My Million-Dollar Donkey Read online

  It doesn’t take a brain surgeon to keep a zucchini plant alive; zucchini is a prolific grower and all, but I thought my first homegrown vegetable deserved more recognition from the master of the house than received. I myself couldn’t help but prance around doing the ‘I grew a veggie’ dance, which is far funkier than the daffodil dance, I assure you.

  That night, I sat down at my computer and searched epicurious.com to peruse the 271 zucchini recipes available. My first round of produce already sat simmering in a veggie chili, but I had to plan for the windfall ahead.

  The next day, I revisited the garden again, hoping to see new produce, but all I found were hundreds of little yellow hairy bugs on my bean plants. I quickly beckoned the man of the house again, hoping a seasoned gardener might know what to do.

  “You can always use a pesticide, but if we want an organic garden, somebody will have to have to pick those bugs off by hand.” “Somebody?”

  I was now privy to the fact that ‘somebody’ meant me, so, grumbling, I spent three hours picking little yellow hairy bugs off of bean plants. Organic gardening seems a romantic ideal, but in reality, going au natural can be yucky. I couldn’t even get my little nature-loving daughter to help. She took one look and said, “This is gross. Besides which, I hate beans. Who cares if the bugs eat them? You’re on your own with this one, Mom.”

  For all that I tried to explain how noble and important organic gardening is to our health and the planet, Neva couldn’t be swayed, so I devoted the afternoon to bug annihilation all by myself.

  The next day, just as in the case of the weeds, my garden had been infiltrated with more yellow bugs. There was no way I could spend every afternoon picking them all by hand, so I decided to employ home remedies. I sprayed the plants with soapy water. That night, we had rain and the bugs had a grand time playing in the bubbles, but they didn’t desert. I went back to hand picking.

  A few weeks later, Mark drove by the garden, came home and said, “The plants look great. Why haven’t you been picking the beans?” “No beans yet,” I said.

  “By now, there must be beans. Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m sure. Somebody has to be involved in this gardening party we started. Somebody is pretty busy picking weeds and bugs. Trust me; somebody would know if we had any beans.”

  After dinner he dragged me down to the garden and slipped his arm around my waist. “Um, honey... the plants are so loaded with beans they look ready to cave. What are you waiting for?”

  “No, sir....” I crouched down, and dang if there weren’t hundreds of string beans hanging off the branches, hidden in the leaves like praying mantises. Not knowing what to look for, I hadn’t seen them. “They look like a part of the plant.”

  “They are a part of the plant,” he said. “And ready for harvesting. Somebody has to pick them.”

  Since picking beans was far more interesting than picking bugs, I didn’t mind being somebody this time. In fact, my enthusiasm for the task was so contagious, that Mark and the kids started picking too and in half an hour we had two huge baskets filled.

  The squash plants proved to be overachievers too. I gathered a basketful, and from that day on, added squash to every meal, until Kent no longer asked, “What are we having for dinner, Mom?” and instead commented, “What will we be having with our zucchini tonight, Mom?”

  I put zucchini in bread, cookies, and brownies. I sautéed, stuffed, and fried zucchini, put it into soups, and blanched and froze a dozen bags.

  We ate beans till we burst. I froze some, canned some, and even tried my hand at pickling beans, though I knew at the time there was scant chance anyone in our family would eat a pickled bean. Preserving wasn’t so much about good eating now but more about taking advantage of our ‘free’ food in a way that would allow me to brag all winter about my new self-sufficiency. I made salsa, tomato sauce, and dozens of jars of pickles: traditional dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, sweet garlic dill pickles, lemon dill pickles, and more.

  Still harboring hope that canning would improve my sex life, since a woman with canning skills seemed high on my husband’s list of remarkable women, I did my best to present every batch of canned produce to Mark with a sultry bat of the eyelashes.

  “That’s a lot of pickles,” he said, seeing the counter overrun with jars of green spears, and a huge bowl of cucumbers brining.

  “I figure, any food that gets you to pucker up is worth making,” I quipped, trying to look sexy as I hoisted another gallon jug of vinegar to the counter.

  “They look great,” he said, turning away.

  Sigh.

  Every day, I walked down to the garden with a big bowl and scissors to cut lettuce for our evening salad. I’d mix the fresh dark greens with walnuts and feta cheese and throw in anything else I found ripe that day. Every meal began with my pointing out how healthy the menu was, my not-so-subtle demand for praise from the troops. I was spending an awful lot of time in the nourishment area of our life, but since gardening was only going to last the summer, I considered it a short term grand experiment rather than drudgery. I marveled at each vegetable’s natural form, fascinated that these tasty items were imperfect cousins of the Stepford vegetables found in shrink packaging at the grocery store. I got a kick out of the fact I could walk right outside my door with an empty bowl and return moments later with that same container overflowing with the makings of a healthy meal.

  Of course, some of our efforts fell flat for no explainable reason. We planted cantaloupes and the plants flourished and flowered, but nary a melon grew. We planted corn, but only skinny wormy stalks came out. I was willing to pick bugs, but drew the line at worms. The corn become treats for the chickens. I should mention here that my chickens were real slackers in the egg department so far, and all I did was feed them, rather than them feeding us. We still had not seen a single egg.

  Then, one day, I came upon ‘the globe.’

  A vine had popped out of the dry dirt where we had tossed the random seeds. Huge flowers bloomed along the stem and the bees buzzed so loud that echoes inside of those big flowers could be heard from ten feet away. Nevertheless, only one single globular thing developed. I stood at the edge of the hillside and stared. Might that round thing be a pumpkin? Perhaps a watermelon? But why wasn’t the surface turning dark green? The ball didn’t look like a gourd. If anything, this ball looked like a honeydew melon, except we hadn’t planted any of those.

  After two months of speculation, the globe turned orange, revealing that we’d grown our very own foot-wide Halloween pumpkin. I was mighty proud to have grown something so substantial, so much so I couldn’t bear to carve it. The pumpkin sat in a place of honor on the mantel, as a seasonal decoration. I was so proud of that pumpkin that when Halloween passed, I added some cornhusk pilgrims as a fall tribute. Soon snow fell, and that pumpkin, still as fresh as the day picked, was crowned with a Santa hat, which made for an odd Christmas decoration, I agree, but still nice evidence of our farming finesse.

  Spring came and I tried nestling the pumpkin in a wad of Easter grass, but even I couldn’t justify the pumpkin’s presence when spring offered a bounty of fresh flowers for decoration instead. So, the pumpkin found a new home on a bench outside of the kitchen door. I patted the gourd whenever I passed, marveling that months had gone by and there wasn’t a speck of rot on the thing.

  By May, I started wondering if pumpkins lasted forever, or if this specific one was enchanted. I started wishing the thing would wither or rot because I couldn’t bring myself to just throw my prized pumpkin out now. I was deep in the throes of planting a new spring garden, and ready to retire any vestiges of the former year to make room for the new produce. Finally, I took the pumpkin to a hillside and, with a whispered “sorry,” smashed the gourd for the chickens to pick through. A month later a new pumpkin plant made a shy entrance into the world and young eel-like vines spread across the hi
llside like Medusa’s hair. Yellow globes began to bud on the tips. I’d unintentionally begun a heritage pumpkin patch, and our Santa Pumpkin had become the grandfather of many pumpkins to come.

  And so my garden adventures continued. By each September I was tired from months of bending over to weed, harvest and water. I hated to see the garden fade, but after a full summer I was ready to take a break from harvesting to start opening the jars of preserves and sauces I’d made instead. Some days the effort and expense of organic gardening made me question the true value of growing food at home. I could buy a can of tomatoes for half the price of growing them, and finding locally grown produce was easy since every corner had a neighbor farmer selling wares from the back of his pickup. The industrial revolution was considered good for humanity because inventions rescued people from endless manual labor, right? But despite all the reasons why home gardening might be impractical in regards to a utilitarian equation, nothing compared to the sense of accomplishment and the fascination I gained from growing food myself.

  Before moving to the country, my understanding of food sources was limited to an academic awareness that food grows on plants or in the ground, bacon comes from pigs, and hamburger from cows. Living closer to the earth made me see everything in life has a season and a purpose. Witnessing the life cycle of a bean, from planting of the seed to watching the mature plant wither and die, brought a certain reverence to my meals.

  I still wasn’t ready to raise livestock for eating, even knowing the meat for sale in the grocery store came from animals subject to a horrible, pitiful existence. The methods corporate food companies developed to feed the masses cheaply and to please our palate are truly inhumane. But however passionately I felt about the need for humane farming practices, I couldn’t bring myself to kill my own dinner. I just had too much empathy for any creature I looked right in the eye to be the instrument of its death. My weakness was my shame.

  As a compromise, we purchased one half a cow and a whole pig from Ronnie. Mark agreed to share the cost of the animals with him, with the understanding that I was never allowed to see them. I guess he feared I’d crack and lead the beast home on a rope as a new pet if I ever saw my cow up close.

  One day that fear was put to the test. I wandered down to Ronnie’s pasture to admire his property and accidentally came face to face with my cow.

  “That black and white one is yours, you know—well, at least half of him,” Ronnie said.

  For an instant my stomach dropped, but watching that cow meander lazily across a field ripe under the sunshine made me reconsider my gut reaction. This cow would live two years on a clean pasture, while others I consumed spent six months in darkness and dung because the poor creatures were unlucky enough to be born and raised by a corporate meat company. True, in both cases, the animals were destined for slaughter, but death would come quickly and gracefully to my cow. I’ll feel better when my freezer fills with hormone-free packaged meat from a cow who had known the pleasure of sun and kindness during his time on earth.

  Like so many others of my generation, I know I rationalize my behavior when stress or frustration has me headed to the McDonald’s drive-through. I don’t always eat with mindful awareness. But tending a garden and watching animals graze naturally has taught me to consider the difference between food raised with respect and dignity, and the alternative. I guess you can say that instead of saying grace with my meals, I began to feel grace as my relationship with food changed.

  “There is no beginning too small.”

  —Henry David Thoreau

  BEE YOURSELF

  Two bees ran into each other. One asked the other how things were going.

  “Pretty bad,” said the second bee. “The weather has been really wet and damp.

  There aren’t any flowers or pollen, so I can’t make any honey.”

  “No problem,” said the first bee. “Just fly down five blocks, turn left, and keep going until you see all the cars. There’s a Bar Mitzvah going on with all kinds of fresh flowers and fruit.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” said the second bee as he flew away.

  A few hours later the two bees ran into each other again. The first bee asked, “How’d it go?”

  “Fine,” said the second bee, “It was everything you said it would be.”

  “Uh, what’s that thing on your head?” asked the first bee.

  “That’s my yarmulke,” said the second bee. “I didn’t want them to think I was a wasp.”

  (That’s a beekeeper joke, don’t ya know?)

  As I pored over gardening and environmental magazines, I kept stumbling over articles that focused on “an impending epidemic of monstrous proportions.” Bee colonies were collapsing without clear cause and science was in a tizzy over the loss of our beloved pollinators. The world’s food supply would collapse without bees, the articles proclaimed. Meanwhile, honey was at a premium due to the decline in production as more and more independent apiaries were giving up the struggle to stay in business.

  My new role as guardian of the land made me feel responsible for doing my part to save humanity.

  Theories about why the bees were disappearing ranged from global warming and the overuse of chemicals to the possibility that cell phone towers were interfering with the insect’s communication skills. New, heartier Russian bees, more aggressive in nature, yet less inclined to go belly up, were being bred. Even so, the bee population was still dwindling.

  Despite the scientific facts, I didn’t see a lack of bees as much of a threat where I lived. My blueberry bush was always humming with honeybees, bumble bees and all manner of wasps and butterflies. The ground vibrated from so many flying insects hovering over the clover and whisking through the fescue, I had no doubt my plants would be visited by enough pollinators to get the job done. The whole bee scarcity thing seemed an exaggeration, but the focus on bee colony collapse disorder did bring my attention to just how vitally important bees were to my garden. If I wanted to do this organic and environmentally friendly gardening thing right, I should get some bees.

  I began studying beekeeping. As creatures of distinct habit and remarkable social structure, bees can be second-guessed and even controlled. Hive placement, estimated flight path, and a bit of basic math can leverage bees so they’ll impact a garden in the best of ways. Furthermore, local raw honey is one of the healthiest foods a person can consume; the honey from the pollen of the very plants that plague residents with allergies helps a person develop natural immunity.

  I didn’t have allergies and my garden was producing well, but the lure of jars and jars of free honey to cook with was as much a motivation to me as performing the ecologically conscientious act of raising bees.

  The problem was going to be Mark. If a miniscule little sweat bee buzzed anywhere near, he would flap his arms and dance about like a terrified little girl, so I knew he wouldn’t be very enthusiastic about my adding fifty thousand bees to our back yard.

  “Honey, I was thinking about how to get the most from our garden, and beekeeping might serve us well,” I said one night.

  “No.”

  “Can’t we talk about it?”

  “We just did. You asked about keeping bees. I said no. Case closed.”

  “That’s not a very good attitude. When the world’s supply of food dries up because there weren’t enough bees to pollinate plants, won’t you feel guilty?”

  “Maybe so, but bees sting. Isn’t it enough that you have chickens and zucchini plants?”

  “I need bees to pollinate the zucchini. Just think of all the sweeties I can make you with a vat of honey at my disposal. Honey’s expensive, you know, but with bees, honey will be free.” (I prayed he wouldn’t compare this to my egg production equation, which as yet, hadn’t saved us a cent since my birds hadn’t laid a single egg.) “I’ll put a hive in a far corner of our land. I promise.”

  �
��I hate bees,” he said.

  “I know you do, dear.” I felt a twinge of guilt when his heavy sigh of resignation filled the air.

  He said no more, so I thought the case was closed. Bees had been vetoed. But a month later, he joined my sister in giving me a starter beehive kit for my birthday. He no doubt felt railroaded by my sister’s enthusiasm and figured I’d be getting bees one way or another so he might as well get credit by giving me his generous permission rather than having his preference ignored. Nevertheless, I was touched. It’s easy for a man to give his wife a sexy nightgown or a lovely dinner out for her birthday. But a beehive when you absolutely despise bees? That’s love, or so I chose how to view the act.

  I went online and bought some beekeeping books, bee food, a bee smoker, and tools. I subscribed to The Beekeeper Journal, joined the Georgia Beekeepers Association, and signed up for a weekend beekeeping course.

  When the hive kit arrived, I put the pieces together, painted the parts, and went back online to purchase bees, only to discover orders for bees are taken in January and since this was spring, all the bee companies were sold out.

  Mark suggested I talk to the Indian at the flea market who sold honey on weekends. Perhaps he would know where I could get some bees. So, we visited the honey booth, and I interrogated the Indian while Mark leaned down to peer into the jars of gleaming gold sweetness.

  The Indian was a gruff, quiet man with dark eyes and tobacco skin. He offered to sell me a nuc (a small colony) of bees, and for a reasonable fee offered to help me set them up. The next day he came to our place in a rattling truck filled with a dozen gallon jugs of honey and a box holding five frames of bees. Mark immediately announced he had important errands to run and skedaddled. Alone as usual in my country adventures, I showed the Indian beekeeper where to set up the hive.