FARMER

Gardening is in my blood. You see that guy on top of this hot house in the picture below? That's my Grandpa--he's 80 years old and built this new hothouse. I'm sure when I'm 80 I'll be packing up my stuff and pulling the handle on my lazy boy, not preparing to make more seedlings to plant.. This next photo is my mom. The guy on the roof raised this lady. You can see in the distance behind her corn, her own hot house she built by herself.

As a kid, my mom and all her siblings were responsible for a huge garden a mile from their home. I don't know who owned the land, but they let my grandparents garden on it. They all grew up working in the garden. My grandpa always says:
"I have 9 kids and their all boys except the last 8."

So all these girls had to physically labor and toil growing up. I don't know if the garden is what made most of them tomboys, or the fact my Grandpa planned to have 9 kids to have a complete baseball team, and the fact that they were mostly girls didn't change the plan. But most of my aunts are also big gardeners and it's a big topic on that side of the family.

Anyway, this is me. Recently, perfectly posed with some tomatoes in my hand. Notice I'm even smiling? Don't I look like I enjoy gardening?

Well I do...now.

But I didn't growing up. It's just recently that I've accepted my farmer/ gardening heritage and appreciate it.

My mom lives on 1 acre. About 1/2 the acre is set aside for the garden. That is huge. The back chunk is the mini orchard, but the rest of it is for the rows.

As you can see behind me, we live across the street from a field--which is a big cow pasture. But we're not in the sticks completely. We live on a main road in our little town. So here is the story. As we were required to "slave" in the garden growing up, we all hated it. My mom would always tell us we'd appreciate it when we were older, we need to learn how to work, etc. Or I remember an aunt saying one day there will be a famine and people will be tearing up their lawns to plant gardens to survive, and I'll know how to garden already or something. But as a kid and teen, like I cared about gardening. Just buy the stinking tomato from the store. Why toil all summer when you can buy one without bugs or anything???

Each day all summer for a few years, we had to "pick rocks". Our land has tons of rocks. So we had to fill two huge buckets of rocks everyday and dump them in the park strip. We all had different strategy. Some would sit in one spot, and just pick up all the rocks in the vicinity to fill it up and get it done. Others, would wander aimlessly over the half acre looking for really big rocks to fill up the bucket, because obviously you need fewer big rocks to fill a bucket. Anyway, we loathe the rock picking.

This photo is me when I'm 12, which is about when this next story took place. I don't know if you remember being 12, but all the sudden you become aware of your image, care about what people thing of you, right? Well looking at this photo, it probably doesn't look like that has hit yet, with the slicked hair and grubbiness overall, but despite that, I was self conscious.

I chose this picture because in my memory I was wearing those pink shorts.

Heather, my older sister and I had to weed the corn. The corn at this point was between 1-2 feet high and the rows were perpendicular to the street. So here I am, on all fours, pulling out these weeds in July. I remember sweat dripping into my eyes. It was hot, I was sweaty, and I hated all of this. As I worked along the rows, rather than walk back and start the next row, so I was working toward the street, I'd just turn and head up the next one. What I'm saying is, half the time, my butt was facing this busy street as I'm pulling out weeds on my hand and knees. Not really thinking about this or caring, as we were working, with my butt to the street, someone drove by with rap music blaring, honked and yelled at my butt. I obviously couldn't see who it was, but it had to be a teenager, yelling at our butts in the garden. I was mortified!!!

I knew I couldn't get out of finishing the job, so I went into a savage mania of ripping out the weeds. I probably looked like a lunatic crawling along, ripping out morning glory in a rage, red faced, sweaty, and when I'm mad I flare my nostrils REALLY BIG. Kind of like a skeletor hippo going crazy in the corn or something. I hated that we had to do the work, but hated even worse, the set up of having to work with an audience my whole life.

But look at me now. Now I'm grown up, I see the economy and logic behind having a garden, and the self sufficiency it can provide. I used to be so embarrassed of people seeing me work as a farmer girl, but now I'm proud of being from a farmer family.

The old guy at the top of the post was raised on a farm, and that is how they survived through the Great Depression as kids and it is a way of life. Recently that side of my family made a DVD of each of my Grandpa's siblings documenting their memories of their parents, my great-grandparents. One thing that was interesting is how my great-grandma gave each kid their own little plot of land for their garden. It was theirs. They chose what they wanted to grow, and they were responsible to take care of it. So no wonder, it all got passed down, but I thought this was such a good idea.

When I have older kids, and more importantly, hopefully a house of our own. I think I'll try to pass on the gardening passion and have my own kids have their personal gardens. To teach them responsibility and to learn how to do it. I know they'll probably let their plants die or something, but I'd rather have a little garden die--then I won't have to allow them to have a pet to try to teach them responsibilty. But maybe they'll feel ownership and get excited about having their own little plants to nourish, and will enjoy it. Probably not. They'll probably hate it like I did, but when they're old they'll eat their words and be grateful I made them garden all those years.

I'm actually glad I've had the opportunity to live with my parents for these pas two years, because I have a lot to learn. I realized all those days with my butt in the air in the garden, I didn't learn the whole process, just completed the required task and got the heck out of there, kind of missing the whole point of learning how to garden. So I'm glad I've had this second chance. And now I've had the chance to weed in the same rows, in front of the same busy street, with an even bigger butt in the air this time around, and it's been a good summer and a good harvest. So thanks to Great-Grandma Pheobe, Grandpa Herschel, and Mama Sheila. You were all right. I do appreciate gardening some day.

But thank goodness the frost is almost here to wrap it up here with fall.