Every now and then you meet someone and they just find a place in your heart. That’s the story with Chris and Stephanie. We met in a church small group where we shared our hearts and a meal on weekly basis. Our journeys took us in different directions for a time but we stayed connected through random events and social media. I knew when I started sharing my journey here at Seed and Sonder, they were people I wanted you to meet as well. Avid gardeners, their passion for sharing gardening with their family and friends is contagious. They have passed that passion along to their two children and watching them share their gardening and food journey with them is a joy. I mean, how many toddlers do you know that will sit and munch on a radish? Add to that their more recent step into grain and dairy free eating, and we had much to talk about.

Here is a little bit from my “interview” with Chris and Stephanie. I know you will love them as much as we do!

Tell everyone a bit about yourselves.
Steph: Chris and I have been married 10 years. We've lived in Denver for almost 6 years, moving here from Omaha, NE. We both work for a web design and marketing firm, JM Web Designs, out of Omaha; Chris as the project manager, and I work as the Brand and Marketing Coordinator. We work from our basement, and we LOVE our company, boss, co-workers and jobs. We have Grace (4) and Benjamin (1.5). We love beer and cocktails, watching cooking shows on PBS, reading books with our kids and the DIY lifestyle. Our life motto is "if it's not a pain in the ass, it's not worth doing."

As I recall, Chris studied something agriculture based in college - is that true?
Chris: I studied Biology in college and then an M.S. in Ecology where I studied how parental care in carrion beetles influence the physiology of their offspring.

Where did your love for gardening begin?
Chris: My mom. My mom always kept a garden, just like her Dad. She was always very intentional about feeding us fruits and vegetables in a place where cheesy potatoes and prime rib reign. Where I grew up in rural Nebraska, we couldn't always go to the supermarket, because the closest fully stocked grocery store was about an hour away. We had a grocery store in town, but it was most reliable in providing shelf/freezer stable foods. But to be honest, I would say that most people in my town had a garden, probably for this reason, but also being an agricultural community, it was also kind of second nature I suppose.. So as much as it was my mom being a good mom, culturally, it was part of a lifestyle. I think a lot of my own interest in gardening stems from studying Ecology too. I spent a lot of time studying native prairies. It always struck me that we have almost no understanding of the herbs, greens, roots that have been growing in our country without cultivation. Our diets include foods that have a heavy influence on domesticated plants and animals from other continents rather than our incredibly diverse and bioproductive ecosystems. If you go for a hike, whether in the mountains or in a prairie, focus on what you smell. There are tons of different fragrances that are mostly foreign to our pallets. Imagine those herbs in combination with a bison roast or a quail filet with a side of nettle soup... What would our american food culture be like had we spent more time learning our the natives eat!? So much of my interest in gardening was pushed by my curiosity of native plants and foods. But I cannot say that I have a garden that is full of Jerusalem Artichokes, Salsify and Chicory. But this year I am planting some Purple Prairie Coneflower (most of us know this as Echinacea), and I always like a good sunflower (they're mostly cultivars though...).
Steph: I grew up on Long Island NY. And while my family didn't have a garden, my next door neighbor did. We called him Uncle Herbie and my family shared in all the joys of his garden. We helped harvest, and I particularly remember the TONS of raspberries we would eat and freeze from his garden every year. When we bought out house 4.5 years ago we had 2 neighbors who had AMAZING gardens. They have since moved, but they seriously inspired me to create a beautiful space to grow our own food.

Do you garden year round in this crazy climate?
Steph: No. We've tried. But by the time Sept hits we usually need a break. We need a break from harvesting and preserving. It's somewhat symbolic of the seasons. Letting things die and go dormant as winter approaches... and then seeing new life when spring arrives.
Chris: Well I did plant some beets, spinach and kale last September. They overwintered well with almost no maintenance, but they didn't produce anything until this spring. But yea, usually by the end of summer, I'm ready to not be gardening.

Garden to table - what does that look like for your family?
Steph: The first couple years we grew our garden we really didn't use it to its full potential. We would grow a lot of produce and then we would let it go to waste because we couldn't find a recipe for it, or we didn't know what to do with it. The last couple years we were dedicated to cooking what was in our garden. I am a dedicated meal planner. So each week we would sit down and talk about what vegetables would be ready to pick in the garden for that week. And then I would meal plan around it. And if I couldn't find a recipe for it, we would just make it work as a side. We also grow a lot of things that you can't really just eat out of the garden. For instance, we have hundreds of jalapeños. So while jalapeño poppers are great, you can't eat hundreds of them. So we pickle them and enjoy them throughout the year. Radishes, we harvested 2000 of them this year. So we pickle them to enjoy long-term. Kale is also really plentiful, but you can really only eat so many kale salads (Chris disagrees), so we freeze it to put in smoothies. Also, when we have too much of something we give it away. We give it to friends or neighbors. And it's been a really great way to love our neighbors and provide them with a good gift of fresh produce.
Chris: Our garden mostly supplements ingredients in a recipe rather than being the entire recipe itself. That's kind of disappointing because the garden is supposed to be your off-grid hack to feeding your family. But for a hobby garden that's pretty much impossible. It's super exciting when we can have a main dish that is entirely garden grown. As much as we grow our garden for dinner, for Grace the garden has always been a place where she can walk up to it and put it in her mouth. One of my favorite moments was last summer when she fell and skinned her knee. She looked up at me with alligator tears and said, "I wanna eat a tomato!" and she walked over to the cherry tomatoes and had a few. How great is that?! She is so much more likely to eat interesting foods that "she picked from the garden" than a dinner. Besides, the only place most of us ever find anything to eat is in the fridge, so walking outside and having a snack is sort of a cool idea. It's certainly not economical. I suppose I do it mostly for hobby, I enjoy the aesthetics of a full garden in the backyard, and I hope that my kids see that food can be fun and isn't just from the grocery store. But when I consider that I have organic, free range, non-gmo, biodynamic, however you want to call it, foods in my backyard... I think heck ya I do, why would I do anything else?

What have been your most successful crops here in Denver?
Chris: The toughest plants that can take a severe amount of neglect would be kale, swiss chard and mint. I have found peppers do well: we've cranked out banana peppers (perfect for Grace) jalapeño and Anaheim chilies. Apparently tomatoes do well, but I think they take a bit more of attention. Peas and spinach are a favorite spring crop for me, but they'll start to die down once summer sets in.

How do you engage your children in the process?
Steph: From the perspective of post-harvest, our children know that cooking is just what we do in our house. We LOVE to cook. The kids have stools and can be up at the counter and be a part of prep and cooking as much as they want. Our 4 year-old even sautés and stirs soup on the stove. And when the food we cook is something they grow they are much more likely to try and love something new. So we encourage them to eat it right out of the garden (minus the jalapeños) and then to help us wash and prep the food. They can be much more connected to the process and really appreciate the joy (and difficulty) of growing and preparing fresh food. I hope that gardening and preparing fresh and healthy foods gives our kids a passion for eating well, for respecting and caring for creation, for trying new things and for feeding their neighbors.
Chris: In addition to some of the things I mentioned before, the kids are so interested in the life out there. Putting a seed in the ground and later eating it, how cool! Not to mention our garden is teeming with worms and pillbugs. The kids make homes for them and love discovering the squirmy, dirty world that exists out there. They're little scientists out there discovering a new universe.

Tell us why we should home garden?
Chris: Because you'll learn something. Maybe growing a food you don't always eat will help you discover a new favorite food. That's how I discovered acorn squash. You'll be less squirmy about less than perfect produce in the grocery store, chances are you'll eat a bug someday if you garden. Also, it just feels good.

What has been your biggest challenge and your biggest reward?
Chris: It's pretty time consuming and it really isn't saving money growing your own food. Bugs and disease are hard manage well. Going on vacation and keeping your plants alive is hard. Hail storms suck. When kids harvest they can be kind of destructive.