“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” ~Marcus Tullius Cicero
It’s green bean time in our garden. I grow stick beans. Those are beans that you have to supply something for the vines to grow up onto. We use an overhead wire strung between wooden posts and then twine strings attached to the wire and to individual wires we stick in the ground. This year and the last couple of years the vines have gone crazy and grown to the top of the strings and then overflowed to fall back toward the ground. Doesn’t make picking those beans easy, but I rummage around in the vines until I get beans.
We’ve given over most of the garden to my son who lives near us since he has a family to feed and Darrell and I don’t need as much as we did when the kids were home. His wife likes Tenderette bunch beans. They grow in bushes low to the ground. In the picture, my granddaughter is joining in the picking back a few years ago before she was really old enough to help. Back then, it was fun. Tonight I helped them pick their rows of beans. The girl in the picture is now old enough to be more help although she’s still young. She was a willing worker if a bit slow and easily distracted from the task at hand.
Her sister, who is three years older at 14 now and thus old enough to be a better help, wasn’t very happy about picking beans. She made a firm statement while we were picking that she was NOT going to have a garden when she got older and on her own. She was going to buy her beans at the store. Her father reminded her that the beans wouldn’t taste as good, but she said she didn’t care. They would taste good enough. I suggested that she might marry someone who wanted to raise a garden. She was very emphatic in declaring that if he wanted a garden, HE could do all the work. Picking beans made her back hurt.
“What a man needs in gardening is a cast-iron back, with a hinge in it.” ~Charles Dudley Warner
And so it does. Even her young back, I suppose. I could have told her she should have an old granny back like mine. But I didn’t. I simply smiled and wondered if when she did get older and was on her own if she would change her mind.
“The glory of gardening: hands in the dirt, head in the sun, heart with nature. To nurture a garden is to feed not just on the body, but the soul.” ~Alfred Austin
For me, I never ever thought about not having a garden. A garden was simply something you planted in the spring and harvested all through the summer. A person should raise the food she needed. A person should preserve whatever she could from that garden whether by canning or freezing to have the food from her garden last all through the year. My mother had a garden. My grandmothers had gardens. I’m sure my great grandmothers and on back through the years all had gardens. While gardens are work, there is something so fulfilling in cooking and eating food you’ve grown yourself. Plus, as my son told his daughter, it tastes better than what you can buy at the store. And what a gift my son has given his children to participate in that planting and growing and harvesting just as I was given that same gift when I was young.
In my Appalachian stories, the gardens are called “sass patches” and the produce “sass.” Not sure where that comes from but it added to the flavor of my stories. In An Appalachian Summer, I have Piper helping one of the mountain women pick beans, something she’d never done. It gave her time to connect with nature and talk about the Lord to the older woman.
I’ve been helping my son and his kids pick the beans for several years. The two older kids are better pickers than these younger ones, but they are off to college now. One year when my son was sick, the older daughter and I picked three bushels of beans in one afternoon. We definitely needed that cast-iron back with the hinge that day.
But the best part of picking the beans has been the chance to hear the kids talk about books and plays and songs. That always made the picking go better. I’m sure when I used to help my mother pick beans we talked about things too. Working together opens up new ways to connect, and whether the kids wanted to pick or not, they did and we talked and they went home with a bushel and a half of beans. Tomorrow they’ll be snapping those beans and getting them ready for their mother to can. It will be a blessing for them even though they may not realize it now. Someday they will. And who knows? That girl so determined to never have a garden might change her mind and bring me some beans out of her garden when I get too old to raise my own.
“Everything that slows us down and forces patience, everything that sets us back into the slow circles of nature, is a help. Gardening is an instrument of grace.” ~May Sarton
Are you a garderner? Raising vegetables for your table or beautifying your world with flowers? What do you like best about gardening?
Comments 16
There’s nothing better than fresh garden veggies! And the fruits of our summer labor sure taste good on a cold winter’s day.
Your granddaughter sounds like my daughter at that age. She said she was going away to college and getting a job in the city, far away from farm life! Haha….after her 1st semester of college, she switched to a local college to finish her nursing degree. (Cities are way too noisy!). Now she lives in the country and drives to Lexington for work. And she’s probably picking beans…or some other veggie in her garden…right this minute. There’s nothing like raising kids on a farm to give them roots for life. 🙂
Thanks for another great story, Ann. Have a wonderful weekend!
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I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if my granddaughter did something the same as your daughter, Lavon. I love that my son has them so busy in the garden. A kid needs to know about growing food and how to work. I like that thought of roots for life. Maybe I’ll save that phrase and write a post about that sometime.
We lived in a farm and had a huge garden. I remember both sets of grandparents did. It’s what you did. I had one even if it was only tomatoes. My son has it now, and I just have flowers. His is pretty good this year. Last year nothing grew.
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Glad your son’s garden is doing well this year, Ann. Sounds as if you’re doing what we did and turned the garden plot over to the next generation. I do have my rows of zinnias and sunflowers in the garden. The butterflies love the zinnias and I love bringing their bright colors into the house.
I have a very small garden, just two raised garden boxes, tomatoes and cucumbers. I don’t think it would seem like summer if I couldn’t pick a few fresh ones, the taste is so much better than the ones at the grocery store. My son raises a small patch of corn and shares with us. My Mom and Dad always had a big garden, I helped with that, picking and preserving. I always have to have flower baskets on the back porch and several plants come back every year in the yard. I love watching the blooms grow and open.
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Tomatoes and cucumbers out of your own garden beats those bought ones hands down, Connie. My sister who moved to town a few years ago has made herself a small raised garden now and is enjoying growing some veggies. We both took my other sister some cucumbers today, so she is well supplied. But I’m with you, that flowers are fun to grow too.
Hi Ann, I had to smile at your description of your granddaughter. I could picture the scene of an unhappy girl who probably thought of 50 different things she would rather be doing at that moment. I didn’t much like having to come home from school and snapping bucket after bucket of beans when I was a teen either and thought buying from a store much easier. Now that I am married, we grow a garden and I snap our own beans and have a not-so-happy about doing that teen of my own to help me. I freeze our beans and they sure do taste good in the middle of winter when summer is just a memory. 🙂
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For sure, this granddaughter’s father had some of her same feelings when he was a teen. He always hated snapping beans even worse than picking them. He may still manage to give that job over to the girls. I don’t mind snapping beans if there’s something to watch on television. And it can be a companionable occupation if you have someone to help you. I liked visiting with Mom and snapping beans. Great time for talking.
I enjoy raising veggies, berries, and flowers. Lots of hard work but well worth it. Thank you for sharing.
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Gardens do supply one with plenty of exercise, Lucy. But there is something very satisfying about raising your own food or at least some of it. While we don’t have to do it out of necessity as so many of the frontier families did, we can still take pleasure in some degree of self-sufficiency.
While I live in the suburbs and do not have a huge yard and while we have a number of trees providing shade in the yard, we have been successful in growing vegetables in pots on the patio. Tomatoes have been our best crop this summer followed by basil and mint. Other years we’ve also grown sweet bell peppers, okra, eggplant, and some other edibles. We receive a great amount of satisfaction from the growing and harvesting process–just further evidence of God’s genius and His provision!
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I’m guessing that tomatoes are the most grown vegetable anywhere, Suzanne, since you can grown them in a pot or a small patch of worked up ground and then enjoy those fresh from the garden tomatoes. Did you know that at once time people thought tomatoes were poisonous?
Eating the fruits of someone else’s labor! My dad came from a farming family. All 6 other brothers and sisters had big farms! My dad joined the Army after college—no farming for him!!! My husband was raised on a farm and each place we’ve lived during his Air Force career we always had a garden. I don’t like working outside so he always did that and I either froze or canned the produce, but never really enjoyed it. I’m like your granddaughter who said she would buy her beans from the store. And there are too many farmers markets where I can buy just what we need. Our oldest son has a fairly large garden and both he and his wife love freezing and canning, making pickles and jams. Each to his own, I say. 😊
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Farmers’ markets are the next best thing to having your own garden full of produce, Karen, and as you say, much easier. My granddaughter would surely smile to ready your comment. I suppose for me, being a farm girl, I always thought a raising a garden was as necessary as washing clothes or cooking. Something that had to be done.
And I envy you for that. I wish I had the same mindset. By the way, your green bean vines are beautiful!!! 😊
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Thanks. We do seem to have good luck with our beans each summer. Struggle with corn and tomatoes. The critters keep breaking into the garden to steal them.