Garden Salesmen?!

The moment we began this venture of kitchen garden installations, a spectre showed its face. "We're going to be garden... salesmen?" Images of a used-car commercial haunted me. "Whadda I have to do to put YOU behind the wheel of a raised bed of brassicas and peas?! Let me show you our 2008 clearance model: an untreated-wood frame filled with our patented GOLD Freelance Soil Blend... seedlings, compost pile and drip irrigation included! Don't delay! Offer ends soon." (Note: we are actually quite proud of our soil blend.) I still find myself wanting to promise clients a sort of Chia-Pet magic: "Instant cornucopia! No work, no thinking!" What we offer, though, and what we see as most important, is simply not a commodity. It's a chance to participate in the timeless human endeavor of food-growing. Just as we aim to cultivate superb Sungold tomatoes and salad greens, we aim to cultivate curious and motivated gardeners.

And so we've entered an area dangerously distant from the salesman's charted waters. We're offering the chance to work on something wonderful. The chance to be challenged, to overcome, to be fulfilled. To suddenly understand "seasonal foods" in a point-blank way (try as you may, your sweet corn will not grow in January). To eat the most sacred of foods -- yours. And to (joy of all joys) flip through seed catalogues in the wet winter and plan this spring's layout. In each of these steps, we're not removing a task from your life, but adding a high, high quality one to it.

In a recent New York Times Magazine article, "Why Bother?" (April 20, 2008), Michael Pollan articulated the rewards of ... not hiring the Freelance Farmers to run your garden for you ... but learning to garden yourself: "Still more valuable are the habits of mind that growing a little of your own food can yield. You quickly learn that you need not be dependent on specialists to provide for yourself — that your body is still good for something and may actually be enlisted in its own support." Emily and I have talked, and we decided we have no intentions of becoming such specialists. We will not neuter our clients of this trophy of natural rights: sweet, sometimes sweaty, self-reliance. After installing our (first-rate) vegetable gardens, our goals (we're aspiring history teachers, remember?) are educational.

Talking to a family about installing a food garden is like asking them to consider a new pet. Both ask of us new daily rituals. Both communicate to us in elusive, non-verbal ways ... and we become obsessed with finding out what they're saying. Why did the chard do so well in the corner? Why did the cilantro go to flower so quickly in the hot summer? Why did the tomatoes set larger once I pruned the suckers? For both pets and veggies, there are books written to help us down these avenues, and there are trainers for hire. Think of the Freelance Farmers as breeders and trainers of produce-growing. We'll provide you with a garden of your choosing, and lay down the foundations of a life-long, ecstatic relationship with it. With no money down! Extended warranties! Low APR financing....