My Journey Through Debt: Part 9A: Food From the Garden

Throughout my childhood, my family did not have two thin dimes to rub together.  We went for long stretches without electricity. The telephone was a luxury we could not afford. New anything was completely out of the question. However, we ate like kings and queens.

My sweet mama made sure we never went hungry. Ever. By the time she would pay the bills that she could from her meager paycheck, she would have $6.00 left to stretch through two weeks of food. Obviously a family of four was not going to make it on $3.00 a week for all the food that we consumed. Enter, the garden.

My sweet mama’s garden was more than just a tiny plot of land dedicated to a salsa garden or salad garden. My mama’s garden was meant to feed our family of four year round. You name it; we grew it.

Whatever we grew, we canned. Freezing our food was a bad option back then since our electricity was shut off so often. Instead, mama canned everything she could think of. Hundreds of canning jars lined our pantry. I honestly felt sorry for my friends that were not able to “shop” out of their pantry full of home canned goods.

That desire to have a garden and preserve food has been passed down to me. Not only is it cheaper to grow and preserve your own food, it is much healthier. When you grow your own food, there are no preservatives in them to make them shelf stable for years upon years. Those chemicals do not enter your body, leaving you a healthier individual.

The garden we had growing up was huge. It was my job to hoe it, water it, and harvest it. I hated that garden at the time, but I loved the food that we ate from it  all year long.

JP and I now have a much smaller garden, but we still grow a lot of our own food. As a part time agronomist, I work daily, 8-18 hours a day all summer long, yet still come home and tend the garden. No one can tell me that they do not have time for a garden. We all make choices in our lives. My choice is to have a garden so that we are able to save money and live a healthier lifestyle.

I preserve a lot of what is grown in our garden. Besides canning, I also freeze and dehydrate food in order to make it last longer. More on the “how-to” in later posts.

The money that I saved by growing my own food was put towards the principle of my debt. As I have said in earlier posts, every little bit helps.

For those of you that live in apartments or rentals and have no land that you are able to till into a garden, may I suggest you consider doing container gardening. While you will not be able to have a large harvest, you still would be able to have fresh, organic vegetables at a fraction of the store price.

As I battled the debt pit that I was seemingly drowning in, every little bit of momentum up and out of it was a Godsend.

Is it easy to keep up with a garden and preserves the fruits of your labor after a full day’s work? No. Is it worth it? Only you can be the judge of that. It truly depends on how much you want out of debt, or how healthy you want the food your family consumes, to be.

To me, it was definitely worth the time and effort to keep a garden. Remember, you are not in this alone. If you have a family, get them involved. Or ask your friends to help you. The garden can be a place of laughter, joy and fun. A place of family. A place of healing.

As Alfred Austin said, “Show me your garden and I shall tell you what you are.”

Have a wonderful day, lovelies!

~Annie