How Does the Garden Grow?

More than a century ago, farmers started planting smaller amounts of land in fruits, vegetables, and flowers that could be easily taken into town to sell to stores or directly to friends and neighbors.

The "truck farm" was born.

It helped farmers balance the larger cash crops and feed needed for livestock and provided some cash while waiting for the rest of the crops to be ready for harvest.

The market gardens, as they were also called, were a way for aspiring farmers and immigrants early in the 20th Century to get into a career of growing things for others.

The various crops helped replenish the soil as one crop replaced another.

The small truck gardens became obsolete during the later part of the last century as food became a commodity itself and arrived in out shiny stores from places that "produced" our food.

There were always gardeners among us - folks we could count on for a grocery bag of corn, tomatoes, or string beans.

The ones we had to watch out for were those friends who left their homes in the middle of the night to leave bags full of zucchini on our back step.  (It's the only way to get rid of a large zucchini crop.)

Some "Farmer's Markets" sprung up in places like Madison and at intersections outside cities where people could get fresh vegetables out of the back of a pickup truck that tasted much better than that stuff from the store.

The growing popularity of Community Shared Agriculture (C.S.A.) has advanced the truck garden to individuals sharing the risks of weather and production with the farmer in return for a share of the abundant (or not so abundant) harvest.

Maybe you, like me, notice lately how we are gravitating toward those truck gardens again.  We want things to be locally sourced, farm fresh, and organic (if possible).

It seems that sometimes the best ideas now, were real good ideas even a hundred years ago, too.