Once you've grown up on or near a farm, your view on gardens is very different from that of a modern gardener. Here's some of the viewpoints I've seen the last few years that have made me stop and think.
1. Sustainable living/front yard gardening - these gardens are in subdivisions, where people who have 1/2 an acre or less have literally made their entire landscaping some form of gardening. some people in this camp view the current idea of landscaping for beauty as wasteful. Others do a mixture of both. My biggest objection to that is the amount of weeding and care it would take to have a garden/yard look presentable to everyone driving by is immense. A few summers ago when our lawn mower tore up in the summer and it took them a month to fix it, I had two different people in our area contact us wanting to know why we hadn't cut our grass or asking if Bobby was sick. Appreciate their caring, but I know I would get a lot of advice and feedback if I did something like that in my front yard. On the other hand, my father-in-law, who had the acre+ sized garden in the field and expected everyone in the family to help work it, also was a bit in this camp. The reason almost all of the trees in our yard are fruit or nut tress is because of him. When we first got married and I planted a few flower bulbs and shrubs, he frowned and said "How are you going to eat that?" But he wouldn't have put his garden in his front yard, I don't think.
2. Bed gardening/straw gardening - my mother-in-law calls this "city gardening" and laughed every time I used the straw method. But the area near my garden couldn't be tilled because of the dog's underground fence line, so going above ground was my only option. If I followed the recommendations closely, we had success. The one summer I got started late I had almost nothing grow until very late in the summer. Green beans did well; not so much with the other things I tried. My biggest problem with this is the amount of crops you can plant is very limited. You'll get enough for a few meals, but not enough to put up for the winter. So that's a lot of work and time and money for just a few meals. If you simply enjoy gardening and playing in dirt, then this is a great way to do it. But if you're old school and wanting to can or freeze for the winter, you're going to invest an awful lot of money in dirt, straw or boxes, fertilizer and pesticides and a lot of time in weeding and watering.
3. CSA - Community Supported Agriculture - I know many people who are shareholders/members in a CSA. They don't help with any of the farming, but they pay a weekly/monthly/yearly membership fee in exchange for weekly food items (eggs, produce, meat, etc). I never considered myself a picky eater before, but the thought of paying money for food that I'm not that crazy about (not a huge fan of strange vegetables) didn't sit well with me. Some farms let you rank foods at the beginning of your membership, but that doesn't guarantee you'll only get those items. One of my nieces belonged to one that sent recipes with each weekly box so people would have ideas on how the vegetables or herbs could be prepared.
For various reasons, my big garden season is ending. I took down the fencing for what we called the "garden annex" last week and hope to clean up some of the things in that area this week. I am going to use my large pots for a few things (more on that later), and I'll try one more year to do tomatoes in our traditional spot. A small part of me already misses it as I keep getting emails from seed companies. I'll probably clean out my seed stash in the next few weeks. But the other part of me is so relieved to have something so time consuming off my plate. We're planning to utilize the farmer's market more and purchase some things in bulk to put up for the winter. Yes, I know you can purchase items canned or frozen at the grocery store, but it really doesn't taste the same.
As we listened to "rumors of war" on the news last night, I thought about my father-in-law and his views on food production and constant prediction that "Hard times are coming. Ya gotta be prepared." I've considered the rolling supply issues at the grocery store, the rise in grocery prices, and a part of me says this is not the time to stop a garden. But the reality is, there could be another year like last year where I invested SO much time in the garden, only to have squirrels eat ALL my corn and the okra not produce. I don't have enough space in my garden to plant enough peas or beans to put up for the winter, so we were buying those anyway. I might change my mind in a few weeks, but at this point, we're calling it quits for now.
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