Why I started growing vegetables in my basement after 9/11

When people ask you where you were on 9/11, most people over 25 years old can tell you what they were doing when they first heard about the airplane strikes in the World Trade Center.  Before 2001, September 11^th was the date to celebrate my lovely step daughter’s birthday.  On that day, the date took on a whole new meaning for our country.

I remember hearing about a plane hitting the world trade center while driving to a customer site in MetroWest. I was listening to NPR, and the 9 am news announced the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. While working at the customer site, I kept up to date by checking the Wall Street Journal web site.  I could access live feeds from web sites based in the vicinity. What many people don’t know is when the buildings went down, it was the ultimate testing of the capabilities built into the Internet. The Internet was designed to survive a nuclear attack.  It turns out that on September 11, 2001, one of the largest Network Access Points on the Internet was destroyed.  A NAP is a data center used to exchange binary traffic between providers, and typically has more weight in legal paperwork than the actual equipment used for traffic.  The NAP located in the World Trade Center was demolished, and the Internet barely hiccupped.

Within a few hours it became apparent the scope of the attack.  Few of the planes took off from Logan airport.  I knew those flights, and realized that there may be people I know on those planes.  The attack also changed the Technology industry. Companies didn’t want to spend money on new enterprise software solutions, or consultants, and Venture Capitalists started to shut down startups.  I was working at a startup as a Product Manager consultant, but within 45 days I was out of work.

I was in a transition point in my career.  I had a solid engineering background, but little recent hands-on experience.  I was working towards an MBA, but was a Semester short of graduating.  I decided to focus on finishing my degree while the terrorism and wars filled the news channels.  I got my degree the following spring, but couldn’t find a full-time job.  I continued to look for work.  Eventually the unemployment ran out, we were on food stamps.  Eating healthy isn’t easy on a limited budget.  Produce, especially during the winter is an expensive side dish. 

I needed to find a job with benefits and decided to take a job doing retail sales at a local computer store chain store in early 2003.  I worked there for over two and a half year until I was able to get another job within the High Technology Industry of Corporate America.  It was over five years after the terrorist attack when my career recovered.

The family did go through some hard times, and I realized the first thing that we couldn’t afford is good food, specifically fresh produce and vegetables.  While growing up, our family always had a vegetable garden, but we had too many trees in our property to grow a garden.  Separate from improvements in my career, we decided to spend some money on improving the house.  Part of that improvement was removal of a few trees to make room for a 3-season porch.  That also created a spot in the back yard to try growing a vegetable garden.  We started planting our first garden in 2009.

In the spring of 2010, I was laid off again.  Unfortunately, the technology industry has become a transitional career.  I had a great garden that year but realized my future plans were uncertain.  Unemployment would stop some time later winter, and based on the economy, I could not guarantee if I would have a job by then. 

That’s when I decided to start a basement farm.  I had containers, a tray from early planting, seeds, and could water the plants by hand. all I needed was a grow lamp.  I planted indoors throughout the fall, winter and into early spring.  Throughout that time I also had enough lettuce for salads on a regular basis.  I thought that if I could get something growing, it would be cheaper than purchasing produce in the middle of winter.  If our family ended up on foodstamps, whatever grew would help us eat healthy at a low price.

The commitment to grow a basement farm is like cooking, you mix the ingredients together and let the fire or heat do the rest.  Within a few minutes or hour you consume the results. The difference is with any framing it takes months to see the outcome.  I did a planting of Swiss Chard in early November, got a job in January, and had my family over for dinner in early February.  I harvested enough Swiss Chard (a favorite family dish) for 8 people with leftovers. I even had an occasional spinach harvest.  I kept it going to spring, when I moved the containers outdoors, then discovered squirrels got to the harvest of Swiss Chard before I did.

It seemed like an overall successful project.