When I was a kid, we had a vegetable garden. I grew up in the country, on an acreage that was 3.6 acres. Which, at the time, didn’t mean much to me other than we had lots of room to run around, plenty of dirt to play in, and a ton of space to grow things in.

Vegetables, apple trees, regular trees, and raspberry bushes. And oh, so much grass! We had a good-sized house, three bedrooms, one and half bathrooms, a two-car garage. We even had chickens! Oh, those chickens… Not sure I’m over the trauma of the chickens – it was headless, I was six – need I say more? It was a good childhood. Free from the trappings of city life, fresh air, room to run and get into mischief, build forts, and work.

There was a lot of work. All that stuff came at a price. Children are great labourers, though they don’t tell you that at the outset. Wake at dawn, march out to the garden, weed, or pick, shell, blanche, bag. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

We (or more correctly, my Dad and grandfather) built our house in the late 1970’s. We moved in, I believe, in October 1979 (date checked with my Mom). The following year, I figured, we must have put in our first garden. I don’t really remember gardening until I was a little older, but I do remember the chicken when I was six… *shudder*

For a start, I don’t remember knowing that vegetables came from the grocery store until I was older, probably fourth grade. I believed all people “made” their own vegetables. We did! Except for maybe carrots. For some reason, we could not keep them ‘fresh’, even in our underground cellar! My mother tried everything, but they always ended up limp and soft. It really was a travesty, as they were the best tasting carrots. I do wonder why we didn’t freeze them like the other vegetables… Though I dislike cooked carrots immensely, I know I froze (and pickled) the carrots I grew quite successfully.

Anyway, I keep losing my train of thought on this memory. Back to where I’m going.

So, this garden was HUGE. Big enough that each row was one hundred feet long and spread eight feet apart. We had ten rows of potatoes, peas, carrots, beans, corn, cauliflower, broccoli, and raspberries. That’s what I recall, maybe there were other things? Each row was a ‘double’ row (planted on either side of the string… Yes, there was a string). There was a machine for the potatoes, but again, it must’ve come a little later. You rode on the machine, which was towed, behind the tractor. It had a light, but it didn’t always work. So, you counted. One… Two… Three… DROP! One… Two… Three… DROP! We grew a lot of potatoes. There was a year we put them in between the trees too. The treeline bordered our property, 3.6 acres and while I don’t recall if we did all of the trees, we did a lot of them. I am unclear of the logic behind it, perhaps we were afraid of our own potato famine?

With all this garden came weeding. Seeding happened, as a rule of thumb, May Long Weekend, which is Victoria Day Weekend (the third weekend in May), which is the weekend before Memorial Day for my American friends. This means weeding happens in late June and DAILY in July. Starting at the crack of stupid. Why? Mosquitoes. Then, come mid July? Harvest. Picking peas, raspberries, back to peas, then more raspberries. Beans, peas, raspberries. Dusting cauliflower and broccoli for bugs. Weeding. Picking. Dusting. Oh… My…

But wait! There is MORE! Of course there is! Because these vegetables do not magically prepare themselves, oh no! Peas need to be shelled and two-hundred feet of green peas produce A LOT of vegetables. Bags and bags of peas. We shelled peas until our fingers were green. Until it felt like our fingers were going to bleed, they were so raw! I hated peas. I still do not care for peas; they are one of my least favourite vegetables. After shelling came helping Mom get them ready to freeze. Washing and helping to blanche them. Blanching, if you do not know, is pre-boiling them just a little bit, to help preserve the vegetable. They are then immersed in an ice bath to rapidly cool them to stop the cooking process. I recall it having a terrible odor. Much like the burning of the pin feathers on chickens, the smell of blanching vegetables is one I won’t soon forget.

Endless summers of weeding, picking, and preparing taught me that I never, ever wanted to have a garden of my own! Once I learned you could buy vegetables at the grocery store, I was sold! Why would anyone go through all that work when you could just get it at the store!? Sure, it may have been cost effective to feed a family of five by growing and storing your own food, and sure it may have tasted better than the Jolly Green Giant’s bag of frozen mixed veg, and sure, it kept your kids out of trouble May through October… Our deep freeze was full of vegetables, the root cellar full of potatoes. The cupboard always had pickles (I forgot to mention the rows of cucumbers and dill we planted), and when we had chickens, the freezer was full of chickens. Frozen berries, and preserved apples. So much stuff!

When my husband and I bought our house, his protest? The apple tree, plum tree, and large garden space! <evil laugh> I kept and loved each one! I taught our son the value of weeding and eating fresh grown vegetables (though he never had to spend his whole summer in the garden). While we no longer have any of it, he is one of the only kids who knows how to grow and prepare his own food! A skill that will be handy in a zombie apocalypse!