You sit down to a Thanksgiving dinner. A turkey, stuffing and your favorite vegetables — roast squash, fresh tomatoes, a big salad are the centerpiece of a crowded table. But unlike your neighbors’ dishes, all of the produce displayed on the table was cultivated in your own backyard.

The scenario may sound closer to a Pilgrim lifestyle than to the modern-day staples of boxed stuffing mix and canned cranberry sauce, but “As far as the school garden goes, originally it was built as a way for the kids to be closer to the earth and learning where food comes from,” Bruske explained. “… They want to wash and spin the salad. Give a kid a vegetable peeler and they’re happy for the rest of the day.”

The school garden was a success for the kids, but Bruske’s interest in green initiatives developed further as he weighed gardening’s cost-cutting benefits. The decision to plant his backyard garden was also a reaction to the increasingly industrial food system.

“We’re very distant from where food comes from, and [eating] is such an intimate activity,” he said.

He started by tearing up the yard and replacing it with vegetable beds.
“One bed led to another, and now we have a total of nine,” Bruske said.
Today, his garden churns out hundreds of pounds of tomatoes, okra and cucumbers, among other varieties of crops. The type varies depending on the season, and this hands-on approach has become essential to his family’s everyday life.

“We organized our eating habits around the garden. You learn not to go out and buy asparagus in December,” Bruske said.

“It’s great to step outside any day of the week and compose a great salad,” he added.

A Group Effort
Blogs like “The Slow Cook” and “D.C. Food For All” aim to bring together people and the food they love.

“Food is inherently social,” said Greg Bloom, one of the founders of “D.C. Food For All.” According to the organization’s Web site, the group looks “to bring healthy, sustainable and affordable food for all.”

“It’s both a resource and a way to get involved,” Bloom explained.
“Generally, we as Americans don’t eat very well. And we’re in a city where entire neighborhoods don’t have access to fresh produce. It’s about access, behavior, the culture of a community.”

Hoyas who want to experience some homegrown goodness for themselves should look no further than the Georgetown University Sustainable Garden Initiative. Launched last year by Maddie Howard (COL ’12), Ben Sacher (MSB ’12) and Mara Schechter (COL ’11) and funded by a Reimagine Georgetown grant, GUSGI is dedicated to promoting sustainable gardening and healthy eating at Georgetown through its on-campus garden, consisting of four beds located on a small patch of dirt and gravel behind Kehoe Field. This year, the group’s yield was tiny — only a few summer squash and marigolds — but by next fall it plans to have pumpkins, winter greens and even more squash to show for its efforts. The students are tentatively planning to sell their veggies in Red Square and donate some of their produce to local homeless shelters.

Howard, a self-described “guilty omnivore,” says that while eating organic and local foods seems to be the growing trend nowadays, people need to remain conscious of what they’re putting on their plates.

“I feel like a lot of local foodstuff is misunderstood … There hasn’t really been a mass debriefing about what’s good and what isn’t,” she said. “Some people automatically assume that food bought at a farmer’s market is going to be flawless and ripe … [but] foods change seasonally — you won’t be able to eat the same way if you decide to make the jump to ‘locovore.’”

The seasonal nature of produce forms one of the greatest obstacles for GUSGI: The peak time for sustainable gardening occurs over the summer.
“Mostly, we’re just feeling the area out, trying to figure out what to grow there and when we should plant in order to get yields when people will actually be here,” Howard said.

Caring for the garden is a time-consuming job as well. It takes about 10 hours a week to care for the garden during growing season. There are six full-time contributors to the garden’s tending at the moment, but interest in the organization has continued to grow since its inception on campus.
While gardening may not be the most glamorous step toward a more eco-friendly lifestyle, Howard said he believes that getting a little dirt under the nails might be good for Georgetown students.

“They’re humbling,” Howard said of the gardens. “You learn to care about something other than yourself, on a kind of small scale.”

Planting Seeds of Charity Throughout the District
Both Bruske and Howard agree that small steps at the local level are essential to bettering one and the planet.

“Volunteer in a garden or get a community garden plot,” Bruske suggested. He also recommended checking D.C. Urban Gardeners — a Yahoo list-serv of approximately 700 members — to trade gardening advice or to look more deeply into the related political issues.

“If you can make a little bit of a difference, then you should. You don’t have to try and take down all of factory farming in a single fell swoop,” Howard said.

That little bit of difference is becoming easier to achieve as a host of community gardens crop up around the District; their planters hope to educate the public about sustainability and to serve their neighborhoods with locally grown food.

Capital Area Food Bank is one such organization: Its Harvest for Health program supports several initiatives that help establish connections between children and adults from low-income neighborhoods and local farmers.

Another program, From the Ground Up, teaches children basic cooking and gardening skills, aiming to instill an appreciation for the cultivation of fruits and vegetables and the healthy virtues of the produce itself.

“Kids don’t know how vegetables grow,” said Juju Harris, one of the educators of From The Ground Up. “They don’t know that peppers grow on bushes or that things could taste sweet without sugar.”

Each week of the program, which takes place over the summer, features a different vegetable of the week, explained Harris. For example, the first of last summer’s 11 weeks was dedicated to carrots — the children tasted carrots with dip, carrot muffins and carrot juice. They also dug up baby carrots and learned to cook simple dishes.

“They’re required to take one little nibble of everything,” Harris said. “So you see how it goes from ‘That’s nasty’ to ‘What are we going to taste today?’”

Additionally, Community Supported Agriculture is a partnership between Harvest for Health and the entirely organic Clagett Farm in Upper Marlboro, Md. Half of Clagett’s produce is donated to low-income families and individuals; the other half is sold through community shares. A share of the produce costs $425, but families who are already on food assistance pay half the sum. Each summer, a share is purchased ahead of time and the families are supplied an amount of the harvest each week; they can opt to pick it up at the farm or at the Dupont Farmer’s Market.

“You’re investing locally, and you don’t always know what you’re going to get. It depends on the harvest,” Harris said. “I used to have a share, and I’d take my kids [to the farmer’s market]. They got to meet the farmers — they loved it. It’s a great program.”

Capital Area Food Bank has a number of additional programs, including Grow-a-Row, which informs farmers of ways to donate surplus produce to District food banks, pantries and a weekly farmer’s market in Southeast D.C.

“We’re helping people make the connection from the food to the land, and that healthy food can be not expensive,” Harris said. “It’s just as easy to cut up fresh vegetables as it is to heat up a [Cup Noodles].”

Howard agreed. “I feel like the more local food is produced, the cheaper it will be. We should focus on having the quality of our food be as high as possible, instead of lowering the quality.”

“It’s about trying to get smaller and trying to be kinder to the planet,” Bruske said.

D.C. is trying to do just that. With a more socially conscious generation settling down in the metropolitan area, it’s only natural that this ecologically important issue is gaining a strong following in the region. Whether it’s due to health reasons, environmental concerns or just a curiosity for what nature can bring, sustainable and local food is something to be thankful for this holiday season.