Nature's Best

“Hungry for Change” (summer 2016) says remarkably little about home gardening. Four decades ago when I developed myasthenia gravis, I could walk only about 100 feet until I had to lie down on a neighbor’s lawn to get the energy to walk home. My daughter Lori Kenschaft ’87 convinced me that exercising in my own backyard by gardening would be safer.

Fresh, organic food (available only through home gardening) made my health improve dramatically. Soon I was raising almost all of the family’s vegetables year-round 12 miles from Manhattan with no power machinery, no poisons, and no commercial fertilizers. A group of us started the Cornucopia Network of New Jersey to promote local, organic food, and I open my garden to the public six times a year.

Anyone who wants to join my gardening/environmental list may email me.

—PAT CLARK KENSCHAFT ’61, Upper Montclair, N.J.