I remember as a kid growing a few vegetables, my brother, sister and I each had our own little patches in the garden. Nothing was too successful and I don’t remember the fussy eater young Jacob eating much of what he did grow. There were a fair few undersized carrots, some peas and I remember being particularly proud of a big pumpkin I grew once.
At some point however, that petered out and life moved on. Growing vegetables wasn’t something I had a whole lot of interest in.
In more recent years things started to change. As I stood at the conveyor of the supermarket checkout I’d think about how weird it was that each and every item was wrapped in plastic like they had come out of a factory.
It’s strangely easy to not think too hard about what things are and where they come from.
It’s just something we buy.
It comes from somewhere else.
I am merely the end user.
A complete flip from where it used to be and I thought it would be nice to change.
I have no plans to sharpen the flint on the end of my spear any time soon but I liked the idea of growing some bits again.
Things lined up when we were offered some space to grow some bits at the place we live and Theresa started to put some seeds in the ground. She very much led the charge. I followed increasingly enthusiastically, usually with the watering can, and slowly got back into this growing thing.
It’s a time consuming process.
One I enjoy much of. Though there is a limit on how much watering and weeding I want to do, I’d rather be climbing or biking or exploring most of the time. Just going to the shop is so very nice and easy.
In the bigger picture however, I think it’s an important thing to do. I like having a little control over where my food comes from, I like knowing what it really is, I like not paying into some large corporation, not relying on an unknown system. We never know where the world is headed so it’s nice to be able to simply have these skills, this resilience.
It feels more like how it should be.
Of course picking food out the garden and within a few minutes having it cooking into a meal is pretty special too.
In this scary changing world, I like pushing a seed into some dirt and enjoying the slow magic of it turning into food. And you’ll be happy to know the Jacob of today is certainly eating a lot more vegetables than he used too.
Jacob.
