b'We dont need to believe that Logsdon was actually advocating for a national campaign to get 50 million households to start Victory Gardens. We just need to see what his way of thinking-big-by-thinking-small brings into our fields of possibility. Logsdons abiding sense of systemic imbalances in industrial agriculture was firmly grounded in his competence as a garden farmer. He knew well, observed carefully and wrote often about small farms, starting with his own. He understood the cultural implications of the growing consumer demand for local food. He did not consider off-farm income, when it was necessary, a sign of economic weakness but an indicator of common sense. He studied scientific literature about soil fertility with the same vigor as he studied the pawpaw and mulberry trees that vied for dominance on the eastern side of one of his groves. You couldnt find an Either or an Or in his thinking, or on his farm, even with the most fine-toothed of ideologies:The new garden farming movement is being driven by upscale restaurant chefs, by the flocks of people who frequent farmers markets looking for fresher food, by a growing number of people who are suspicious of regular commercial food, and most of all by a millennial generation that seeks a different philosophy to live by than what industrialism offers them. Behind it all, or because of it all, a demographic change that has been going on for a long time is reaching maturity. The whole notion of city limits is archaic. Rural culture and urban culture are fusing, raising havoc with zoning ordinances and neighborhood relationships. People are screaming at each other over so-called ill-kept lawns, backyard chickens, loose-running dogs, horses pooping on roads, speeding cars, tractor noise at night, and a thousand other little grievances that are the growing pains of acculturation. The problems will be mostly resolved once everyone understands how cities and farms are part of a whole, not divisible from one another. When all realize that, as we munch our good, fresh food, it will not only mean a better 27'