Sometimes
I find myself dreaming about the "good ol' days" and how people used to live off the land, hunting their own meat, harvesting their own crops, and making their own everything. Whenever I read about a long ago homemaker there appears in my mind this image of a lovely young woman stepping smartly just outside her kitchen door (screen door, mind you) to pick whatever vegetables or herbs from her convenient and always plentiful and immaculate "kitchen garden".
I know that's not the real picture but they did, out of necessity, have to fend for themselves and I'm really grateful that we don't have to work that hard. Mostly I'm grateful because if we did have to live that way, I'm afraid my family would have withered away a long time ago.
This morning I harvested my potatoes. I'm actually pretty proud of my little collection of spuds but this is it! This is the extent of my 2012 potato crop. Bob would probably say I dug them up too soon but, good grief, those plants have been out there since February and I'm getting sick of looking at them. So this is it.
We also have tomatoes. But these aren't from our crop. If it weren't for the generosity of our sweet neighbors I'm afraid we'd be homegrown tomato poor because, while we do have tomatoes, we don't have much luck actually harvesting many. Every year I think I'm ready for that pesky hornworm! This will be the year that I win! But every year that thing beats the socks off me. All the books say just pick them off. Are you kidding me!!?? Of course I'd pick them off if I could see the little varmints. But they are very very cleverly invisible when they want to be. I've even been known to go out at night with black light in hand because I read somewhere that it worked..........I wouldn't suggest it. I guess it worked all right but it also made great story fodder for my husband to tell at any given dinner party.
The moral of this story is that I'm just happy that it's not imperative that we grow our own food and make our own whatever. If I want to I can do it but if it doesn't work I can just hop on my trusty bike and go get it at the store. Or I can rest in the knowledge that I have some really thoughtful and generous neighbors that I can trade with. Yep, I was able to give them some eggs. Life is good on the Jacobs farm.
