My First Garden

As a grandmother I want to introduce  my little Sweetpea Lea to gardening .  When she comes to mawmaw's house she loves to touch the flowers and vegetables and watch the butterflies and bees.  She's a picky eater when it comes to veggies as are many her age.  I've heard young mothers say that french fries were the only food their toddler would eat.    Of course things were so different in my generation.

Beginning at the age of 10 it was my duty, as well as my two sisters, to tend to the vegetable garden.  Watching our food grow was a satisfying experience.  We would plant green onions, cabbage, turnip greens, corn, peas, beans,sweet peppers, cucumbers,  tomatoes, beets, carrots, squash, strawberies and collard greens.   We grew peanuts and corn in large quantities in  a separate field , some to eat and some to sell .  Anyone who has a large vegetable garden knows that its a lot of work to keep up.

 I  remember picking a ripe sweet pepper or tomato off the vine, rub it off on my shirt, putting it in a biscuit and eating it for a snack.  We didn't use chemicals even back then and were organic before it became a trend . 

As we girls had to prepare meals for our widowed Father and ourselves all the vegetables we grew went from garden to table .  We ate very little red meat, if any, and raised our own chickens for both meat and eggs.   We drank milk right from the cow  .  The only things we bought from a grocery store were flour , cornmeal and  lard in bulk .  We churned our own butter and made buttermilk as well.   When the vegetables were ripe, the real work began and I can recall many summer days spent in harvesting and canning.  It was a lot of work but a healthy lifestyle and to this day I still prefer vegetables to meat.

When I get my own house here in North Carolina I will make a little garden for my Lea so that she can learn how food is grown and perhaps come to love vegetables as much as I do.  I was happy to read that there are many young families these days turning to organic farming as  a business and one expert said that farming will be the next big thing.  It's refreshing to see the renewed interest in vegetable gardening  and it's my hope that more parents will introduce their children to it .