3 generations under one roof

I often visited with my maternal grandparents in the carefree summers of my childhood. I loved it, we went to the fairs where she often had baked goods or produce entered. My grandma did not just enter items in the county fair; she entered every type of fair that was possible. I loved going everywhere with them, I felt as if I was the chosen grandchild out of many.  

She entered heads of cabbage, carrots, radishes, corn, and everything imaginable from her garden in these fairs. We would always weed the garden in the morning, each day doing a row as grandpa was behind us doing his magical touches. Grandma would try to tell Grandpa How to do everything, and I think sometimes he just pretended to do something wrong just to get her to yell. He would always reply, “Ruth the garden will grow, even if you do it the other way.” She would give him a look as if to say, “Do not push it Jonas” and I knew better then to let the giggles escape.  Grandma was meticulous about her garden and if things were not done the way she liked exactly, she got upset.   

I learned a lot those days about how to grow huge vegetables and fruits without Miracle Grow or other manufactured fertilizers. No food went into the garbage can in her house, nor the dog dish. While most people would toss food scraps into a pail for the compost pile, my grandma required everything in the pail to be mashed.   

The pail was brought outside where it was mashed near the garden, and as you mashed she would toss in deformed but fine vegetables as the sunset. The good with the bad makes it all turn out right she would say.  The pail was then dumped out on the ground behind the garden on top of the dirt and other food waste from the kitchen. 

Even on those days when we would visit a fair, grandma required garden work every morning and every evening. She never used a hose on her garden when it needed it, instead she would scoop rainwater caught in barrels under the eave troughs. She said tap water was very bad for a garden of life, and looking at her bounty at the end of the season along with the ribbons from the fairs you knew she was right.  Grandma and grandpa are both long gone, but their spirit remains and as I tend my own garden I use the same things my grandma taught me 30 years ago.

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