I  built something! YAY!!! High fives all around! It’s such a great feeling, putting pieces of stuff together to make bigger stuff. I have once again proven to myself that I DO conform to the upper-midwest standards of adult manhood. I COULD survive in a post-apocalyptic world devoid of modern conveniences, assuming I have my wife’s ideas, my father-in-law’s tools, and Menards.

The construction responsible for all of this pride is a raised garden bed. Oh yeah. Not only are my wife and I socially and environmentally conscious, our yard looks fantastic. I don’t know how much an aesthetic landscaping sense counts for in civilization-less Wisconsin man-land, but I can tell you one thing – it counts for more than typing skills, that’s for sure, which makes that bed a whole lot more important than this silly little opening letter.

Of course, I understand that I am the one being silly. I know that drilling holes in a few oval-y logs and hammering rebar through them into the ground barely counts as a construction skill, and I know that if I have any chance of surviving in a post-technological society, it will be based on my wit and good looks. In other words, I’m a goner. But I still have a little bit of pride about this project. We are gardening. My wife is outside planting beans as I’m sitting here writing this. It’s trendy, its environmentally conscious, and it puts us in touch with our roots (HA-HA! Jokes like that will keep me alive a few weeks, at least, right?).

We all are a few years into the local food movement, and everyone that hopped on the bandwagon early and planted asparagus is finally ready to harvest a crop. The Farmers’ Market has turned from a kitschy weekend outing into a serious shopping destination. If you’re not camped out waiting for the stalls to open at 4:45am, you can be sure all of the good edamame will be gone by the time you wipe the drool off your mouth and galumph down, you lazybones. I know what edamame is, for pete’s sake! I don’t even really like vegetables. People are joining CSA’s, building greenhouses, and comparing organic fertilizers. The gardening frenzy is ripe.

    Watching this trend blossom has been fascinating. All of a sudden, everyone has a favorite garden store buried in the farmland around the Chippewa Valley, and everyone has an opinion on everyone else’s shop. Last summer, I admitted to a coworker that I purchased some herbs from Menards, and he replied with pantomimed exasperation, “Not Menards, the plant gulag!” I chortled verily, because I got it, picturing some high school Menards clerk whipping some poor rhododendron bush Ivan Denisovich-style.

All of a sudden canning has become a legitimate pastime for hip young people. Really? Canning? That thing my grandmother does? What’s next, groups of twenty-ish year olds getting together to whip up a batch of lye and pickle some fish? I can see where this is going. Some day soon, social acceptance at cool places like Water Street will mean hand-spun wool britches with hand-stitched iPhone pockets. The trendsetters will blog about pea hybrids, smell a little bit like barns, and have stacks of chicken cages on the backs of their Trek bicycles.

Not really. But you can bet that gardening and local food will be one of the defining trends of 20-aughts, kind of like the suburbanization of the 50s and swinging in the 70s. Community gardens are popping up everywhere. Apparently the Food Not Lawns movement is creeping into the Chippewa Valley. This organization helps people turn their lawns into crop growing space and empty lots into urban farmland. Just look around your neighborhood – there are plenty of people that have abandoned the good ol’ Kentucky Bluegrass for greenery that requires less water, fewer chemicals, and less lawn-mowing time.

I have to be honest here, just in case I’ve misled – Mrs. Rasmussen definitely handles most of the Rasmussen gardening. I mostly move rocks and dirt, build raised beds, get pots down from the garage loft, and enjoy an occasional marinara made with fresh backyard tomatoes. But I still feel like I am participating. A lot of people are averse to joining too many trends. But yard agriculture, or yargriculture, doesn’t come with too many drawbacks. Most plants have totally figured out how to grow without any help from you at all. If anything, a little a watering and a little weeding is all you need to feel socially and environmentally conscious while having a fabulous looking yard. And then you too can enjoy some fresh, homegrown kale. Yeah, that’s right, I know what kale is, too. I’m so green.