I have no idea if anyone reading this is a true gardener. Maybe a few of you are hydro-phonics nuts with your own grow house in your garage, ha! You may have nice landscaping and perhaps pull some weeds yourself, maybe even mow the lawn on Saturdays. Doubtful, but perhaps there are a few of you. However, I imagine that most of you are not growing a thriving garden of fruits and vegetables. Little factoid, slow grown food is really good for you and the space of a small backyard lawn could produce enough fruits and vegetables to feed your family all year round. Add some dry rice and bean staples to the diet and you could almost live completely on your own backyard, if you managed the garden well. You could go buy some chickens and hide them from your HOA, and get some eggs on a regular basis too.
Not too long ago our culture was 95% agrarian. We lived where we worked. We worked to provide food and feed for our family and animals. That transition occurred over the last 100 years. The primary occupation of 1920 was Farmer. The primary occupation of 2020 is going to be Retail Salesperson. This cultural transition has been profound and because of that most of us have only a quaint idea of what it means to grow your own food. Well, I take that back. Some of you may have mastered the art of the chia pet, or perhaps the costco herb garden in a box sitting on your kitchen shelf.
I spent a lot of time with my great grandmother growing up. She was born a farmer. She lived on a large ranch with three other sisters and her father who ran a full hay ranch. They absolutely lived on the land their entire lives. When I asked her about the greatest invention that she ever saw in her life (she was born in the 1890s), she did not mention the TV, or even the car. She was blown away by the automatic hay baler. That changed the world, so she says, and maybe in a way that I did not understand as a 8 year old child, she was right.
When I would visit, she would have a box of play toys ready on the kitchen table. That consisted of a bunch of wooden blocks that she had found at a construction site, polished by hand with some paper. She also loved those little metal disks that electricians knock out of electrical outlet boxes. She collected those, smoothed the rough edges and made them into fake coins. She taught my sister and I how to count money, save money, and spend it wisely on whatever we were playing at that day. She walked me through her routine, cutting out articles carefully in the paper and categorizing them. Finding and saving rubber bands, cardboard scraps, bottles and cans. Everything had a potential use and everything eventually did get put to use.
We would at regular intervals be interrupted by the requirement to tend to the garden. I did not understand how odd it was then, but now I can see what it was really like. She was a in a small downtown area in a Western Colorado surrounded by other homes, shopping areas and a few business. There she was, converting her back lot into a thriving garden. She had these tidy little rows created, with stakes pounded into the ground labeling and providing borders to each plant. She labeled everything, using old tin cans upside down on the stakes to indicate the planting time, and the expected harvest date. She believed very strongly in crop rotation and had it down to a science. She had a small irrigation system built, she would flood the top part and the water would seep through neatly carved trenches until soaked. She would do this only when the soil no longer felt slightly damp to her finger.
Her crop of choice was cantaloupe and honeydew. She was always asking to “turn me over some melon.” She would cut the melon in half, carve it out with a large spoon and with a flip of her wrist dump the contents into one of those small white porcelain bowls that were popular in the 60s. I started to hate melon after a few years, but looking back now, I would give a portion of my soul to once again taste a spoonful of that perfectly ripened orange cantaloupe. I can feel the rind in my fingers now, almost taste the freshness of the fruit and get a hint of the nodding approval my great grandmother would give me as I begrudgingly swallowed the results of her first summer harvest.
It is hard to quantify or even understand the lessons that I gained under the daily tutelage of one of the pioneers of the West. A hard woman that led a hard life, but yet probably the kindest soul that I have ever known. She saw more death than any of us will ever know. She experienced heartache, tragedy, disease, wars and the success and failure of men and women trying to earn a living in the early onset of the industrial age. There is one thing that I can say that I learned, and that is an awe and a respect for the nurture of a garden. It is a cultural mindset, and I was privileged to be a small boy playing with my handmade toys at the feet of one of the matrons of this past time. She not only knew how to raise a crop, she understood the concepts behind it.
Her patience, her determination, her willingness to do the small things that slowly accumulate to a successful crop is something that is just lost on those of us in this fast paced, digital age. She found joy, peace and calmness in a early summer morning as she strolled up and down each row, testing soil, plucking weeds and pinching slugs and grasshoppers. There is something there, in the back of the mind that formed when I was 8. Something that speaks to me about the slowness of life as it grows. A willingness to put in the time, in its season, and in the right quantity to produce a result by your own hand. Such is life as you grow, such it is as the garden grows.
Guy Reams
