The Perils of the Front Yard Food Forest

Someone ate my tomatoes last night. The very first, just ripening from orange to red, roma tomatoes from my garden, MY GARDEN, from my tomato plants that I water with a bucket I use to catch the shower water as it warms up and afterwards haul down the stairs to the garden which is, if I haven't mentioned, MY. GARDEN.

Wait, but what?

The worst part is that I can't complain to my husband. Because he told me so.

I don't like it. 

Urban food gardening is hard. You have to find soil space, first of all and just as importantly you have to find sunlight. Some food plants work in shade but not tomatoes, basil and fruit, which is what my spoiled Mediterranean palate leans toward; so when, in my first forays into food gardening, I realized I had exactly two raised beds worth of sunny space in my backyard, I planted one of tomatoes and one of strawberries. Neither produced well (I realized with more research that they inhibit each other) and even after I switched to only planting one or the other, the plants still struggled to produce no matter how much homemade compost and chicken manure I added to the beds. Plants like tomatoes and strawberries pull a lot of specific nutrients from the soil and over a few years neither does well being planted in the same soil--so I had to go look for new places for my tomatoes.

Cue the battle for the front yard food forest.

Before the California drought hit critical levels my husband was adamantly opposed to food in the front yard. His beautiful carpet of suburban green grass was a point of pride. We watered three times a week to the tune of 2000 gallons of water and fertilized and yes, fed and killed crabgrass and dandelions with Roundup Weed and Feed. We didn't know how bad Roundup was then but we definitely knew we didn't want food growing where pesticides and herbicides had been sprayed. 

He had another problem with the front yard food forest, though--what if people walked by and took apples from our apple trees? Our backyard is fenced in, the front yard is not. While I laughed at the thought of a cheerful, barefooted Tom Sawyer-ian apple thief shimmying up our trees (which were at that point the height of my waist and had four buds on two branches) he reminded me of how freaked out I was when a few years ago a strange woman with a stroller had taken to picnicking on our lawn with her baby. I would back out of the garage and see her spreading her blanket out on our (then) green lawn in the shade of our carrotwood trees, taking her baby out of the stroller and eating a snack herself. When she caught me staring at her in disbelief she would gaze back at me eerily with dead, empty eyes while she ate her pudding pack. 

What care I for lands and titles. Forsooth, this choco-vanilla swirl is the bomb.  

"You want scary mommy stopping by to pick kale? Maybe she'll bring her juicer and plug into our power grid while she's here." 

Ugh. Point taken. 

But at this point I had read about "Farm City" by Novella Carpenter and was fascinated by the idea that she had not just tried to address the fresh food desert in her neighborhood of urban Oakland with a food truck or accessibility to fresh fruits and vegetables in stores but that she had created a food forest in an abandoned lot, and left the gates open to anyone who wandered by and wanted to pull a carrot or a handful of greens. It was beautiful, seductive, the idea of an urban Garden of Eden that could feed and nourish the nutrient-starved masses that abutted its flowering borders. It was like the food forest playgrounds of Portland where everyone was welcome, where everyone could forage as we once had, where the land could provide in abundance and we could once more be connected to the gospel of soil. I had visions of my children climbing the apple trees like Scout and Huck Finn and the Boxcar Children, the neighborhood kids picking blackberries as they walked by and finding themselves less hungry for refined sugar, the adults coming for armfuls of squash and a pumpkin at Halloween. 

Tell me more. Is there a chocolate waterfall in this fantasy?

More to the point I have always been aware of a population of immigrants that wander our neighborhood, knocking politely on the door or calling to us when we were working outside, "Trabajo?" I would see them wandering the aisles of Target with their dusty backpacks on hot days, looking without interest at shelves of cheap toys and rubber flip flops, just looking for the relief of air conditioning and trying not to draw negative attention to themselves. I would see them gathered at the corner of our grocery store plaza, with their hands shoved into their pockets, waiting endlessly for the chance at working as day laborers. They looked so weary, so worn out. Where did they sleep at night? What did they eat when they didn't find work that day? What if an apple from my yard might give them a moment of comfort?

Wow, it sounds so benevolent, doesn't it? Until I found those tomatoes missing this morning and partially lost my mind. 

See, San Diego is starting to become more sustainable and urban garden-friendly, but not having the water resources of Portland and northern California, yards around here are more likely to hold drought tolerant plants, fake plastic grass, or rock gardens. Although the drought has made people more tolerant of each other's landscaping choices, I still feel self-conscious about our front yard. Our dead grass apocalypse-landscape lawn was one of many last year, when the drought was in the news every day, but now I've started to see lush green lawns again, despite the fact that this year's El Nino storms had almost no effect on reducing drought conditions in San Diego and 2016 promises a La Nina storm system, which will bring drier than normal conditions. Now that the neighborhood has started to perk up, our food forest is an eyesore. The sunflowers I planted for the pollinators (Seen a Bee Lately?), massive, with heads 18" across and standing about 12' high, are wilting as they set their seeds--and I want those seeds for next year's planting and for the chickens. Trouble is, they have to sit in the sun and finish ripening on the stalk, with their droopy brown leaves dangling from their amazonian stalks and the petals curled and dried out around the heads. The pumpkin vines started fading as the pumpkin crop ripened on the vine; the huge leaves and sprawling green vines quickly turned from gorgeous expanse of verdant abundance to dead and dry and brown forest of death--which has to stay while the last of the pumpkins finish turning orange. The lettuce has bolted and turned to huge brown obelisks as the seeds set. It's the end of the season and I can't wait to rip everything out. I feel like everyone's watching me water and thinking, "This is what she's making out of all those gallons of water? Basically an abandoned lot?"

And you came in the night and stole my tomatoes. 

Why not the tomatillos? I have more tomatillos and serrano peppers than I could ever eat or turn into salsa. There's kale in abundance and butter lettuce literally growing in the lawn. There's green onions! Why the tomatoes. I haven't even HAD a tomato this year yet. Yesterday I went to the grocery store, saw the roma tomatoes on the display and thought to myself smugly, nope. Not buying any of those because I have my own and they'll be ready any day now. 

Dammit. 

Sigh.

I was such a benevolent person before I had to put in any work for my imaginary food forest. No one else came and tilled the ground by hand or saved every scrap of compostable garbage for months to make compost or bought organic vegetable fertilizer. No one else got up early every morning to help me water or hauled buckets of conserved shower water down to the garden to feed those tomatoes. No one else picked bugs off by hand, or wrestled with ethical questions: I have chickens to provide manure for my garden--when they stop laying eggs is that manure worth what I feed them or do I cull them to make room for new ones? No one else lives with the eyesore in the hopes that what they're doing is making a difference...oh. 

Once I actually read Novella Carpenter's "Farm City" I found out her benevolence was taxed too, when she waited for months for a prized heirloom varietal of watermelon she'd been nurturing to ripen. She woke one morning, looking forward to checking to see if her baby was ready, and found it had been picked during the night. She railed angrily and was furious with her neighbors or whatever wandering stranger had decided to come into her garden and take the very best thing available, the one thing she'd wanted only for herself.

Ultimately Novella made peace with the watermelon thief. How could she not? She'd mentally declared the garden open to all the happy strangers who wandered in to take carrots, onions, and plums. She couldn't in good conscience say to herself "you're welcome to everything here, but only after I've gone through and taken what I want". 

I don't know if I'm there yet.

Ugh. GOD. We all love each other. I GET IT. 

The book "The $64 Tomato" really addresses the struggle we food gardeners have to address--food you grow yourself is not free. If you add up the cost of water (did I mention? State water authorities in California suddenly realized last year that with consumers doing the responsible thing and cutting back on their water by 25% to defray the water shortages in the state, they also were going to be losing 25% of their business--so they raised prices to compensate. Now we pay the same or more for using 25% less water), vegetable fertilizer (do you live in perfectly fertile farm land that's been wandered by free range cattle for decades, dropping manure like little gold patties all over the place just waiting for tomato plants to sprout? Please call me. That's incredibly sexy), seeds/plants, and compost to build the soil back up for the next season, backyard tomatoes are not free. If you plant things like blueberries that really don't survive and flourish except in an acidic soil, and you have to amend your soil with store-bought amendments (I don't have elemental sulfate in my medicine cabinet) constantly, those costs go up even further. I will never again take for granted those bags of vegetables or citrus fruits people leave on the table in the break room.

Double sigh.

The truth is my tomato plants are covered in nice sized fruit and I will have plenty of tomatoes once they start ripening. I can spare three tomatoes, whether they were the first of the harvest or the last on the vine. Do I wish I had been able to have the thrill of picking the first red tomatoes, after having watched them eagerly for weeks for signs of ripening? Of course. Do I really hope that the person who did get to pick those tomatoes was hungry and in need? OF COURSE! Do I not want to think about the fact that it could be the teenagers that wander our neighborhood grafitti-ing stop signs and toilet papering trees didn't take them to, like, throw at people? Yeah. Obvs. I wish I hadn't mentioned it because now I'm, like positive that happened. 

But would I give up my front yard foot forest, with the sun and the space, the birds that are nesting in my giant sunflowers, the Monarch butterflies I keep finding on my nasturtiums, the abundant basil patch that cost me three bucks instead of $15, the fresh onions and kale and tomatillos and the strings of serrano peppers hanging in my kitchen? And really, would I give up the chance to share fresh tomatillos and amazingly flavorful berries and tomatoes that taste like fresh warm sunshine, even with people who didn't ask for permission first?

Nope, never. And someday I'll have my chocolate waterfall too.

The Secret Life of Heels

I caught my neighbor growing squash in her front yard and she did NOT want to talk about it.

I was walking past her house and saw the telltale spade shaped leaves of some young squash plants out in her front yard, hidden in the landscaping, and I was like OH MY GOD A KINDRED SPIRIT! Somebody gets it. Right here on my block, holy crapload of yes. Those squash were like little flags waving to me and saying rest here, ye weary traveler, take refuge from the denizens of crazytown, refresh yourself with some organic lemonade made from our water efficient rainwater saving practices and biodiverse compost for you are safe, girl, kick off your heels.

"Oh my god. You add eggshells to your compost too?" I'm home.

Now, she's a super sporty chick who teaches pilates and cross fit and wears cropped yoga pants and a racer back tank as her daily uniform. Her flip flops are actually FitFlops and her stroller, of course, is a running stroller. If I ever see her running around the neighborhood it's because she's just finished a nine mile cross country run while pushing her two boys in the running stroller and managing the flawlessly trained golden retriever who runs along beside her in perfect tandem in time to wave to me as I'm sleepily heading out to get Starbucks.

What I'm saying is we don't have a lot to talk about.

Still, I was excited that this was going to be a community building moment that would cross the barriers of our different types of footwear, that stilettoed-peep toes and barefoot running shoes could come together in a mutual desire for all the goodness that comes with the garden, to grow and flourish and thrive!

But instead, this was how it went.

Me: "Hey! I see you guys have some squash out in your front yard!" (unspoken subtext: "Like I do, in those huge raised beds I have in the middle of my dead and dying lawn of grass that looks like nuclear winter. Yay squash! Also, be my compatriot in this campaign to spread the gospel of Garden.")

Her: "What? I...well, yes, I mean...my mother-in-law was like, of course you don't ever put food out in the front yard and I didn't want to, but...so my husband grew those from these, like, seeds we got at the grocery store and, I mean, who eats squash?...with the dog and everything we tried to hide them but really we should have some landscaping there." (Unspoken subtext: "Oh. My. GOD I can't believe you called me out on the eyesore in my front yard it has almost been a marriage-ending conflict in my household because LOOK AT IT.") She laughed uncomfortably and race-walked away from me, presumably to burn more free carbohydrates from her impeccably sculpted body.

Okay. We don't talk about it. I get it.

In the same way that when you're dieting it seems like every commercial on TV is for Taco Bell Cinnabons or stuffed crust pizza or glorious glorious jalapeno and lime chips, since I've moved my urban farm into the more sunny and expansive acreage of the front yard, I've noticed little sneaky farm-lets everywhere...and I guess people have noticed mine. An older couple, walking their dog, came up onto the lawn to examine our squash while I was weeding. "Whadya have there, some butternut?" the man asked as if he was from some forgotten Stephen King-esque Connecticut hamlet. His wife, in her immaculately coiffed shining pearl hair and diamond earrings shot him a warning look, but whispered to me, "We have about fifteen raised beds ourselves," before smiling uncomfortably and quickly pulling her husband away by the arm.

I have to admit, when my friend was talking about getting a pet for her children and had ruled out dogs, cats, and reptiles, I was a little embarrassed to suggest what seemed the obvious solution in light of her huge backyard and my own state of mind--chickens. She squirmed at the suggestion, but admitted, "I know, I know, it's so chic right now, chickens are so hot, everyone's doing chickens now."

Are they?

Why is urban farming the dirty little secret of the suburbs?

Shhh, they're growing tomatoes that taste like tomatoes over there.
Right out in the FRONT YARD. Dirty communists.

The whole concept of what suburbanites think of as a traditional front yard comes from our roots as an English colony; basically having a lawn was a symbol of affluence, showing the neighbors you were balling it enough to have land that didn't need to be used for growing food or feeding sheep. Not much has changed in 300 years; the Kardashians have recently become the target for drought shaming for keeping their vast L.A. estate as lush and green as ever despite California's severe water restrictions. We're determined to distance ourselves from our rural roots; not only with those green lawns, but also in the lexicon we use when speaking about farmers and farmland. Boondocks; sticks; mudhole; podunk; yokel; hayseed; hick; bumpkin; dirt farmer. In our very words we show our disdain for the people and soil that sustain us. Our march towards the suburbs is one we're not supposed to look back from. We're here now and our neighbors aren't about to let us forget that (property values, honey)--no, I mean they're seriously not going to let us forget that since there are literally zoning restrictions in some states that prohibit people from farming in the front yard. Thankfully, at least in some places, communities are beginning to relax community gardening regulations to allow the shift from decorative back to functional, from lawns back to vegetables, from landscaping to squash vines.

Which brings me back to the secret life of the backyard farmer, quietly cultivating modern-day victory gardens with tomato cages on the back patio; or my neighbors, with their squash vines on the downlow. See, they may still be closet urban farmers but it definitely takes one to know one; only someone who's tried to grow squash on their own knows how finicky they can be about pollinating, how prone they are to squash borers, how greedy for compost and fertilizer they are once they finally fruit. My little old neighbors know, and that's what made them cross the boundaries of the great suburban divide--the property line--step off the sidewalk into my garden and one step closer to the kind of community our grandparents probably had with each other. It's the kind of community that growing things can build.

At a recent dinner party at my house I was startled when all of the artists and actors and writers I brought over didn't want to have wonderful intellectual conversations with each other. They all asked for a tour of my burgeoning backyard farm. I was a little embarrassed to take them around and say "Well, these are my sunflowers that haven't flowered yet, and this is the bare patch of land where I just planted radishes yesterday, and these are my blueberry bushes that I just harvested so they now look like regular shrubs..." but I was more startled that they bent over and looked at everything and sat in the backyard drinking it in, laughing at how I'd probably have chickens soon but wistfully asking whether I might think of getting a beehive? and just like that, the secret life sparks curiosity.

I'm seeing, really seeing, my neighborhood in a way I never did before, and realizing that those squash vines hidden in the landscaping and tomato plants edging the pathways really are a sign--here's someone who's not afraid, who doesn't care what the neighborhood thinks, who wants to take back a corner of the precious resources we've been given, and who's willing to be weird to do it. Possibly a crazy chicken lady at heart. Possibly a kindred spirit who knows the secret life of farming in heels. 

Where Have all the Barbaloots Gone?

"Can't we have the puppy pee on this lawn?" my little son inquired during our morning walk past the neighbor's house. "Look how green it is. Don't they know we're in a drought?"

Indeed, the neighbors lawn fills me with an unreasonable rage. In March of this year the governor of California announced that the state was in one of the worst droughts in history, only to see Californians save a whopping almost no water. After only a 3.6% water conservation for the month of April the government was forced to make water restrictions of 25% per household mandatory, which in our neighborhood also means mandatory restrictions on your outdoor watering to twice weekly or less.

Yet, my lovely neighbor's lawn, filled with the highest quality, fine-bladed, lush and soft Kentucky bluegrass is uniformly the color of water in a deep, still forest pond; the green of a ripe cucumber, watermelon green, the color of life and growth. The grass is so soft and so fine, with nary a tan or yellowed blade amid its luscious carpet, it forces you to imagine squinching your bare toes in it, or laying in it blowing dandelion wishes (if weeds were allowed, which they are not), or braiding daisy chains (if landscaping flowers were allowed to be picked, which they are not). Dr. Seuss must have had grass like this when he wrote of his famous truffula trees, "the touch of their tufts is much softer than silk."

What I'm saying is this lawn did not get nor remain this green by being watered twice a week. 

My lawn, as of March, is D-E-D dead. My lawn is as dead as the girl in the zombie movie who stops to make love in the peach orchard. My lawn is as dead as any character that you name out loud as your favorite character in Game of Thrones (why, Ned Stark, why? Why did you have to be so noble?). My lawn is an alien threat who, having been warned by Doctor Who to stop whatever they are doing, does not stop whatever they are doing. My lawn is a red-shirted nameless helmsman in a Star Trek away team. Dead, is where I'm going with this. Like so dead it's a little embarrassing. My lawn is the color of a truck stop waitress's hair in Texas.

My lawn when when it was green was getting watered twice a week and still using over 2000 gallons of water a week. In exchange for about $100 a month in water resources it gave me:

• the satisfaction of driving up to my house twice a day and seeing a green lawn that matched the other green lawns in the neighborhood
• a soapy chemical runoff that watered the street in front of my house really well
• the pleasure of playing on my grass no, wait, we never played on the grass
• the smell of fresh cut grass  no, shoot, not that either since the gardener cut it
• lots of barefoot front yard barbecues no, front yard parties are not really "done" around here
• some other stuff...wait...there was something. I feel like there was something though...

Total minutes of joy for the month: 60. So, like $1.60 a minute. I mean, you could have phone sex for that much. I think you can buy a dose of heroin that will jack you up long enough to make that worth it. I'm not sure the joy of driving up to see my green lawn before I pull into the garage twice a day was really that kind of high. 

We told our neighbors we were going to let the lawn die. They all shook their heads at how brave we were. Yep, just the heroes of Mount Suburbia over here, willing to shoulder the badge of shame that comes with a dusty brown lawn. Cancer survivors have nothing on us. I am Khaleesi, Queen of the desert grass.

The only problem was that in March we also start watering the vegetable garden more aggressively, and at the same time we decided to let the lawn die, we had just put in two more raised beds in the front yard. I decided to hand water with a watering can for a week so I could keep track of how much water I used; it came out to 175 gallons a week. In exchange for less than $10 a month in water resources it gave me (well, less, actually, since I saved rainwater that particular month): bowls of blueberries

• 5 bowls of blueberries 
• 4 small heads of broccoli
• 50 snow pea pods
• 15 handfuls of strawberries
• 4 heads of spring garlic
• 3 bouquets of fresh cut roses and scented geraniums
• the strong and heady fragrance of blossoming lemon trees
• the exercise of lifting and carrying buckets of water
• a bunch of fresh air and sunlight

Total minutes of joy: 900. That's a pretty good cost per minute of joy ratio. I can handle that. And it was good joy. Fresh blueberries straight from the bushes and a bunch of vitamin D from a few extra minutes of sunlight the garden forced me to get, AND we not only met our water restrictions mandate of 25%, we exceeded it by reducing 90%? I just might be the smartest girl, in the highest heels.

"And so," said the Lorax, "please pardon my cough,
they cannot live here, so I'm sending them off.
Where will they go?
I don't hopefully know."

Most people are addressing California's water issues by digging out their lawns and replacing them with hardscaping and rock gardens; some, like my Bluegrassian neighbors, ignore water restrictions entirely in favor of flowerless manicured outdoor carpets soaked in as much as three times the chemicals per acre of commercial agriculture. Meanwhile songbirds, butterflies and honeybees are becoming fewer and further between as their search for seeds and flowering plants for food pushes them (and us, by the way) into extinction. They are the Barbaloots, the Swomee Swans, and the Humming Fish that disappeared from the Lorax's Valley.

I propose a third option. A pot of flowers. A hanging tomato plant. A bunch of potatoes sprouting in a bucket. A fruit tree. Instead of wrought iron ivy curling up your fence posts, actual bean and pea plants. Instead of grass, paths between the carrots and strawberries patches. Food, not lawns. Butterflies, not chemicals. Purpose, not picture-perfect. For the water, for the bees, for the topsoil, we just have to do better with the resources we have. And unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot...

"...unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot
Nothing is going to get better. It's not."