lunabee34

It's one of those things where I didn't realize how lucky I was until I was an adult.

Dad plants a garden about an acre in size although it's smaller now than when I was a kid. He grows everything--corn, potatoes, peanuts, okra, squash, radishes, lettuces, tomatoes, and a bunch of other stuff. He's never been able to get carrots to grow in that ground, but he can grow most things.

He's got fruit trees and vines--plums, pears, figs, blueberries, persimmons, muscadines, scuppernongs, wild dew berries.

Dad fishes constantly; we ate fresh fish two or three times a week. We ate deer he hunted. When I was younger, Dad liked to dove hunt so we ate dove in season, and even the occasional rabbit and squirrel (although squirrel is just a pain because it's a lot of work for a teensy bit of meat). Some of my relatives raised cattle so we would get beef from them.

And even more than all this good food, it was a way of life, a way of sustaining yourself without having to depend on the supermarket. And also about the value of hard work and thrift (canning the tomatoes, putting up the corn, etc).

It was truly a charmed life that I didn't appreciate until I was buying sup-par produce as a adult.