Outside

Unfortunately, that dream went poof last summer. That’s when my new bride, raised in downtown Philadelphia, expressed her desire for a vegetable garden on a 14-acre field in Powhatan County, about 30 minutes from our home. In the most loving terms, I tried to explain to her the impracticality of maintaining a remote garden. The voracious deer, the indefatigable weeds, the persistent insects, the drought, and the lack of water on the property—all would conspire against a productive harvest. My argument, aimed at keeping my wife free of disappointment and me free of sweat, fell on deaf ears.

My wife, it turns out, loves a challenge—and so commenced our Powhatan/Philly Farm Experiment. Within days, I had made the following outlays:

Pay farmer to disk field: $300.00

Pumpkin seed, corn seed, watermelon seed, cantaloupe seed, sunflower seed and wild game seed: $150.00

Lime: $150.00

Poison for weed control: $50.00

Seed spreader: $40.00

There went $700 before a single seed had been sown.

Then came the work. I spent the next weeks in the boiling sun with a hilling hoe, hand-sowing vegetable seeds. The payoff would come in six weeks, I reminded myself, when beautiful vegetables would grace our dinner table. Garden planted, I walked the rest of the 14 acres with a shoulder-mounted broadcaster, spreading the sunflower and wild game seeds.

A local farmer, William Arrington, stopped by one day. He pointed out to me that sunflower and game seeds need to be covered or they will not germinate. He suggested that I use a “drag” for the job—a bar that runs parallel to the rear of your tractor and drags a row of iron tines that break up the earth and cover the seeds. I didn’t have one, but Farmer Arrington offered to lend me his drag. I refused, knowing that when I borrow equipment I tend to end up buying it. Arrington reminded me that a drag is made of pig iron, impossible to damage. I relented and accepted. A few hours later, real Farmer Arrington learned that he’d underestimated pretend Farmer Jones when I ran over the only stump in the entire field, twisting the drag’s iron crossbar into an ugly V shape. Farmer Arrington picked up the pieces of the drag and left, holding $50 from me to help defray the repair cost.