In Hidden Magic, on Vella, Allura grows row after row of produce in her massive garden. She sells most of it at her farmstand and to restaurants and the bed-and-breakfast in town. She cans and freezes the rest.
When HH and I first got married, we bought a rototiller and created a decent-sized garden in our backyard. My parents had always had a huge garden, and my mother canned, so that's what we did, too. For whatever reason, our garden provided more vegetables than we'd ever expected. The soil was sandy and rich, and plants GREW.
We planted green beans and harvested so many of them, I canned 52 pints and 52 quarts a year, then gave the rest away. Our tomato plants grew so tall, and provided so many tomatoes, I canned 52 quarts of tomatoes a year, 52 quarts of spaghetti sauce (that took forever to make), and 52 quarts of tomato juice. And we still gave away tomatoes. I picked and froze brussel sprouts, broccoli, and more zucchini than anyone needed. I grew tons of snap peas but never harvested any of them, because our kids and the neighborhood kids picked and ate them raw when they passed by them. I figured they couldn't too much healthier than that.
We bought bushels of peaches and pounds of strawberries and blueberries to freeze. I made Dutch Babies every Monday for the girls for breakfast and filled them with fruit and whipped cream. We did this for years until we left one weekend for a vacation and came home to find that our freezer had died, and fruit juice had leaked into the carpet in the basement. We had to throw every bag of fruit away and rip up the carpet and replace it. It was a dry summer, and by the time I watered the garden, it would have been cheaper to buy cans of vegetables at the grocery store. I told HH that I was done, retiring from gardening and storing. He was ready. It was a lot of work.
But Allura loves what she does. And with her witch magic, she can call for rain when she needs it. Her gardens thrive. She never has to weed. I think one of the reasons I enjoy writing her so much is because she brings back memories. I have no idea why HH and I went to so much bother back then. We both had good jobs. We didn't need to worry about groceries, but we were young and enjoyed gardening, canning, and freezing. Allura never ages. She can enjoy it for centuries. So she was fun to write.
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