Reflections of the Beginning

Beginning a new garden at 57 is much harder than when I was in my mid twenties. The early 1980's found me married to my first husband, living in a cottage house with the perfect backyard for a small garden. I removed every blade of grass in a 14x16 area with a hoe and a shovel. I added compost and fertilizer, hoed up rows and planted an assortment of veggies. My husband was not happy. He much preferred a golf course yard....all grass, no flowers and definitely no garden. Although I received no help from him, he would pick a big juicy tomato to show his friends what he had grown and smile with pride at "his" garden. Digging in the dirt and watching God's handiwork appear always brought me joy. All the hoeing and digging was work but my tired body felt different then compared to now. Back then, it was a good tired. Now it is a cry myself to sleep, what the hell have I done tired. Extreme frustration and even anger is the reaction to the pain I have after doing a minimal amount of gardening. Thank God my dear now husband George, has a tractor and a nice large tiller that he used to prepare my site otherwise I'd probably be dead from it all. I am one of those people who pushes through pain with a determination that I can and will do this. Then I spend a couple of days in terrible pain, depressed and wondering if I'll ever recover. Picking a shiny green bell pepper, smelling its fragrance, seeing the little flowers bloom on my snap bean vines then harvesting the perfect fresh yummy pods are the things that compel me to garden. What will I do when I can no longer garden?

We decided to grow heirloom vegetables so we could begin to save seed for future plantings and to share with others. I planted seed from 6 different varieties of tomato and transplanted the plants into the garden. Multiple peppers both sweet and hot, a couple of eggplant varieties, a roma flat bean, mini Indian popcorn and several herbs. We had a late cold snap and had to replant okra and some peas out in the big field. Several corn varieties were also planted in the big field. I  had the "garden" and George had the "big field". All the tomatoes did terrible as did everyone else's in the area. The weather was very strange with long drought periods then an over abundance of rain that caused havoc. The peppers did amazingly well and George made a lot of delicious pepper jelly. The okra and corn was almost more than we could handle. After selling okra, canning okra and freezing okra I dehydrated some pods and made Christmas ornaments.

 We printed labels for our pepper jelly and we also made corn cob jelly, dill pickles, peach jelly, jalapeños and pickled okra to sell. Of course we also canned corn, peas, beans & okra to add to our pantry. The top seller at market was George's Pepper Jelly and his Pickled Okra. It will be our main focus in the future.