My love for gardening and farming started in my childhood. My mother is a gardener. It is my belief that my mother can grow anything. When I was growing up, our backyard was a slightly-wild, verdant oasis in the middle of a desert suburban housing tract. It wasn’t always that way.

My mother came from New England and when she first arrived in the Mojave Desert, she was horrified by how brown and desolate everything seemed. The first spring she lived there, she noticed some little gray-green sprouts coming from the dried, baked earth so she watered them hopefully. Unfortunately, it turned out she was watering a fine crop of tumbleweeds (Salsola pestifera)!

By the time I was born, she was well versed in the desert climate and she always included me in her gardening adventures. We grew everything we could imagine, sometimes successfully, sometimes not, including corn, peas, beans, strawberries, currants, artichokes, peanuts, asparagus, apricots, and apple, avocado and grapefruit trees we started from seeds. I remember climbing the apricot tree and eating the ripe fruit, warm from the sun, while sitting in the tree. I believe that by sharing her love of gardening with me, my mother helped me discover the gardener in myself.

My father was a beekeeper and I remember helping him care for the bees and extract the honey. He was fascinated by animals and we had a series of chickens, rabbits and even a goose pass through our backyard over the years. Although we lived in the suburbs, my parents managed to almost turn our backyard into a kid-size farm.

My favorite plants to grow are edible. I enjoy eating and sharing things I have grown, baked and cooked. Everything tastes better when it is freshly picked and lovingly prepared in the company of friends and family.

3. What is your favorite gardening tool that you can't live without?

I have five tools that I use frequently, without which I don’t think I could garden successfully: shovel, pitchfork, scuffle hoe, garden rake and wheel barrow. I have a little gas-powered tiller now, which makes my life much easier in the spring, but I did garden without one for years.

4. What is your least favorite task to do, regarding gardening?

I dislike repairing damage to the garden, whether it is caused by goats, chickens, uninvited wildlife, weather or a neighborhood dog. It can be very disheartening to see something destroy what I have worked hard to bring to fruition and then have to work to try to repair the damage or start over. Gardening often reminds me to let go, accept, and be patient because as a gardener I am not in control.

I can facilitate the harvest by reading, experimenting, observing, learning from my observations and being vigilant, but ultimately my success depends on the weather and other natural variables outside my control

5. Since you are growing your way to freedom, what does your daily routine look like, differing from the average person in our society? (I'd like to know what you have managed to eliminate from your home/life)

Four years ago we moved into an antique, colonial style New England farmhouse originally built in 1738. The house has a large, open hearth fireplace for cooking and a bee hive oven for baking. When our house was built, the tools, clothes, household belongings and food consumed were produced by the people who lived in the house or by people they knew. In contrast, we found ourselves living in a society where few of our belongings and little of the food we consumed was produced by ourselves or someone we knew personally. Living in this farmhouse inspired us to look to the past to find the skills and ideas to help us live more simply, to rebuild our sense of self-reliance and local community. As a family, we have just started our journey, but no journey starts without small beginning steps. Gardening and raising animals for food is part of my desire to embrace a simpler, more self-sufficient life. I am trying to put my faith into practice; as M. Gandhi said, “Live simply so others can simply live.”

Looking at my life through the eyes of the culture in which I live, it might look like I have actually complicated my life rather than increased my freedom. My gardens and animals require a great deal of time and hard work. I cannot just decide to “get away” for the weekend, particularly during the spring, summer and fall.

In reality, I believe we are slowly increasing our freedom from many aspects of this culture that do not allow me live up to my ideals. My family and I are becoming more independent from the consumption-oriented society that surrounds us. One example is our business with the local grocery store. The store is filled with shelves of brightly-packaged, already prepared food and a dazzling variety of fruits and vegetables that have traveled across the globe, sometimes in an airplane, so that I can buy pre-made, instant meals in a box or bag and fresh blueberries, strawberries, mangoes or oranges when several feet of snow cover the ground outside. The idea of eating what is in season makes no sense when you visit our grocery store and can find virtually anything you want regardless of the season. By growing my own food and patronizing local farms, I can avoid trips to the grocery store for weeks at a time during the summer and fall months.

I am becoming free from the worry about how my food was grown and produced. I know that there are no pesticides and harmful chemicals on the foods I grow. I am getting to know the local farmers who supply us with many of the foods we choose not to grow or raise ourselves and I can ask them what their practices are and why they follow them. There are no hidden harmful additives in the food I prepare. I know that my chickens and goats are healthy, fed and treated well. By growing, preparing and preserving my own food, I am also significantly reducing the amount of waste our family produces, primarily due to all the packaging that comes from purchasing pre-processed foods.

As part of this journey, my family and I are becoming free from the self-imposed isolation often found in the suburbs that appeared along with our society’s increased dependence on the automobile. Buying and selling locally-produced food has allowed us to meet and get to know our neighbors. We barter chicken eggs for locally-produced maple syrup or aluminum cans to build a solar power project. We share expertise and resources with neighbors, such as borrowing a tractor, building a fence, taking care of each others’ animals or sharing excess produce, canning equipment and other supplies. Rather than jumping into the automobile and driving to a store or hiring someone to supply a need, we are starting to look to ourselves and our neighbors first. I hope by living my ideals, I can help inspire others around me to help build the kind of community within which I want to live.

6. What is your gardening dream for the future?

I would like to be able to efficiently preserve more of our harvest to feed my family during the winter and early spring months, retaining the great taste and nutritional value we enjoy in the summer and fall. I am looking into options such as dehydrating, fermenting, making hard cheeses and building a cold cellar in our basement.

Another one of my future goals is to grow a goat garden to allow me to purchase less hay in the winter months. Harvesting and transporting hay is dependent on fossil fuel so what I can produce locally to feed my goats will reduce that usage and allow me to live more simply. They already raid my garden when they escape and get any extras plants we cannot eat, but I would like to think of ways to grow more food for our goats and chickens.

My greatest long-term dream is that one or both of my sons, or perhaps someone I have not yet met, will want to take over this farm when I no longer have the strength and energy to keep it going. Many things I have planted will not come into full maturity for years, but I would like to believe that the work and creativity I am pouring into this little farm will not be lost in the future.

7. As you know, you are one of my heroes, who is one of your gardening heroes and why?

I don’t feel like a hero. I am someone trying to live my life in accordance with my ideals, both in the garden and in life. I often fall short of those ideals but I forgive myself and keep trying. I have had many people in my life who have shared their passion, time, energy, experience or a particular skill with me to help me become the gardener and farmer I am today. I guess they are my heroes.

My parents taught me, by example, to never stop questioning, learning and growing. My husband works a nine-to-five job so that I have the time to try these things. My botany teacher in college inspired me to learn more about the science behind gardening. I have learned from wonderful gardeners who shared their experience by writing a book or posting an article on the internet so I did not have to start from scratch. Sometimes my heroes are people who are already traveling a path to freedom and served as role models, such as the Dervae family in Pasadena or the late Tasha Tudor. Others have offered a supportive word or a new idea that has encouraged me to keep on this path to freedom even when I have felt discouraged.

8. What advice do you have for new gardeners who want to grow their way to freedom?

Reach out to others you can help or who can help you on your journey. Find your own path which might be quite different from mine, such as starting a balcony or indoor garden, participating in a community garden or CSA, raising sheep for milk, cheese or wool to start weaving your own cloth, or volunteering at a local farm, apiary or food cooperative.

Just start.