her able hands

I’m stubborn and I asked Harvey to plow up part of the garden so I can get the potatoes planted immediately. I just cannot deal with giving/throwing away that much organic seed potato, especially the Rose Finn. I’ve been in a frozen mental space for a week because all I can think about is the waste, and the hunger I have for fresh grown food. I’m trying to remain mindful of the fact that I have a terrible habit of overextending myself with big plans, and then get crushed by the fact that what I’ve decided to do isn’t humanly possible for one woman. I’m attempting to keep it within the realm of manageable.

It only took Harvey a half hour, coming in just as the air was changing, and the thunderstorms were gathering on the western horizon. He seemed to feel much better after he plowed. The neat square of dark earth lay behind him as he sat smiling on his Massey Fergeson with a fat cluster of wild mustard flowers shoved into the breast pocket of his overalls, courtesy of Miss Lila. He had turned in the lush rows of fall-planted clover, and the birds flocked—right away—to the thousands of bugs and worms pulled to the surface. For that moment, everything felt right with my world, a finer balance between want and need satisfied.

Harvey thinks I should go ahead and plant everything I want to over here, and then just call him to pick. I’m not going to make it unnecessarily complicated. He wants me to do the Saturday market with whatever I can grow, and whatever he can grow. I’m open to that possibility, as long as he’s willing to pick his vegetables frequently and young. I just won’t take baseball bat-sized zucchini, or dried out, giant bush beans to the market when I already have a reputation for being the “tender baby veggie lady.” Old-Timey ways will not sully my good name!

I was thinking about doing the community garden, but that’s a 20 minute drive from the house in a different direction. I may put the tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant there, but I may not. I don’t really want to have three different places to tend while we’re in the process of moving. We’re going to be coming out here a lot anyway, so I might as well plant things that don’t need much maintenance, just mulching, thinning, light weeding. Maybe some watering, but hopefully not too much of that with a good layer of mulch. I don’t want to seed anything here that will need daily picking, like beans, cukes, and summer squash. The lawn will need mowing at least once a week, so we’ll already be here. If the house miraculously sells fast? Oh well. Maybe we can get it in the contract that we can at least harvest the garlic, potatoes, winter squash, and pie pumpkins.

The idea of doing half a season at the market—Market Lite—appeals to me for several reasons. I want to keep my presence known, and let people know that I’m growing food for market as Emily said, less than a mile away. Unheard of! Then there’s the money. I never made less than $100, even on the slowest day when I had slim pickin’s. Most days I made $200, and several times closer to $300. We’re going to be so tight with our finances during this double-mortgage phase (and Maude help us if we have to go into winter with two houses to heat) that the extra money will really help.

Then there’s the fun factor. I’ve had an aching sadness in my heart to think that I would have to miss out on setting up in the humid morning mist, and that one aging hipster with his ten-year old son who always came for Haricot Verts, Mexican Sour Gherkins, and Chard until his own plantings started producing. The stooped over old woman who always comes at the very last minute, while the vendors are all packing up, trading leftovers with each other, shouting down the rows about the weather, and the Bloody Woodchucks and Rabbits. This woman stops at every table and talks about her own patio garden that the squirrels routinely destroy, the racoons that pry up the lid on her vermiculture bucket, and how she wants to buy something, but doubts she’ll be able to use all of it before it spoils. Most weeks I pressed a half bunch of Rainbow Chard, or the last couple of peach muffins, or a half-pound bag of Royal Burgundy Bush Beans into her hands with a smile, and tried not to hurry her away so I could break down the tent and take the kids for a milkshake.

I don’t want to skip a year. I spent so many years living in that apartment overlooking the fifty acres of onion fields, my heart awakening each spring to the black dirt dust on my quilt every morning, and the tiny green shoots pushing into the blue sky in luminous victory. I ached for just twenty square feet of that dirt to take care of. I’ve waited a long, long time to do this, and I know it’s the right thing to get my family into town. That tending my people is the greatest gardening project I will ever do. Every fiber of my being knows this is the exact right thing, and that I will never really regret it. I won’t do as much canning as I did last year, but I have to keep my fingers in the dirt.

At least a little.

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