“Pullin’ weeds, pickin’ stones
Man is made of dreams and bones
Feel the need to grow my own
‘Cause the time is close at hand

Grain for grain, sun and rain
Find my way in nature’s chain
Tune my body and my brain
To the music from the land.”

From “The Garden Song,” by David Mallett

For my wife Jodi and I out here in Vermilion Lake Township, and for so many others in our area who strive to grow at least a portion of their annual food supply, August is the month of putting food by.
It’s the culmination of months of effort. For many small-time growers, like me, the growing season starts well before the last of the winter’s snow has melted, as many of us turn to sunny windows, solar greenhouses, or basement shelves and grow lights to sprout and grow seedlings for later transplanting into the garden. I usually start with the cool weather crops, like broccoli, cabbage, and lettuce, all of which can go out in the garden even before we’re safe (at least as safe as we ever are) from late frosts.
As the spring progresses, it’s time to start the warm weather crops— the tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, peppers, and the winter squash. They stay in the protection of the greenhouse until late May or early June depending on whether the season is coming in warm or cool.
Planting is a big job here on our growing little farmstead, as over the course of about a month the transplants hit the garden beds. I maintain 15 raised beds, each four feet wide and eight feet long, separated by wood chip walkways, along with a hoop house and a separate garden bed owned by a friend in Soudan, so there are lots of transplants and plenty of prep work each spring. Then there are the direct planted crops, the carrots, beets, green beans, potatoes, onions, and this year, for the first time, sweet corn, which I’m growing as a treat.
I had refrained from sweet corn in the past mostly because it’s a heavy nitrogen feeder and I don’t use inorganic fertilizer in my gardens, so I had to prioritize. But now that we raise chickens, nitrogen is no longer a scarce resource. And it isn’t just the sweet corn that’s taken notice. The addition of chickens and their powerful manure has made a huge impact on plenty of other crops, perhaps cabbages most of all. Lots of insects, not to mention slugs, will devour cabbages, so the key to success is having enough nutrients to encourage plant health (which helps ward off insects) and to speed development of the cabbage heads, which minimizes the amount of time they’re exposed to garden pests.
Planting is a big part of gardening, at least in the early season. As things develop, however, the focus shifts to weeding, thinning of crops like carrots and beets, and lots of watering, at least in a dry year like this one.
It’s all work, but it’s good work. Henry David Thoreau wrote that he went to live at Walden Pond in order “to live deliberately,” which meant making intentional choices to strip away societal distractions, focus only on life’s core essentials, and experience existence directly rather than letting routine or material pursuits dictate your time.
Time spent in the garden is exactly that. After all, what could be more essential than growing one’s own food. In a world where so many of us are constantly distracted by the ever-present screen and the hyperactive pace of our society in general, the garden is a refuge, a place to quiet the mind and nourish ourselves emotionally. For me, few things are more calming than sitting on my short garden stool and quietly weeding a garden bed.
Indeed, there are few things better for the human spirit than spending time in a garden. The work involved is exactly the kind of low-impact exercise that can keep us fit well into old age. Studies have documented that time spent in a garden lowers your stress levels and your blood pressure. Tending plants has been shown to lower cortisol levels, which is good for your heart. And time spent under the summer sun allows your body to produce more Vitamin D, which strengthens your immune system.
And these are the benefits you derive even before your first harvest. Like many folks in our area, we grow our food organically, which means we can be confident that the food we consume from the garden is free of the toxins that undermine the goodness of so many of the foods raised commercially.
And August is the month when all the work starts to pay off. While we normally start harvesting our greenhouse lettuce as early as May and begin cutting broccoli and cabbage by early July, August is the month when the gardens can barely be contained. This year, the cucumbers are growing by the bucketloads, the beets are huge and perfectly formed, the green beans are seemingly inexhaustible, and the onions and garlic are hanging to dry in the woodshed. We’ve had our first sweet corn with lots more on its way and while the winter squash are weeks away from ripening, they’re looking big and plentiful.
While we’re still waiting for the tomatoes to ripen, Jodi is already going full bore in the kitchen, making pickle relish with all our cucumbers and canning green beans. In a couple more weeks, when the tomatoes are ready, she’ll be canning steady for nearly a month, putting up dozens of jars of various tomato sauces and salsa, that will last us right through to next summer.
It will all be supplemented by the 80 pounds of chicken meat that went in the freezer two weeks ago when we butchered our meat chickens, along with the 27 quarts of blueberries I harvested earlier this month, mostly from the berry patch right behind the house. Wild rice season is just ahead and from the sounds of things, it looks like a decent crop.
What could be more basic, more deliberate, than spending our time and nourishing our souls on the most basic matters of human existence.