Living off the earth

This time of year makes me happy. I am renewed by cultivating, harvesting, and celebrating all things green and fresh.

A few years ago I spent a weekend sawing, nailing and building five garden boxes. We dug up some grass, made some room for the boxes, and so the gardening experience blossomed.

Over the next five years or so we expanded or garden to pretty much utilize our entire backyard garden bed area as home for our fruits and vegetables every spring, summer, and fall. And I added one more box on our wasted ex-garage cement "driveway". And I can't forget to mention that we also incorporated many pots on our gravel walkway and a-for-mentioned "driveway" for tomatoes and herbs.

Our backyard is not large. Maybe the size of a nice size living or great room. But it's enough space to grow a nice variety of tasty, crisp, fresh greens and fruits.

So far this late-to-be-summer season we're harvesting peas, peas, and more peas, kale, lettuces, chard and will soon be eating fresh sweet carrots.

It takes some work, but not too much. I enjoy watering every morning. Walking around with my homemade organic "pest" tea made from garlic, pepper and mint, and spraying to deter the garden of nasty bounty-eating creatures like aphids. Pulling an invasive weed here and there. Fertilizing (organically of course) every once in awhile. Just enough work, I'd say.

Why do I do this? Yes, we love the fresh fruits and veggies. Yes, I do love watching plants grow and flourish. Yes, the garden adds beauty to our yard. Yes, I enjoy the time I have to myself. Yes, I love teaching and sharing nature with Chayse. Yes, I love knowing where our food comes from. And yes, I have bought into sustainable practices.

Why do we have space around our homes full of grass? Or full of weeds? Or full of plants that don't produce fruit? I love flowers, I love space to play. But why do we not grow more of our own food? I'm so tired of mass production farming. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

What happened to home gardens?

Over the years I've heard people discuss and argue about the reasons why our country is becoming obese and unhealthy. Yes there are many reasons for it. We've become sedentary. We eat fast food. We eat processed, chemically laced food. And there are many, many, many more reasons.

But I think many of the reasons can be boiled down to the fact that we no longer work for and appreciate food and where it comes from.

I know when my mom was a child her dad had a huge garden. Kids crossed farms to go to school. Families worked on farms. Gardening and farming was an essential part of society. They did the hard work and reaped the benefit: active people, fresh vitamin-rich foods, and knowledge of where their food came from.

Some of my generation still grew up doing Upick as a fun summer activity. Some families still had their hands in the soil.

And then somewhere along the way in the last 50 years farming became industrialized and mass produced. Pesticides became an accepted part of the process and every day people stopped having their hands in their food production chain. As a result people stopped knowing where food comes from. Today food comes from the grocery store or fast food chains. It's frozen, processed, rarely fresh.

Today many kids (and sadly MANY adults) don't even know the names of common fruits and vegetables. Let alone the fact that they don't eat them. If you don't know or care about where your food comes from or what it is, you eat fake food. Our bodies need real food to be healthy.

I can rant about this forever. But I won't. I'll just say this:

Plant one tomato plant. Plant some blueberries in your yard. A single strawberry plant. Plant a small garden. Cultivate it. Give it a little care in the form of water and compost. Then one morning when you walk out, coffee cup in hand, and you see that ripe red tomato or that sweet strawberry, pick it. Eat it. Appreciate it. Nothing is sweeter than fruit or veggies that you grow with your own hands. In your own soil. Savor that moment. And I bet you'll want more of them.

And soon you'll find you want to know where your food comes from. You'll start finding ways to know more. You'll explore farmers markets and ways to expand your little garden. You'll go to UPick farms and discover the sweetest peaches and apples you've ever eaten.

Share the experience with your kids, get their hands in the dirt. Involve them in their food chain process. Take them a Upick blueberry farm, let them engorge themselves on the UPick berries and green beans, and your kids will eat their fruits and veggies!

And I bet you'll discover that cultivating and living off the earth is how we're meant to eat. Put down the frozen foods. Drive by the drive-thrus. And stop at the farm stand instead.

The healthiest and best tasting salad you'll ever eat is the one you have by taking your favorite big salad bowl for walk, and filling it in your own back yard.