In the Garden

Every year, I forget how long it takes for our vegetables to be ready for eating.

I forget that its often late August before we start to see green beans and cucumbers, September before the corn is ready, October before the tomatoes are in full swing, and peppers ready to eat. Not to mention the various squashes, gourds and pumpkins.

It seems so strange to be living in a place where school starts before the canning season has fully begun.

I spend the days between June and August picking berries... Strawberries, Raspberries, Blueberries, Marionberries, Blackberries... for that's all that is ripe around here. The jams have been made, including a batch of Rhubarb freezer jam... cobblers and pies and shortcakes have been eaten, much to the delight of everyone present.

Meanwhile, the garden grows at a turtle's pace. 

If it was up to me, school wouldn't let out for "Summer" until the last threat of cold and damp was over, and it would start up again, after the harvest was brought in, or at least most of it, and the weather once again turning to damp.

Don't you think? Instead, we spent the first full month of Summer break huddled in the house with the woodstove blazing, waiting for the chance to even plant the garden.

How's a girl supposed to teach her kids the value and joy of preserving our own foods for winter if they've already been taken back to classrooms and schoolbooks?

I remember reading the Little House on the Prairie books and thinking it was so sad for the big boys that they had to miss out on the first part of the school year because they were helping with the harvest. But now... I'm thinking us folk in rural communities need to set our school calendar by the crops, not by what other districts and states are doing.

But I'm not much of one for soapbox-standing and marching in front of the Capitol, so I imagine I'll just keep rolling up my sleeves and living my life as best I can, away from the push and pull of the political landscape. In the true spirit of the Pioneers and all that.

I much prefer my own landscape... Its way more peaceful and scenic, don't you think?