Yard to Table

Yard to Table

HOW THE UNPRECEDENTED CHALLENGES OF 2020 MIGHT PERHAPS YIELD A MORE AGRARIAN FUTURE

Story by Jonathan Olivier • Photos by Paul Kieu

In the early days of the pandemic, when there were more questions than answers surrounding COVID-19, our world came to a screeching halt. In the midst of nationwide shutdowns, deaths, jobs lost, and general confusion, news began trickling in of shortages at the grocery store. Aisles were bare and resupplies were lagging. It appeared as if America, the land of plenty, could soon be left without a way to feed its people.

Stevie Mizzi has been practicing life as a full-time homesteader for years, growing vegetables and raising farm animals on her plot of land near Duson.

Paul Kieu

We know how the story played out—some essentials, namely toilet paper, were scant, but most supplies were still available and, luckily, we averted a nationwide food crisis. But at the time, when no one knew if the shelves would be restocked or if workers could enter food processing facilities again, the fear was palpable. Due to shutdowns at meat packing plants, thousands of pigs were euthanized and farmers had no restaurants to buy their product. The U.S. Department of Agriculture spent three billion dollars purchasing meat, dairy, and produce as a bandage for farmers, and the USDA later sent direct aid to them.

There’s one part of that story that really struck home for me: shortages of vegetable seeds, chickens, and garden supplies. At the time, I was running a small market garden and, to my dismay, couldn’t find available seeds from my normal supplier or five of its competitors. I scrambled together what I could from as many sources as possible to have produce to sell last summer.

Despite my initial frustration at the situation, with hindsight I’ve begun to reconsider this period of American history. I’ve realized that perhaps last spring’s panic buying wasn’t based in irrationality, as I believed at the time, but rather evidence of a deeply-rooted cultural practice inherent in us all. When the foundation of our industrial food system started to develop hairline fractures, people realized how unstable that structure had been all along. Gardening appeared to be the only logical exit.

Paul Kieu

Growing food, foraging, and self-sufficiency, after all, is woven into the fabric of human history—and America’s, too. It’s likely that most of us are only a few generations removed from some agrarian ancestor. Growing food, then, is an American ideal.

While shutdowns are becoming a memory, along with the threat of food shortages, I’m sure many of those victory gardens have succumbed to weeds. But maybe the lockdowns helped America, if only for a few short months, remember where we come from and, ultimately, how growing food is about more than sustenance.

“For me, having the chance to just watch a seed sprout is almost like watching magic happen,” said Jenny Prevost, a home gardener from Rayne.

Prevost, who grows for her husband and three children, explained that she sees gardening as a fundamental element of the human condition. And that’s not only because it nurtures, she said, but because it’s a practice that puts her in touch with her spirituality. “To watch your plants grow—I can’t see how that couldn’t be a soul-saving, healing experience for anyone.”

Jenny Prevost and her family started raising a home garden in January 2020. When the pandemic began, the family became more involved in the project, and now most of the food they consume is grown in their backyard. The garden has doubled in size twice since then.

Paul Kieu

Prevost’s father, Bill Guidry, cultivated a garden when she was younger. She’s tended to a small vegetable patch herself for the last few years, although at the beginning of 2020, she decided to really dive into it. She received fledgling plants from her mother-in-law Ellaine Turner, and the hobby matured. By the time spring rolled around, her garden was full and growing more every day.

“Once the shutdown happened, and everything came to a halt, I was so grateful to have had expanded the garden,” she said. “It became such a grounding activity. My kids were home from school, and it became a family undertaking.”

Prevost described her family’s diet before the pandemic as conventional; their pantry was stocked with shelf-stable, typical American snacks like chips and cookies, while the meals she cooked didn’t take much prep time. But, she told me, the pandemic changed all of that. Over the summer, she and her family doubled the size of the garden, and they did so again in the fall. She said those easy snacks have all but disappeared, replaced by home-made, fermented foods, along with fresh, more involved meals straight from the backyard.

Paul Kieu

Such a journey into self-sustainable growing was once described by the agrarian philosopher Wendell Berry as the “profoundest enactment of our connection with the world.” In one of his most celebrated works, The Art of the Commonplace: The Agrarian Essays, he equates gardening to an awakening, one that can help us to recognize and reject the way in which America wastefully produces food for easy consumption. “In this state of total consumerism … all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken,” he wrote. Only through gardening, through working the land, can one “begin to understand and to mistrust and to change our wasteful economy.”

For Prevost, witnessing the fragility of the country’s food and education system was enough of a catalyst to make a lasting change, one that she has discovered, as Berry noted, is about more than access to fresh food.

“It hit a reset button for me,” she said. “I realized that not so long ago, people did without these modern conveniences and had happy lives. I’m finding that is important to get back to.”

This philosophy is one that Stevie Mizzi tapped into years ago. On a plot of land near Duson, she cultivates a small farm that feeds her husband and three children. In addition to a garden full of vegetables, she has a dairy cow, chickens, and fruit trees.

Paul Kieu

When the shutdown upended life in America, it was business as usual for her. A full-time homesteader for years, Mizzi’s routine was practically unchanged. She and her kids awoke in the morning and would head outside into the garden to pluck breakfast right from the earth—whatever was in season at the time—along with some fresh-laid eggs. Throughout the day, she’d continue to meal prep, mostly with vegetables or meat her family procured on their own land.

Although she also had trouble finding seeds for her garden last spring, Mizzi saw the rush through a different lens than I had. “My immediate reaction to it all was that I was very happy,” she said. “I was glad that people were giving gardening a shot, because I felt like for some of them, it would stick. And maybe those people would continue moving in that direction.”

Mizzi hoped others could glean what she had from all of these years of working the land—that backyard gardens offer clean food, breed bodily satisfaction, and instill valuable work ethic. She shares in Berry’s vision of gardening as such a radical act. She told me that she believes the practice “is the answer to most of society’s troubles.”

“Gardening is the exact opposite of instant gratification,” she said. “The rules of gardening are governed by nature, and a lot of time that is out of our control. If you mess up, you have to wait a whole year to try again. You really have to be patient, and also resilient and persistent.”

Paul Kieu

Some habits instilled by this pandemic— such as social distancing and maskwearing—we’ll be happily rid of once the threat has gone. But perhaps some new behaviors born of this moment in history, such as gardening, will stick around a little longer as people witness its value to us as individuals and as a society. Perhaps these months of increased contact between us and the earth will be the catalyst for the change that Berry hoped for.