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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Ammi Midstokke: Growing my own food and other lies

Ammi Midstokke

I am staring out across my garden plot. It has been yielding incredible crops of golden rod and knapweed for the last few years. This year it is going to produce vegetables. So many vegetables, I will not know what to do with them.

This is the fantasy I have as the Captain meanders by in his chainsaw chaps, like some fluorescent logger cowboy. He is headed straight for an giant red fir, dead and dry and begging to be dropped. By the looks of it, he’s just the man for the job.

He nods toward the expanse of field and weed and rock I keep referring to as “the garden” and sighs.

“I thought you weren’t going to grow a garden this year,” he says. He is suspicious that I might ask him to help. Apparently the list of Things To Do When You Own a House is growing uncomfortably long.

I have made an observation about our different priorities when working the land. When I gaze out from my deck, I see flower beds that need planting, cute little streams, ponds that need lilies, and a blossoming garden with a ridiculous amount of zucchini.

He, on the other hand, sees firewood and any project ever that justified the purchase of a pickup truck and a trailer – and providin’ sustenance, a la the wild animals that traffic our land all day. Talk of deer and moose tags is common.

“We could grow so much food, we’ll hardly have to buy groceries,” I lie.

It reminded me of this friend I have. She suckered her husband into buying cashmere sheep to finance her knitting habit. “It will be so much more affordable if I just have my own sheep and make my own wool!” The sheep are just yard decoration but they look lovely. I’ll still buy vegetables.

“We need firewood,” he says as he picks up his trusty saw and crushes a path through the golden rod.

Heat the house, feed the house. Both fall under basic needs. My garden will be amazing. The fire will be roaring.

I am tearing away impossibly at dead weeds. The ticks are crawling up my legs as I wade through the dry and broken stalks, ripping and yanking and digging until my hands and arms are exhausted. In the distance, I hear the chainsaw buzzing.

The children set up a viewing station on a mossy outcropping of granite. They stand and wait for the tree to fall. The buzzing continues. There is the occasional chink-chink of an ax.

The minutes tick by as I crawl around the soil discovering secrets of its past: Blueberry bushes decimated by moose, wild raspberries, and patches of rhubarb that bring the first spring color to the land. The tree is still standing.

An hour goes by, then another. Buzz chink chop buzz. The forestry cowboy stomps up to the house in a determined gait. The children get bored and build yet another shelter of sorts (elves and gnomes will discover a completely prefabricated village on our land) while they sit and wait. A dozen new fairy houses are manufactured.

The Captain disappears into the trees again. The chainsaw chuffs and chortles in the distance. I move onto the next row.

By lunch time, we’re all wondering how such an abused tree can actually still be standing, but lumberjacks are not fond of such observations.

The children give up on their post and the silent logger storms and stews his way past again. He mumbles some things about dull blades and various woodsman frustrations as he goes inside and closes the door with a thud, I assume to slam some whiskey. It’s quiet in the yard, just the spring breeze and the soft chatter of fairies float in the air.

Then the tree falls.

It was a fantastically cataclysmic crash and crumble, followed by the whud-thump of thousands of pounds of wood on soil.

I return to my hoeing and shoveling and listen as the kids squeal with delight and run inside to report, God help them.

The Captain comes out with a stevia sweetened root beer – because we’re impressively boring like that – and sits in the garden.

“So you’re going to garden the whole thing?” he asks, looking out at the hole in the sky where the fir once stood.

I break into some economic discussion as to how much actual produce one can yield in a garden of this vast size and soil richness. Imagine the squash! The kale! I can grow artichokes and asparagus and an entire winter’s supply of sweet potatoes and carrots and cabbage!

I left out the part about how I don’t actually know how to grow a garden. In fact, I have rather a reputation for killing house plants. I can raise radishes, because if you dropped some seeds in the driveway, they’d grow. Mostly, my gardening attempts only seem to attract gophers and draught.

We may have to invest in presto logs and the farmer’s market this year. Neither of us seems to care as we’re sitting in the afternoon sun watching the kids traipse through the creek. This place fulfills so much more than our basic needs. It warms the heart and nourishes the soul.

Ammi Midstokke can be contacted via email at ammimarie@gmail.com