Planting Time

 I planted my garden today.  Well, I call it my garden. It’s 5 buckets with tomato plants.  I’ve downsized from 12. That was too much. Five is just right. I was a farmer for several years as a young man.  I have a degree in agricultural economics and I loved farming.  The economy and the Russian grain embargo of the early 1980s forced me out.  But every spring I still get the urge to plant something.  When I drive by a freshly plowed field and smell the earth, it stirs something in my soul.  

So I plant tomatoes.  I don’t do it on the scale my grandfather did.  He would grow hundreds of plants from seed in a “hotbed”. He’d start them in late February or early March and transplant them in April. He usually had close to an acre of tomatoes.  He ate several every day but his greatest pleasure was giving them away.  Pretty much anyone who came in his store left with a bag of tomatoes.  When Daddy would go to New Orleans on truck business, Popdaddy would send a box to Aunt Dorothy and one to the guys at the Ford dealer!  

 Susan goes all out with her garden.  She has raised beds, grow bags, buckets, everything.  She grows tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, herbs, okra, and eggplant.  This year she’s trying her hand at corn.  She’s never happier than when she’s digging in the dirt.

The biggest thing I miss about farming is that I wish I could have kept it going for Lee.  Lee is a service technician on farm equipment and he loves farming and being around the farmers.  He would have made such a great farmer and I’m so sorry I couldn’t pass that on to him.  

I may get another bag or two of potting soil and plant some peppers or something.  I have some green onions that I used the green part and I’m letting the roots grow and I’m going to set them out in a day or so.  Getting dirt under my fingernails this morning has stirred the desire to do more!  You can take the boy off the farm but you can’t take the farm out of the boy!