3 Things That Can Change Everything

Welcome to the Grow youw Self podcast. Surprising stories about the food we eat and inspiring conversations about what it really takes to live the whole and happy life we're all craving. My name's Nicole John C. Burke, and I'm the owner of Rooted Garden and gardenary Incorporated and author of the upcoming book Kennedy Kitchen Garden Revival. Is it obvious I'm kind of obsessed with the kitchen garden. Each week here on the Grow youw Self podcast, you're going to be shocked at the things you'll learn about foods you eat every single day. And you'll feel encouraged to take little steps in your own busy schedule to create a more whole and happy life for yourself. So turn up the volume and let's turn.

Take a walk, go on a drive.

Or just hang out in the kitchen garden together. Every time you listen, I promise you'll learn something that will help you grow yourself in a new and exciting way. Sound good? I think so. Now let's dig in.

Do the things that you're doing today make a difference in the world? I mean, really make a difference? Have you ever asked yourself this question? I know I have. And in today's episode, we are gonna dive into the answer. It is the middle of summer, and we are going through the Kitchen Garden Revival Book Club. And for this week's episode, I thought it would be so fun to throw it back to one of the very first episodes here at Grow youw Self through three things that can change everything. We've had over 30 episodes here at Grow youw Self in 2020, and it has been such a fun ride. I want to thank you so much for listening to the episodes each week and commenting and sharing on Instagram and all over the World Wide Web for this week. I thought it'd be so fun as we dive into chapter two in Kitchen Garden Revival to talk about the reason for doing this whole thing in the first place. And if. If you haven't listened to this episode that I recorded way back, I think I actually recorded this one in 2019. You are gonna love it. It's three things that you can do right now, right where you are, that could literally change the world. Don't believe me? Well, you gotta listen to today's episode. This episode is brought to you by Gardenary Garden Coaches. Listen. The fall, believe it or not, is one of the best times to get your kitchen garden set up. When you set up your kitchen garden in the fall, you'll get to grow some in the fall and winter, depending on what climate you're living in. But the best part is you'll be all set up for 2021. And who doesn't need to be thinking about a new year right now? I know I do. So you can get garden coaching. You can get a full kitchen garden design from a gardenary garden coach@gardenary.com coaches. So listen to this episode, get inspired to do these three things and then find a garden coach who can help you make it gardenary.com coaches. We can't wait to help you make your kitchen garden dreams come true. Thanks so much for being part of the Grow youw Self community. Now let's enjoy this throwback to three things that Change Everything. The first thing I want to challenge you to do is to eat seasonally. Eating seasonally means focusing on primarily eating the foods that grow in the season you're currently living in. This means eating winter type foods during winter, eating summer type foods during summer. You get the picture. Basically only eating, or at least primarily eating the things that are growing in the season when they're actually growing in your area. So for instance, if I live in a colder climate and it's winter, then, which it is, by the way, for me, I'm in Chicago at present and it's about 15, 18 degrees when I woke up this morning. It's cold here and snowy. Not a lot is growing. So for me, what that would mean eating seasonally here would be prioritizing the foods that store well for the winter or might be growing, growing in a greenhouse or in covered areas somewhere nearby. To do that, first I'm going to actually need to know what foods do that, right? There's some learning that's necessary. And then second of all, I've got to figure out how to find those foods, which is a challenge in itself. So this explains why we're not doing this as a whole, all of us, really. Well, unless you're unique out there, hello, you unique person. Most of us don't eat seasonally. And this is why the grocery store. The grocery store makes it almost impossible to eat seasonally. At least the grocery stores I visit. In fact, I was just at the grocery, I guess two or three days ago. And like I said, in Chicago, it's freezing cold. We're in the middle of winter. I walk into the grocery store and the produce section is packed with every color, every variety, every fruit, every vegetable. There were bananas and mangoes and kiwis and watermelons and cantaloupes and peaches and apples and pears and oranges. Every kind of fruit I wanted I could get. Well, not every single one, but you know what I mean. Then there were so many vegetables. There were cucumbers and peppers and tomatoes and broccoli and brussels sprouts and asparagus and spinach and on and on. You get the picture, right? You've seen this, right? In a grocery store, it seems like everything is always in season. But it's not. I mean, I can look out right outside the window of the grocery store and know that there's no way on earth that any of those foods are growing outside in this season. Or if some of them are, definitely not all of them. So eating seasonally is going to take a lot of work because the grocery store has fooled us for many, many years that there really isn't such a thing as a season when it comes to food. So this is what we've got to do. We're going to have to learn what our particular seasons are in our area and which things grow in each of those seasons. Like I said, you're going to learn more about this throughout the Grow youw Self podcast this, but here's a general overview. So in the middle of the cold season, this is when the temperatures are below freezing, like the temperatures I'm currently in in Chicago, this is a time where you're going to eat foods that store really well or that may be grown somewhat near you or at least on your same continent in a more temperate climate. So here's what it looks like for me in Chicago, the cold season would mean eating lots of root vegetables. So k carrots and beets and potatoes and even sweet potatoes. So things that grow underground generally store really well. So you can eat those in the cold season, even though they didn't maybe necessarily grow during that season. Another thing you can eat during the cold season is greens. So broccolis and cauliflowers, kales and spinach, all of those deep, healthy greens, those are generally either grown under a cover or in a polytunnel. Some may be able to survive frost, but not a heavy snow or some of the frigid temperatures we get up here. But you can still basically call those a seasonal food in the cold season. And then as fruit goes, it's pretty hard to get fruit in the cold season. But again, you'd want to have fruits that store well. So things like apples or pears that store from the fall or possibly some citrus that has come from a little bit more temperate climate, hopefully on your same continent. Okay, that's the cold season. Then the cool season would be again A lot of those same things, root crops and greens, onions and garlic, asparagus. The difference being this time around, in the cool seasons, those foods are being grown outside of a polytunnel without a cover and probably even close to the spot where you're buying your food in the warmer season. So this is when the temperatures are say, 65, 75 degrees and above, you can be eating tomatoes and beans and peppers and squash and all kinds of berries. And then finally, in the hottest part of the year, when the temperatures are over 75 or 85 degrees, it's time to eat melons and basil and eggplant and okra and lots and lots of figs, probably even some peaches. So that's a general overview. Like I said, you're going to learn so much more about the seasons and eating seasonally, but hopefully this starts to at least give you a little list of what to look for when you head to the grocery store. And it looks like everything is in season all at once. So this is what's going to happen when you start to eat seasonally. This is how you'll grow. First, you're going to eat more of each thing, rather more quantity and less variety. What I mean by this is, during the cold season, say, or let's say the cool season, I would eat lots and lots of the first strawberries of the year. So strawberries every single day in all kinds of different ways, but I wouldn't be eating hardly any of the hot season or the warmer season. Fruits like melons and peaches and figs and plums, those fruits that grow during the warmer parts of the year won't be on my plate. So I would eat lots and lots of the things that are right then available, but not as much variety. So what I like to say is you end up filling up on the very best things available in that season, and then by the time they're no longer in season, you're kind of done with them because you had your fill. The second thing that will happen when you eat seasonally is you're going to get more of the nutrients for what you need each season. Now, I don't know how this happened, but it seems that the things that grow in each season are actually the things that our bodies crave. I mean, think about it in the middle of the winter, when we're really fighting off the flu and the cold and there's germs, because we're all inside and bundled up and passing everything to each one of us. This is a time when we need our bodies to be ready to fight infection, right? And to fight the germs and the greens like kales and broccolis and mustard and spinach do just that for our body. And it just turns out those are the foods that are actually growing seasonally at that time. Everyone knows that citrus is like the best way to fight a cold, right? Well, guess when citrus grows in the cooler parts of the year. So fun, right? I tell my kids, you know, watermelon is full of what water? And guess when it grows right in the middle of the heat of the summer when we're the thirstiest. Do you see what I mean? It's like nature knows us or something. Nature knows what we need when we need it. And so when you eat seasonally, you end up giving your body more of what it needs when it needs it. The final thing that will happen when you eat seasonally is you're going to spend less money. What happens when you are trying to buy a wide variety of things? You end up spending a lot more money because generally you're buying things that took more work to get to you. We know the law of economics, right, that when supply is less than demand, then the prices go down, and when supply is more than demand, the prices go up. So, yeah, that's right. So when you are trying to buy and eat foods that are not in season, there's a lot less supply than there is demand. So you're going to end up spending way more money on those foods than you would for the foods that are available seasonally, because there's way more supply in that case. Which is going to lead me to the second way to grow yourself. Are you still with me? Okay, number two is to shop locally. So the next way to grow yourself is to prioritize your spending on foods that are grown as close to your home as possible. This really ties in with the third benefit of spending less money. And I'll tell you why. First, let's talk about why you don't do this already. Why do you not shop locally? Well, first, grocery stores and our current food system, at least I'm speaking about the United States current food system, makes this extremely difficult. So most of the grocery stores that are near you are likely bringing food in from really large farms. We've created a food system that prioritizes farmers that grow in bulk and sell in bulk. So grocery stores in general like to do deals with farmers that are growing loads and loads of certain varieties of foods, and they buy lots from them at a cheaper price. When this Happens, most likely the growers are not nearby. In fact, it's proven that most local growers have the hardest time selling their food, their produce, their harvest to local grocery stores. So oftentimes they're left to do the selling themselves. When you head to a grocery store, it's often not visible or evident to you who even grew your food. So unless you take close inspection and take time to figure out where your food came from, more than likely you'll walk in, buy loads of produce, and have no idea how far that food actually traveled to get inside your cart. No blame on you, it's just the way the system has been developed. So this is why you don't do it. But here are a few ways that you can so the first way to shop locally, the easiest, the best way is to shop at local farmers markets. When you shop at a farmer's market, almost all of your money is going to go straight to your local growers. Now, I don't know what your farmer's market situation is in your area. I've lived in towns that have all different kinds of varieties of farmer's markets. When I was in Virginia, we would have a farmer's market every Saturday morning. When I lived in Nashville, which was awesome, we had a seven days a week farmer's market downtown. When I lived in Houston, there were various farmers markets in different parts of the city on different days of the week. And then here in my small suburb above Chicago, we just have one farmer's market day a week in our little village and it only runs from June to October. All that to say there's a lot of different farmers market situations. In the show notes, we will have a link for you to be able to discover the farmer's markets that are near you. As soon as you find this out, you want to prioritize getting to the farmer's market as much as you can. Every time you do this, it's going to make shopping locally more attractive to you, more fun, and you'll realize there is a whole world out there of amazing food and amazing people that you never knew about before. I will admit to you though, as a mom of four kids and a business owner, sometimes it's really difficult for me to make my way to the farmer's market each week. So a second way that you can buy locally is to sign up for a csa. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Have you heard of it? It's the neatest thing. It's like Hellofresh or some of those other food subscription services. Except 100% better. Even exaggerating here. So while HelloFresh and those other subscription food services are fine because they're helping you eat, you know, healthy or whatever, the issue is that they're shipping you food from all across the country and it's definitely not seasonal focus, at least I haven't seen one. A CSA is like that, but so much better because it's local food and it's grown by farmers that are near you. So a CSA is a program you'd sign up for like a subscription service and you promise to pay your local farmer a certain amount for a certain amount of food over a period of time. So you might pay for a three month share or a six month share and then you find it there's. They work out different systems to get that food to you. So some CSAs deliver right to your door, some CSAs you can go to a general pickup spot. There's all kinds of ways to make it work. And again in the show notes, we'll include some links for you to be able to find some CSAs near you. CSA is a great happy compromise if you can't make it to a farmer's market, but you want to find a way to start shopping more locally. No matter if you shop at the farmer's market or you join a csa, let's be honest, almost all of us, except for the real die hards are going to end up at the grocery store at some point. I have to be honest, I always do, every single week. And the thing I can do at the grocery store to shop more locally is this. Check the tags. When I first started doing this, I was absolutely floored to see how many foods had traveled thousands of miles before they'd hit the racks at my grocery store. Fruits that I had just unknowingly picked up and put in my cart for months and years before. I was certainly appalled to realized they had literally come across the globe to get to my shopping cart. No wonder they cost so much and no wonder they taste so bad. When you check the tags at the grocery store, you can start to notice which foods are more locally grown. When you do this in general, you're going to find those prices on the more locally grown produce are less and the taste is so much better. If you're ever in doubt, no matter where you're shopping, even if it's at a farmer's market, I would always ask, ask where something was grown. When we do this, we start to inform the seller that this is a priority for us. I know over the Last decade, you've seen the huge spike in natural and organic labels, right? Almost everything is promising to be organic these days. And do you want to know why? It's because in the decades prior, people started asking for it. So when people would be shopping at a grocery store or at a restaurant, they would say, hey, is this organic or not? And those questions informed the growers and informed the merchants to start creating more organic products. Well, we've got to start doing that for local products. So when you're at the grocery store, or even when you're at the farmer's market, always ask, hey, where was this grown? If you can't find a tag on produce at the grocery, just grab the guy next to you and say, do you know where these apples came from? Even if they don't know, just asking the question informs them that this is something that's important to an awesome customer like you. When you start to shop more locally, here are the ways you're going to grow. I already said it, but it's worth saying again. Your food is going to taste good. Really good. I mean, have you ever tasted a freshly picked berry or a freshly picked apple? If you have, you know how different the taste is when you have something closer to the picking time? I mean, it just makes sense, right? A food that was picked from a farmer three days ago, brought to a local grocery store, and then is on your plate that night has to taste better than a food that was picked 1500 miles away, packed into some plastic, shipped across the country for two or three days, then sits on a shelf in the grocery for seven to ten days, and then makes its way into your fridge. Which vegetable would you want to eat? I definitely want the one that was just picked three or four days ago. So the food is going to taste better. You're also going to spend less. Like we said, when the supply exceeds the demand, the prices are going to go down. And even if you're paying the same amount, the money that you are spending is going to the better places. So when you spend more money, say, on organic greens at the farmer's market, you're not paying for trucking, you're not paying for plastic wrap, you're not paying for storage. You're paying for really good food from a person who's working really hard. Card. Isn't that cool? I think so. The third thing that happens when you start to shop locally is you support your local economy. You are helping your local community to grow to its fullest potential. Listen, every time that you spend money on Something that was produced and grown in your own local area, you are literally investing in yourself. We all talk about where we live and our property, property values in our apartments or our homes, the schools where our kids will attend, the libraries, the community resources, all of those things, all of the things that we care most about, about our own towns and cities, they're all tied to how much of our local money stays in our local economy. When you spend money with someone who's grown food near you, you are literally investing in yourself. You're. And the promise of your property, your kids, schools, and all the aspects of your personal community. I totally believe that every single farmer needs to be supported. But I do believe that when we can create a system where each farmer or grower is supported by its own local community, we are going to have a much stronger and healthier economy and a stronger and healthier planet. Can you guys tell? This is like my soapbox. Okay, I'm gonna get off of it now. The third thing I want to encourage you to do, and you knew this was coming. Is to grow naturally. I want to challenge you to grow a little bit of your own food the way nature intended. So here's why you're not doing this one. You might believe in this idea called a green thumb. Have you heard of fit? It's a superstition that people are either born with a natural gift and knack for gardening or they're just not. And it is just what I said. It's a superstition. It's a myth, a green thumb. It just doesn't exist. Gardening is just like every single other skill in the world. It's learned by great teaching inside of a community and over time. And every single person can learn to garden. Here's why I know we can. Because our species has survived with gardening. Now, I mean, I know there were hunters, too, right? And gatherers and all that stuff. But if you look back and you study history, you realize the times when our species really thrived and literally grew, it was because we were gardening. So throw out this idea that if you don't have a green thumb, gardening isn't for you. Gardening's for everybody, you included. And so this year, I want you to challenge yourself to grow at least a little bit of food, a little bit of food naturally. So maybe you're not gardening because you believe in the green thumb myth. Another reason you might not be gardening is because there's honestly very little access to education and help on the subject. It's crazy. I made it through 12 years of school, four years of college, and two years of grad school, and I never heard one little lesson about food and the way it's grown. And I never got a lesson on how to grow it myself. I didn't even know which seasons which vegetables and fruits grew. It's crazy. And yet that food is essential to my survival as a human being. You may be in the same exact spot where you've just had so little access to good teaching on the science and the simple practices of natural gardening. Another reason why this might seem like an impossibility for you to grow naturally is because you're part of a system where the gardening industry is focused not on people, but on products. So when you head to a nursery or a local store, what you see is rows and rows and racks and racks of products, but nobody standing around saying, hey, Jimmy, teach you how to use that. Worse than that, most of the products are promising things that aren't naturally possible. So we've got bags and sprays and all these synthetic things that were made in factories that we're supposed to use to do something that nature does. Kind of ironic, right? If you read any labels on most of the bags and sprays at the hardware store, you're going to find all these promises for things that are just literally supernatural, like super fast growth or no pests, no disease and plants that just explode with growth overnight, promises to always have green things and no death, things that literally are not possible. So when we are in an industry where the focus is almost 100% on product and not on people like us, then we either buy the stuff and buy into the idea of a miracle that really disappoints us in the end or makes our food taste gross, or we don't buy anything at all because we feel too confused and we're not sure how to move forward. So, like I said, it's not your fault, right? It's not your fault that you're not growing yet, but we're going to make it possible on this podcast. So here are a few things that you can do right away to start growing naturally this year. First, I want you to go and take the Green Thumb quiz. You heard me say that I believe that the green thumb is kind of a myth, but I also believe that we can all develop our green thumb. I've developed this quiz to help you figure out where you currently are in your growing and how. I'm going to teach you how to bring your green thumb to the next level level. So at gardenary.com, G-A-R-E-N-A-R-Y.com there's a quiz and you can take the quiz. Oh, in about two minutes. And as soon as you do, you'll find the results. And then I'll take you on a journey for about a week. After you take your quiz, I'll send you an email to teach you about how to go from your current level of gardening to the next level. It's super fun. Fun. So go take the green thumb quiz@gardenary.com that's the first step in growing naturally. The second step, if you've never grown before, or if you just want to see some success, is to start with the leaves. So herbs and greens are simply the easiest things that you can grow naturally. They're the first to come up from the soil, and they're the ones that you can cut from the most often. So anytime I meet a client or a friend who's ready to start trying their hand at gardening, I always recommend they start with the herbs and greens. So you should do the same. Next, I want to encourage you to start small. You don't have to go big or go home with gardening. In fact, I often encourage people to start with just one simple pot. In fact, the simplest thing to start with is just a pot of chives. It's pretty hard to kill chives. And chives are a fun thing to add to almost any dish. In fact, way back when, when I was a mom to just. I mean, not when I was just a mom to four small children, I was doing good, asleep to brush my teeth every day, and my mom gave me a pot of chives to put on my front porch. Even though I was in the midst of craziness all day long, stepping out on my porch, cutting a few chives to bring in for an omelette or a soup at night made me feel like a different person, a person who was growing. And I know it'll do the same for you. So here's what will happen when you start to grow natural. First, you're going to feel like you're learning a new skill. Like, you know that feeling when you just finished a gym class or you learned that yoga stretch, or you got that really awesome shot in tennis. That's what's happening here. Every time you learn a new skill in gardening, you're going to feel accomplished, like you're still growing, even though you might not be growing physically anymore. The next thing that's going to happen is you're not going to see food the same again. I like to say that once you start seeing food, food come out of the garden, you won't be able to unsee it and you won't want to. It's so amazing to see a seed turn into food that you cut and literally feed your body with. It's the first step, I think, to waking up to the wonder of food that honestly, a lot of us have lost. Another thing that will happen when you start to grow naturally is you'll get to eat the healthiest and best tasting food possible. The nutrients that are in the vegetables and fruits our bodies need are most available to our bodies the minute after they're harvested. So you can imagine the food that's been shipped across the country and especially across the globe is literally the least nutrient rich food we can put in our bodies when it comes to raw fruits and vegetables. But when you just harvest and then stick that food directly into your mouth, you're giving your body the thing it craves tons of nutrients and vitamins that are available right away. And you're actually going to want to eat these vegetables because they'll taste good. So much of the vegetables, so much of the reason why we have to like force ourselves to eat kale and brussels sprouts and beets is because the food just doesn't taste that great. And the reason it doesn't taste that great isn't the food's fault, it's the food miles fault. So the longer that that food has sat and travele sat and traveled, the less taste it's going to have. But when you've just harvested it from your own garden, it's going to be the sweetest it possibly can be and hold that flavor that it was meant to have. So you'll find yourself needing less dressing and piling on the salad in a way you never have before. The final thing that'll happen when you learn to grow naturally is you'll literally be encouraged to do the first and the second thing to too. Every time you pull something from your own garden, you're going to understand your seasons in a bigger way. You'll know how to eat seasonally because you're growing seasonally. You're also going to be encouraged to eat more locally. Each time you pull something from your local garden. When you taste those 10 carrots that you just harvested outside your back door, you're going to want some more. So you eat those 10 carrots and then you'll head down to the farmer's market and gladly spend them money and support your local farmer to make sure you get to eat that good of a carrot all season long. Can you see how all three things could literally change you this year? Can you see how these three things could change your community? And these three things could even change the planet? I know I sound like I'm trying to save the world or something, but I really do think, I really do believe that these three things are the answer to so many of our plans problems. Listen, food is a thing we've got to talk about. We all crave good food. We all need good food. And we need a system that works to keep feeding our whole planet. And I think these three things to eat seasonally, to shop locally, and to grow naturally, are a way to do just that. Phew. I made it through my first episode. Thank you so much for your patience. I know I fumbled my words little bit here, but I'm just gonna keep it all here so that you know I'm a real person just like you, and that I'm trying to learn to grow myself too. So stay tuned. I promise I'll get better at recording these podcasts for you. I hope that you feel encouraged and challenged for the new year to do these three things to grow yourself in 2020. Like I said, there are all these resources on the show notes@gardenary.com pod and you gotta get over to gardenary.com and take the green thumb quiz right away. Do it. You know, I'd love for you to subscribe and to leave a review especially important as we just get started here. So go ahead and tell the world how I fumbled my words and sounded super nervous. I'm okay with it. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you so much for bringing back to the Kitchen garden with me. Thank you for growing right alongside me and I'll see you next week. Thanks so much for listening in to the Grow youw Self podcast this week. I hope you loved this inspiration that you know what these little bitty things that we do every day, like open our mouths and put food in there, can make a difference. Like you can literally change the world by changing the way you eat, the way you view food, the way you view the seasons, and the way you view the local suppliers and growers in your own area. So I hope you feel inspired to head out to the farmer's market this week to grow a little bit of food yourself and to eat up all that good, delicious stuff that's growing in your own local area as much as possible. I know I am going to be eating all the watermelon I can find over the next few weeks. Thanks so much for listening to Grow Yourself. And don't forget to hang out with us on Instagram, on YouTube, and the Facebook group for more of the Kitchen Garden Revival Book Club. Don't forget that you can find a garden coach to help you make your garden come true this fall@gardenary.com coaches. I'll see you back here next week with a new episode for the Kitchen Garden Revival Book Club. Thanks again for listening.