Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Soul food..........

Ah........Gardening. When I was a small boy growing up on a small working farm, my Mother always had a garden. Out of that garden, she canned everything we needed for an entire year. In those wonderful days, buying a can or jar of anything was a novel and weird thing to do. Everyone canned their own supplies from their gardens. We also had cows for milk. My Mom would squirt fresh, warm milk straight from the cows teet into a metal cup for me to drink. From the cows came the ingredients for my Mom to make cheese. Ah....I remember the cheese balls hanging from the rafters of our dark, cool, damp cellar when I was sent down for another jar of canned vegetables or fruit.

So, vegetables from the ground and fruit and nuts from the trees. All in their own season and all put away with loving care with skills passed down through the generations of my family and the families of most people of those times. The only food type items that one bought from the store were salt, sugar, flower and maybe spices. She even made most of our clothes with material she bought. One pair of Levy's and one pair of shoes each year right about the time of the county fair and beginning of school. The rest my family was basically self sufficient with using things we grew or raised. Chickens were for meat and eggs. BY the way, real fresh laid eggs are supposed to have a dark orange yolk, not the pail yellow crap you get at McDennys or at most stores. Pigs, chickens and butcher cows were our meat supply.

To this day, what's for dinner usually revolves around what's in season, ripe and ready to go out in the garden and what we bought and store in the freezer from the local butcher shop. Lets get something perfectly clear here. There is no comparison between ANYTHING one buys at the store to what you grow yourself and pick fresh straight from the ground. Also none of the butcher departments of the major grocery stores has anything to compare with finding a local butcher store, with the whole carcase hanging right there in plain sight for you to see. Real butchers know exactly where the cow was raised, slaughtered and how and what it was raised on.

Our daughter when young asked one day in the middle of winter why I bought those "so called" tomatoes. She said they were nothing more than pale yellow cardboard things and we should not buy them from a store ever. Also one time at a Denny's (probably one of the last times we have ever eaten there, thank the goddesses above!) we were just served out breakfast and was starting to dig in when we noticed her just setting there staring at her plate. We asked her what was the matter. She said "What are those"? Pointing at the eggs. "Eggs", we said. "no they're not, eggs are orange, these are pale yellow". You see, she was raised her whole life with fresh eggs straight from the chickens butt and had hardly ever even seen a store or restaurant egg until then.

OK, back to gardening......

It's actually quite simple really. Just add something organic back to the soil every year in the winter to make up for what your plants that year took out to grow and your good to go. As everyone knows by now, the only way to go is with raised beds. That way whatever you put in your beds stays there. Also, the weeds tend to be less and easier to deal with.

Don't ever let anyone tell you that it's just easier and cheaper to buy everything at the store. Money has nothing to do with the subject of great, freshly picked and eaten food. What you grow yourself comes with unbelievable taste and soul and you're not going to come close to that with store bought anything.

One more cool thing. Even if your children are not required to work in the garden, they will see how important it is to you and see you doing it. They will also learn how great the food that their parents grew tasted. That will stay with them for the rest of their lives and they too will have gardens when they're adults. Then their children will get to experience it also. So pass it on for the next generations of your family...

To this day, our daughter has these tubs she bought at the hardware store, along with pay dirt and plants and has a little garden in the backyard of her condo.

YEA!!! IT WORKED!

As we all know, there are lots of city kids who think eggs, vegetables and meat come from the cabinets at the supermarket. They have no idea they too can do this in the backyard or patio of their apartments.

and to me, that's a pretty sad thing indeed..........




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