The Saturday Morning Post: Once a farmboy, always a farmboy

 

King Street Market, Alexandria VA, there has been a market on this square for 270 years. 

Street Musicians Playing at the Market on King Street, a very civilized place. 

A couple of weeks ago, we took Jay's oldest brother Ed to Hale Farm, something Ed and I have in common is a love of historic farming, well really any farming.  When Ed was growing up there were still a lot of farms around, and their father always had a large garden.  Ed and I were gardners, he still dables, I no longer have outdoor space, and largely stopped as physical changes caught up with me.  But we both love seeing a well tended garden.  We appreciate the work that goes into a successful garden, it is so much more than turn the soil, plant the seeds and wait.  

I was raised on an 80 acre funny farm.  There were a few large fields rented or sharecropped with neighboring farmers. My grandparents around the corner always had a large and successful garden. My parents largely gave up on gardening by the time I was old enough to understand what it was all about.  I planted a small garden for a few years, then moved to helping my grandmother around the corner, as my grandfather sank into dementia.  There were tomatoes to be picked the day he died.  

Three of my four grandparents grew up on farms.  During the depression gardens and farm work, kept a roof over their heads and food on the table.  My father's -father was a great gardener, at one time on the farm he had ten-acres of tomatoes, and a stall on the Eastern Market in Detroit.  

Growing up on a farm, surrounded by working farms, I am a farmboy at heart, and always will be.