Filed under: Gardening, Homemade | Tags: Accidental Pastures, Gardening, Homemade, Processing, Seeds
In cooking some of the best things can happen by accident, but can the same be said of farming or gardening? I’ve talked about my Father’s gardens of my youth, but I have never mentioned my Mom. That is with good reason, she didn’t really garden. Sure, she loved her flowers, but beyond that getting dirty wasn’t exactly her thing. Over the past 10 years, since my father’s death she has branched out from the typical flowers. With the help of a Master Gardener friend she started to grow the gardens around my childhood home into beautiful bursts of color, but with the exception of my herb garden by the back porch there wasn’t much you could eat.
My mom has remarried and her husband Stuart is always working around the yard. A few years ago he put in grape vines near the porch and started a beautiful compost heap. We added to their gardens by purchasing blackberry bushes for my mother for Mother’s Day last year and have been trying to talk them into allowing someone to place bee hives on the back of their property (still working on that). At their cabin in Maine there are more grapevines, which have grown into a sweeter grape then the ones in Massachusetts which are being looked at for some wine making.
Last fall for Halloween, my Mom purchased a huge pumpkin as usual. The pumpkin took its place of honor on her front steps and there it sat and sat and sat like so many pumpkins purchased for the holiday. The frost and snow came and the pumpkin rotted under the snow. It finally found it’s end, I believe in late winter when Stuart shoveled up the remains and tossed it into the compost heap out back. Good-bye pumpkin right? – Not so fast! Sometime this summer Stuart noticed that there was a vine growing out of his compost pile. The seeds had taken root. He carefully removed it and planted it in one of the back island gardens in the yard. Over the course of several weeks the vine has grown longer and longer, and sprouted pumpkins (7 at last count). This little “Oops” prompted Mad Dog to start calling my Mom’s home “Accidental Pastures”. Which I honestly feel is perfect, since the things they don’t plan usually are far more prosperous than the planned ones.
They have embraced the new name to the point that my Mom is making labels for her homemade grape jelly, made from the grapes from their vines in Massachusetts. On a side note, the grape jelly was surprisingly good and she did a lovely job canning them for us all. This has also prompted them to “plan” a pumpkin patch for next fall-allowing the kids to pick their own right from the yard.
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