Best Quotes from Farmer Will Allen And The Growing Table by Jacqueline Briggs-Martin with Page Numbers

To all those who’ve ever planted a seed and watched it grow—farmers who tend food and flowers and tend the earth.

We never had a car or a TV, but we always had good food.

Will realized he 'loved digging in the dirt.'

Will believed everyone, everywhere, had a right to good food.

When he looked at an abandoned city lot and saw a huge table heaped with food, was he right?

He remembers people who’d come to dinner tired and drooped—and leave.

Will loved the food but hated the work.

He planned to quit on...leave those Maryland fields for basketball or white-shirt work.

When he talks, everyone listens.

When he laughs, everyone laughs, glad to be in his crew.

One day, driving in Milwaukee, Will spotted six empty greenhouses on a plot of land about the size of a large supermarket, FOR SALE!

He could see kids, who’d never eaten a ripe tomato, never crunched a raw green bean, sitting at his table, eating his vegetables.

Will Allen bought that city lot!

He had no money for machines to dig out the bad soil, for truckloads of good soil.

In Belgium, Will had learned to make good soil with food garbage. They called it composting.

He added hay, leaves, newspapers, red wiggler water.

Will told them about the piles and the red wiggler worms that would help the garbage become compost.

Will says worm 'magic' is what makes his farm grow.

He grew greens in buckets, greens in rows.

Will added goats, chickens, turkeys, and bees to that city farm he named 'Growing Power.'

Will wanted his table to feed folks all over the world.

I would teach people to grow food for their own tables.

We need fifty million more people growing food on porches, in pots, in side yards.

Will Allen dreams of a day when city farms are as common as streetlights.

When he sees kids, he sees farmers.

How big will your table be?

I like to farm in all sorts of places.

You are the key to helping people, at home and around the world, have better, safer and healthier food to eat.

By planting your own small garden anywhere.

The secret to being a great farmer is great soil to farm in.