I have always considered farming a noble profession, though I had never really considered making a career out of it. I don’t really know why. It might be because I consider it time consuming or labor intensive, but should that honestly matter?
No, it really shouldn’t.
Even so, I have my reasons for shying away from farming.
Before we go anywhere near those, I think it's important to understand what I do like about farming.
For me, farming is more than just a way to get cheap produce. It’s sort of a... I hate the word “spiritual,” so I won’t use it… but it’s sort of a connection you forge with the earth. There really is little that is more exhilarating than seeing those first leaves push their way through the topsoil. Once they do, the magic and excitement really begins. The changes and stages that a plant goes through as it develops are truly amazing to me. Gardening, or farming, is akin to parenting: you plant the seed, watch it sprout, nurture it, watch it develop, nurture some more, see it full grown and produce offspring of it’s own, and eventually die. We are ultimately watching a life-cycle take place every year.
Even though I have a very strong connection to farming and I regard it so highly, my family has had some… less than perfect experiences with gardens in the past.
(On to the story)
My parents, my little brother, and I moved to New Mexico in October of 2003. We really had no idea what “The Land of Enchantment” would hold for us (though my brother and I knew it was going to be terrible no matter what), but we were excited (HA!) to find out. We rented a house in the small town of Flora Vista, New Mexico. It was small, but we fit in comfortably. Our yard, however, was gigantic compared to the house.
In early 2004, my mother had resolved to plant a good-sized garden. By February, she was sketching and coming up with designs for her garden. When April arrived and she was ready to till the ground, she had a monster garden in the making. If I were to estimate the size, I would say it was about a 50x30 foot garden (this is large to me, maybe not to some of you).
If you don’t know much about New Mexico, it is a desert. For plants to survive in the desert, they need to be hardy. The weeds in this state are some of the hardiest in the world – their roots run so deep you could tug at one for hours. And we had to till a 50x30 foot rectangle of this stuff! After much work and much preparing, May rolled around and we finally planted the seeds. Not only was my mother ambitious with the scale of her garden, but also with the number of plants. We had: tomatoes, peas, green beans, Brussels sprouts, peppers, eggplant, cucumbers, beets, zucchini, yellow squash, butternut squash, spaghetti squash, acorn squash, watermelon, pumpkins (those were mine), and corn, though I’m positive there were more. Planting alone took an entire weekend. Weeding was non-stop. Watering was a logistical nightmare; thankfully we had a well to draw water from.
As summer came to a close, we were faced with more vegetables than we had any idea what to do with – except for corn. The ears of corn never grew larger than 5 inches in length. We ate, we canned, we ate, we froze, we ate, we gave away, and we even ate the produce. Overall, the entire experience was, exhausting.
The next year, we scaled back immensely. We reduced the size by about 50 square feet and the number of vegetables by about half. Even with the reductions, that garden was still a lot of work. As the years progressed, the size of the garden decreased until now where we are down to a few tomato plants.
I love to grow a garden, but I never fully appreciate the time and effort that go into it until I’m in too deep.
I still would love to grow a garden, I just need to make sure I’m ready for it and have everything planned ahead of time to make the experience as enjoyable as possible.
