Digging Deeper
When I was little, maybe six or eight, we lived in a modest suburban house with a backyard that felt impossibly large. Huge trees lined either side, and the far end touched the land of a local animal doctor, so occasionally a lost duckling would wander up to our door.
It was there, with my mom, that I first began gardening. In the back right corner, on a mound of earth - I can't recall if we built it or found it - we planted an Asian pear tree. It took forever to get it in the ground. When it finally bore fruit we were so proud. We loved it so much that we dug it up and took it with us when we moved.
On rare warm evenings, my mom would convince me to climb into the garden wheelbarrow. Clutching the sides, I’d laugh as she zigzagged me through the trees, down past the Asian pear, and back to the house.
It never felt like gardening. We were just outside, hacking at blackberry brambles, peering at leaf curl, stringing up doomed tomatoes the dog always got to first. But we were doing something. Something together.
Later, after we moved to a house with a much smaller yard, we kept planting. Black raspberries. Our prized dogwood. We'd sit out front on spring evenings, just the three of us, and strangers would stop to ask about the beautiful display from the tree with the pink blossoms.
Gardening never felt like a calling. I thought of myself as a city kid, despite growing up far from any real city. I didn’t study agriculture. But I carried those memories like roots under the surface, quiet but deep. Eventually I had my own garden. Filled with a cherry tree, herbs, artichokes. Tomatoes in Summer, pumpkins in the Fall.
When I moved to Paris, I said goodbye to my backyard chickens, re-homed them carefully. I left my dog with my folks. I stopped checking on the garden each evening. And that’s when something shifted.
I realized I wasn’t really a city kid. I missed the dirt. The growing. The small acts of care. Maybe it was something I had always needed.
Now, my wife and I are on the train, heading east out of Paris. We stare out the window at cream-white and rust-colored cows that seem like the happiest animals in France. Part of me wants to pull the emergency brake and lie down with them in the tall grass.
Back in our apartment, the bathroom is crowded with plastic trays. Tiny green shoots trying to catch a scrap of sunlight. Basil, tomatoes, peppers. Some from seeds we smuggled back from California. They’re unlikely to survive the moody Parisian weather, and even if they do, we’ve only got one sunny windowsill. But still, we plant.
All of this connects.
It connects to the countryside. To the garden. To our coffee.
This is why we want to work with plants. Trees. Fruit. Jam. Grains. Homemade and handmade. Things that grow and take time.
The land is calling us back. I can hear the bees. The chickens. The crackle of a wood fire. I can feel the breeze on my face and the joy of being flung around the yard in a wheelbarrow.
In restaurants—and even cafés—there can be a separation from source. Like buying milk in a supermarket and wishing you’d seen the cow. We want to shrink that distance.
What if the field was right outside the door, and what we served came directly from it?
What if the products weren’t just good, but grown here? With care, with time?
What if our coffee didn’t start at the grinder, but at the garden bed?
This isn’t just nostalgia. It’s a framework. It’s a way of remembering. Of digging deeper. Into something that was always there, just under the surface.