Family Gardening Matters

It was February in Wyoming, and the data gathering started early, so the sky was still dark when I pulled on my staff t shirt, then I slipped my medicine bag over my head. Everyone that day needed healing, including me. Many families of Wind River Indian Reservation wanted to garden.

Everyone wanted to improve their health, but some people were short of the money or maybe the labor, or maybe the knowledge that they needed to get started with gardening. So we co designed a study. This study would pay for supporting home food gardens while measuring the health impacts of gardening twice a year before and then after every gardening season, we would host data collection sessions. The data collection room was well equipped with sterilizing swabs, syringes, staff surveys, scales and steadyometers. People of Wind River came to answer stilted questions and to share their blood.

When those numbers became numbing, I would lift my hand to the medicine bag, to my heart to remind myself why we were here. One day, the Northern Arapaho elder, Dr Virginia Sutter, shared a story with me. Her organization was helping families start their gardens. Listening. My eyes welled with tears, and my heart swelled with hope, while my brain was thinking, the data we're gathering isn't capturing what gardens really mean, including for health. Dr Sutter told me last week, someone came to me saying, You don't know me. Dr Sutter, but I want to thank you. You helped my family start a garden. Now, instead of sitting inside each looking at our screens, we go outside in the evening. We gather around the garden. The children ask us questions, and we answer them. We watch the sunset. Thank you for bringing my family together again