The garden
When I was a little kid in the late 1940’s we always had a big garden. The garden began in April of every year.
Dad would or some other man would come in with a tractor and disk the garden dirt up and the use a harrow to smooth it out. Mom, my sister and me finished this job up; going through the garden with rakes and hoes to break up the dirt clods that remained and to do a little smoothing out.
Then again with hoes and rakes, long furrows were made, creating a high ridge of dirt where the seeds would be planted and ‘ditches’ on each side of the ridge for irrigation.
At the appropriate time in April and even into May the seeds were planted and the irrigation began.
That was my job. I didn’t know playing in the water was a job. I had lots of fun building little dams and making the water go this way and that. That is until mom would remind me of what I was supposed to be doing.
We grew tomatoes, radishes, string beans, peas, onions, beets, spinach, and leaf lettuce in that garden.
Mom canned some of it. I particularly remember the canned tomatoes. We ate those all winter long in various recipes. To this day, I cannot stand even the thought of eating stewed tomatoes!
But the garden provided food for the family that we probably could not have afforded to buy and was provided a very healthy diet even before such diet practices became a fad.