52Ancestors Week 17: Land

From Amy Johnson Crow: Week 17's theme is "Land." Farming ancestors, homesteaders, and military bounty land claimants are all on deck this week. Who does "land" make you think of?

With your powers combined....

We're finally here! The last of the elemental blogs! If you want to read them, check them out here: Water was about Rings Island Marina and my adventures there. Fire  was about the fire needed to travel across vast distances. Air was about something interesting I found about my grandfather who was a paratrooper during the second world war. What should I write about this week for "Land"? Well...

Vegetable prison

I hinted about my parents' garden before in the harvest blog from September of 2019. That was written at the tail end of the gardening season. Here we are in late April and that, my friends, is usually when the fun starts. It's around this time that we start thinking about planting various things in the garden. In late April, we usually start tilling the soil and plant stuff like potatoes. By May, we toss everything in there we can think of. These would be plants such as basil and thyme and veggies like tomatoes, peppers and green beans.

Right. So, how did all of this get started? What prompted my parents to make gardening such a major hobby of theirs? It's hard to say. My parents always had a garden of some sorts. I want to say it started really taking off in the early 1990s. That was when I was involved with cross country and running in general. My mother always told me that we grew vegetables because we would know where our food came from and let's face it fresh basil makes the BEST pesto sauce. I may be biased here. =) She may have a point, though. Fresh vegetables always tended to make everything better and nothing and I mean NOTHING beats the smell of fresh tomato sauce cooking for like seven hours inside your house. So good! There's something to be said for fresh tomatoes because my teammates on the cross country team asked for it all the time! 

Want some tomatoes?

I ran cross country all throughout high school from 1993 to 1997 and my mother would make tomato salad for the team to have during parties or something to snack on before meets. She would cut the tomatoes, sprinkle basil and garlic on it and have it soak in a pan of olive oil. They were so good that this conversation usually took place before the home meets:

Coach: Litchfield runs a good game. But, it's important that we keep energized. I think we have a good chance at beating them since we're on our home turf. The course is nice and neat. We definitely can win.

Everyone: YEAH! 

Coach: Chris?

Me: Yeah, Rhoades?

Coach: Did your mom bring any of those tomatoes? We probably could use some.

Me: *laugh* Yeah, she did. Don't worry about it.

Rhoades loved the tomatoes and so did the rest of the team. There really is something to be said for homemade tomato salad. It wasn't exactly hard to make. That's probably not the point. The point is that we had fresh veggies to help us with our game. The coach really didn't like having us have pizza before a meet. Makes sense. Your body would be digesting that as you're trying to run in the woods. That's a discussion for health blogs. 

Years later my mother and I ran into Coach Robert Rhoades shortly before he passed away and he jokingly asked if she still made those delicious tomato salads. She said she did and he laughed. I was amazed that he actually remembered since it had been over ten years since he last had them. It just goes to show just how good homegrown vegetables are. That's definitely a lesson you can learn from this story. If you have something homegrown, it's going to be in your memories for a long time to come. 

My grandparents more than likely passed down the value of homegrown food to my parents as they even had gardens of their own. Learning how to grow food is something that's been passed down throughout the centuries and is probably one of the most important things you can teach someone aside from fishing. Now, what will happen with the Ferraiolo garden in 2020? It's hard to say as we haven't planted anything. Everything's in the planning stages and I'd honestly really would like Mother Nature to cooperate! I will keep everyone posted and if I could I would definitely send you all some of that delicious tomato salad.

See you next time!

P.S. The tomato salad was technically Caprese salad without the mozzarella slices. So good. =D