Organic Gardening

Founded in 1940 by JI Rodale a health food fanatic from New York City Lower East Side, the magazine devoted its pages to agricultural methods and health benefits in growing food without synthetic chemicals...
Organic Gardening and Farming struggled along in obscurity until 1969 when an ecstatic review in the Whole Earth Catalog brought it to the attention of hippies trying to grow vegetables without patronizing the military–industrial complex. "If I were a dictator determined to control the national press," the Whole Earth corespondent wrote, "Organic Gardening would be the first publication I'd squash, because it is the most subversive. I believe that organic gardeners are in the forefront of serious effort to save the world by changing man's orientation to it, to move away from the collective, centrist superindustrial state, toward a simpler, realer one to one relationship with the earth itself."

Michael Pollan's, The Omnivore's Dilemma, p. 142

I have been visiting gardens this week–checking up on all the vegetables I have planted with my clients. While I have been driving around with JT, my assistant, I have been paging through Michael Pollan's Work... Maybe it is because I am excited to have just signed a contract with Rodale/Prevention Magazine for recipes, or maybe its because I am always thinking about how and why my projects are connected but this above quote stuck as I checked gardens and thought about feeding others.

The Rodale story is something to checkout. Currently the publisher of The Inconvenient Truth and Men's Health– who knew that it all started from J. I. Rodale living in tenement housing in the lower east side trying to make a better life for himself and others–similar to what Will Allen, of Growing Power, is doing in Milwaukee...