Garden Harvest: How Much Is Enough?

The question occurs to me: Can you have plenty while not having enough?

I can think of at least two ways. The first one is: don’t measure things that don’t require measurement. The second one is: keep a garden.

We’ve all heard the adage, you are what you eat. But I would suggest that the truth of this statement is bigger than just food. We are what we watch. We are what we read and hear. We are the people we hang around with. There is a great machine engulfing all of us that is working very hard to get us to consume, to want more, to believe we need more, and to get more every day. The world around us is constantly trying to frighten us. It takes an effort to shut it all out. But it’s a worthwhile effort. Because the machine of commerce obscures what’s important in life.

I do not consider myself particularly religious, and yet over the course of this past year I’ve experienced a growing sense of wonder that is not without a certain spiritual content. Planting and sprouting seeds; observing the miracle of life prevailing against all reasonable expectations; visiting a nearby farm and wandering amongst animals some of whom eventually ended up on my table have all made me thankful for meals in a way that I have never been before. This is not so much because of the work that I’ve put into these meals as it is because of the extent to which things happened that I did not do. My thankfulness is not self-congratulatory but directed towards something operating above and beyond myself. Learning about the ubiquity of yeast in the air gave me a sense of wild freedom and possibility – how close it is within our power to turn a few simple ingredients into bread! The alchemy of lacto-fermentation offered me a glimpse into the creative alchemy that goes on inside of all of us. I have been constantly reminded that man is a maker; that our lives and our means of sustenance are paradoxically both inevitable and tenuous and should never be taken for granted. I have a developing understanding not only of how much planning and activity and preservation it may take to feed my family through the winter (I don’t think I’m even coming close!), but also of the importance of growing and eating and enjoying today’s food today. A closer contact with nature is a constant reminder that I don’t know what may happen tomorrow or the next day. But today I am well-sheltered and well-fed, and to a great extent that makes me rich, and I am thankful.

It calls to mind a line which has been rattling around in my head a lot lately – “give us this day our daily bread”. Not enough bread for the rest of the week or month; not an assurance that we’ll still have bread this time next year, but our daily bread.

Surely enough has to start with enough for today.

And if I have enough for tomorrow too – well, perhaps that means that I have plenty.

There are many advantages to having a garden. There is the exercise; the opportunity to be outdoors; the healthier food; the satisfaction of producing it oneself. There is the sense of communing with nature and with something that is bigger, and stronger and greater, and longer-lasting than us. I love all of these things, but I don’t think that any of them are the best thing about having a garden. I think that the greatest gift that a garden can give us – even a weedy, overgrown, not always well-tended or well-realized garden like mine – is that if you put in the effort – some days it seems that if you put in any effort at all – it eventually reaches a state of plenty.

Even prior to having a garden, I rarely bought tomatoes. I rarely bought green beans. I never bought zucchini or squash. Or turnips. Or rutabaga. I’ve never even seen a kohlrabi in the grocery store. But we eat these things now because we can grow them. We eat them because they are there in abundance.

A grocery list is another form of measurement. It’s a declaration that there are some things that we absolutely have to have, and if we do not have them, then there is a lack in our lives, a niggling aggravation that must be overcome. Granted there are some basic things that we have to buy, but I have found over the past few years that my grocery list has dwindled. So have my grocery bills.

A recent article in Grit by fellow blogger Paul Gardener gave a wonderful and inspiring accounting of just how much we can save by gardening. I’ve been tempted to take stock of my efforts this way. You see, for a long time I’ve been obsessed with measurement; I’ve been worried about having enough. I’m a compulsive checkbook balancer; a tireless list-maker. One eye is always so firmly fixed on the horizon that I often don’t see everything that’s right in front of me. I went into the present gardening season determined to do better than last year; in particular, I set some pretty hefty goals for providing certain foods for my family through the winter. Along these lines of thought, as the present garden season began to ramp up, months before I read that article in Grit, I considered buying a scale. I wanted to be able to see just how much progress I was making. I wanted to be able to demonstrate to myself that I was growing more, and preserving more, than last year. I wanted to be able to determine and document just how much would be enough. And I wanted to grow enough.

But lately I’ve decided that I’m not going to do that.

I don’t want to weigh my produce. I don’t want to keep track of what I spend in the garden – in money or in time. I would spend that money and time somewhere anyway. I think that if I start trying to frame the garden in the language of investment then I might lose the sensation of getting something for nothing. If I begin to measure, then I will inevitably begin to think in terms of enough. And why would I want to do that?

When I already have plenty.