A Matter of Perspective

When I was a kid growing up in east central Illinois, I didn't know any better.  With the rich soil of the Midwest, it was pretty much a given and it seems all the neighbors did it too.  Up there, you can stick a seed in the ground and it's pretty likely to take off and grow. Everyone had a garden.

Mom would hire someone to come out and disc the garden, then we would all walk it and throw the grassy clumps to the border of the garden.  Then would come all of the hoeing and raking and planting, and if it was a dry early summer the endless watering.  Onions. Tomatoes. Peppers. Green beans. Corn. Cantaloupe, and more.  I remember washing tomatoes off with the hose and eating them like apples in the garden, while we went on picking them and putting them into five gallon buckets.

Mom would have Karen (my sister) and I help with the canning.  At the time it seemed like endless sessions of snapping beans, and slipping the skins off of tomatoes, and canning.  We didn't have air conditioning and the kitchen would be positively steamy during the humid Illinois summers.  One dish I will never forget the smell of was green tomato relish.  I can't say it was a favorite, nor can I say it would be one now, but it sure stuck with me.  When we had eaten and canned all we could and there were still tomatoes coming on, and the neighbors had plenty, we would set up a stand at the corner of our property and sell tomatoes to passersby.

When I was young, this was just what we did.  We grew our veggies in the garden - maybe we had too many tomatoes and the neighbor had too many cherries on their trees, so we traded. And we would can or freeze food to eat during the cold months.

Now... take a step away, and spend 20 years of your adult life away from that environment.  Several moves, and finally landing in a place with a great growing season but terrible soil added to the challenge.  When I finally got back to it, so many memories came back to me.  Some more or less humorous than others like standing the flattened corn back up and mashing the roots back into the wet soil with muddy bare feet after a near miss by a tornado had laid it all down was not the least bit funny then... it's hilarious now!

Now, all these years later with my own garden it is different.  When I pick something from the garden or the herb bed and take it in to prepare for a meal I recognize my roots... and I feel a deep sense of satisfaction that I am doing this for my family, my self, and my future.

From garden to table - we all need to regain this perspective.  It's food for the soul.