"Take the Good With the Bad"

I often get the question "How did you start gardening?". Working in the technology field, it probably seems like the last thing someone like me would do. My simple response has always been "I've been doing it my whole life" because basically I have, whether I wanted to or not. I'm often envious of people who say their passion for gardening started with helping their grandmother trim her roses, or city dwellers who always yearned for a greener way of living. My story isn't as romantic.

I come from a family of dairy farmers- both sides of my family owned dairy farms. I even had some family members that ran a pig farm in Woodland for many years, but they had stopped that before I was born. My parents bought a house on some land in a small farm town, and my dad immediately turned it into quite a hobby farm. We had sheep, chickens, goats, ducks, rabbits, turkey, geese, and one cow named Bossy (who has her own interesting story, which I'll save for another time) . My dad had also created a huge garden (larger than my entire plot of land now) where we grew pomegranates, oranges, strawberries, grapes, pumpkins, corn, artichokes, tomatoes, basically everything you could possibly want. We always grew WAY too much zucchini (who doesn't?), so much so that my mom had to buy an entire cookbook just on zucchini so we could find ways to get rid of it all (this cookbook now belongs to me!). Fried zucchini, zucchini pancakes, and chocolate zucchini bread were and still are my favorites. It was a lot of work to maintain the farm, and I had a long list of chores to tend to daily. I hated every minute of it.

Reading the previous paragraph I think most would say "Oh, she learned how to garden from her dad". That would be an easy answer! The truth of the matter is, I don't want to give him credit for it. You see, my dad was abusive and to put it mildly, he was kind of a prick. It's hard for me to give credit for something I love so much to someone I dislike. I think he was trying to make me the son he always wanted, so he was pretty critical of me. I admit I wasn't an easy kid, but I know now I didn't deserve most of the punishments I got. He left us my 6th grade year, and most of the farm chores fell on to me. I hated all of the work, especially since that farm was his dream, not mine. I'd get up early to feed all of the animals before catching the hour long bus ride to school. My evenings were spent tending to the garden while it was still light outside, and once the mosquitoes came out I'd go inside and do my homework. Eventually my mom could no longer afford the upkeep of the farm and we sold it. I haven't spoken to my dad in about 18 years. I saw him a couple years ago at a wedding, but he wouldn't come and talk to me (probably wise of him- I had several large glasses of wine that night). I used to be okay with him being gone because my life was a whole lot easier without him around, but once I had my own child it was harder on me. I guess it's hard for me understand how someone can walk away from their own child, and even harder for me to understand how a parent could be abusive to their child. That being said, some of my best qualities are because of him, and my love of gardening is one of them.

After he left I continued with my love of plants. In high school I was active in the FFA (Future Farmers of America) where I would show plants every year at the state fair. At the age of thirteen I helped my mom design and install her front and backyard at our new house, which is where I also learned to never plant mint in the ground (unless you really, really like mojitos). She will be battling that mint for the rest of her life thanks to me! When I bought my first house I didn't have much of a yard so I became really good at container gardening, and started collecting strong scented herbs to try and mask the disgusting cigarette smells from my next door neighbor. Eventually I got married, and we bought a nice house with a decent sized lot that was covered in mature fruit tree's. I secretly started building and installing raised beds in the backyard, which upset my city-loving husband....until he took a bite of a REAL vine-ripened tomato. Three years ago we had a baby girl, and now that she's finally moved past her must-eat-the-dirt phase, I can't seem to spend enough time outside with her working in our vegetable garden. Gardening is no longer a chore, but a nice stress reliever for me.

When someone asks me now "How did you start gardening?" I think I will start to respond with WHY I garden. I garden for my daughter, so she can grow up knowing where her food comes from. I grow a lot of my own fruits and vegetables so that I know what goes into them, so that I may protect her from the many chemicals that are used in commercial farming today. I garden WITH my daughter so that she spends time outdoors learning about things that really matter- like attracting beneficial insects, saving water, how to compost, and how to build a worm bin! And more importantly, I garden with my daughter so that someday when she's my age and someone asks her where she learned to garden, she can PROUDLY say that she learned it from her mother, and that it wasn't a chore because we had way too much fun gardening together.