Speaking to my soul (and stomach!): This Organic Life by Joan Dye Gussow

During the weekend of MLK Jr. Day I spent my time at the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association's Conference absorbing as much information as I possibly could about organic market gardening. I'm hoping to take my urban gardening to the next level and recently a friend of mine offered up part of her backyard for the cause.  Knowing all of this, I've been snagging as many books as I can to help my venture.  While I was searching through through the stacks of new books at the conference's book room, I happened upon a shelf of inexpensive used books and the cover and title of This Organic Life by Joan Dye Gussow caught my attention.  I was ready to read something to learn from that wasn't simply a "how-to-book" or another manual on gardening/mini-farming (although there are some good ones out there-- some of which I already own).

While it took me nearly two weeks to finish the book, even though it's only 260 pages, it's a dense read.  I think this may partially be because of the stream of consciousness type feel to her style, which isn't all bad.  It makes it a bit difficult at times in that there are recipes interwoven into her story as she refers to the various veggies she's growing.  I'd like to save many of these for later, but I'm not feeling motivated enough to copy each one out of the book to add to my collection.  I can't help but wish that she'd simply placed these in the back of the book in such a way that it was more convenient to actually use.

The book starts off with Joan telling about how she ended up in her current gardening space, after moving with her husband from a large Victorian house to a river front lot with a folly of a house.  I found it interesting that she jumped back and forth between telling about the houses and it wasn't exactly chronological, but somehow the pieces fit. At this point it also became apparent that she also seemed to be using her writing to help her process her husband's death.  I really liked this aspect because it really brought the human element to the story and I feel she did a nice job telling about him and his connection rather than simply lamenting his loss.  By roughly halfway into the book she began to allude to his sickness and then the fact that he'd already passed as she talked about the connections her husband had with the community garden they created together and with the people who used the community garden.      

I also appreciated Gussow's discussion of the house situation and what it meant to her and her husband and their gardening.  I could relate to her emotional connection with the houses and the gardens, especially as she and her husband prepared the "new" house and its gardening area.  Again, she showed her humanity by telling of the frustrations with starting to renovate the house and then finding out it needed to simply be scrapped, particularly after they put in so much time and effort in preparation to restore it to its grandeur.  I also had many chuckles as she told of the misguided feistyness of her new neighbor and her anger in return.  I liked that she told of her anger and how her husband managed to smooth over the the situations as they arose, and with a seemingly good-natured and zen-like ability.  In this, I again felt like I could relate to her because I could envision friends and family similar to those she described-- again, all of them very human with their various skills and weaknesses.

I finally finished the book after I began reading in the early mornings as well as during the evening, and I'm glad I did.  It gave me lots of ideas for planting and cooking-- in particular with kale, sweet potato and onion.  She also made me aware of how many fruits and veggies I eat that are out of season and are shipped considerable distances just to satisfy my desire for fresh strawberries, blueberries and bananas.  She also made me aware as to how tough mini-farming can be (as demonstrated by ravenous rats and catastrophic flooding in her yard), allowing for forgiveness for the consumer who resorts to buying the veggies and fruit that are simply available at the nearby store.