My Switch From Gardener to Farmer

When my husband and I bought our house in 1992, it came with a spectacular yard.  A strange collection of cast offs, courtesy of a previous owner’s son who worked at a large local nursery, dotted to property.  Trees in various states of decline did too.  We became adept at tree removal and bought a woodstove to heat our home with our growing woodpile.  Nearly twenty years later, only one of original trees remain.  Our yard got sunny in some spots and shadier in others.  Things changed and the landscape moved with the sun or the shade.

Bee Hives

When my first son was very little, a neighbor divorced.  Part of her divorce settlement was half the garden.  As she was moving to Florida to care for her mother, her share of a beautiful perennial garden was passed on to her friends and her friends’ friends.  My brother and I made countless trips with my son’s wagon and my new wheelbarrow to collect hostas, ginger, lilies, roses, astillbe, and many other beauties.

A neighbor with a passion for hostas shared his extras and my shade gardens grew big and beautiful

When my second son was born, I realized that I had bitten off more than I could chew in the yard.  The weeds went wild while I was pregnant and fighting them off seemed impossible with two small children.

My husband always joked that we couldn’t have another child until the garden was weeded.  It was a big job and good birth control.

The real problem was that I wasn’t really very interested in my gardens once they were planned and planted.  Weeding them was just work, hard work.

As time passed, I realized that I really did want that third child, so I made myself get out there to weed.  I weeded and worked on my husband.  In time, the garden got neater and his resolve softened.  I convinced him that a third child would be a good addition to our family.  We started our adoption process in 2005.

Gray Water Irrigation

In the coming months, I weeded and waited.  By the end of the summer of 2006, our trip to Armenia to adopt our daughter was taking shape and our garden was nearly weed free.

Late summer/early fall in Armenia is a magical time.  The markets fill with beautiful, local food.  Fruit is ripening everywhere.  Its harvest time and its delicious.

Part of our adoption fee included “Travel”.  I assumed that this meant transportation to and from various agencies.  But our agent was adamant that we see the country of our daughter’s birth.

My favorite portion of the travel, by far, was a trip to a family farm.  We were fed a wonderful meal of traditional Armenian barbeque.  The “farm” was a lot 200’ square, but it included a milking cow, a flock of chickens, a bee colony, grape vines, fruit trees and shrubs of all varieties, and vegetables and herbs in between.  The lot provided enough food for two extended families with overflow that was sold to neighbors to buy dry goods.

Grapes

The yard that surrounded this house was completely edible and fantastically beautiful.  Our hostess led me through the property and we identified plant life in both Armenian and English.  The whole place reminded me of “Charlie and The Chocolate Factory”.  It was a completely edible tour.

That garden made me thing differently of my own garden.  I realized that it was hard for me to spend time working in it because it always seemed just that, work.  I derived enjoyment from the planning and planting of the garden, but the reward of experiencing it was overshadowed by the work of maintaining it.

When I returned home, I began taking out perennials and replacing them with vegetables.  I gave my sunny perennials to friends in exchange for some of their shadier varieties.  My brother dug up extra plants from his wonderful raspberry patch.  I dug a long trench and planted asparagus.  Delphinium were replaced by tomatoes.  Phlox gave way to potatoes and squash.  I limited limited my flower gardening to the spots too shady to grow food.

Picking Herbs for Cooking

Five years later my garden is a completely different place.  I never consider it work to weed, as I once did.  It doesn’t seem a chore to take a bucket into the garden and fill it with weeds on my way to check out the garlic.  I don’t even consider it “weeding” anymore.  Instead, I think of it as “creating compost”.  It’s a treat to sit out in the garden and pull up a few weeds, while chomping on freshly picked green beans.

In transforming my yard from garden to “farm”, I transformed myself and grew in ways I never could imagine.  I learned far more about “farming” than I ever did about gardening.  In the process, I learned to feed my family, the soil, my community, and my soul.