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We are big composters. We compost everything - bread, tea bags, coffee grounds. I even dump out my old coffee in the garden. We keep a mixing bowl on the counter and just fill it up as the day goes along, then dump it in the mulch pile before dinner and wash it with the dinner dishes.

In New York, I live on a compost heap of all the stuff I accumulate.

When my mother was raising me, she moved us upstate to the Woodstock area. Our closest neighbor was a mile away. She planted all her own vegetables.

Sometimes we followed the crops, doing migrant labor. We did several years of tenant farming in Western Oregon starting in the early '50s. Later, my stepdad managed gas stations in a small town near Portland.

My mom used to make everything. She had a great garden and composted and made everything from scratch - peanut butter, bread, jelly, everything. I don't know how she did it because all those things take time and love and labour. I only do half the stuff she does - but there's still time.

I grew up in Southern Oregon. My father was a sawmill worker and a logger, and his job put food on the table.

After school, my sister and I helped our mom in the garden. We grew potatoes, cucumbers, tomatoes - not for fun, but to eat.

My childhood home backed onto wheat and cotton fields.