Going Green – The Coincidental Gardener...

05/23/2009

A few months back I read an article in the AARP magazine about building a vegetable garden, and how rewarding it is to see one’s labor rewarded with bountiful harvest.  Well, I immediately envisioned a vegetable garden somewhere on The Farm.  I imagined a cornucopia of tasty, fresh vegetables, especially those like tomatoes and summer squash both yellow and green, cucumbers, green beans and peas, carrots, lettuce and loads of fresh herbs.  I could see it all in my mind, and with a little planning I could picture it oh so clearly.

There is a spot on our property that most definitely at one time was just such a garden.  I am guessing in total it is about forty feet by eighty feet.  In my grossly under-estimating-the-labor-involved-in-such-an-endeavor mind, I thought I might attempt to recreate it.  The Nancy, being the more sensible of us, talked me into starting small just to see how it goes.  Her idea was to maybe make a ten foot by ten foot to give it a try, and that was a great idea; however my insanity took over and it ended up being sixteen feet by twenty-six feet.

Believe me when I say the size of my garden may never get larger.  I had no idea what it would take to get this thing going, but I can say the harvest of said garden best be damn good.  The initial investment included $600 for a tiller, $500 for lumber, fencing and materials to keep deer and small critters out of it, plus $360 for good top soil to fill the raised portion of the plot, and another $100 bucks worth of plants and seeds.

Initially I was just going to put up a little fencing to keep out the deer that populate our area in large numbers.  Talking with others who have done this before, I was encouraged to go tall.  The framing of the fence is eight feet tall.  The fencing is chicken wire and is attached to the frame with nearly 5000 staples. 

I can’t say this was a labor of love.  It was torturous.  Every bone in my body aches, every muscle is sore.  My hands ache from squeezing the stable gun a billion times.  I got sunburned because I wasn’t smart enough to wear a hat or sun screen.  And to add insult to injury, I got dirt under my fingernails – yuck!  All I can say about all of this is, these had better be some damn tasty veggies or this thing may turn into a pen for chickens.  Hmmm?  Fresh eggs!

And that is all I have to say about that…