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Village Idiot |
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Aren't you a little old for a garden, hippie? Because of the fast-rising price of food, more and more people are planting gardens this year. The price of food is rising, because the price of oil is rising. That sounds logical, but when we planted a huge garden this spring, I can't tell you how little oil we used. Of course, we used our own compost, not expensive, oil-based fertilizer. And we didn't have to fill up a tractor with $500 worth of diesel. We won't have to truck our produce across the country in gas-sucking 18-wheelers. But wasn't that the whole point of big farms? That they could do things cheaper in bulk than we could do ourselves? And for some crops, that's still true. I don't want to grow my own wheat. I don't want to milk my own cow. I don't think bananas will grow here. Besides, I want to leave some room out back for the hammock, the grill and the ladder horseshoe game. But tomatoes, green beans, peppers, squash and greens we'll have in abundance, for a fraction of the supermarket price. Instead of putting in money, we will put in sweat. Well, Sue will put in sweat equity. I don't want to risk injuring my typing fingers. "Who has got time to put in a garden?" said my neighbor Dave, who hasn't missed a baseball game all season. "I'd rather put in a little overtime and pay the price." Dave is one of those guys who think that lettuce on a hamburger is a salad. "Besides, I save money other ways. I switched from bottled water to beer. It's cheaper." Considering the main ingredient in beer is water, he's right. "What are you now?" he said when he saw the rows in our backyard. "A hippie? Aren't you guys a little old for that?" What are you going to do next, join a commune? Start making macrame pot hangers? I think I still have some tie-dye T-shirts that I can dig out of the attic and give you." What a card he is. What an obnoxious, overbearing card. There was no convincing him that planting a garden was not just work -- it was a hobby, it was spiritual, it was a basic connection with Mother Nature. "You wouldn't call bowling 'work,' would you?" I asked. "Not if I'm watching it on TV," he said. Well, to each his own. While he's eating taste-challenged, salmonella-bearing tomatoes from who knows where, we'll be eating the black tomatoes right from our own garden. They'll be full of garden-fresh flavor, they'll be bursting with -- no, wait, back up -- what? Black tomatoes? "We planted what?" Sue rolled her eyes. "Heirloom tomatoes -- the kind of tomatoes everyone used to eat before everything got homogenized, pasteurized and commercialized. The kind our great-great-grandmothers used to grow. Some have red and yellow stripes, some look lumpy, some have green spots, some are so dark red they look black -- like blood sausage. They may be not be pretty, they may bruise too easily for supermarkets to stock them, but these tomatoes taste the way a tomato is supposed to taste." Yeah, I'm sure it's the bruising that's keeping them off the store shelves. "So you're telling me an idiot like Dave will be eating nice, beautiful, red tomatoes from the store, while we'll be eating the stuff that looks as if it came from a restaurant dumpster? Won't he look silly?" I'm afraid to ask what else she planted. If it's blue lettuce and pink cucumbers, I'd rather not know about it just yet. Maybe store prices will come down by August, and I'll be able to afford a red tomato once every few weeks -- not to eat, just to look at. |
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