Gardening is Hard

Tiffany Pearl

Sep 30

Last summer was a gardening bust; I spent the first half of it sick with Covid and the second half of it recovering from a hiking injury. This year I gardened more than last season but not by much. Back in April, we were blindsided by a family illness. Amy and I lived separately for three months, which was its own challenge. The illness was terminal and each of us started grieving in our own way. In the middle of this heartache, I thought it was a good idea to try and juggle working at a local bakery and manage their vendor tent at area Farmers Markets. It didn't take long for me to realize I bit off more than I could chew, however, and two months later (and a couple pulled lower back muscles richer), I reached the inevitable decision that standing in as a vendor at numerous events every week is too labor-intensive for any real longevity for me and my little farm. I did learn quite a bit about how Farmer's Markets are run, and exactly what it means to be a vendor. So, I am very grateful for the experience. This series of heartbreak and untimely events that was Smoke & Charm's spring and summer led me down another path of gardening neglect. Despite these on and off-farm challenges and intense bouts of grief and subsequent depression, I managed to successfully harvest asparagus, garlic, sweet onions, red onions, watermelon radishes, turnips, celery, swiss chard, romaine lettuce, kale, spinach, jalapenos, jedi peppers, a few stalks of corn, and surprisingly a couple little eggplants and three whole rainbow carrots! Is there a word for when you are proud and embarrassed of yourself at the same time?

Gardening is definitely a practice in patience for me and a hard lesson in finding success in a world of unpredictable failures. I'm a writer, a planner, a scheduler, and a researcher; I love a detailed outline of short and long-term goals. Plants don't give a hoot about my plans, however, and neither does Mother Nature. Last summer Western Mass suffered through a pretty severe drought and this season extensive flooding. My pond and the roads around me are flooding right now as I type this. Several farmers I know lost their entire crop(s) this season and some folks were forced to wait months before replanting due to polluted runoff. It was heartbreaking. Often I say that nurturing plants is far harder than nurturing animals or even people. Too much sun, the plants die. Too much water, the plants die. Too many bugs, the plants die. The wrong formula of nutrients in the soil, the plants die. Too hot, the plants die. Too cold, the plants die. Forget your chickens are out free-ranging while you're hardening your transplants and the plants die. There are a multitude of ways plants can die. For a novice gardener like me, it is easy to become overwhelmed with everything that can directly or indirectly go wrong and kill your crop. Sometimes just thinking about this is all I need to push the garden to the back of my priority list.

With all this said, however, I am still determined to grow food for my own table, preserve it for the winter, and have at least a little surplus harvest to sell or trade. I have zero expectations or intentions to make any money gardening or selling my girl's eggs, but I do want to counter the cost of feed, medicine, and supplies a bit while also offering local food at affordable prices to my community. This is all I have wanted to do for the past ten years, and it may not be a mainstream type of job, but it is the only work I've ever done that feels like home. I just have to learn how to stay out of my own way because winter is coming, and there's nothing left to do but learn from my mistakes and start planning for the next grow season. One of these days I'm gonna wake up and love gardening, right? Until then, I'll keep on refusing to give up. If you are able, plant a vegetable or two. Get your hands in the dirt at least once. Appreciate how difficult it is to produce the foods you cook with, and all the enormous, labor-intensive efforts farmers/vendors put into making these local foods and products available for purchase. Donate to relief funds whenever possible too. Anything helps. Even stopping by each week and letting these hardworking, local folks know how much you love their products is incredibly encouraging and uplifting. Gardening is hard, but it isn't impossible. So, we just gotta keep calm, support each other, and farm on.