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Mrs. Obama visited Latin American Montessori Bilingual Charter School on Monday, in advance celebration of Cinco de Mayo.

She held a Q&A with the students (transcript here.)  She told the students that Mexican food is her “favorite food in the whole wide world.”  In response to the final question of the day, she spoke about impact as the First Lady, and used the White House Kitchen Garden to illustrate her point!

MRS. OBAMA: We’ll do one more question, and then we’ll stop. Okay, here we go. Tell me your name.

Q: Amelia. I’m eight years old.

MRS. OBAMA: Amelia (ph). Thank you for the flower, by the way.

Q You’re welcome. I’m eight years old, and I wanted to know what has surprised you mostly about the White House.

MRS. OBAMA: Oh, see, this is a question; serious. What has surprised me most? I think — you know, I didn’t — I didn’t know that I would have this much fun doing what I’m doing. I didn’t know what to expect. I didn’t know how hard it would be, I didn’t know how much work it would be. I didn’t know completely what to expect.

But what I found is that this is a really good job. I’ve always felt like public service is a really good thing to do. I used to be a lawyer. I went to law school — you knew that because it’s in the book, isn’t it? (Laughter.) That’s good. But I practiced law, and I enjoyed practicing, but I decided early in my career that I wanted to make my career be something that helped others.

And being the First Lady is like the icing on the cake of helping other people. In this role, I have a big platform. I can come by your school, and people will follow, and they get to see what’s going on here, and they get to see your faces, and we get to remind them why education is important, and why investing in you guys is so good, and the whole world will see you dancing and singing just because I came by to say hi.

Or I can plant a garden, something as small as planting a garden, and the whole world will pay attention, and then we can talk about the importance of not just gardening but of eating good food, right, of making sure you guys eat fruits and vegetables and that they taste good.

I can get my kids a dog and we can talk about the importance of young people taking responsibility for their pets, because if you ask for a pet, you got to take care of it, right?

So there’s a lot I can do to help the public, and it’s been fun and surprisingly fun for me. So I think that’d be the most important thing.

So, you guys, thank you so much. You’ve been great and patient.

(Photo courtesy of Getty Images.)

April 29, 2009 marked the first harvest!  One hundred days after moving into 1600 Pennsylania Avenue, and less than three weeks after Mrs. Obama and the Bancroft Elementary School kids planted the White House Kitchen Garden, the Obamas enjoyed their first tastes of their homegrown garden.  (Actually, according to Jane Black, it sounds like the first salad was served to President Obama and his hungry starving economic advisors.  No word if Bo licked the plates clean.)

Oak leaf lettuce, red romaine, speckled lettuce, fennel were among the first varieties harvested.   Rhubarb was harvested as well, bound for a strawberry-rhubarb dessert sauce to be served at Miriam’s Kitchen’s annual fundraising gala.  Mmmmm!!!!  This is the first of many donations bound for Miriam’s Kitchen.  And it is in line with historical precedent.  During World War I, First Lady Edith Wilson donated wool from the White House flock of sheep (aka Living Lawnmowers) for the Red Cross, which they in turn auctioned off to sweater-knitters nationwide.

Read all the details at the Washington Post’s brand spanking new Food Blog, All We Can Eat.  Jane Black reports on The First Garden’s First Supper.

And get your own Oak Leaf Lettuce seeds and oh, so much more from Vermont’s finest High Mowing Organic Seeds or your seed purveyor of choice.  (Oak Leaf Lettuce photo credit: High Mowing Organic Seeds.)

The Obamas celebrated their first 100 days by enjoying their first harvest from the White House Kitchen Garden…but only after Mrs. Obama spent a few hours volunteering at Capital Area Food Bank.

The first 100 days also generated food for thought in the form of recaps and commentary across the internet. Many mentioned the White House Kitchen Garden. Here are just a few:

Obama Foodorama — 100 Days of Obama Agriculture Policy: Everything But the Kitchen Sink by Eddie Gehman Kohan

La Vida Locavore — Obama’s First 100 Days: How’s He Doing on Food? by Jill Richardson

Salon — Obama’s 100-day report card by Michael Pollan (and many more).

Civil Eats — The Obamas in the First 100 days: “B-” on Agriculture Policy by Paula Crossfield.

(Photo: President Barack Obama watches his wife, First Lady Michelle Obama, on TV as she breaks ground for the White House vegetable garden. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs watches with him in the Upper Press Office of the West Wing 3/20/09. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza. From the White House Flickr stream First 100 Days Slideshow.)

Please redirect to:
http://www.TheWhoFarm.org/thanks.

In celebration of Earth Day, this video is showcased on the White House homepage.  It’s called ”Green Jobs for the Future.”  Van Jones, Green Collar Jobs Advisor to the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Sara Loveland, DC Greenworks Interim Executive Director visit a DC Greenworks green roof project.

Like we’ve been saying all along, IT’S GONNA HAPPEN!

The first lady first told Oprah of her plans in the new issue of O Magazine:
Michelle Obama: We’re also working on a wonderful new garden project.
Oprah: Will kids get to visit the garden?
Michelle Obama: We want to use it as a point of education, to talk about health and how delicious it is to eat fresh food, and how you can take that food and make it part of a healthy diet. You know, the tomato that’s from your garden tastes very different from one that isn’t. And peas - what is it like to eat peas in season? So we want the White House to be a place of education and awareness. And hopefully kids will be interested because there are kids living here.

Now, the mainstream media is picking up on the good news, and just in time for Spring, it could happen any day now!  Please spread the good word.

First Family To Plant White House Veggie Garden: ABC News’ Brian Hartman Reports

Not a bad place to find ourselves on inaugural weekend, we reckon.

Veggie Gardens and Other Ideas for the Obamas
Advocates Are Pushing Bushels of Suggestions; Clothesline for a Day
by Anne Marie Chaker

Our friend Roger the Gardener at Eat The View has proposed a Victory Garden at The White House for Change.org’s Ideas for Change in America competition, which was created in response to Barack Obama’s call for increased citizen involvement in government.

The final round of voting began on January 5. The top 10 rated ideas from the final round will be presented to the Obama administration on January 16th at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, co-hosted by the Case Foundation.

Please click the link below to vote for this idea and bring us a few steps closer to an edible landscape at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Thanks.

http://www.change.org/ideas/view/green_the_white_house (UPDATE: The contest is now over, we did fairly well, but unfortunately didn’t crack the top 10.)

On the same day that Presidents Carter, Clinton, Bush and Bush ate lunch with President-elect Obama at The White House, The Washington Post chose to run a lengthy feature on The White House Organic Farm Project, on the front page of their Food section. We are also pleased to be featured on the washingtonpost.com homepage.

No word yet on the Presidents’ menu or what local organic delicacies were offered. Due, perhaps, to the rainy conditions in Washington, the Presidents did not scout out a location for an organic farm groundbreaking ceremony on the White House grounds.

With all the hype surrounding the auto industry bailouts, it seems that now would be as good a time as any to revisit Henry Ford on Self-Help, circa 1932.

According to a Time Magazine from that era, Mr. Ford “presented [his ideas] directly to the public by a series of three newspaper advertisements throughout the land. His company paid for them as ‘a contribution to public welfare.’ They summarized the fundamental economic philosophy of the man whose factories supply more industrial employment than those of any other individual.”

This particular ad included the following:
“The land! That is where our roots are. . . . No unemployment insurance can be compared to an alliance between a man and a plot of land.”

Were he alive today, it seems likely that Mr. Ford would have signed our petition to President-elect Obama.

Click here for a PDF of the entire advertisement.