Farm Sitting Part 5: Garden Fresh Produce

You might wonder how a suburbanized girl like myself ended up farm sitting. I met the family originally through church. The wife played the organ for our services and I led the singing so we got to know each other. I knew they planted a large garden every year partly because I had gone over and picked green tomatoes right before the frost hit last year and let them ripen on my counter. They didn't all make it, but I had tomatoes for a while.

Last January, I was really wishing for spring and growing things and missing my own garden space. The previous year I had planted two tomato plants at another family's house and had enjoyed fresh tomatoes and some beans, but I wanted more this year. I called this other family up and asked if I could help them with their garden in exchange for some space to grow my own things. I wanted to be able to work as much as I wanted the produce. I missed planting lots of different things and seeing them all grow. My initial plan was just to see if they would let me have a small section to plant whatever I wanted, but it was easier just to help them with everything and share in the produce. They plant fifty-foot rows of tomatoes, beans, corn, squashes and potatoes.

Towards the end of May, I went over and helped plant a row of tomatoes and one of squash. We also did for rows of beans--two bush, two pole. The last thing we did that day was plan two rows of potatoes. It was nice to know more got done because I was there. Since then I have gone over and weeded, replanted tomatoes, and helped set up the trellis for the pole beans.

As part of the bargain, I agreed to watch the farm while they were out of town, which wasn't going to be often. They are actually going to be gone again, but my sister and her kids are going to be down visiting so it wouldn't work.

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of the garden, but I took a few while I was there. I spent a good part of Thursday picking beans, raspberries, and weeding potatoes. Here's a picture of the beans. We planted the bush beans next to the pole beans so that once the bush beans were done, we could pull them out and get at the pole beans a little more easily. The pole beans weren't on, but there were enough bush beans for me to do my first bit of canning (that's for another post).


As it is such a large garden and only two busy people working on it regularly (I would have gone over more, but I was gone for three weeks of the summer), the potatoes got rather over run with weeds. Most of what you see in the first picture are weeds. While these two are not before and after pictures, they give you an idea of how many weeds I pulled. I think there were eight rows of potatoes and two of them were weeded. I weeded maybe a third of the others. It was rather tricky because I had to make sure I wasn't pulling up the plants. Even after learning to recognize which were weeds and which were potato plants, I had to start at the top of the weed and follow it to its base to make sure I was pulling the right plant. After I accidentally broke off a branch of potato plant while trying to extricate a particularly large weed, I stopped. I should have taken a picture of the pile of weeds.

The part I didn't weed:

The part I did:
As I mentioned, I spent most of the day Thursday working in the garden. I had prepared a lunch, but forgot it at home. I didn't feel comfortable raiding their kitchen, but I didn't want to go home. The wife had mentioned I could try some of the new potatoes, so I looked for some in the newly weeded section. I had already picked beans and raspberries, so I had those. I added some swiss chard to the lot and went in to prepare lunch. I fried up the potatoes, steamed the chard and washed some beans and raspberries. It was one of the best lunches I'd had for a while.