. And here we also
have Gercher Jekyl, a renowned garden designer who really changed
(13:49):
the style of the English garden. She used seasonal changes
as an influence in her design as well as understood
the coordinating of color and texture into the garden. It
was credited with designing over four hundred gardens in her time,
so she was pretty big. She was a big wig.
I'm sure she wore wigs. And soon comes the war
garden or better known as Victory gardens, so the history
(14:13):
of Victory gardens really became a legend in itself. These
gardens first started popping up around the First World War.
The American government at the time called on the people
to start taking up the self sustaining practice of gardening
as possible and actual food shortages could affect the country,
of course, with an underlying manipulation of calling it patriotic duty.
(14:34):
There was a lot of propaganda with this, a lot
of propaganda, and it worked. The people joined the movement
by turning their open lands into vegetable gardens, the front yards,
the schools, and the community open areas. And women were
the focal point in this movement because you know, the
men were at war, so women had to take up
the lag and women did a great job. But moving on,
(14:55):
Author Cecilia Goudi Wygant and I really hope I said
her name right. If I didn't, I apologize, wrote this
about that era in her article Women's History and Gardening
for Victory on blog dot front Range dot edu. Quote.
During both World War I and World War II, the
US government targeted women in their advertising of wartime agricultural programming,
(15:16):
and women use the opportunity to put their labor, both
at home and on farms, at the forefront of natural
conversations about the imbalance and equalities of their labor and
their political voice. Their labor helped win the long movement
for suffrage, aided in carving out places and spaces for
women in education and agriculture, and ultimately provided opportunities for
women to form personal identity based on their work to
(15:39):
help others. So this really did open up World War One,
really did open up a lot of opportunities for women.
I wouldn't say it changed anything, but it did show
that women could do it. Don't get me right. It
did change things, but you know what I mean, it
was slow rolling because when the women came back, they
were like, Okay, women go book to that kitchen. Men
have got it now. So we did see things change.
(16:01):
We're going to get back to activism, gardening, and women
later in this episode, not a lot, because again, like
I said, it could be really a lot bigger, but
just a little more in conversation. But for now, we're
going to finish our conversation about the Victory Gardens. So
the background motive on how these gardens came into play
has a lot to do with politics, with a need
to support our allies across the way and ourselves. The
(16:23):
government encouraged the families to start growing their own food
and cut out things like meat and wheat as a
way to hoard the supplies from other farmers. Back to
Goudi Wiget's article, she writes, keeping the allies from starvation
became an important goal of the US involvement in the war.
Americans believe their safety depended upon a victory of their
trading partners and cultural allies. Therefore, as war loomed across Europe,
(16:46):
American political and social leaders looked for ways to send
aid to food insecure soldiers and civilians in Europe. Official
rationing programs discourage American citizens from consuming too much and
to accommodate for some of those losses of agricultural programs
encouraged Americans to produce more food at home in backyards,
window boxes, rooftops, and vacant lots. There was also a
(17:08):
big seed program that we don't get into in this
conversation that happened. There's a lot of propaganda. There's a
lot of interesting things that happened within this time. I'm
not going to get into maybe any will in a minute,
I don't know. And they made money off of this.
They made one point two billion dollars to be exact
by the end of the war, and they were able
(17:29):
to send four million tons of food to the warfront,
although the original goal was twenty million, so it wasn't
as much, but you know, some some headway. And like
a lot of the industries and jobs at the time,
women stepped up as the men again were gone to war,
and this included farming. In the UK, they were able
to successfully keep up with their farming and agriculture thanks
(17:51):
to the WLA or Women's Land Army, who were also
called the land Girls slash land Lassies.
Speaker 1 (17:58):
The land laugh.
Speaker 2 (18:01):
I just had to add that because I was like,
we would oh no here land lessiek and he who
works out no anyway. They were put together to help
keep up with the needed work on the farms and
to continue to feed their communities. Of course, after the
war ended they disbanded, but thanks to World War Two
they were revived to do the same work with a
(18:22):
new generation, and by the end of World War One
they renamed their War Garden to Victory Gardens and the
tradition was picked up again during World War Two with
more encouragement from the White House and the administration even
having registrations for the gardens across the country, and they
started contest to celebrate the largest gardens and the gardens
(18:44):
who had the most harvests. So they were real bit like,
we're gonna make this fun, We're gonna make this a competition.
It really does feel like when you're in middle school
and you're like, we had to do the most of
this and you can have a pizza.
Speaker 1 (18:53):
Party accelerated, reading accelerated and.
Speaker 2 (18:57):
Which is back, by the way, pizza Huddond family is
doing it again. Oh yes, moving on, and they were
breaking records again from that front Range blog. Approximately ten
million victory gardens were planted in nineteen forty two, and
that number increased to twenty million in nineteen forty three.
The USDA estimated that those twenty million gardens produced ten
(19:19):
billion pounds of food and forty percent of the nation's
vegetable supply. So that's a huge amount of numbers and
I'm sure it saved a lot of people. And as
a side note, this also led to the beginning of
the practice of canning which I'm sure any you also
have a lot of information about that. Speaking of which
I know you covered these subjects in your show other show, Saver.
(19:39):
What can you tell us about Victory gardens.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
I can tell you that victory gardens had a huge
impacts on how people viewed certain foods. And we're not
going to get into this today because it's not gardening,
but it also, like certain things like eminem like World
(20:02):
War One and World War two just completely changed a
lot of our viewpoints on food. But when it comes
to victory gardens, there were some unfortunate what i'll call victims,
vegetable victims, because you would grow hardy vegetables like kale
(20:25):
or coal robbie, and there was this very patriotic push
behind it, like you've got to do it for your country,
and so people did it. But then because it you
were eating it all the time, you had these other
rations that were impacting your meals and how you can
(20:46):
make them taste. People just didn't like kale anymore. They
didn't like col robbie anymore. So that's why, like in
the nineteen nineties, kale was the number one purchaser of
kale was Pizza Hut, hey, pizza hut in one episode,
and they use it as a garnish. They didn't use
it as a food because it was viewed as like,
(21:07):
and they kind of hate that we do this, but
we do as humans. It was viewed as a food
for people who didn't have a lot of money. It
was viewed as like, oh, you're in rationing, you're eating kale.
But it was something people were passionate about, and then
it had that lasting impact on the certain foods that
(21:28):
were being grown, right, yes, skilled back in, well it
kale is back in, but it took It was that
kind of clipical thing of people being like, oh no,
not Victory Garden kale. And then people were like, wait
a minute, let's think about this kale. Do we have
just have it as a garnish a pizza that I
(21:49):
don't know.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
I really didn't know it was edible, because I'm very
confused about the situation. It's not in one of those
brown container cans where you yes, like cucumbers for your salad. Interestingly, yeah,
so I did read that after the Victory Garden, after
the World War, after the Great Depression, people stopped gardening
(22:12):
because they were so scarred and traumatized by the Depression,
the Great Depression, and doing those things just felt like
reliving that era. Yeah, which I find interesting because it
like it makes a lot of sense when you don't
understand what it is and if you don't have the
variety the ability to make food taste different. So if
(22:34):
you don't have butter, which I'm sure that was like ration,
like nobody's business, you don't have the seasonings and all
of that, it makes it makes a giant change. And
if you're not eating meat, which makes a lot of
the vegetables tastes great. Sorry vegetarians and beacons. But like
you know, one of my favorite things is doing like
beef stock or like chicken stock to block choi and
(22:55):
I make sure you're like with lots of garlic. But like,
if you don't have that.
Speaker 1 (23:00):
And the US government did try really hard, this is
a whole rabbit hole. You can go down listeners if
you want to. But they were like, no, Cole Robbie's great,
here's all ways you cook it. So they would release
like these pamphlets yes that were just like please eat
(23:21):
it and here are the ways you can cook it.
But yeah, if you don't have the ingredients to make
it good or honestly, sometimes if your soil isn't good
or whatever it is, and you've got kind of a
wilty kale, nobody wants a wilty kale.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Yeah, sure, wilted kell people eat that anyway. No, but
it is interesting to see the effects of that because
it was a lot of like community pride. But then
it lasted a lot longer than they expected. The need
was a lot longer than they expected. The government made
a lot of money on rationing people in an odd way,
(24:01):
like one point two billion dollars to send off. It
seems suspect in that, especially during that time. And again,
this is an interesting conversation today because it's kind of
coming back and people are talking about the needs to
have more of it. We're gonna talk about that a
little bit more later. Part of the reason I started
gardening is kind of being motivated about what happens if
(24:22):
we are in the apocalypse, So that is that whole
level survival. Oh and I was gonna ask you, what
do you know about canning? Because if we don't, we're
not It's not about gardening. But it is interesting because
my like it's a very southern thing to do to me.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
I have a whole book right here that just shows Samantha,
I know a lot about canning through the work of
what I've done on Safer. Napoleon he's really the one
that that little guy, Yeah, because again we're talking about wars.
Wars been such a push in finding ways to get
(25:01):
food to soldiers, and so Napoleon like he listed a
reward for whoever could figure out a better canning system
a way to preserve food to send to soldiers during
the French Wars, the Napoleonic course, and I think it
(25:24):
was Nicholas Upier he figured it out. And it's obviously
such a big thing because if you can make food
last longer, especially before refrigeration, right, that was a big deal.
That was a huge deal. I've personally never done it,
and I'm kind of terrified of it. My friend I
mentioned doctor Julia Skinner. She's told me it's not as
(25:46):
scary as I'm making it out to be.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
You're afraid of the popping.
Speaker 1 (25:50):
I'm afraid. I've got a lot of fears on this sleep.
But I do know it's a big I have friends
from the South who make like scuppernog jam or like
they'll can Yeah, they'll do specific preserves or something that
(26:10):
do feel very Southern to me.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Yeah, Like I just remember jars and jars of green beans. Yeah,
that would be set aside because I was one of
the biggest crops in the South. Here. It is those
green beans, and I love good fresh green bean. So
I loved seeing that okra would be jarred. That was
not my favorite because if it didn't eat it took
(26:33):
me a while to like okra texture. I will say
my partner has scared me because he bought a giant
box of cans, like the glass Mason jars, and I'm like,
are we about to start canning? We probably need to,
but that means I have to learn something that I'm
not gonna be real good at. I have a book
I can get I might be calling you, But I
find that stuff interesting because it is talking about preservation
(26:55):
of food and keeping those And that's the reason they
brought canning was because they were growing such a substantial
amount of vegetables that you can't keep forever, so they're like,
how do we preserve these? So yeah, this gardening movement
really opened up the world to grow and cultivate more
of course, like I said, there was a moment of like, yeah,
we're not doing that anymore. We're not in the Great Depression.
(27:15):
No thank you. But it did bring into mind like, oh,
that we can do it. It actually is possible. It's
not as difficult. It's not a fun thing. If you
lived in the direct Great Depression. I know, people have
like habits that they had formed that it was hard
to let go of. Like I remember my great grandmother
saving all these types of things that you don't need
to You don't need to do that anymore. But because
of the Great Depression, they really learned to like stretch
(27:38):
out their dollar rightly. So but with that, as that
hadn't passed, people started to come back to gardening and
be like, Okay, this may be a sustainable thing. This
is interesting. And also with climate change, they really took
on gardening as a conversation piece. They had gardening into
schools to teach children about responsibility about nature, and they
(27:58):
also opened up urban community gardens. So this is kind
of like all you know that era after World War Two.
During World War two is when they started really doing
a lot more like school gardening because they're like, we're
going to take advantage of the space child labor laws.
There wasn't that really wasn't a thing much. I mean
it kind of was, but it wasn't. They're like, yeah,
make them do this, but also it's enjoyable, like get
them out in the yard, get them out and play
(28:19):
in the dirt, and this is this is something they
can learn, and that kind of kept going into the schools.
The type of gardening specifically in schools really helped students
become more interested in gardening science than nature. It also
again helped bring up issues about climate change and in
environmental advocacy within the schools. This is one of those
conversations where we were like, we talk about climate change.
(28:39):
A lot of people don't want to talk about it now.
Even then they probably like it's not a big deal.
But there were a lot of those who did get
really caught up in understanding this is a thing we
need to see what's happening, and we need to teach
the children, and gardening was way to do that. In
movements like the Victory Garden, community gardens and garden clubs.
Again something we're going to touch on later, not in
(29:00):
this episode. It really pushed for women to be in
the gardening world and with that activism in gardening. So
during times of oppression and discrimination, many communities use gardens
as a way of empowering but also of survival. There
was one conversation during World War two about the Japanese
internment camps and how they actually had their own gardens
and those internment camps not only as a way to survive,
(29:23):
not only as a way to get through the day,
but they actually did it to preserve their culture. They
would grow a lot of things that was dear to
them from Japan in order to keep their culture alive,
especially during the time that they were being persecuted. So
they really brought that as a way of activism and
continue to thrive and empower themselves at a time of oppression.
(29:44):
Also with that one clear another example would be of
the enslaved people, specifically the enslaved women, who would have
small gardens or provision gardens near where they lived, so
here they would grow food, medicinal herbs, and so much
more in order to continue to survive even though they
did not have time honestly obviously, but they knew that
(30:07):
they needed this for themselves as a way also to survive.
As a way also to preserve their culture. This is
from gardening know how dot com. These gardens were some
of the few spaces that black women felt as if
they had some aspect of autonomy. Caring for them became
a way to maintain family bonds, passed down familiar food traditions,
(30:27):
and keep healing practices alive, all under a system designed
to strip people of autonomy. And it is through this
that the US have some of the different types of
crops that we have today that originated from Africa. Judith
Karney led a lecture at UCLA talking about these specific
moments in history, which you can find her lecture at
(30:47):
International dot UCLA dot edu just look at her name.
She says this food insecurity was a brutal fact of
daily existence on plantations during the Transatlantic slave trade. Overworked
and underfed the slaved to growing their own food in
the small yards around their dwellings. In the article, they
talk about how she was using first person European accounts,
(31:09):
so they were able to get all this information drawings
and from paintings in oral history, so she was able
to get a lot of this information. So she uses
the term subsistence agriculture, and she said it was hiding
in plain sight within plantation monoculture. And she goes on,
after the abolition of slavery, this subalternate agricultural strategy evolved
into Afro descended small holder farming system widely practiced even
(31:33):
to this day. A defining feature of this alternative food
system is the number of plants that are African in province.
And she added including sorghum, millet, yams okra, the oil
palm and cola of Coca cola, and black peas. So
all these came through. Also, they apparently had brought some
plants that originated in Asia but had made its way
(31:54):
to Africa, including taro. I was like, oh, that's interesting,
but that was brought and introduced here. So they go
on to say all of these food plants were domesticated
in Africa. So we talk about a lot of things
started in Africa. It truly started in Africa. It's not
just the same. And during the civil rights movement, legends
(32:14):
like Fanning low Hammer not only was at the forefront
and advocating for women's rights and voting rights, but she
paved the way in food security during that time as well.
So this is from an ap news article about women
in gardening. A civil rights and agricultural activist, Hammer founded
the Freedom Farm Cooperative in the late nineteen sixties to
provide land, livestock, and vegetable growing resources to poor black
(32:37):
families and farmers in Sunflower County, Mississippi. The cooperative facilitated
crop sharing, self reliance, and financial independence. Participating families were
also loaned a piglet to raise the maturity, after which
they would return it for mating and give the cooperative
two pikelets from each leader to continue the program. If
you have a pig in your backyard, if you have
some vegetables in your garden, you can feed yourself and
(32:59):
your family and nobody can push you around. Hammer said
her cooperative became one of the earliest examples of modern
community gardening and a precursor of today's food justice movement.
I didn't know that about I needed a little bit
about Famielu. Hammer didn't know that part. And I love
that as a conversation because she and many others understood
(33:19):
the basic human rights really has to be here. But
with that that includes food justice, food security, which is
still not solved. No, and we couldn't finish this episode
(33:41):
without talking about the importance of the indigenous people when
it comes to cultivating and growing food. We talked a
while ago about the Juna Shoni community and their leadership
for women's movement, an overall great example of the matriarchal leadership,
so it isn't too surprising to see that they would
also be leaders and teachers to our modern standing of
agriculture and sustainability. But with that, they had the three
(34:06):
Sisters who were the sustainers of their community. But it
wasn't just a way to honor them, but a whole
intercropping system. So this legend, the spiritual practice became a
system that really helped grow more food. So this is
from the National Agricultural Library from the USA. According to
Shavanda Jacob's Young, PhD. Administrator, Agricultural Research Service, US Department
(34:30):
of Agriculture. Quote in agricultural parlance, three sisters are crops
planted together in shared space maize, beans, and squash developed
through indigenous agricultural practices. These three plants protect and nourish
each other in different ways as they grow and provide
a solid diet for their cultivators. The intercropping method of
(34:50):
planting corn beans and squashed together, commonly called the three sisters,
have been studied and described by scholars in anthropology, history, agriculture,
and food studies for many years. While this practice is
often cited in current sources as a way to improve
small gardens for individual use, its historical value lay in
larger implementations designed to nurture and sustain entire communities. So
(35:14):
this practice was successful, to say the least. Through this
they were able to have such diverse varieties and healthy
harvests that spread throughout different types of environments. But of course,
due to colonizations, many of these amazing variants were lost. Yeah,
which makes me sad because I couldn't imagine. I think
about some of the things that we missed out on
(35:34):
because of bad practices. And just in case you wanted
a definition of what intercropping is, this is what the
USDA article says. Intercropping is an all encompassing term for
the practice of growing two or more crops in close
proximity in the same row or bed, or in rows
or strips are close enough for biological interactions. Mixed cropping,
(35:57):
companion planting, relay cropping, interceding, overseating, underseeding, smother cropping, planting polycultures,
and using living mulch are all forms of intercropping. Technically,
I'm doing that with my urbs in my plants.
Speaker 1 (36:09):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
Thank you. Indigenous communities and they are trying to they've
been trying to research this practice as a way to
sustain food around the country. Around the world. There's also
the conversation about saving seeds and creating better seats for
the following year, creating better crops, creating variants, which is
a real good idea. Outside of the US today, Indigenous
(36:34):
women around the world have been leading food sovereignty initiatives.
Indigenous women from countries like Philippines, Indonesia, and Bangladesh have
come together to organize and teach people to not only
grow food, but also to keep their culture and way
of life. And to add to that, they were working
to teach more about self reliability, climbing solutions, and also
for communities to take part in local and territorial government
and policies, because yes, farming food is political. And with that,
(37:00):
new practices like permaculture, which we talked about a little bit,
has been something that the indigenous community have been practicing
before colonization way before when. So this is from PBS
SoCal from their article titled The Indigenous Science of Permaculture.
The foundations of parmaculture rest on two concepts, and understanding
and acceptance of the diversity of whole systems as opposed
(37:20):
to the soil degrading effects of industrial monoculture, and on
the relational, slow, yet dynamic practice of observing the land
and its many complex ecosystems. Both of these principles have
also been the core tenants of relating to and working
with nature by indigenous people the world over for millennia.
That permaculture arose as a vital response to the dangerous
(37:41):
environmental and human degradation of industrialization and its toxic farming
and agricultural practices is undeniable. So the article goes in
depth in the sciences and practices that the indigenous people
use in their farming and gardening. Permaculture they say is
fundamentally then and indigenous science. This framework is a design
system that incorporates core principles and practices from indigenous knowledge
(38:05):
around the world, assimilating it with sustainable new technology that
is making strides towards harmonizing this traditional wisdom with pioneering
modern quantum science. As such, it can restore valuable ancient
knowledge while steering our industrialized society towards a more viable
future based on regeneration and reciprocity. So what we do understand.
(38:28):
What we do know is that a lot of these
practices were kind of killed off by colonization, by war,
by the death of the indigenous people, by the conquering
and of the indigenous people because they actually would burn
down crops in order to push people out, push the
indigenous communities out, which is why all this happened. Not
only that they would actually try to steal their stuff
(38:51):
without actually researching what it was. So what once it
was helpful because we know the lore is that they
were the colonizers were giving some tips. We're taught how
to grow in this land in this area, and so
they took that. But then all the wars and they
wanted more, and the greed happened and they just kind
of burned everything down. They lost a lot in this moment,
(39:13):
and instead of finding smart, sustainable ways of getting food
and providing food, they did their own thing, which causes
a lot of havoc of where we are today, Oh man,
if only.
Speaker 1 (39:28):
Anyway.
Speaker 2 (39:29):
So there's a lot we need to look at beyond
just the joys of gardening and the fact that we
have been at a point where Benny families are still
struggling with food securities today, and the conversation about whether
the government is going to actually provide a solution or
it's something that we're going to have to do. A
lot of this comes back to where we are today.
(39:50):
This affects us today, was just going to teach us
today and whether or not we can continue on. It
is interesting to see how we went from the beginning
of one thing to the and now understand when need
to go back to that beginning.
Speaker 1 (40:03):
Mm hmmm.
Speaker 2 (40:05):
Because communities are the ones that have been providing the
most food when they come together and are able to
be sustainable, but also teaching each other to learning from
those who already knew how to do this in a
responsible manner, that's a bigger conversation. So it's a lot.
So what I thought would be a very short episode
kind of grew bigger. There's a lot more to the
(40:25):
subject that we can come back to. I will give
you all updates about my plants, yes please, I now
just have lots of basil.
Speaker 1 (40:32):
Hey, I love basil every time my dog sit for peaches.
I give you my grocery list, and I'm like, basil.
I'm excited about this because I usually don't get the
type of basil I want because they don't sell it
at the grocery store. But I think you've got the
one I want.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
I've got four to varieties right now.
Speaker 1 (40:50):
Yes, because I want my ramen fa basil.
Speaker 2 (40:54):
So I got that tie basil exactly.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
That's not what I normally get. I'm always kind of like,
this is close enough, but it's not what I exactly want.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yes, I got you. I got you on the basil.
But for listeners, if you liked this episode and learning
all about the nuance of women in gardening, and you
want to have a big conversation about other topics, you
should join us on our voyage on October second through
the seventh of twenty twenty six from New York to
(41:25):
berminaz on Virgin Voyages with Stuff at c Yes, we
are going to do a live podcast that you can join.
Other podcasters will be there, not as important as us,
of course, but you know we love them as well.
So if that's something that you're interested in. You want
to learn more about women in intertational feminism and you
(41:46):
want to talk about it on a voyage out at sea.
This is the perfect opportunity.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
Yes, and you can learn more at Virgin Warges dot
com slash stuff. It'll be really fun. We hope to
see you and we hope to hear from you. Listener.
Tell us about your garden. We want to know. You
can email us at Hello at Stuffmannever Told You dot com.
You can find us a blue sky at mopsusuff podcast
or on Instagram and TikTok at stuff I Never Told
You for us on YouTube. We have merchandise at Coppureau
(42:14):
and we have a book you can get wherever you
get your books. Thanks as always to our superducer Casey
and our executive producer Maya.
Speaker 2 (42:22):
Thank you and they see you for listening Stuff.
Speaker 1 (42:24):
In nevertial Respect from my Heart Radio. For more podcasts
from my Heart Radio, you can check out the heart
Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
favorite shows.
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