We will be following closely as the Obamas’ Chicago chef Sam Kass manages the garden and tells us what the family is planting, and how they are using it.  Check back as our White House Garden grows, and read an op-ed piece below written by White House Farmer site coordinator Terra Brockman.

Meanwhile, now is the time to follow up on Your Farmer . . .

Newcomers to a community always ask neighbors and colleagues: “Who’s your mechanic?” “Who’s your hair-dresser?”  “Who’s your babysitter?” . . .  but seldom “Who’s your farmer?”

Following up on President Obama’s call for greater personal responsibility and initiative, we would like to move from “Who’s the White House Farmer?” to “Who’s your farmer?”

With your help, this site can become an answer to that question. Stay tuned as we develop that capability, and send a comment if you can help us in this endeavor.

In the meantime, you can find your local farmers and leave or read comments about them at Local Harvest.

While we continue to look for leadership and inspiration from the White House, and look forward to a White House Farmer, we will also take matters into our own capable hands, as President Obama has urged, so that we can bring about the transformations we seek in our own communities and on our own tables . . . knowing that “Yes, we can.”

Op – Ed, March 22, 2009

On the first day of spring, First Lady Michelle Obama and a group of 5^th graders began removing sod from a portion of the South Lawn in preparation for a garden.

This ground-breaking for a White House garden was the culmination of a proposal that many grassroots groups had been advocating for. I myself was one of those advocates–as the fourth generation in an Illinois farm family, as the founder of an educational nonprofit training new farmers and preserving farmland, and, most recently, as the coordinator of the White House Farmer website. This website was the brainchild of my father and sister who, while walking the country roads near our home in central Illinois last fall, decided we should take Michael Pollan’s idea of a “White House Farmer” to the next level by inviting people across the country to nominate their own favorite farmers to create and tend a White House farm.

While a White House farm may strike some as little more than a publicity stunt, it is in fact a venerable tradition. John Adams planted a garden to feed his family; Woodrow Wilson had sheep grazing on the White House lawn, and Eleanor Roosevelt planted a Victory Garden in 1943. Later that year, more than 20 million such gardens sprouted up across the country. By the end of World War II, 40% of the nation’s produce was being grown by average Americans, leading to abundant fresh food and enhanced self-sufficiency and independence.

Then, as now, there are many practical reasons that people choose to plant gardens: the health benefits of fresh, chemical-free produce, the cost-effectiveness of planting and then plucking your own food, and the gratification of realizing that your body and hands are capable of doing something almost miraculous in concert with the earth. What is comes down to, as the First Lady said before the hoes and rakes and spades and shovels were handed out, is that she wants her family to eat well and know how food is grown.

But any action of the First Family is symbolic as well as practical. At a time when childhood diabetes and obesity have risen to epidemic levels; when a global economic meltdown is pushing food prices ever upwards; and when produce is being flown in from far-flung places making our food dependent on fossil fuels which contribute to climate change, the symbolism of a vegetable garden emerging on the White House lawn cannot be overemphasized.

The belief that healthy fresh foods should be accessible to all people cuts across political, religious, ethnic, and every other boundary I can think of. As I watched Michelle and the kids “dig in,” I remembered doing the same in my parents and grandparents gardens, and I imagine many viewers and readers had the same memories – of a sunny spring day, the smell of the earth, and the anticipation of the season’s first fresh peas.

Just as water evaporates from the earth, condenses in clouds, and falls back down as gentle rain, so the simple yet radical idea that fresh local food can be available to all has gone “bottom-up” –with many grassroots groups and individuals pressing for a White House Farm – and it is now beginning to move “top-down” to farms, lawns, and empty lots all across the nation.

From the inspiring sight of Mrs. Obama breaking ground on the South Lawn comes the ground-breaking notion of empowering people to grow some of their own food. I look forward to seeing millions of “White House Gardens” spring up on school grounds, college campuses, city parks, empty lots, and in lawns across the country. In these times of economic uncertainty, one of the most positive and delicious things we can do is plant a garden and reap the bountiful rewards.

Terra Brockman

Coordinator, www.whitehousefarmer.com

Founder, www.thelandconnection.org