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FOOD CHAIN NEWS TOPIC
THERE IS A GARDEN IN THE MIND
Food Chain Radio Show #912 • March 16, 2013 • Sat 9AM Pacific

Michael Olson hosts Dr. Paul Lee, Author
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As a student of Chinese language and literature, I had to spend many hours inside the language lab at the University of California, Santa Cruz.   When finished with the day’s studies, I would stumble outside into the brilliant sunshine to watch a full-scale revolution in action.
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Adjacent to the lab, on a parcel of steep, shrub-covered hillside, students from around the nation were dropping their studies in engineering, chemistry, and physics to dig in the dirt of a French-Intensive / Biodynamic garden under the tutelage of an actor from England by the name of Alan Chadwick.

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This garden, which was always filled with youthful exuberance, was somewhat of an enigma to me.  Having grown up with the chores of farming and ranching, which included hour upon hour of hoeing weeds under a hot Montana sun, I could not quite see what all the excitement was about, nor why anyone would drop their studies to dig in the dirt.  ‘What am I missing here?’ I often asked myself.
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(I was not the only one with the question.  When those students called home to tell mom and dad they were dropping their studies in chemistry to become a gardener, the phone began ringing off the hook in the Chancellor’s office!)
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What I was missing was a revolution in thinking about gardening, about food, and about how we go about living on planet Earth.  There is a Garden in the Mind, and it leads us to ask…
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Why organic?

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