“With just a little
bit of work, you could be harvesting your very own organic salad greens right
from your back yard…”
“Kale is so expensive,
but so easy to grow. Why are you paying
so much at the store?”
“Fresh corn. You know you will want fresh corn in August.”
“It would be a shame
if you didn’t grow your own tomatoes.”
If you can’t actually grow a garden, due to lack of land, or
restrictive covenants on your property or your spouse’s aversion to dirt, those
siren songs can be particularly painful.
So this essay is for you, frustrated would-be gardeners. And for those of you contemplating your own
harvest bounty, take heed. Sometimes,
you really just don’t want a garden.
It’s not any cheaper
to grow your own food.
There are economies of scale to agriculture that make the
production of your own harvest bounty, but
for less!, impossible for most of us.
The reason? Labor. If you factor in your own labor, even at
minimum wage prices, the cost of that perfect tomato skyrockets. And for most of us who are beginning
gardeners and are just learning the art of raising food, there are many costly
mistakes and many setbacks that make breaking even rather difficult. There is an inherent joy in pulling your own
salad ingredients moments before you assemble the salad, but after you have
totaled your supplies (seeds, starts, tools, fertilizer, compost, labor) that
salad is no cheaper than the items you can purchase at the supermarket, or
farmer’s market.
Got time?
Oh, in the spring—especially when the soil heats up and
releases that intoxicating scent of last year’s rot and this year’s growth;
when the sun shines on you as you dig and pull weeds; when you look with joy on
all that you’ve planted; the spring is a wonderful time to be in the
garden. But that time you spend in the
spring must be matched, if not increased, throughout the summer and into the
fall. Planting takes time, and really
isn’t done all at once. Cultivating
(weeding, watering, amending) takes time and never ends. Harvesting and
processing take time and have the bonus of needing to be done right after you
finish working in the garden. Can you
find two to three hours per week (minimum) to cultivate your garden? Can you do this week after week? Because with your garden, that’s what you
will get to do.
You’ve actually got
to eat all those things you grow.
Before I gardened, my response to this statement would be,
“I know! That’s the best part!” And indeed, it’s wonderful bringing things to
maturity and then consuming them yourself.
It’s fun to tell friends and family, “I grew this!” But sometimes all the lettuce—much too many
heads because of poor planning—matures at once and you look at your bounty and
think, “what in the hell am I going to do with twenty heads of lettuce.”* And sometimes it turns out you don’t really
like radishes, or your maximum zucchini consumption per month is two. Or it turns out you hate, really abhor, corn
on the cob. Or beets.** And yet there they are, staring you in the
face, mocking all your hard work. What
to do? This brings me to:
You’ve actually got
to eat all those things you put up for the winter.
Canning the things you grow is a great way to preserve them
for eating in the winter. It’s also fun,
in that sweaty pioneer way, and you get shelves full of pretty things with
remarkable names like “chow chow” and “brandied plums.” But guess what? Unless you already have an affinity for chow
chow and brandied plums, most likely, those things are just going to stay on
the shelves mocking all of your labor. I
mean really, what does one do with chow chow?
Eat it with pork? I’m guessing
you’ve got better things to go on your pork, things you are already familiar
with.
If you are thinking you will be giving them as gifts
remember the golden rule of giving. If
you yourself aren’t really interested in eating the food you preserved, most
likely no one else will want to eat it either.
I know there are people out there who love chow chow and even know what
to do with it, but I also know those people make up a very small group, none of
whom are my friends.
So those of you who aren’t able to garden, rejoice. You are free of the burden of growing your
own. Go forth to the CSAs, the farmers
markets and the grocery stores to fill your larder and appreciate the amazing
miracle that is food production today.
And then thank the lord you yourself are not involved in it.
*The answer is to pass off as many heads as you can to
friends and deliver the rest to the food bank.
All of which takes time.
**Not me, I love them and can’t get enough. But friends grew some really great specimens, roasted them and then said, “Eh.” It
turns out they were not fans of beets.
i already felt this way before the essay. i love a good csa, but even that gave us an overabundance of food that sometimes got waited. good essay.
ReplyDelete-from the ee cummings version of sara k
Tomatoes are one of those things that people tend to love and appreciate. I know that my dad spends ungodly amounts of time on his garden. But, he also grew up... Well, Poor. And I do mean poor. Where you grew as much as you could and canned as much as you could so you could eat during the winter because there was no trip to the store in the horizon. I remember the garden that his parents had when I was younger. It was HUGE. We weren't actually allowed that far from the house or past the outhouse because it was dangerous. I think mostly, we just stayed away because we didn't want to get put to work! I have helped Dad can for the past several seasons. He even went so far as to buy a rather expensive pressure canner system and high grade food processor because we were doing so many batches and so many jars at a time. (We even figured out that if you drain most of the juice out of the salsa when packing the jars, that you can then spice them up a bit for bloody Mary's. Which is awesome!) he even made ketchup! But, I don't like ketchup, so whatever. Pickles are a debateable thing because I don't consider it a pickle if it isn't dill and I generally do not like Bread and butter pickles, but I open a jar of Dad's regardless and it never makes it back in the fridge! I even made some tomato jam which I liked, but is totally not a hit with anyone else.
ReplyDeleteI know that right now, since we have 4 different tomato plants and 3 pepper plants that I will be over run and busy! Of course, that is if I can get the girls to not eat them like apples! But, there are worse things than a tomato faced grin!
All this is so true! I wish you lived here so we could garden and preserve together. I need a buddy.
ReplyDeleteI remember going over to a friend's house and they had a HUGE garden in their backyard. But they also had 9 children, so it was necessary.