Late last month, Portland Tuv Ha’Aretz hosted its first Jewish Garden bike tour, focusing on gardens in NE Portland. 25 riders, ranging in age from pre-teen to, well, older than pre-teen, met at a local park. The ride was both conceived and led by Tuv Ha’Aretz member Beth Hamon, with help from Joel Metz. Beth is a bike mechanic and co-owner of Citybikes, a co-operatively owned bike shop here. She’s also a serious old-school bike geek and thought our first bike tour should be commemorated in true bike geek fashion, so she made spoke cards for all the participants (everyone thought they were cool, and you can check ours out at the top of this post; extra points if you can figure out what the Hebrew says)

We visited five gardens of varying sizes and ages; three of our gardeners also keep chickens. Some of the gardens were well established and others newly planted, and we had the opportunity to sample freshly picked peas from several gardens. One garden is in the backyard of a rental property; gardeners Chana and Richie Andler, who recently joined our planning committee, demonstrated how to grow the maximum amount of food in small beds and containers. Chana suggested the book The Bountiful Container by McGee and Stuckey as a good guide for growing food in small spaces. She and Richie also provided us with a delicious mint limeade, made with mint from their garden:

Chana’s Mint Limeade

1/2 cup fresh mint leaves, plus sprigs for garnish

3 limes wedges, plus additional slices for granish

1/2 cup fresh lime juice

sugar or honey to taste

2 cups water

Club soda

Muddle the mint leaves and lime wedges in the bottom of a large pitcher. Add lime juice, water, honey or sugar and mix thoroughly. Top off with club soda, to taste. Pour into glasses over ice and serve. Garnish each glass with a lime wedge and mint sprigs, if desired. You can also add white rum to this if you like.

All of our gardeners talked about how their Judaism informs their gardening. Chana and Richie feel an obligation to grow more food than they plan to eat, in order to donate the surplus to the hungry; this aspect of social justice and Tikkun Olam is also a major focus of my own gardening. For Andrine de la Rocha and Howard Patterson, gardening helps reduce their carbon footprint and thus ties in with Jewish teachings about stewardship of the earth. Here’s a picture of them next to their octagonal raised bed, complete with statue:

Judy Heumann, shown here with one of her chickens, uses the time in her garden for reflection and sees gardening as an inherently spiritual act. Judy’s garden is the most established of those we visited (it’s over 20 years old), and she talked about how she’s added to it and changed it over time. She also gifted us with some fresh-baked rhubarb cake, made with rhubarb from her garden.

Hannah Treuhaft, one of the members of our planning committee, likes to say a bracha before she eats, and extends that practice to growing her own food. Over the four years she’s been in her home, she’s removed all the lawn from her landscaping and built raised bed. This year she and her husband started raising chickens.

We finished the ride at my house, where we harvested spinach, said a bracha for the wonders of creation, and ate a delicious communal spinach salad, with eggs provided by our chicken keepers. A good time was had by all, and we plan to offer another bike tour, focusing on a different part of town, next season. If any of you are interested in hosting a bike garden tour (or a farm tour) for your chapters and have any questions, please leave me a comment and I’ll be happy to help you out.