April 13, 2008
Memo: Proposal for a Vegetable Garden
Prepared by Megan Hornbeek on behalf of United Parish’s 20/30 Vision
“Americans put almost as much fossil fuel into our refrigerators as our cars. We’re consuming about 400 gallons of oil a year per citizen—about 17 percent of our nation’s energy use—for agriculture, a close second to our vehicular use…If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week.”
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, by Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver, page 5.
Go green! Eat organic! Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! Think globally, act locally! All of these slogans are used in current popular culture, politics, academia, and religion to spur conversation about humanity’s behavior and treatment of our one Earth. United Parish’s 20/30 Vision recognizes that if the current course of human action is not altered, then the plant we all call home is due for an irrevocable change, a change that will drastically alter current civilization. With a massive environmental crisis looming, the members of 20/30 Vision would like to begin taking the small steps toward reforming the way we live on this planet, Earth.
20/30 Vision would formal like to propose and request the opportunity to start a small garden in United Parish’s backyard. Many of the members of 20/30 Vision have participated in general and informal conversation regarding our desire to garden and produce fresh vegetables in the summer months. However, since the majority of the members of 20/30 Vision live in urban apartments and condominiums, the land to start such a garden does not exist for us. Therefore, we are requesting the church loan us a plot of land (minimum size of 10 feet by 10 feet) which the members of 20/30 Vision will take responsibility of during the spring/summer of 2008.
In conjunction with the activity of gardening, 20/30 Vision will read and discuss Barbara Kingsolver’s best selling book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life. Kingsolver’s book is based on her family’s real-life attempts, successes, and failures to eat only what could either be grown locally or bought within a 50 mile radius of their home over the course of one year.
If this proposal and request is accepted, 20/30 Vision would like to publicize the progress of their endeavor to the United Parish and Brookline community. We believe this would be one small way to raise community awareness, and, if we are lucky, inspire others to start their own gardens and/or shop at local and farmer’s markets. It is also worth mentioning that since many of us have never “officially” gardened before, we welcome learning from those in our community who have experiences in gardening. Also, we would like to accept donations of old, hand-me-down tools from members in the community; these gardening tools would be used to get us started!
Many thanks, in advance, for reading and considering our proposal. We look forward to hearing from you; we sincerely hope that you are as excited about this idea and proposal as we are. It is our sincere hope that bringing this proposal to action would both benefit our immediate group and the larger community as well.
Respectfully,
20/30 Vision
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