I give my late grandfather, Leo William Harback, credit for introducing me to the outdoors.  A quail hunter and fisherman, he took me with him on his outings from the time I could barely walk.  (He had three girls, and I was his first grandchild, a boy, likely the explanation of my early involvement with him.)  He was an engineer on the old Frisco Railroad based in Monett, just over a ridge from the White River basin.  Among his special interests was raising a big garden, a necessity during the depression and an act of patriotism during World War II.

That garden was a major project every year and he would be considered a master gardener today.  His garden had nearly every vegetable and flower imaginable: asparagus, tomatoes, peas, beans, corn, raspberries, grapes, gladiolus, dahlias, zinnias, and the list would run on.  I helped him  fetch and carry and especially enjoyed bringing in a big basket of flowers or vegetables.  He taught me about compost and manure, about planting and cultivating and nurturing the flowers and vegetables he raised.

In the late 1940's, he bought an 80 acre farm a few miles west of town and one of his first enterprises there, besides stringing new fence and filling old gullies eroded during earlier years, was to plant several acres of strawberries for commercial production.  In those days the Ozarks raised some of the most delicious strawberries which were shipped on iced rail cars to markets elsewhere.  My job was to help pick the berries as they ripened.

Despite the mechanization of agriculture, strawberries were always picked by hand.  With carriers holding six quart boxes, I remember laboring under the hot spring sun, picking (and eating) berries and as I recall earning a nickel a quart for my work.  We would take the cases of berries to the railroad where they would be shipped out of the Ozarks.  My grandfather never grew rich from this project, but he loved every minute of it and made me appreciate it too.

In those days of more than half a century ago, nearly every neighbor raised a garden and our country kin raised most of the things they ate.  My grandmother canned nearly everything that came from the garden and the cellar beneath their house was filled with jars of tomatoes, beans, peach and strawberry preserves.  This was a part of the way of life, a marker of Ozarks culture, a tradition that has arguably slipped away over the years.

Today the Wal-Mart super centers and supermarkets  have a bounty of fresh vegetables year round at moderate prices and there is no longer the incentive there once was to raise gardens.  The newspapers run features about kids learning to plant things at school (see the article linked below).  We have moved from modest measures of subsistence to increased specialization and dependence on others to grow the food we eat. 

I guess I have bucked the trend because I continue to raise a garden every summer.  A small kitchen garden graces a raised bed in my backyard, while a larger garden is at our farm.  Because we can salsa for use through the year, there are four dozen tomatoes along with a variety of other vegetables.  Our compost pile is growing with nearly weekly additions of old straw and all the grass clippings from the yard, their nutrients to be added as we increase the tilth of our soil.    The connections between the compost, the vegetables and our harvest bear witness in their special way to the interconnections which define the natural world.

I think my granddad would be pleased with these efforts.  My new grandson, now just five months old, is named for my grandfather, his great, great grandfather, and my hope is that he will remember me as warmly as I remember his namesake.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK