Instructive question

Before....

During.....

After....

Sometimes you learn more from a question than an answer.

About 20 years ago I was a full-time working mom, had a husband in grad school, 3 growing children, aging and ailing parents to help, and a farmstead to manage. I must have been crazy because every spring I'd plant a huge garden. Of course I had built-in slave labor in my children for weeding and harvesting but the inevitable fruitfulness of the garden meant many nights of canning tomatoes and green beans into the wee hours of the morning. I even canned the runty little potatoes that were too small for anything but soup. At one point a friend asked me, “Why in the world did you plant potatoes?!? They are 10 lbs for 99 cents at the grocery store!”

Believe it or not, that question has haunted me for the last 20 years. I think I was so astonished by the question that I didn't even answer her. Why, indeed, plant potatoes when you can buy them for 10 cents a pound? If you count your labor for anything (most gardeners don't), buying the potatoes at the market certainly made fiscal sense.

I don't think I have a good answer to the question even now after 20 years but I still think about it. Here are a couple of thoughts I've had...

1. Gardeners plant things for the same reason the chicken crosses the road. Every 6 year old can tell you the chicken crosses the road simply to get to the other side (a perfect example of what my husband calls a 'Microsoft answer – technically correct but practically useless'). I think most gardeners plant things simply because they can. I honestly don't know why more people don't “cross the road”. There are few things that give you as high a return on the investment as sticking a few seeds in the ground and watching it grow, mature and bear fruit. There just isn't much to beat that and it's something every gardener knows.
2. Joy; most gardeners plant things simply for joy. Anyone who has carefully stepped the potato fork into the soil at summer's end and turned over a loamy pile of dirt with perfect and beautiful potatoes spilling out will know what I'm talking about. Run your fingers through the soil, breathe in and smell the thousand fragrances released. Put those potatoes into a wire egg basket. Move down the row and repeat. Backbreaking? Probably. But full of joy, discovery and delight. It's the same sensation as reaching your hand into the nesting box and pulling out warm brown eggs laid by hens that have names. Would it be cheaper to buy the eggs at the market? Definitely. But where's the joy in that?

Joy is adequate reason for many other things we do. Why spend hours bent over, cutting fabric into little pieces and then hours over the sewing machine, sewing them together again? I could go to the store and buy a blanket to warm my loved ones' beds – why go to the bother of making a quilt? It's simply a matter of joy - love and joy.

Maybe in another 20 years I'll have more insightful answers to my friend's question but for now those two answers will do just fine. And there is a single potato plant growing in my garden right now...just so I don't forget the question.