Summer’s Successes and Failures
Tuesday, October 6th, 2009In my, shall I say, unusual childhood, we had a huge garden that was the source of most of our food. Row upon row of peas, sugar beets, carrots and squash.
Farming on the Canadian Shield is never easy – the soil is poor and shallow and in no month is it guaranteed not to snow. But while I spent hours and hours of my youth weeding and taking out rocks and digging up potatoes, the worry and responsibility of growing enough food to make it through the winter rested on the squarely shoulders of my parents, not mine. Which is how it should be when you’re six.
Now that I finally have the space and time (this is debatable) to grow my own garden, the stakes are considerably lower. I live just a few blocks from a weekly farmers market. I’m married to someone who distrusts food that doesn’t come wrapped tightly in cellophane and considers iceberg lettuce to be a vegetable (it isn’t, of course, it’s crunchy, pale-green water). We’re so far off from being successful survivalists, we don’t even have a root cellar.
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