Transcription of Roger Doiron for the show Earth Calling #152
Dr. Lisa: About three years ago I watched a very interesting TEDx talk by a local man who is doing good things in the area of local foods, and in fact, personalizing and localizing the food supply. Today we’re speaking with Roger Doiron, the founder and director of Kitchen Gardeners International, a Maine-based nonprofit network of over 30,000 individuals from 120 countries. He is taking a hands-on approach to re-localizing the food supply.
Thanks so much for coming in and talking to us today.
Roger: It’s my pleasure. Thank you.
Dr. Lisa: Roger, I was inspired by your TEDx talk, which I believe was held … well, I know it was held right up the street here in Portland. It made gardening seem to accessible. You said that I believe you saved several thousand dollars by planting your own garden and eating your own organic food in your house. It made it seem like something that any of us could do.
Roger: That’s really my life’s work. I’m trying to help more people to grow at least a little bit of their own food.
You’re right. It is accessible. It’s not rocket science. It’s a question of putting a seed in the soil at the right time and giving it a little bit of care, and then cultivating that plant once it starts to poke its nose through the earth.
It doesn’t have to be complicated, and it can be done with very little space. If you happen to have a little bit more space, you can actually grow quite a bit of food and save quite a bit of money.
Dr. Lisa: There was a big effort that dealt with quite a big space, actually, with President Obama and his wife several years ago when he was inaugurated for the first time. You had a part in that.
Roger: I think I did have a little bit of a hand in that. I continue to give 99.9% of the credit to the First Lady, Michelle Obama, because she’s the one who actually stepped up and said, “Let’s plant this.” My organization, Kitchen Gardeners International, had run a campaign called, “Eat the View,” which was a social media campaign to really build support and enthusiasm for the idea of having a kitchen garden planted at the White House once again.
It proved to be successful. We got a lot of attention. I think primarily we got a lot of people excited that we could actually get this garden planted.
Dr. Lisa: This seems to be something that more and more people are interested in. I’m seeing more chickens in people’s back yards. I’m seeing more beehives in their gardens. For a while, though, we gave away the power. We let somebody else create our food for us. How did that happen?
Roger: That’s one of the things that I was addressing in my TEDx talk which was titled, “A Subversive Plot.” What I said was that I think that gardening is a subversive activity in the sense that, by growing a little bit of your own food, you’re doing something that’s socially subversive in the sense that you’re taking some power into your own hands, and you’re also, at the same time, automatically taking that power away from some other forces in the world which I think tend to be these bigger forces like multinational companies that have been enabled by our political system, but also by ourselves.
We need to own our own actions. We’ve allowed the Monsantos and the Krafts and the Coca-Colas to not only find their ways into our supermarket shelves but also into our schools and places like that.
I think we’ve gone astray over the years. It’s been more of a slow train wreck as opposed to just a violent car crash, but the fact is we really are on our way back. We’re in the midst, I think, of a full-blown local foods revolution right now, and that’s where I’m putting my energy.
Dr. Lisa: Are you originally from Maine?
Roger: I was born in Chicago, so I’m not officially a real Mainer, but I moved here when I was about two years old, so I’m pretty close.
Dr. Lisa: You have experience with attempting to grow things here in Maine for quite a long time.
Roger: I did grow up in a family that had a garden, so I’m pretty tuned into the seasons here and what works and what can’t, but I’m also one of those people who doesn’t take no for an answer that nicely, in the sense that I’m continuing to try my artichokes every year. I think over the past three years I’ve had three artichokes, but I think that’s part of the fun for me, is just to push the envelope a little bit and to see what we can get out of our soil and our seasons here in Maine.
What you ultimately find out is that we can get a lot.
Dr. Lisa: You and your wife have three boys?
Roger: That’s correct.
Dr. Lisa: How do they help you out with gardening in your household?
Roger: They help quite a bit with the eating. They’re ages 14, 16, and 22. They have been actively involved over the years with all the different stages, just because I thought it was important to give them that education as well as their more formal academic education, just to know where does food come from, and to feel some empowerment in knowing that they could actually grow a potato if they wanted to, or they know the life cycle of a bean. They know that it doesn’t come prechopped in your plate. You have to do some work actually after the harvest, too.
They know their stuff pretty well. In fact, my two youngest sons ran a farm stand from our front yard not last summer but the summer before, just because they were too young to get a real summer job. I said, “Why don’t you just have a go at it and see what happens?”
I don’t think they’re going to go on to become professional farmers, but I think they really learned the value of a dollar, and learned the value of hard work, and understood also how to run a small business. It’s not just this type of thing where you show up with your freshly-cut salad greens, and suddenly the market is there. You have to actually get out there and let people know that you’ve got something for them.
They’ve been involved in … I’m trying to keep them involved, but they’re getting into their teens now, and they’re very active in their own little things, too.
Dr. Lisa: Yes, I had that experience when my family tried to have a community garden plot. My son was far more interested in Little League than he was in weeding, but it was nice because whatever small amount of touch he was able to have with the garden, he appreciated it, and his younger sisters did, too. As long as we didn’t get too stringent about requirements for the garden, it felt like it worked okay.
Roger: I think that makes really good sense. It’s meant to be a pleasure. I also have to pull myself back a little bit and remind myself, “This is supposed to be fun.” Don’t set yourself up in such a way where it becomes another task, because that takes the joy out of it.
I think you’re right. For children in particular, you need to teach them the value of work, that it’s not going to happen on its own, but you also have to keep it light and keep it fun.
Dr. Lisa: Your background is not just with local foods and with gardening. You also have a background in journalism, in activism, in business, and I think international relations as well. How did you pull all of these together and create this 30,000-member organization, Kitchen Gardeners International?
Roger: It and I am a work in progress in that I’m still trying to pull it together. I think I’ve landed where I’m supposed to be in the sense that I did study international relations and diplomacy, and got a master’s degree in that, so I think I’m an ambassador for the garden world now, just trying to spread the good news about what kitchen gardens can do.
To answer your question, it was a lot of hard work, basically, but a labor of love in the sense that I really enjoy what I’m doing. I’m lucky to be able to do what I’m doing where I’m doing it and to see the results not necessarily on a daily basis, because there are a lot of days where you work in the void without necessarily getting the feedback, but with the work that we’re doing in particular right now I think we really are changing a lot of people’s lives.
We’re really trying to focus on, instead of the campaigns that we did for the garden at the White House, we also did some campaigns to protect the right to garden in one’s front yard, which got a lot of national attention and some international attention.
Our focus now really is helping other people who would like to grow their own food to do so, especially working via schools and through community gardens and churches, prisons, libraries, all of the above, by providing mini-grants to those organizations so that they can grow gardens.
Dr. Lisa: You also have a wealth of information on your website that is very practical. If people ask questions about, “How do you store seeds?” and having poked around there, I think that’s very helpful. I think there’s a barrier. If you haven’t grown up gardening, there’s a barrier between somehow putting how own fingers in the soil, getting to that place.
Roger: I think you’re right. That’s part of the enabling that I’m referring to in the sense that we’re providing some money and some seeds and supplies to people to help them plant gardens across the country and around the world; but there really is this missing piece, which is the education piece, too.
As I think you know very well, here in the United States, here in Maine even, we’re one, two, in some cases maybe three generations removed from growing a substantial part of our own food.
We need to think about the social structures that we have in place to allow people to get back to that. If you’re lucky, you grew up in a family where you had a parent or maybe a grandparent who could teach you some of those things, but there are a lot of people who aren’t so fortunate.
We have to set up other ways to pass on that know-how, whether it’s a website or whether it’s writing an article for a magazine, or becoming involved in a local garden club, or reaching across the white picket fence to your neighbor and saying, “I see that you’re having a go at raspberries this year. How is that going? Is there something that I can help you with?
Dr. Lisa: There’s also something very healing, in addition to healing the person physically by eating locally-grown organic food, which is, of course, good for the body. I’ve noticed on … I believe it’s your blog, people are writing in and saying, “I was a soldier in the war, and I’ve come back, and I’ve done this gardening. It somehow is a salve to my wounds,” really.
Roger: That was project that we helped fund in New Orleans. I think it’s actually on a marine base. It was, once again, through this program called “Sow it forward.” That’s the type of story that I find so refreshing, and makes you want to get up again and go for it the next day. You do see that people really are getting a lot more than simply vegetables out of kitchen gardens. For some, like that marine, who had done two tours of duty, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, that garden really is very important for him. It’s about getting back to a better place in his life.
We’ve also given out grants to prisons, and the stories coming out of those places, I think, are just as powerful, where people are realizing that their life, for whatever reason, went off on the wrong track, and maybe they did some harm to others through their lives, but the garden was a way of reconnecting with themselves, reconnecting with the earth, and trying to get things right in their lives.
I think we … I, at least, feel like I sometimes need to remind myself of that. I love food, so I always think of the garden in terms of food, but the garden can be much more than just food.
Dr. Lisa: Yes. I know that when I … there was always a woman that would put flowers out by the side of the road, and I would go running by them. The flowers were free, so she’d say, “Free flowers,” and I’d go running down the road with my bouquet of flowers. It made my day. It made my week. It made my year. To know that here’s some who’s, out of the goodness of her heart, cultivated these beautiful things that were going to end up on my table. Even though I’m not as much of a gardener, it was this little bit of beauty that really touched my day.
Roger: Beauty and … it sounds like generosity, too. I think that’s one of the things that I particularly enjoy about the work that I’m able to do. I just realize that there are so many people out there who are doing this because they know it’s the right thing to do, either for themselves or their families or their communities, and I sometimes refer to them as, “garden angels.” I think they’re fluttering amongst us. They’re volunteering at their school with a school garden project, or they’re planting an extra row for a food pantry.
If you feel like you’ve really had a terrible day, or you’re feeling really down about the state of world affairs, maybe go visit a community garden or visit a school garden. I suspect that you’ll find some new joy after that.
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Dr. Lisa: I remember reading something that … I can’t remember the name of the book, but it was about asparagus, and it was about how it’s a three-year cycle, something like that, to get to an actual asparagus stalk that you can put in your mouth and eat.
There’s some patience that is required [crosstalk 00:51:56].
Roger: There is a lot of patience with asparagus. We’ve moved asparagus out of our garden plan, but I remember when we did put it in. If you’re heard of the international movement called Slow Food, asparagus should be the poster child for that in the sense that it does take three years; but after you’ve got your bed going, it can last a long time. It’s one of those things where it does pay off in the long term.
Dr. Lisa: There are other things that are still growing, that people started the process with years and years ago. We interviewed somebody on the show who really enjoyed doing work with apples, Heirloom apples. In Maine we seem to have a lot of different varieties that have been planted quite a long time ago that we are able to access now.
Roger: There’s a lot happening with apples in Maine. We’ve had it all going on for a long time, but I’m very enthusiastic about some the new things in terms of people starting to make cider, hard cider. I think there’s a whole economy that can be built around some of these things.
Apples are one of those great investments. I think there was another quote about the best time to plant an apple tree was probably ten years ago, but the second best time is today.
Put the effort in, and five years from now you’re going to have a great harvest, and it’s going to keep on going if you put the work in to prune your tree and things like that.
Dr. Lisa: I think I remember seeing something on either your website or your blog about Alice Waters.
Roger: Yeah, she’s one of my heroes.
Dr. Lisa: She’s one of my heroes, too. I think of her as being someone much like yourself who really has had to work at this thing for a long time, really needed to start planting that garden and start talking about local foods so far before anybody else was really thinking about it.
Roger: She’s been at it for a long time, and she’s very charismatic and very persevering. Actually, I give another talk these days called, “Gardening Our Way Back to the Future,” where I go through some of the milestones over the past century. I have a lot of pictures and that, and I found this one picture from 1970 of Alice Waters waiting tables at her own restaurant, Chez Panisse, in Berkeley.
I knew that she was this towering figure in the American food system, but it really touched me to see her as a young woman in 1970, obviously very idealistic and full of good energy, but putting the work in, putting the work in of doing the very unglamorous work of waiting a table, but doing it probably also because she loved it and she wanted to see what was going to be the reaction once the customers started biting into her creation.
Dr. Lisa: It seems like, for you, this is also a labor of love.
Roger: Very much so. I love gardening, and I love that I can get paid for doing what I think is good work and the right work. It’s one of those maybe that wouldn’t have been possible 10 years ago or 20 years ago here in Maine, because you would have needed to be in a much bigger city, maybe next to some bigger foundations and philanthropies and things like that. Now, because of the internet, you’re able to do all kinds of things and build your support base pretty much anywhere you want to.
I do consider myself really lucky to do the work that I’m doing, where I’m doing it.
Dr. Lisa: Roger, how can people find out about Kitchen Gardeners International and the other work that you are doing?
Roger: You mentioned that we have a website, kgi.org, and it’s a website that has a lot of bells and whistles built into it in terms of social networking tools, so that people can add a blog post or a photo or a recipe. We also get involved in the social networks like Twitter and Facebook. We have a very big Facebook population, so people who are really Facebook people should check us out there and join the conversation.
We encourage people to share their know-how as well, because, while I might know a thing or two about growing a tomato in Scarborough, my knowledge isn’t necessarily going to transfer over to somebody who wants to do the same thing somewhere down in the Deep South. Somewhere among our 30,000+ people, we’ll have somebody who can probably help you out.
Dr. Lisa: Roger, it’s been a pleasure to have you in today. I told you before we started that you have been on our list of people we want to talk to on our radio show from the very beginning, so I’m thrilled that you took the time to be with us.
We’ve been speaking with Roger Doiron, the founder and director of Kitchen Gardeners International. I encourage anyone who’s listening to go back and find your TEDx talk. It’s quite interesting and amusing. Also to look at your website and perhaps take a few steps in the direction of doing their own gardening.
Roger: It’s a pleasure to be with you. Thank you, Lisa.
Dr. Lisa: You’ve been listening to the Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast, show #152, “Earth Calling.” Our guests have included Ted Carter, Ellen Gunter, and Roger Doiron. For more information on our guests and extended interviews, visit doctorlisa.org. The Dr. Lisa Radio Hour and Podcast is downloadable for free on iTunes. For a preview of each week’s show, sign up for our eNewsletter and like our Dr. Lisa Facebook page. Get Twitter updates by following me as doctorlisa, and see my daily running photos as bountiful1 on Instagram.
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