Meaningful Effort, Meaningful Harvest

Early morning vegetable gardening on the homestead.

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Hello my friends,

High-summer is here and we are about to hit the peak of production in the rock-lined, market-style rows of garden beds that occupy a quarter acre on our property. After feeling some arbitrary need to prove myself, I’m focusing this year instead on remembering the fact that I actually really enjoy gardening - and not just the harvest.

The best moments often happen out in the garden - though there’s often sweat dripping off my brow and dirt under my fingernails, this is where I am when the kids sprint out to meet me and see what I’ve got in my basket. It’s where the dog will grab a potato and playfully toss it around the yard. It’s also where Stuart and I have our best conversations, before the kids and sun are awake - our only witness is the birds that have come to call the garden home for the season (now if only I could train them to eat squash beetles).

I don’t garden out of fear or obligation. To me, the pleasure of gardening is two-fold: first, we get to experience a taste of produce that far surpasses any vegetable you can buy. The kind where the tomato is still hot from the summer sun when it hits your supper plate and the potato is so fresh it makes a pop sound when it’s plucked from the soil. There is no carrot, no beet, no cabbage available for purchase that will surpass that which is grown in our own soil. This alone is worth the effort - that is, if you’re the sort who finds pleasure in eating such delights.

Secondly, gardening cultivates good habits. It encourages me to be disciplined, thoughtful, and to creatively solve problems. Gardening helps me to stay fit physically, while at the same time giving me a place for mental thoughtfulness and relaxation. The art of growing teaches me to think ahead, to pay attention to weather patterns, to read nature as if it were a story. The act of taking care of something when it’s notoriously difficult makes one a sturdier person overall.

There is much to dislike: watering issues, wasps, already-mentioned-squash-beetles, endless weeding (no really - it’s endless), and overall depth of effort. It is sweaty, laborious work no-doubt.

But if humans quit participating in hard tasks, where will we end up?

Stroking our pleasures and idols, mindlessly watching with ease as decades of our life pass by?

No, thank you.

And so we labor in the cool of the morning, in the heat of the day, in the blazing heat and in the chill of autumn. We labor when we feel like it and when we don’t, whether there is a bumper crop filling our baskets or when there is no harvest to be had at all.

We labor because there is value to us as people in doing hard things and in vibrant, delicious food. A meaningful harvest can only come with meaningful effort.

Cheers,

Shaye