The Greek Secret Weapon?

In the lead up on the Greek referendum on the Greek debt, I saw this fairly amazing headline:

Greek villagers’ secret weapon: Grow your own food 

Wow, I thought, what will the Greeks think of next.  One of the oldest farming cultures in the Mediterranean and they can grow their own food.

Okay, that was snarky, and unfair too. The headline writers for stuff usually are the same people as the authors, and the article didn't really mean to suggest that gardening was a Greek secret.

Still, it's surprising that this would have been regarded as really sort of amazing, and perhaps it tells us something about the extent to which Greece, traditionally an agrarian society, still is.  One Greek interviewed stated:

“I have my lettuce, my onions, I have my hens, my birds, I will manage,” he said, even though he can no longer access his full pension payment because of government controls imposed six days ago. “We will manage for a period of time, I don’t know, two months, maybe three months, because I also want to give to our relatives. If they are suffering, I cannot leave them like this, isn’t that so?”

Most Americans couldn't do that.  It's interesting that fair number of Greeks, apparently, can.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/world/article26291980.html#storylink=cpy