So I have been thinking about what advice I would give Tad Retz, the young artist featured in Fine Art Tuesday.
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| Steven Hanks |
I had decided to tell him (if he asked) that no image is more evocative to me than to see a mother in a garden with two or three of her children. It really doesn't matter what they are doing. They could be pulling weeds or thinning the carrots or picking green beans or berries. Likely the youngest isn't really helping, he is eating whatever the other three are picking.
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| Hans Dahl |
To me, everything is "right" about that kind of picture. It is the circle of life. It shows humans and the environment engaging in a dance-of-peers and each treating the other gently. It is how humans passed on culture and technology before paper and ink existed.
Images like that resonate in primal, atavistic ways that are deeper and truer and more compelling than our intellects.
So imagine my surprise when one of my internet friends sent me a treasure-trove of pictures of that very thing today.
In the text he told me that he had been approached by a long-time business associate and friend. The friend said "Things are getting crazy. I want my kids and grandkids and great-grandkids to know how to grow food here in southern Nova Ruritania. Just in case.
My internet friend has been doing exactly that for fifty years. He has grown vegetables and many species of farm animals in Nova Ruritania and done it as a business. He, too, has felt the temperature rise and the pulse-rate speed up. He agreed to give the entire, extended family a crash course on growing food in their unique climate and soils as long as they agreed to participate in his HANDS-ON methods.
Alas, it did not occur to my internet friend to take pictures until the end of the class, i.e. harvest.
I asked him if he could reach out to the patriarch and ask if I could post the pictures he sent me. To my surprise, the patriarch whose family received the hands-on crash course agreed to let me post them as long as I didn't use any names or mention any location more specific than "east of Scottsbluff, Nebraska and north of Huntsville, Alabama".
With no further ado and in no particular order....
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| Kids caring for younger siblings is a time-honored tradition in the garden. |
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| Harvesting tomatoes ahead of the frost...and a sugar beet? |
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| One of these guys is my internet buddy and the other is the patriarch who had the foresight to inoculate his clan against future chaos, tumult, tempest and storm. |
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| I cannot imagine a more perfect picture. Tad Retz...are you reading this? |
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| End of season means harvest. Obviously, my internet buddy is a good teacher and the students put in an A+ effort! |
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| That kid now knows where carrots come from and he probably thinks they taste pretty good. They taste like "Victory!" |
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| Another million-dollar image |
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| And another million dollar image. Who said you shouldn't beet your kids? |
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| Getting ready to spike it in the end-zone. |
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| Another perfect picture of a "Mom" and "Kids". These are real people living life to the fullest. |
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| It is like every player who stepped up to the plate hit a home run, one after the other. |
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| Look at the grins on their faces. This is food that is even better than what they see at Piggly Wiggly...and THEY grew it. |
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| This picture is "OK" |
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| This one is fabulous! All you see are elbows and pony-tails. |
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| And this one too! |
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| Good photo, getting down to the kid's level |
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| Busting with pride...good pride...earned pride. |
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| Toiling away in the background. Not showy. Not forgotten. |
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| Lots of moving parts. This family is going to do "OK" and it gives me hope for the future. |
We can do this.
Many folks are challeneged to garden due to where they live,sure,some can move,some kinda stuck due to family/jobs ect.
ReplyDeleteOne can do small gardens and also vertical hydro,add wheels and can go out of garage/onto balcony ect. during good weather and extend growing season.
I think folks limited into what they can grow due to space specialize in one/two veggies and perhaps trade with other like minded folks growing something different.
I am, admittedly, an optimistic person. I think that if you have a good grasp of the fundamentals of growing fruits and vegetables...even one of them...it is scalable. During WWII cities plowed up school yards, churches plowed up their lawns. Every clover-leaf in the Interstate system is about 10 acres of land. Admittedly, any agriculture needs to be policed to deter theft and vandalism.
DeleteWithout that fundamental knowledge, though, any efforts to scale-up will be a train-wreck.
Outstanding post sir, just outstanding, thanks.
ReplyDeleteMy internet friend and the patriarch deserve all of the credit. The pictures ARE the post. The words add just a tiny bit of context.
DeleteWOW, those are great pictures & a lot of grins & smiles. My two grandsons help me each year with our garden. The youngest who is now 4 has been helping me plant peas & beans since he was 2 years old. And yes they are very proud of the results when harvested. It does this old man's heart good passing on this kind of knowledge to another generation.
ReplyDeleteMy granddaughters (11 and 6) helped me harvest potatoes and green beans last summer and loved every minute of it. They live much too far away for my liking but it is what it is for now.
ReplyDeleteThere was a young man in our beginners beekeeping class last week (11 yrs. old) that has a permanent bidders number at one of the vegetable auctions not far from here. A friend told me the kid sold over three thousand dollars worth of produce from a stand in front of his house last year.
We are for sure going to set him up with some bees this spring. As my friend said "That boys going places!"
Neck
What great photos of a family learning and making memories together. Thanks for sharing this story.
ReplyDeleteSW Mi.
Thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeleteI'm off on a rabbit hole, however. I bought some sugar-beet seeds on a lark. I had no idea they get THAT big! What does your internet friend do with them? Does he make his own sugar from the juice?
I assume most people use them for stock-feed. They are very hard and cattle, sheep and goats struggle to gnaw on them, so they benefit from grinding.
DeleteSome people use them for deer bait-piles. My friends tell me that they are much more attractive to deer after they have been frozen and thawed a few times.
Those are Rutabagas. Good people food. We always grow some. ---ken
DeleteI totally approve of messages here, but unless the young are caught early before cell phone / gaming stage occurs, it is very difficult to move them outside where its hot / cold and growing plants is boring. Kids raised in rural environments have a huge step up - they see the food cycles all around them. They or their neighbors have livestock.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how I ended up reading your blog, but I loved this.
ReplyDelete