Gardening as a Family Tradition

I grew up with a garden.

Every year my mom planted green beans, onions, carrots, sweet corn, tomatoes and several other vegetables. And I hated it. I always took the produce for granted and I hated helping weed it. I hated it so much that my mom used pulling weeds as discipline for my sister and I when we had been fighting. It was, generally, pretty effective discipline.

Then I grew up, graduated high school and left home for college. I was a typical, poor college student surviving on ramen noodles and frozen pizza. Suddenly the fresh produce that my mom labored over every summer became much more appealing.

When I graduated college and moved back to my hometown I took more time to appreciate my mom’s garden and volunteered to help her can green beans, tomato juice and freeze sweet corn. I enjoyed the time I got to spend with my mom and once HandyMan and I got married and started our own garden I really began to value the knowledge that my mom had shared with me.

This summer HandyMan and I, somehow, managed to have a garden. HandyMan took Blue out to the garden to pull weeds and plant vegetables while I was on bedrest. After Daisy was born and was in the NICU, the garden began to struggle. The dry, hot summer scorched our green beans and ruined our first planting of sweet corn, however we were still able to put up 36 quarts of tomato juice and can a few green beans. Every year when HandyMan and I get out our canning supplies we call my mom for a reminder on what to do, and she patiently reminds us of the steps we forgot over the previous year.

Our sweet corn, while delicious, didn’t amount to enough to freeze. Thankfully, my grandpa planted more than enough and one Saturday my entire family (my sister’s family, my brother & his wife, my youngest brother, HandyMan and I +6 small children) went to my mom’s house and spent an entire Saturday freezing sweet corn. We started early in the morning and worked all day freezing 200 bags of corn. It was a long day full of hard work, but it was so much fun. We enjoyed spending time together, talking and teasing HandyMan for picking SO MUCH corn, but really we enjoyed the day. And now we’re going to be able to enjoy sweet corn all winter.

As HandyMan and I raise our children, I hope they don’t hate the garden like I did as a child, but instead enjoy it and value having fresh, healthy foods to eat throughout the year. And I hope someday, when Blue and Daisy are grown that they will come home, with their families, to spend a day “putting up” food for the winter.