Purple garden majesty — Bruce’s garden after the April shower.

There’s broccoli, artichokes, Brussel sprouts, kale, carrots, and in the background hard red wheat.

He grew everything from seed with no fossil fuel. He’s rightly proud of his endeavor, all direct seeded and weeded with a grub hoe.

@winfield_farm is eating plenty high on the proverbial hog these days!! The afternoon sun shines light on the abundance— agriculture as art!

POTLUCK CONVERSATION
(Purple garden majesty)

I was at a potluck that several local gardeners hold where they can show off their cooking and tell stories. I was bragging about my garden and showed some photos. Another gardener asked me, “What do you do with it all? “

I had a pat answer, which is: the pigs are always eager customers. The question has lodged in my brain, however, and I keep trying to rationalize — an acre of grains, red wheat, white wheat, spelt, barley and corn, along with lots of Cole crops from the winter garden – because the “what do you do with it all “question is also a “why do you do it all,“ or at least in my head it has morphed into that. 

Mostly I grow grains for dry storage, but I also try to keep two years supply in the drying shed and always keep seed for next season. I can answer “what I do” better than “why I do it,” because every season for many years, I have squirreled away the fall bounty. Finding the tools to process at very small scales is a parallel pursuit, and finding recipes are corollaries to the harvest abundance, but usually only pecking at the volumes waiting in the shed. 

 There is an advantage in growing grains in that they can be accurately weighed and entered in some sort of calorie ledger. “What is enough” is a valid question and it bothers me a bit, but “how much is possible” nags at me too, but in a positive kind of way.  

The garden is growing very big these days, but it is spring and the winter was mild. I keep planting and so I keep increasing how much garden I need to keep cultivated. It can catch you and overwhelm you as the heat turns on, too many weeds rooted too deeply. So, you cultivate between rows at the first hint of newly germinated weed seeds. Bare ground between rows is eventually shaded by crops, but lots of cultivation while it is bare is essential.  

What is possible, what tools, what seed, when to plant, those things I know. How to do it without lots of power, and again, what is possible? In that I have some confidence, borne by years and years of gardening. Still, it is a solitary pursuit and has been for most of the thousands of hours gardening in my life. 

 So why so much? I don’t really know, but I imagine somewhere in my gene line an answer lies. It wasn’t always a full larder, and no I can’t compensate for the distant past, but an empty belly has a very long memory, I think, or no memory at all. 

Bruce