and they say we live in the city

When I was a kid, my grandpa had a very large garden, and grew just about every vegetable imaginable. The work started in the spring, with tilling the ground, planting seeds, watering, weeding, mulching, staking, and everything else that goes along with gardening. As soon as we were old enough to walk around, we were helping in the garden. Mom would lather us up in sunscreen and bug spray and we learned the difference between a weed and a baby zucchini sprout. A bit older, and we could help Bampa (my grandpa) form the tomato cages and place them carefully around the young plants. We'd help tow the irrigation pipes across the rows, carefully placing them to make sure no water was wasted.

As the summer wore on, we'd harvest - fun (tasty!) but difficult work. Most plants require bending over them for hours on end while you search for the perfectly ripe produce. My mother's seven siblings would visit in late July or August. Most of them lived in large, urban areas where gardens like ours weren't an option. However, they loved fresh produce, and so they'd happily show up and eat it.

Seriously.

We would do all of that work, often even picking everything, and they would eat and relax on their vacation. Often, I was scolded for having 2nds at dinner by somebody saying, "Aunt La-ti-da and Uncle Yoo-hoo are only here for a week. Let them enjoy the tomatoes!" Certainly, we ate plenty of fresh produce, but it was frustrating to watch other people gobble up what they hadn't worked to produce.

Ah, how times have changed.

We have now picked over 30 pounds of blueberries at local farms. We are hoping to reach a total of 50 lbs before the season is over. We've also harvested 27 pounds of peaches, a dozen or so ears of corn, and some broccoli and cauliflower. Next week, we hope to get cucumbers and green beans. As summer progresses, we'll aim to get a bunch of tomatoes.

We're eating fresh, that's for sure, and stocking up for the year ahead. We've frozen most of the blueberries, and drying or canning peaches. Of course, we're having fruit on our cereal and enjoying snacks and desserts and salsas in the meantime. I'm planning to make this cobbler, too. We'll try pickling next week if we get enough cucumbers, and we'll freeze beans. I'm most excited about tomato season, as that's probably my favorite food. I'm going to try canning some sauce, and making lots of fresh salsa and BLTs on our menu!

It sounds like I'm back home in South Dakota, doesn't it? Perhaps that's why I'm amazed at how cheerful the folks are at the u-pick farms. They've worked so hard to grow these crops, and strangers like us gather them up without a second thought, gladly dropping some change for a chance to enjoy fresh produce. I suppose that's why I tell the boys to say "thank you" to the farmers, even after we've paid for our portion. It's a gift to harvest where we have not sown.