Planting and growing a garden is a basic tenet of self-reliance, as the Founding Fathers knew. “During the whole of the American Enlightenment,” Henry Steel Commager notes, “every President was a countryman.” (The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and American Realized the Enlightenment, p 243.)
We must have hard work so that we can create order and virtue. Hesiod says, “The immortals decried that man must sweat to attain virtue, since for mortals, order is best, disorder is worst.” Those who work to “fill their barns” know this freedom better than those who are enslaved to the prices and nutrition of the grocery store produce. When we have abandoned our yards, to the great farming corporations, we have abandoned the values created through gardening.
Through gardening, our country can return to greatness and freedom, if we know the advantages of gardening. Peace, prosperity and political stability have to be carefully created out of our own “hard work, skill and virtue” (Bruce S. Thorton, Vital Remnants, p. 43)
When we take the time to plant a garden, involving our children and families in the process, we create a bond of love and future rewards. Those who have helped plan this garden necessarily will endeavor to keep it in good order, checking the progress as the small spouts arise, keeping the weeds at bay. By example, as moms, we teach this love of our garden to our little ones. Many wonderful, in-depth conversations and also those meaningful silences can be enjoyed while weeding a garden.
Later, when harvesting, preparing and cooking together, our families will have an appreciation for the greater nutrition provided by the colorful vegetables and fruits. Our children and even the neighbor children are willing to eat the things they have had a hand in growing. The rewards enjoyed from seeing your child pick a carrot right from the ground, rinse it in the hose and take a noisy bite are priceless. Soon, the neighborhood kids will be eating the produce as well.
Our next-door neighbors and beyond will look forward to the fresh produce you share and the conversations engaged in when you come over. While they are outside doing yard work, you can have a great conversation over fresh, red tomatoes. Invite them over to see the garden as it grows. Later, when you learn to bottle some of the harvest, sharing a bottle or two of string beans, your conversations will build the foundations for long-lasting friendships.
These lasting friendships aren’t the only reward—gardening and the values learned and taught while engaging is this process are the essence of our country: “We are all tillers of the earth… a people of cultivators… united by the silken bands of mild government, all respecting the laws without dreading their power, because we are all equitable. We are all animated with the spirit of an industry…because each person works for himself.” (J. Hector St. John de Crévecoeur, Letter from an American Farmer.)
This “working for himself” is self- reliance, which will provide the strength, virtue and value of hard work necessary to become great again. Thomas Jefferson wrote to George Washington: “The moderate and sure income of husbandry, begets permanent improvement, quiet life, and orderly conduct, both public and private…it is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals and happiness.” As our nation has strayed from this lost ideal, we have become a nation of the opposite: leisurely, unethical and unhappy. Now is the time to regain these attributes in ourselves, in our families and in our communities—to return to values of self-reliance, independence and freedom.