Welcome to MARS

My name is Mary. Yep, my people call me Mars. And I’ve been up to some obsessive growing and cooking. I love food. I love to eat it, yes. But I’m fairly wrapped up in the process of it, too—the way any of us delights in a thing and must know it, inside and out. For me, that means starting at a food’s beginnings. I want to bake the cake from scratch. I want to make the broth from bones. And, yes, I want to grow the vegetables in dirt. And, so far as I know, Chad and the kids have never minded eating all of it.

When I took a break from my editorial career to be home with my three little ones in 2009, I found both joy and defeat in it—the way we do. Wouldn’t trade it for the world—but, wait. Who am I, anymore? It’s here, in these baby years, that I doubled down on cooking and baking. It was a creative outlet that helped me stay sharp and remember myself.

In that Brooklyn co-op, I wanted to grow vegetables so badly—and Chad and I kind of tried!—I remember some poor, scorched tomato plants we left in the rooftop sun too long. Then we moved to Northern Westchester, in 2013, and gained outdoor space for the first time.

With a four-, a three-, and a two-year old in tow, and a fourth baby on the way, we moved to South Salem to start something new. Embrace some wiggle room and a quiet we needed to adjust to. There was no garden on our property, but I immediately began growing vegetables in pots. My father—I think a tad excited for someone else to share his gardening mania—would drive two hours to gift me starters from his giant garden. I asked Dad millions of questions, I watched invaluable content from YouTubers, we struggled with groundhogs and pests, and Chad and I eventually built ourselves six raised, fenced-in garden beds to grow our food in.

I might call myself self-taught, except that I don’t know about the phrase “self taught.” Those of us who've skirted a traditional study of trades owe our education to a wealth of sources (cookbooks, food blogs, YouTube, gardening books, Instagram—Ina!) and the people behind all of this content. Not to mention the people in our lives who influence our pursuits the most, right? That would be my father.

My father is my first and always garden teacher, and I continue to benefit from his obsessive growing endeavors. Garlic farming, bee keeping, plant grafting, vine tunneling, worm vermi-composting, fertilizer diy-ing, compost perfecting, mulch making, dehydrator delirium. Dad continues to cycle through meticulous studies in and around his garden. And at every visit, I soak up what I can—asking questions and pressing him for specific answers when it might sound obvious to him. He is, without question, the inspiration for just about everything I grow.

I’ve spent years culling and culling and culling. And here I find myself, working to become one of these sources of education for you. Kitchen gardening gives me so much joy. All of its parts, including the tests that can come with it. Because it’s the process that fuels a grower, just as much as the harvest. I’m here to share with you a way of vegetable gardening that I’ve “taught myself.” One that starts in a bed of raised dirt and ends doused in olive oil on our plates.

I hope you’ll join me.

-Mary Buri, founder