Faith In Our Gardens

A garden is evidence of faith. It links us with all the misty figures of the past who also planted and were nourished by the fruits of their planting.

                                                 —Gladys Taber

Gladys Taber, the author and essayist who cultivated her faith in a garden across the river in Southbury 70 years ago, has herself become one of the misty figures of the past she wrote about all those years ago. In her time, she won a devoted national audience for her books and her column in the Ladies’ Home Journal by describing rural life and its deep connections to natural cycles, oscillating with the seasons between privation and provision. Even her contemporaries, however, understood her portraits of rural life at her beloved Stillmeadow in Southbury were period pieces depicting a way of life slipping quickly into history. These days, January looks like July in the supermarkets, and not only do people not know what garden their tomatoes come from, they would be hard pressed to identify their state or even country of origin. And in the past week or two, we have been steering clear of tomatoes altogether, because some — we don’t know exactly where they’re coming from — are carrying salmonella to the dinner table.

We’ve come a long way from Stillmeadow, and clearly our faith has been shaken along the way. Most of our produce has traveled, on average, 1,500 miles to our local markets, and these hardened travelers bear little resemblance to the ripe and flavorful fruits and vegetables that used to emerge from the erstwhile farmlands of Southwestern Connecticut that now grow mostly houses. Not only are we paying more at the checkout for our cosmetically perfect and perfectly tasteless strawberries, we are paying a dear price as a society by burning dirty and disappearing fossil fuels to fly and truck them all over the globe before we eat them.

For those still looking for evidence of the faith that gardens once produced, we suggest they look no further than Sandy Hook, where two excellent farmers’ markets are commencing another summer of satisfying both food lovers and bargain hunters with fresh produced ripened not in a container or boxcar but in a field — a Connecticut field.

The Sandy Hook Village Farmers’ Market opened on June 1 and will return to the Sandy Hook Village Park every Sunday through October from 9 am to 1 pm. The midweek Sandy Hook Organic Farmers’ Market opens on Tuesday, June 24, from to 2 to 6 pm in the grassy area between St John’s Church and The Villa restaurant in Sandy Hook Center. It also will run through October. Along with the vegetables and fruits, baked goods, jam, and handcrafts are routinely offered at both markets.

So this summer, keep gas in your tank, keep great food on the table, and, more importantly, keep the faith with the keepers of our remaining local gardens. And be nourished by the fruits of their planting.