Vancouver vegetable growers band together – club encourages growing your own food

Photo Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun. Meeru sitting in centre with fellow club members.

By Meeru Dhalwala
The Vancouver Sun, 26 Nov 2008

I certainly didn’t have an idyllic childhood, but I did gain some idyllic principles from my mom and dad. It used to drive me crazy when either one would yell at me for getting even a “ B” on a test or for not finishing my lunch, even if the bread was stale.

“ In India . . .” was how they always started the guilt trip. As I became older, I yelled back that they were the ones who had brought me to the U. S. and that I wasn’t going to feel guilty about all the poor people in India.

At some point, my parents told me that guilt was never their intention. They wanted me to do my best with the opportunities I had, in honour of the poor people we had left behind in India. The way they saw it, it was a waste if even the lucky Indian was going to give in to laziness — my not finishing lunch was considered to be a form of will- power laziness.

Last week, I read an article about a father named Edward in the Congo who has become a walking refugee with his family of five. Their village was taken over by a rebel group and in his words, “ It is very difficult to live when you have nowhere to plant.” His family made a move to find safety and a place to grow food.

While reading about Edward, I remembered that my father was also a refugee at the age of 10 during the War of Partition, and had to run to catch cold chapattis being thrown from government jeeps. Often, he had to beat up other boys who were vying for the same chapattis. The Partition made sure that my dad would never become will- power lazy.

Whether it is Edward’s family in the Congo or a family in India or Canada, there is one universal and idyllic principle that until the recent past has been handed down from generation to generation. I wrote about it in my previous column: the principle of growing at least some of your own food.

I received more than 80 e-mails in response to my offer of starting a Vancouverwide vegetable garden club. Sixtyone of us met last Saturday morning at my restaurant, Vij’s, to form this club and get an action plan going. Officially, we now have about 65 members. I started this club so early, before the growing season, because I know that in order to take on a massive new activity, we sometimes need to prepare ourselves psychologically and gather encouragement from others before the big day of action.

Some of us are new to gardening, and some of us are lazy, but wanting to garden. Others are seasoned vegetable growers. We range from Don, who is just about to become a Master Gardener ( if he’s not already) and who has the most incredible garden full of vegetables, to Jasmine, who has a small Yaletown balcony.

There’s also Susan, who grew up in East Vancouver in a neighbourhood where many things were bartered. Her mom, a nurse, traded her skills with the neighbours in exchange for backyard vegetables and fruits. Susan has just moved into a small condo and has offered to exchange her hand- made soaps for vegetables that she can’t grow on her balcony.

Our vegetable garden club, which may need a better, more personal name, has been divided into regional subgroups: West of Burrard, which includes downtown; East of Burrard; North Shore, which includes the islands and West Vancouver; and the Suburban group, which incorporates Delta, Surrey, Richmond. Each group has a coordinator and a gardening expert.

There is no profit- making or networking among us; all is done for barter or just plain goodwill. Our goal is to grow as many herbs and vegetables as possible and celebrate in a late summer harvest party. Colleen wants us to consider sharing some of this collective harvest with a community kitchen. Like many others, she wants our club to consider the wellness of our community at large.

In a way, it’s crazy that in Vancouver we’re forming a club to encourage growing our own food while Edward and his family are starving refugees because they can’t find a safe plot of land on which to grow enough food.

But I’m not going to feel guilty about it. Instead, I’m going to honour the plight of Edward and his family by doing the best I can with our new club.

What follows is Meeru’s original newspaper article, which drew people to the founding meeting of the vegetable growers’ club.

Who wants to grow vegetables with me in 2009?

Let’s get off our butts and do something positive for the environment.

Meeru Dhalwala,
The Vancouver Sun, October 29, 2008

Imagine that you have a decent-sized vegetable garden in your backyard or on the rooftop of your apartment building. Given that many of us are recent transplants to Vancouver, i magine further that you inherited this garden from your mother or father and are carrying on this family tradition.

You share your vegetables with your neighbours and family. Some of the children in your building or neighbourhood love to come and help. You’ve become so good at it that you keep your personalized mini-farm going all year round. You’ve even managed to figure out how to grow everything organically. Finally, imagine looking out your kitchen window every morning at your garden. This is your view. You created it.

Probably the most awkward thing I’ve ever said to Vancouverites is that the view of the mountains and ocean bores me to tears. It’s an immediate conversation damper and some people even take it as a personal insult. The prize damper was when I responded to a person’s shock by saying that at least I wasn’t driving my huge SUV and polluting what I supposedly loved so much.

It wasn’t a nice thing to say, but my unclear point was that we all play a role in what goes on in our hometown even if we don’t do it on purpose. Maybe we humans in general aren’t hardwired to live for the greater good and tend to focus on our immediate, personal lives. Only when something affects us personally do we get involved.

There are two things that I spend an abnormal amount of time thinking about: What if there is a God when I die and God tells me I missed the point? and what the hell is going to happen to our environment by the time my girls are older?

Without writing a full journal entry here, I figured out how to deal with these two preoccupations. I’m going to grow my own vegetable garden starting this coming spring, and I’m going to try to get as many Vancouverites as possible to join me in growing even a small wad of green beans.

For reasons of convenience and laziness, we’re losing our connection to where and how our food is grown. Without this connection, how can we really care enough to get off our butts and do something positive for the environment? Driving and eating are two main activities that we can control — what we drive and eat, and how often.

I’m not an expert on driving, so I have no right to preach about that. But I’m in the food business and, having done lots of reading and research, feel confident to make suggestions on that topic. Farming has much to do with pollution and world hunger.

I don’t want to be a solitary gardener. I want to use gardening as an excuse to meet more people in my community and give and receive for free what we grow.

My only problem is that I know nothing about gardening. I couldn’t even figure out how to compost this past summer, even though everyone told me how simple it was. As if I needed further demoralizing, Akiko, our Rangoli restaurant manager, told me that composting was so easy that her family automatically grew the most beautiful potatoes from rotting potatoes in their compost. Akiko loves my gardening idea and has decided to grow potatoes in sacks hanging from the window of her bachelor suite. (Apparently, this is a Jamie Oliver idea that you can view on YouTube.)

If there are any first-time or seasoned vegetable gardeners who want to be a part of my vegetable garden club, let me know at
contact@vijs.ca.

Brussels sprouts, carrots, garlic, green beans and tomatoes are on my list for 2009. I’m not sure I’ll manage to grow anything the first year, but I’ll consider just getting on my knees, digging in the dirt and sharing lemonade or beer one step closer to achieving my goal.

Meeru Dhalwala cooks up her version of eggs with an Indian kick in the kitchen at Vij’s. Photograph by : Jenelle Schneider

Link to Vij’s Restaurant here.