The Garden

I have many stories that involve the garden. Mom had a huge garden that we all helped with growing up. It had everything in it. I can't even guess at the exact size, at least a basketball court, plus another half of that for the potato garden. It might have even been bigger than all that. I know that we probably complained so much about having to weed the garden. It was a never ending task in the summer. Now that I am a mom, and for now just take care of my small apartment let alone a farm, I wish I would have helped my mom out more. I can't imagine how much work she did to keep the garden in order.

Sunflowers
One year Mom decided to plant a few rows of sunflowers to add to the garden. She had a few different varieties. I think she must have started with a few rows in one section of the garden, but year after year they spread. We had to pull a lot of sunflowers, but Mom also left a lot growing in various places. I still remember neighbors commenting on her sunflowers. Sometimes we would pick a bouquet for the kitchen/living room, or our bedroom. I remember that usually we would go out to pick them, and after twisting them, yanking them, and doing everything we could to get them off, we finally had to go inside and get a knife or scissors.

Raspberries
We had similar results with the raspberries as we did with the sunflowers. They took over after a few years and we had more raspberries than we could pick or eat.  I remember one summer Lauren and I spent a lot of time picking raspberries and selling them. We would try to put them in shallow boxes so as not to squish them, but often half the raspberries were slightly mushy.

Corn
I think we weeded the corn the most. Mom probably trusted us the most with the corn because it was easy to tell what was a corn plant and what was a weed. After a few weeks, the corn grew so tall that it was by far the easiest area to weed. I remember while weeding we would often accidentally pick a corn plant.  This seemed to happen often, no matter how tall the corn was. Maybe that is why Mom planted so much. After accidentally picking a corn plant, we would panic a little and try to find a place to hide it where Mom wouldn't see. Sometimes this was in a pile of large weeds, the bon fire pile, or if it was really big, somewhere out in the big field.

The Carrots and Lettuce
I remember these being the areas where only Mom could weed. I guess after we pulled too many carrots, she figured maybe she better take over.

Potatoes
Mom had a whole garden dedicated to potatoes. I don't remember eating tons of potatoes growing up, but we had a huge garden full of them. I don't remember weeding this garden very often. Probably because after we helped in the other garden we figured we had done enough and Mom finally let us run to the river for a swim.

Pumpkins/Squash/Zucchini
We have some great pictures of the harvest we had of pumpkins, squash, and zucchinis. The zucchinis used to get so big that they were no good to eat. We would occasionally take a large zucchini and play chef with it. We would grab an egg from the chicken coop, some oats that we used to feed the cows, and some play dishes from the sand box, and actually made some fake casseroles that looked good enough to eat. We would set them out in the sun to bake. Yum :)

Other
Mom also had strawberries (which the birds would constantly eat), asparagus, onions, tomatoes, peas, green beans, radishes, and I am sure much more. I even remember some broccoli and cauliflower one year, but it seemed like the bugs always ate all of those.

Dirt
I remember one instance in particular where dirt was thrown while Ben got bored weeding the garden. Taryn was visiting, and she was sent to weed the garden like the rest of us. Ben, getting bored with weeding and having the chance to bug someone other than his sisters (cause that's what brothers do) starting throwing dirt clods at Taryn. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I remember it ended with Taryn inside and Ben probably doing extra weeding.

Fruit Trees
 We also had a number of fruit trees on our property. 3-4 apples trees (including a crab apple tree), and two plum trees.   

*Lesley*