Why do you garden? It is the sheer joy of watching vegetables and fruits grow or do you enjoy the fruit of your harvest like these broccoli heads that I just cut?
Here is a recent dinner Jim and I shared.
Only gardening allows you to take foods from “farm to table” with an incredible level of freshness. I served grilled free ranged pastured beef with steamed broccoli in real butter sauce and campfire new red potatoes and green onions. Newly dug red potatoes are so tender they are perfect in a quick grilling recipe. All you do is take butter (or use an extra virgin olive oil) and coat a double layer of foil. If you are cooking for a family, make up several so that the cooking time is uniform. Cut up washed new potatoes, green onions and dollop with more butter and spices. I use garlic, red peppercorns and a touch of sea salt.
Fold envelope style and they are ready for the grill. Tender spuds take no more than 5 to 10 minutes. I listen for the sizzle and turn them over once, making sure the seal on the top holds. This could be a great way to draw kids into the kitchen. After they help you dig the potatoes, you wash and cut them and allow the kids to arrange the ingredients on the foil. Hopefully not even the pickiest eater could resist such fresh goodness.
I kept thinking as I ate this first of many complete meals fresh picked from our organic plots that “This was what it was all about!” This is why I work so hard.
Great produce, wholesome eggs, nutritious milk, cheese and yogurts, organic soaps and lotions, fresh herbs and savory complex proteins from free-range livestock, an whole grains, it’s why homesteaders work so hard to supply our families with the best foods. Growing up, with nine members in our family, there was never extra money but, oh my! The home cooked meals my mother put on the table were masterpieces of the finest, healthiest quality. Nothing like fresh bread with fresh churned butter and jelly from the strawberry patch washed down with real whole milk. It was all about caring for her family by serving whole foods.
It’s the reason we go to Buchheit in spring and buy seeds and starts. It’s why we invest in one of their tillers and pick up that special hoe that fits your hands just right. It’s why we go back to the store to get the soil amendments and weed killer and mulch. It’s why we bring the kids to help pick out this year’s chicks and poults and an extra bag of Buchheit’s goat or hog feed. It’s why we get up at dawn when the weather turns and the weeds are trying to take over the watermelon patch. It’s why we work and watch and wonder. It’s a labor of love. Wish all of you could visit me and sit at my table to enjoy some farm to table food! Keep gardening, it pays off. Be blessed! Anne May
