Becoming a Family of Plenty

On December 27, 2007, my wife Nancy and I, both Presbyterian pastors,were restless for a change in our patterns of consumption. In a fit of post-Christmas shopping fatigue, we wondered together if we might be able to find more meaningful and faithful ways to spend our time, energy, and money. We scribbled down our ideas on a Starbucks brochure and four hopeful themes emerged: local, used, homegrown, and homemade.

At some point in the conversation I speculated, “What if we sought to live by these four rules for a whole year? Everything we purchased would have to be either local, used, homegrown, or homemade.” Some how this impromptu New Year’s resolution/manifesto stuck, and thus began a “Year of Plenty” in the Goodwin house.

Hopefully this gallery of ideas and experiences will spur you on to start your own unique experiments in pursuing a life of plenty.

Craig Goodwin is the author of Year of Plenty.

Make Something From Scratch

One of our first realizations upon entering the year is that, if we wanted to have some items, we were going to have to make them from scratch. Some of these consumer goods were staples, like butter and ice cream. Others were special items that we couldn’t find locally like a flamingo piñata requested for a birthday party. We made many discoveries as we ventured out to make these items. We learned that we were capable of far more than we imagined when the year began. We learned that these homemade items, though not as professionally made as goods at the store, were much more satisfying to use. Most of all, we learned that the process of making always forced us to slow down, take time, and be together as a family. While the piñata for Noel’s birthday party wasn’t pretty, it was Noel’s favorite part of the celebration.

Know the People Who Brought It to Market

Our church runs a farmers’ market in the church parking lot, and our family’s experiences buying directly from the farmers at the market was part of the inspiration for our rules. The market had given us a small taste of these direct relationships and we were eager for more.

Early on in the year, after deepening these friendships with farmers,something spontaneous and new broke into our pre-meal ritual of prayer. Along with thanking God for the food, which was the normal extent of our prayer, we thanked God for all the people connected to each item of food. We thanked God for Gary who raised the chickens, and for Dale who we met at Inland Northwest Dairy, and for Mr. Siemers who grew the carrots. Our meal was transformed into a community event—connected to people, land, sacrifice, with God’s grace encompassing the whole of it.

Start a Garden of Plenty

Growing some of your own food has been one of the most rewarding aspects of our efforts to slow down and build more meaningful patterns of consumption. Fresher fruits and vegetables are more nutritious and tasty, and it doesn’t get any fresher than plucking a tomato off the vine and taking a bite. Ever since we started growing vegetables, our children have grown to love eating them. They roam the garden all summer creating impromptu feasts of carrots, berries, and beans, gobbling them up with glee.

Along with serving many practical purposes, gardening has become a spiritual discipline. Following the seasons and paying attention to the Creation has helped better connect us to the Creator.

Turning a Lawn Into a Vegetable Garden

If you've done the survey of your property to identify areas that get more than 6 hours of direct sunlight, you probably discovered that there are already plants growing in those places, with grass taking up a large portion of it. There are two ways to replace a lawn with vegetable garden plots. One method is to create raised beds filled with gardening soil placed directly on top of the grasswith landscape cloth underneath.

At the end of the first growing season, use a pitch fork to loosen the soil and poke holes in the fabric, making openings for future veggie roots. Don't do that the first year or your grass will grow up through the fabric.

Tip: DON'T use treated wood for the frame. You'll likely get a good dose of arsenic and other nasty chemical with any veggies you grow in a treated-wood raised bed.

Turning a Lawn Into a Vegetable Garden Part 2

When we turned our lawn into a vegetable garden during our year of plenty, we used a sod cutter to remove the grass. We amended the soil with composted manure (make sure it’s composted and not fresh). Just remember that the sod is incredibly heavy and you'll need a place to pile it up. Leave it for a growing season and then use it as compost the following year. Unless you’re using a tractor, there is not necessarily a benefit to keeping your rows straight and narrow. We decided to make ours into a labyrinth maze with a patch of grass in the middle. This isn’t without some challenges. For example, it’s not easy to get the lawn mower into the middle of the maze when the garden is fully grown.

Turning a Lawn Into a Vegetable Garden Part 3

I was a little concerned initially about how the kids would respond to losing prime space for running and playing, but to my surprise, the labyrinth maze has become Grand Central Station for summer children’s activities. They love the adventure of walking the maze, and the central patch of grass is now a stage for their fertile imaginations to act out elaborate dramas. It has also become a favorite picnic spot for the family. One summer we discovered that the nasturtium leaves surrounding the central circle make tasty mini wraps for a quinoa salad that was part of our picnic. We were initially concerned about what the neighbors would think, but have been pleasantly surprised at their encouragement. The fact that we share the harvest probably helps.

Turning a Lawn Into a Vegetable Garden Part 4

The Labyrinth shape echoes the historic practice in the church of walking a labyrinth as a lived metaphor of our winding journey to God at the center. The convergence of our backyard, a vegetable garden, and a labyrinth has been a spark to my imagination about the relationship between tending the garden and attending to my relationship with God.

Wendell Berry speaks to this in The Art of the Common Place when he says, “The 'drudgery' of growing one's own food, then, is not drudgery at all…. It is—in addition to being the appropriate fulfillment of a practical need—a sacrament, as eating is also, by which we enact and understand our oneness with the Creation, the conviviality of one body with all bodies.” Berry’s comments reinforce what I have discovered—that gardening is a practice that helps connect us to the web of Creation and provokes us to consider our connections to the Creator.

What If I Don’t Have any Space to Grow Food?

For a variety of reasons, you may not have any space to grow food. Maybe your property is covered by the shade of tall trees, or you rent an apartment, or you just can’t bear the thought of tearing out the lawn. There are plenty of other options. There is no reason you can’t mix vegetable plants into landscape bushes and flowers, and many food plants are quite beautiful, especially herbs.

One proven strategy with limited space is to choose your variety of vegetable plants carefully. Most vegetables come in vining or bush varieties. If you have a limited footprint of soil to work with, you can use a bush variety that won’t take over the whole garden, or you can use a vining variety and train it up a trellis or a teepee of poles. You can also use container pots filled with soil, but beware of gimmicks. For example, I have yet to meet someone who has had great luck with upside tomato set-ups.

Community Gardens are a Great Option

Another option is to find a nearby community garden and rent a raised bed for the summer. You can find a database of community gardens around the U.S. at the American Community Garden Association site. If you don’t see a listing there, call your local County Extension office for more information. If you find that there aren’t any nearby community gardens, how about starting one? It’s a great project for a church or other community group. In 2010, our family and church joined up with our neighborhood and community to create a new garden on a nearby abandoned industrial lot. With donated lumber and soil delivered to the site we put out the call for help and over thirty people showed up to put together the beds and fill them with dirt.

Community Gardens Part 2

There was a woman who walked by during our first workday at the community garden and she asked what we were up to. When we explained, she lit up and talked about how excited she was at the thought it. As if to sum up her enthusiasm, she said, "I just want to be a part of a community."

One of the most important lessons for our family during our year of plenty is that we long to be connected in meaningful ways to each other and to our neighbors, but the patterns of our lives make this difficult. We learned the power and joy of doing meaningful things together, and the way this pushes back against the forces that disconnect us. Growing food together is a helpful way of becoming a family of plenty and a community garden is a great step toward becoming a community of plenty.

Raise Chickens in Your Backyard

Part of our journey of plenty has included bringing chickens into our family circle. The idea of keeping chickens in our backyard at one time seemed outrageous, but now it’s hard to imagine our household rhythms without them. They are precious pets with personalities that the kids love, they work in the garden all winter scratching and fertilizing the soil, and they feed us breakfast all year round.

Our experience with the chickens has also given us a new perspective on the way farm animals are treated at industrial-scale farming operations where they are confined and crowded. Seeing our chickens basking in the sun and rejoicing in having laid an egg has helped me appreciate them as God’s creatures that deserve living conditions appropriate to their design. Our two-legged companions have turned me into a chicken activist and have given our kids a healthy appreciation for where their meat and eggs come from.

How to Get Started Raising Chickens in Your Backyard Part 2

Two favorite breeds for backyard coops are Buff Orpingtons and Barred Rocks. There are other good breeds, but these two have especially good dispositions for kids. You may want to consider entering your chickens in the local county fair. Noel and Lily showed their chickens at the Spokane County Fair and Lily look home a Best of Breed blue ribbon for her Buff Orpington named Cheesy. It’s a great educational experience. You might also want to consider having the kids enter vegetables in the fair. During our year of plenty, the girls brought home the coveted “Largest Rutabaga” Grand Champion ribbon. They also would have received the “Only Rutabaga Entered” award, too, but that didn’t make it any less of a triumph.

Invest in New Experiences Not New Stuff

One extra rule for our year of plenty was that we chose one international location to buy items from during the year, with the hope that we would make a visit at the end of the year. We chose Thailand, where Nancy had some connections from when she lived there after college. Thailand not only offered us a good source of rice and coffee, it connected us to global economics in a personal and meaningful way.

As a compromise for buying gasoline that wasn’t local, used, homegrown, or homemade, we took the money from one of our cars and bought tickets to Thailand. We joked that we traded rides in our minivan for a ride on elephants in Thailand. Our two weeks with missionary friends and churches in Thailand was an amazing time and helped us understand the wisdom of investing in experiences instead of spending precious resources on new stuff that is here today and gone tomorrow.

Walk Instead of Drive

A consequence of living with one car is that we ended up walking more, especially in the mornings when I walked the kids to school and then walked the extra mile to my office. When the other children in the neighborhood saw that we were walking, they asked if they could join us and we welcomed them into our merry band of travelers. We ended up with a walking school bus of kids, spending quality time, getting healthier, and starting the day with laughter and a little bit of adventure.

I found the extra mile of walking time to work, after dropping off the kids, a good time to get centered and prayerfully reflect on the tasks of the day. I also became more aware of my surrounding and better connected to what God is up to in the neighborhood.