Street Roots • April 3-9, 2015
my parents wanted to do. We had a couple
acres of land, relatives coming over to pick
tomatoes on weekends. We grew more than
we could consume.” His father worked at
the University of Notre Dame power plant,
and his creative, inventive mother ran the
garden and the family. Neither had
graduated from high school. “But,” he says,
“they instilled in us the value of education.”
When they were ready for college, he and
his older brother, Jim - Tom was the second
- decided they wanted to go into fisheries,
and they chose Oregon State University as
the best destination. OSU had a great
fisheries program, and out-of-state students
could work in Oregon for the summer and
then qualify as residents. When Tom
graduated in 1968, Jim had already served
with th e Marines in Vietnam, and he
suggested, as Tom mildly put it, “You know,
you might be better o ff... doing something
else with your time.” That’s when Tom
Lichatowich joined the Peace Corps and
ended up in Fiji with 11 other volunteers.
After a dozen years in Fiji, first with the
Peace Corps and then with the Fijian
government, Lichatowich worked for six
years for the United Nations in fisheries
programs in the Middle East and Africa.
Most of his projects were demonstrations:
showing how to make fisheries more
sustainable, getting others to develop their
own fish farms
In Fiji, he found a culture that depended
on mutual community support
“In poor countries, for survival they have
to pull together.” Fijian society worked on a
system called keri
“You are obligated to
help someone if they are in need or if they
ask. When someone else’s house blows
down, you have an obligation. When you
have trouble, they’ll help you.”
Though complicated, it was a system in
place for centuries, and it knitted the
society together. Fijians couldn’t really own
a successful business then, because if
someone came to them and needed what
they were selling, they had to help. One can
see how such a custom would make
capitalism impossible. Today, of course, the
tradition is being lost. But Lichatowich took
important lessons from that culture of
mutual support — lessons he still lives by
today.
ven in the middle of winter,
Lichatowich’s garden is a world apart
from the rest of his Northeast Portland
neighborhood. The street is lined with one-
story bungalows and neat square green
lawns. When I asked for directions, he told
me, “It’s pretty easy to spot when you come
down the street. It’s a striking yellow house,
and it’s the only one with no lawn out front.”
Photos of the sum mer garden show
vivid masses of every shade of green;
brilliant reds and oranges and purples —
tomatoes, radishes, carrots, eggplants;
splashes of flame-red dahlias, tall golden
sunflowers; the giant dark leaves of rhubarb,
shiny-deep-green basil, delicate sprays of dill
and fennel, tassels of corn. Deep in the
garden among all this jungle, a stone
Buddha sits quiet and reflective, rather like
Lichatowich himself.
On the damp gray winter, day I visited,
E
News
the garden was a series of messy-looking
weight down the cover, and a small warming
dirt mounds laced with sticks and eggshells
bulb in the comer wired to a switch in the
and bits of leaves and even old chicken
house. Everything is from found, scrounged,
bones, with wandering paths of fine orange
or recycled materials.
sawdust, and a few leafless fruit trees
Lichatowich figures that about 60 percent
standing brave in the winter cold. He hasn’t
to 70 percent of what he and his wife,
built wood frames for his raised beds —
Penelope, consume is grown in the garden.
they’re just heaped-up leaf mold and rabbit
He also provides produce to his daughters
manure, piled on wood chips, piled on layers and their families who live in town, and he
of cardboard. But I’m a gardener too, and I
shares with neighbors. Penelope dries and
could see the richness of those piles of dirt,
preserves fruits and nuts, makes and freezes
the potential of the
tomato and basil
new season hidden
purees, dills their
in the humble,
cucumbers for
scrappy earth.
pickles, makes
Ignoring the
coleslaw, does
light Oregon
some fermenting.
drizzle,
They store onions
Lichatowich took
and squash in a
me for a garden
dry, well-
tour. He was quick
ventilated garage
to point out the
and dig potatoes
very simplicity of
from the ground
his garden, despite
all the way
its wealth of
through
produce in the
December.
high season. He
Having retired
"P e o p le g o h y a n d say?
y o n ?re
uses, as he said,
some
years ago,
a lw a y s a n t to re » d o in g s o m e th in g
very minimal
Lichatowich sees
In
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e
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a
rie
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worfe
sa
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inputs. He gets the
the garden as a
B u t 1 r e a lly d o n o t n o tic e th e tim e o r way he can save
sawdust from a
man nearby with a e ife rt« H aw ing th e tim e to werfe w ith
money for the
small lumber mill,
nature? p ro d u c e s o m e th in g ©1 w in e ? family and
who takes downed a e s th e tic a lly as w e ll as n n trltle n a lly ? contribute to the
trees from tree
neighborhood,
Is a g ift« 1 gness 1 a m g ra te fn l lo r
He claims not
service companies
to be a
and mills them into th is g i l t / "
TOM LÌCHATOWICH, neighborhood
usable pieces for
! 'NORTHEAST PORTLAND organizer or to
woodworkers.
RESIDENT AND GARDENER
have an organized
“Most places
communal
charge for
system, but he
sawdust,” .
Lichatowich explains, “but he gives it away if gives away plant starts to local gardeners
and sometimes posts them on Craigslist.
you’re willing to shovel and haul.” Of course
Neighbors bring over heaps of leaves, grass
Lichatowich is. Another neighbor raises
rabbits, and he drops off loads of manure - B clippings, any yard debris they have left
over. His street is a through bike lane, and
one of the secrets of the garden’s success.
Lichatowich puts plants and produce out at
I was curious to know whether he
the corner for free pickup.
planned out the garden ahead of time,
“Always disappears quickly,” he says. “I
maipped what he’d put where.
suspect we have easily given away about a
“Oh, I always start out with a plan,” he
third of what we produce.” ,
said. “But certain things happen, it morphs
He and Penelope moved into the
and morphs, and it turns out it’s a dynamic
neighborhood just a few years ago. About
thing.” The plants take over the garden.
that time, the Tohoku earthquake and
They have their own plan.
tsunami struck Japan, and there was talk of
He’s working on extending the planting
the likelihood of a big quake here in the
season in the Northwest He showed me a
Pacific Northwest Penelope tried to drum
wooden planter about the size of three end-
up neighborhood interest in a meeting to
to-end shoeboxes, where he is raising
talk about preparing for an earthquake or
lettuce sprouts from seeds he hand-
other emergencies. Walking the
harvested in his garden at the end of the
neighborhood, she found many doorbells
season. The sprouts were maybe an inch
broken, signs saying “Do Not Disturb.”
tall, tiny green leaves that looked vulnerable
On the day of the meeting, only three
in the cold. He’d protected them with a
people came. But later, a neighbor told her,
series of hoops made from bent recycled
“I won’t come to a meeting, but if it’s a
wire and roofed over with clear plastic. “The
parly, I’ll be there.” So Penelope announced
roof is just old plastic grocery bags. I cut
a party.
them open to spread them out and poked a
“Everybody came. Kids rode their bikes,
few holes so the sprouts get some
played games in the street. And people got
rainwater.”
to know each other,” Lichatowich says. Now,
His compost pile, an impressive shoulder-
they have block parties, with beer provided
high three-bin fortress in the back comer of
by a neighbor who works in one of the local
the lot, is built from used pallets. He has
breweries.
rigged a cleverly-designed mini-greenhouse
Neighbors know each other; if someone’s
shelf onto the side of the house with
sick, people will take over food. “If an
another clear plastic covering, a row of
elderly lady has a branch down, neighbors
chopped-up garden hose along the edge to
Page 9
help o u t” In the fall he grows pumpkins,
decorative gourds, cornstalks for
decorations, and “kids come over and do the
pumpkin patch routine.” They love digging
into the earth for the treasure of buried
potatoes.
He sees his garden as a piece of
something larger, a small part of a solution
that’s within reach for others, too, if they’ll
work together. “You know, we’re only as
strong as the weakest link,” he says. “I think
the financial crisis a few years ago showed
it. One entity — big banks and mortgage
companies — took advantage of a part of the
population and created havoc for us all. You
can’t do that without suffering some
consequences.” People — especially
Americans — don’t want to be dependent, he
says. But we are.
ut front, we spot raccoon tracks in the
fresh sawdust. He grows enough to
share with urban wildlife, too: raccoons,
birds, opossums, even the squirrels. It
seems natural to him to share what he
produces. But he wonders, is our society
ready to share what we have?
“We can share tools, but if you loan out
your shovel, it might come back dirty, or
broken.”
He examines the bare branches of a
Brooks plum tree. “It seems that working
toward the common good is
countercultural,” he says. “But I think
things are changing.” He cites a study he
read that said the fastest-growing
agricultural sector in Oregon is backyard
gardens.
“That was at the time the recession hit,
and maybe more people started thinking
about gardening. I saw it myself in the
garden stores: drip irrigation equipment,
cedar raised beds, organic fertilizers.” He
tells of urban gardens being established in
poor neighborhoods, where on 2 acres they
can feed dozens of families. “It doesn’t have
to cost a lo t And it’s all organic, so ...”
O
ichatowich offers a little light of hope in
a time when so many go hungry,
especially in Oregon. He lives his example
of backyard gardening as a simple,
manageable, inexpensive way to provide
what people need — not only in nutrition,
but in mutual support, a sense of community
and a sense of purpose,
“People go by and say, ‘Gee, you’re
always out here, doing something in the
garden. You work so hard.’ But I really do
not notice the time or effort. Having the
time to work with nature, produce
something of value, aesthetically as well as
nutritionally, is a gift. I guess I am grateful
for this gift
“Plant a garden, you have a job for life.”
He pauses, hands in pockets, gazing over
his garden.
“So you’d better love i t ”
H