Last month, we planted a few things in some good earth. In some good, free earth, I should say. The owners of a cafe and a strawbale house let us plant some veggies in two rows of their garden. And we've been looking in on them, but today we went and actually picked some things! We had enormous lettuce, a full-grown cucumber, and a ton of fresh basil ready to be cooked with some pasta!
Our two little rows: tomatoes, chili peppers, red lettuce, cucumbers, basil
Just picked basil! Yummy! It smells so good.
The great thing about this lettuce is that you just continue to pick the outside leaves and it continues to grow! We trimmed them down today and have an entire box of beautiful, tasty lettuce- way more than we can handle. So we got to share with the Mart Man. While we were in the Mart, a woman there was impressed with the size of our lettuce and the color, too. She said that we should buy some land and farm like this. We were both really surprised, because we didn't work at all for this stuff. We just put it in the ground, and it grew! But I love giving it away and seeing how much a small bit of gardening can provide.
We also picked one of our cucumbers. It was so crispy and delicious. I am still reading essays in Wendell Berry's book, The Gift of Good Land, and I am able to understand much more now that I've experienced the joys of producing some of my own food. (Even if it is on such a small scale.) I don't know. Maybe I'm getting all sentimental and idealistic with the essays on traditional agriculture and the giddiness of seeing our veggies grow. But I really think there's something enriching about producing rather than consuming. I feel good. And I'm thankful for this small bit of earth we've been given. It's giving back to us already.
