- Joined
- Feb 9, 2004
- Messages
- 17,078
One Inch for Peas, Two Inches for Beans - July 26, 2006
I grew up learning how to plant a garden from my earliest days. I remember asking Mom each year, "Now how far apart do we plant the peas? And how far apart do we plant the beans? And why do we always plant two seeds of corn to a hill?" The answers were always one for peas, two for beans, and one foot for corn. And then I marveled when my own kids could never remember these simple measures from year to year.
Gardening is not my favorite work. But I like the way it makes me feel infinitely more in touch with my sisters around the world who also put hoe to ground and grow their own food, and with the women who have lived centuries before me. There is something very elemental about the fresh smell of earth in spring, and the color of dirt and weeds staining the hands after pulling pigweed and pruning tomatoes in summer.
In many countries around the world, gardening and even farming is women's work, which they accomplish with infants tied to their back or tummy, and preschoolers in tow. For many years our children loved to garden, until it became a chore. But that's okay. How good for kids to work, get exercise, sunshine, Vitamin D, and learn the responsibilities of chores while producing some of the freshest, most nutritious food you can eat.
I've always wondered if it makes any economic sense to garden, can and freeze one's own food, what with the cost of seeds, upkeep on rotor tiller or tractor-plow (or alternatively paying to have those chores done), canning/freezing supplies, cost of gas, energy (to run canner or heat water for blanching veggies for freezing), pesticides or fertilizers (if used). Not to speak of one's time. The only way gardening pays at all is if all labor is donated or volunteer.
There was a time when gardening was considered to be patriotic; it supported the war effort in World War I, someone reminded me recently. Because so much farmland had been ruined in Europe, food shortages were real and feared, and a campaign was begun to encourage the women in the U.S. to plant "war gardens" with precise instructions as to how much food could be produced in what they considered a "family" sized garden of 40 by 50 feet. Daylight Savings was actually begun to give people more time (especially those with other jobs) to garden long into the evening and specifically for this war effort.
These organized forms of raising food (and preserving it) were undertaken by whole communities, as especially seen in community canneries. I have a niece who recently moved into a house where the garage was actually used for a community cannery where my grandmother worked. Born in the very early 1900's, she would have just been the right age to seek this kind of employment away from home during World War I.
Earlier in June, here in Virginia, we despaired that our gardens and indeed whole fields of corn and soybeans would soon be nothing but dust and disappointing dried up plants. My mother visited in mid-June and she said it almost made her cry (a farmer's wife most of her life) to see the shriveled fields. And then we were amazed as only a week later we worried about flooding when many areas got five or more inches in just days.
Gardens, on whatever scale you choose (whether vegetable, flower or potted patio plants) keep us more in touch with the cycles of nature, the rhythms of creation, and the goodness of God, who sends rain on the just and the unjust, the deserving and the undeserving. And when the rains come and the tomatoes ripen and the first plate of steaming hot sweet corn is put on the table, we feel much more gratitude to God for making it all possible.
Contributed by Melodie Davis: MelodieD@MennoMedia.org Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way
I grew up learning how to plant a garden from my earliest days. I remember asking Mom each year, "Now how far apart do we plant the peas? And how far apart do we plant the beans? And why do we always plant two seeds of corn to a hill?" The answers were always one for peas, two for beans, and one foot for corn. And then I marveled when my own kids could never remember these simple measures from year to year.
Gardening is not my favorite work. But I like the way it makes me feel infinitely more in touch with my sisters around the world who also put hoe to ground and grow their own food, and with the women who have lived centuries before me. There is something very elemental about the fresh smell of earth in spring, and the color of dirt and weeds staining the hands after pulling pigweed and pruning tomatoes in summer.
In many countries around the world, gardening and even farming is women's work, which they accomplish with infants tied to their back or tummy, and preschoolers in tow. For many years our children loved to garden, until it became a chore. But that's okay. How good for kids to work, get exercise, sunshine, Vitamin D, and learn the responsibilities of chores while producing some of the freshest, most nutritious food you can eat.
I've always wondered if it makes any economic sense to garden, can and freeze one's own food, what with the cost of seeds, upkeep on rotor tiller or tractor-plow (or alternatively paying to have those chores done), canning/freezing supplies, cost of gas, energy (to run canner or heat water for blanching veggies for freezing), pesticides or fertilizers (if used). Not to speak of one's time. The only way gardening pays at all is if all labor is donated or volunteer.
There was a time when gardening was considered to be patriotic; it supported the war effort in World War I, someone reminded me recently. Because so much farmland had been ruined in Europe, food shortages were real and feared, and a campaign was begun to encourage the women in the U.S. to plant "war gardens" with precise instructions as to how much food could be produced in what they considered a "family" sized garden of 40 by 50 feet. Daylight Savings was actually begun to give people more time (especially those with other jobs) to garden long into the evening and specifically for this war effort.
These organized forms of raising food (and preserving it) were undertaken by whole communities, as especially seen in community canneries. I have a niece who recently moved into a house where the garage was actually used for a community cannery where my grandmother worked. Born in the very early 1900's, she would have just been the right age to seek this kind of employment away from home during World War I.
Earlier in June, here in Virginia, we despaired that our gardens and indeed whole fields of corn and soybeans would soon be nothing but dust and disappointing dried up plants. My mother visited in mid-June and she said it almost made her cry (a farmer's wife most of her life) to see the shriveled fields. And then we were amazed as only a week later we worried about flooding when many areas got five or more inches in just days.
Gardens, on whatever scale you choose (whether vegetable, flower or potted patio plants) keep us more in touch with the cycles of nature, the rhythms of creation, and the goodness of God, who sends rain on the just and the unjust, the deserving and the undeserving. And when the rains come and the tomatoes ripen and the first plate of steaming hot sweet corn is put on the table, we feel much more gratitude to God for making it all possible.
Contributed by Melodie Davis: MelodieD@MennoMedia.org Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way
