The great garden give-away ~ August 24, 1995

David Heiller

Last week I asked Hazel Serritslev, who work; at the American, if she needed any green beans. Hazel is 74 years old, so she qualifies for garden give-aways.

Hazel said yes, but she was going out of town so she wouldn’t have a chance to use them.

No problem. I called Leone Schultz of Finlayson. She is 89, and this is the first year that she hasn’t had a big garden. She said yes, she could use the beans. She stopped in to pick them up on Friday, August 18, and said a sincere thank you.

A little broccoli to put-up, eat-up
 and give-away. And there will be more!

“Can you use some tomatoes?” I asked. She said she could, and this Friday she will stop in again and pick up some tomatoes, if I remember to bring them.

Palmer Dahl stopped in on Sunday to drop off a screwdriver that he had re-ground for me. Palmer is 86, so I figured I could pawn off some vegetables on him.

But he is a man of simple means, and more blunt than Hazel and Leone. (No offense, Palmer, but you have to get up pretty early in the morning to beat those two women in the politeness game.)

He walked through the garden with me, and pulled up some weeds that he had a fancy name for. I forgot what he called them. When Palmer walks through a garden, he sees the weeds first and the vegetables second.

“You put a lot of work into this garden,” he said, which is a big compliment from Palmer. Unfortunately, he only went home with one kohlrabi. He even seemed a little leery of that. He’d never tried one before.

On Sunday night, Cindy and I rode our bikes over to the home of a neighbor, Steve Hillbrand. Steve gave us a tour of his garden, which is a vast one. He has a rutabaga that I estimate at 10 pounds. Cindy said it’s six. I’m trying to get him to bring it to the Rutabaga Festival this weekend.

Steve has second plantings of beans and peas coming up. There are tiny broccoli that he planted on July 27. If they make it, fine, Steve said.

Glorious beets!

If not, that’s OK too. It’s a good attitude to have when frost sometimes hits on August 22.

Steve always has extra vegetables that don’t get used. He doesn’t worry about them going to waste. They get composted and turned into next year’s soil.

Steve also has a patch of corn that is untouched by raccoons, based on the fact that he has three strands of high voltage electric fence encircling it, not to mention a guard tower and .50 caliber machine gun.

Steve sent us home with two pretty yellow summer squash that look like giant gum drops. He had a fancy name for them, but darned if I can remember it. Cindy will fry them up into something delicious.

Names aren’t important to me when it comes to gardens.

More and more tomatoes to eat, put-up
and give-away. If David had the chance
to sell something, he always gave it away...

What’s important is the joy of seeing things, lots of things, grow. Many things go into this. Working the soil, making it rich and sweet smelling. Watching plants get bigger almost before your eyes. There’s a lot of joy in pulling weeds too. We all have a little Palmer in us.

Then harvesting begins, early at first, like the snap peas that you mostly eat off the vines, and the raspberries that get made into jelly, and the new potatoes that you steal from the mother plant.

And then the big harvest comes, which has people like me scrambling for little old ladies and Norwegian bachelor farmers to give the extras to.

Actually, it isn’t a desperate act to give away vegetables. It is fun and rewarding. It’s fun to share the bounty of a good garden. It is rewarding to give, to share, to hear a thank you, especially when you know that what goes around comes around, and some day somebody will be trying to load you down with a 10 pound rutabaga and you’ll be thanking them. Gee thanks.

There will be plenty for everyone from this year’s gardens, which are exceptional. We’ll put up all that we can use, and eat vegetables every day, and work real hard, and wonder why we planted such a big garden, and give away the rest, and plant a bigger garden next year. That’s something to be thankful for.