Gordon Jenkins

Gordon Jenkins programs events, assists curators, and recruits farmers and artisan producers for Slow Food Nation. He has developed a Youth Program at Slow Food Nation and organizes events to inspire and unite young farmers, activists and students. Gordon grew up in Berkeley, CA and graduated from Yale in May 2007. He wrote publicity materials and planned events for the Yale Sustainable Food Project and grew vegetables at the Yale Farm. More recently, he worked as an assistant in Alice Waters’ Office at Chez Panisse.

How did you become interested in organic gardening and farming?

As a student, working for the Yale Sustainable Food Project. I had always enjoyed food – in high school, friends and I would spend summer days going to Asian groceries, buying unpronounceable vegetables, and competing in furious “Iron Chef” cook-offs – but I didn’t think much about it until I interned for a summer at the Yale Farm. Nine-to-five, all week, weeding and cultivating and planting and composting and harvesting for the New Haven Farmers Market on Saturdays. And then cooking: I brought home bushels of pea shoots, tomatoes, and romano beans every evening to turn into dinner for my housemates. That was the summer, growing and cooking. I’ve been rabid ever since.

I hear that while working on the Yale farm, you used to sing to the vegetables. Did your musical prowess benefit the plants?

Only the beans. They were particularly fond of deep-throated Italian opera.

Who are some of the folks who have inspired your love of food and farming?

Many, many and they’re all unoriginal. Alice Waters’ cookbooks, particularly the Chez Panisse Menu Cookbook, resonated with me early on. Michael Pollan, Brian Halweil and a few others have made me a fiery food activist. I’ve recently been reading gardening books, and two in particular stuck with me: How to Grow More Vegetables, by John Jeavons, and Golden Gate Gardening, by Pam Peirce. Jeavons writes inspiringly about Alan Chadwick – this mystic, more myth than man – and I’d like to start growing in his direction. I get the sense that Chadwick has been a major influence on Northern California gardening, from UC Santa Cruz to Green Gulch to Occidental Arts & Ecology. Wendy Johnson worked with him, and she’s been a recent inspiration for me, through the Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley (where my girlfriend, Vera, is a garden teacher). Jeavons, Chadwick and Wendy Johnson have taught me to consider gardening a spiritual, or almost moral, endeavor: to learn to garden is to learn to live well.

Those are books, ideas. Really the person who’s inspired me most, as friend and mentor, is Josh Viertel, co-Director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project.

What are challenges to city-dwelling and gardening?

The challenge in city-dwelling is that there isn’t enough green space and most of our food comes from miles away. I want to live in my food. The challenges to urban gardening are many: wind and fog and not enough sun (in San Francisco), too much concrete and no soil, dogs, cats, car exhaust, and for most people, no space. I’m lucky to live in a flat with a front stoop facing south, but even then I’m gardening in containers that are never deep enough and it’s always windy and there’s a tree blocking the sun and cars are roaring by. I’ve taken to intensive transplanting: right now, I’ve got ten tomato plants crammed into a sunny spot in my bedroom, next to my bed. I may leave some of them there, and dream of tomatoes all summer.

Which farmers markets do you visit in San Francisco? Why?

I go to the Ferry Plaza on Saturdays because some of the produce is unbeatable, some specialty vegetables – like mache and sunchokes – are only available there, and I like to stop by the Marin Sun stand and buy eccentric animal parts. I do most of my shopping on Sunday at the Heart of the City Market at Civic Center because it’s closer to my house and it’s a whole different crowd: smaller, humbler, new immigrant farmers and shoppers. Not nearly as many are pesticide-free, which is important to me, so I’m still only shopping at certain stands, but I see it as a better vision for a farmers market: fresh produce that’s cheaper than the grocery store because you’re paying the farmer directly.

How has cooking improved your social life?

Cooking is my social life. There’s no better way to spend time with friends and lovers than to cook a big meal and sit at the table and drink wine. I love to think up menus, spend all day shopping and cooking, and then invite ten people over for dinner. Or invite five, and tell them each to bring someone. You connect with people at the table. It’s a shared pleasure to eat together, and it binds you. Cooking has made me a better person: more open-minded, happy to share, eager to give. “Dinner parties” shouldn’t be stuffy affairs. Eat with your hands, play loud music, dance on the table.