John Cardoza has a rather interesting idea about how to make it through the period of high gas prices and the impending spike in food prices due to the weather in Iowa - victory gardens.  He even gets the topic started off with a little World War 2 propaganda, just to spice things up a bit.

This isn’t a particularly new idea, of course.  Slate recently had an author that’s part of the “urban farming movement” that detailed her experiences with raising poultry.  As the article puts it:

There’s been a lot of ink spilled lately (in the New York Times, among other publications) on city chickens and the urban farming movement. Yes, movement. Whether they’re screw-you-ing the chicken or the egg industries (or, of course, both), next-gen farmers seem to have read Michael Pollan very carefully. They are hip, young, smart, liberal-arts-college graduates, green in many senses of the word, wearing stiff new overalls and chewing on only organic, free-range, locally grown straw, racing outside to move their tractors for street-sweeping. They are locavores, homesteaders, part of a revolution. They are saving the environment, making a statement. And if they eat their own, they tend to see the killing as an unpleasant downside—a tradeoff for the clear conscience that comes with cage-free, hormone-free, factory-free gumbo.

If some of this sounds familiar, well, it kind of should…

“One sometimes gets the impression that the mere words ‘Socialism’ and ‘Communism’ draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, ‘Nature Cure’ quack, pacifist, and feminist in England.”

Or, if you will, precisely the kind of people that have been involved with the “urban farming movement”… until now.  You see, John is not hip.  He’s young (just turned 30), but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him - he has a handlebar mustache, for Christ’ sake.  He is smart, and he does have a Masters in Music Composition, but that’s where the left-leaning wackiness ends.  Past that, it’s nothing but Reagan-praising conservativism, with strong Catholic Republican roots.  Point being, he’s precisely the kind of person that isn’t being described as part of this “revolution”.  He’s not doing this to save the environment - indeed, becoming an urban farmer in a desert city like Reno is probably worse for the local environment than just letting the food get shipped in.  He’s not doing this to grow organic food - in fact, I’m willing to bet he’d spray DDT on his garden in an instant if he could get a hold of it.  I can also guarantee you that killing his own meat would not be considered an unpleasant downside - on the contrary, it would be one of the rewarding parts of the experience of raising his own animals for human consumption.

This is why this man is a visionary.  He is showing us another way - a new philosophical path to embrace the concept of locally grown, or, if you will, revealing a well-worn old path, one with deep ruts from many ages of use, and dark, tall trees, planted eons ago to shade travelers past.  This man isn’t telling you anything you didn’t already know - he’s simply reminding you that which you already know so well.  His first, best destiny is to tell you how to grow green beans.  Anything else is a waste of fertilizer.

(John - good enough plug for you?)

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