Letter to Berea Citizen

Dear Editor,
This gardening season with inspiration from the “Edible Yard Project” sponsored by sustainableberea.org, I decided to use part of my front yard for green, purple and red vegetables. I had no intention of “grating” the nerves of the Berea Citizen publisher. I do not feel like some kind of hero who is “saving the planet” but the vegetables I pick from my “drive thru” garden sure taste great. The best part of our garden is I get out in my front yard and talk with neighbors. We are getting together while visiting and sharing the bounty from our edible yards. Unlike gardeners in the country with an acre to grow food, we only have our little yards.
I invite you to look at http://www.edibleyards9.blogspot.com/ to view some stories of edible yards in the West Ridges neighborhood of Berea.
You are correct in noting that gardening is not a new concept. This “old hippie type” recalls that one of Adam and Eve’s sons was a tiller of the soil. In my travels during the past twenty five years, I have visited over a thousand gardeners in eastern Kentucky who were putting up hundreds of quarts a year to feed their families. It is sad that fewer and fewer people are doing this now. The feel good story for a publisher should be that a growing group of people, even though not of “necessity”, are doing our best to revive and keep the gardening tradition going for future generations. Of all the complaints that a newspaper could include I don’t feel that a bunch of “old hippie types” growing some tomatoes should be cause for alarm about going “overboard”. Now if we were throwing tomatoes then there might be some grated nerves.
Keith Gilbertson
Berea