When I signed on to take over the community garden plot on the edge of town, I had a pretty good idea that I was biting off more than I could chew. And I mean that literally — I knew it would be a lot of work, but also that it would (hopefully) produce far more than I could eat.
The point of a community garden, however, is to feed a community, so biting off more than I could chew was exactly what I hoped to do.
For once in my life, I did not underestimate the difficulty and time commitment of a daydreamed project. I knew managing the garden would be a lot, and I was right. I also guessed that by summer’s end (or maybe middle), I would be annoyed with myself for making the commitment in the first place. On that count, however, I was wrong. Every minute spent in the garden, and that includes on the hottest, most mosquito-laden days, was a pleasure.
This was in no small part because my friend Ruth was often with me. We had some physically demanding days — like when we unloaded an entire 1,000-pound round bale of straw that was jammed in the bed of her pickup one pitchfork full at a time. But mostly our time was spent weeding and chatting. It was during one of those weeding days that I announced to her this had been the best summer of my life, and I meant it.
For one thing, the physical work was gratifying. When it came time to unload that straw bale, I was pretty sure we weren’t going to be able to do it, and then, amazingly, we did. My socks were full of pokey stems, and my arms were covered with scratches, but I was euphoric and so proud.
Weeding on such a large scale is also strangely meditative. Time passes differently when you are slowly inching down a row of carrots on your hands and knees, bees buzzing around your head. Plus, once our crops were established, we switched from hand weeding to using a weed trimmer, which is the exact opposite of meditative, but very satisfying nonetheless.
This weekend marked the first light frost, so while the gardening season is not officially over, we are getting close. And though the prediction that I would come to regret all the work required for the community garden has not come to pass, neither has the abundance of food I was imagining.
The first round of cucumber seeds went in the ground too early and didn’t sprout. The second round went in too late, and those plants have only produced a few cucumbers to date. The thousand or so tomato varieties we planted are doing great — as are the deer who tiptoe through, taking one bite from the tomatoes just as they start to ripen.
There are still buckets of potatoes to harvest, and shell beans and beets, but the cool spring and early autumn do not bode well for the winter squash. For the amount of work, it certainly doesn’t seem to be penciling out.
The vegetables we’ve harvested so far have been available on a “pay-what-you-can“ basis at the Sheep Shed Cafe Farmstand, but mostly we’ve just given away what we’ve grown, a few bags at a time, to folks who couldn’t have their own gardens this year because of medical issues or kids hanging out next door at the library or to make salads for the wedding dinner of one of the women who helped us plant the lettuce.
We also used a bunch of the produce, along with donations from other local gardeners, for a big community supper at the school. If the pleasure I found in the mundane work of the garden hadn’t been satisfying, the effort was worth it for that meal alone.
Looking across the spread of freshly-sliced tomatoes in every shape and color, the herb-flecked potatoes, the cooler full of corn-on-the cob, the fudgy pans of zucchini brownies, I was overjoyed and thought again, “It doesn’t get any better than this.”
