Recession Garden

I covered an interesting press conference Thursday afternoon. A young history teacher had this idea to make a recession garden. She thought now was a good time for families to save money by growing their own organic vegetables. The press conference, arranged by Suffolk County Legislator Wayne Horsley also made it clear that families that receive food stamps can purchase seeds and food bearing plants with their stamps.
The press conference went well, local radio, two television stations and Newsday, our daily newspaper were there. That’s a homerun in terms of coverage for a story.
Newsday called Legislator Horsley to let him know they decided not to run the story because his aide, Brendan and the young history teacher, Alline are dating and the editor was not made aware of this prior to assigning a reporter and photographer to the story.
Wow.
According to CNN’s web site, George Ball, CEO and Chairman or the W. Atlee Burpee & Co. says they’ve seen a 25 to 30 percent spike in vegetable seed and plants this year. John Laumer reported on the Treehugger .com site that AP reports US seed sales are up 19%.
Car manufacturers, banks, retailers and, yes media companies are all down. Newspapers are closing, car companies are filing for bankruptcy and families are finding it hard to make ends meet. Yet, a good wholesome story like a local gal growing some vegetables in her grandmothers’ yard can’t make the paper because the legislator’s aide and the gardener are dating.
Wow, maybe that’s a story.
I’ve read stories about people that fail to do what seems obvious when under duress. Someone might not think that spending money on a vegetable garden is not a good idea during hard times. Maybe they don’t know that a dollar’s worth of seed produces something like twenty-five dollars worth of produce. Well, the readership of Newsday, the voice of Long Island, NY, and America's 6th-largest regional newspaper won’t be reading about it in their paper.
In today’s day and age, who know what will last longer, Brendan and Alline or the recession.