Memories Vegetables

My dad had a quarter acre with a large garden on it, and he was out in it nearly every evening when we got home. Beans, leeks, beetroot, pumpkins, yams. Whatever was ready that night was what we ate, and we hardly ever bought a vegetable. I did not think of it as unusual at the time. It was just what the back of the section was for.

Then in 1990 he decided the whole quarter acre should go in beans. We ended up with about five hundred kilos of them. The family spent the end of that season washing, blanching and freezing the lot. Absolutely nuts.

He gave most of them away. Neighbours, friends, anyone he got talking to. That was the part he liked, other people eating something he had grown. Years later some people we knew thanked him for them, and mentioned they still had a bag in the freezer, which they got out whenever somebody sprained an ankle. He was not impressed. Food was for eating, and that was that.

The thing I think about more now is that he saved his own seed. Onions, carrots, beans, pumpkins, kept going year after year without him ever making anything of it. Most seed you buy now is hybrid, which gives you one good crop and then something else entirely if you try to save from it. His came back the same every time, which is the only reason any of it worked. On my last visit he gave me some of his bean seed. It is still in a jar. I have not planted it yet.

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