SEPTEMBER MONTHLY CHALLENGE

Harvesting Your Own Food is Part of My Culture

Growing vegetables and making your own meals is how I grew up

It is the harvesting season in the northern hemisphere while many people worldwide don’t get this season. They can simply grow food and all kinds of vegetables all year round.

Some people have no connections to farming and the harvesting of food. They grew up in cities, get their vegetables wrapped in plastic containers from the supermarket, and don’t understand why there are no strawberries available in wintertime.

Well, I feel pity for them. Because I grew up growing and harvesting all kinds of foods.

My history in farming

No, I did not grow up on a farm nor have I studied agriculture. But I grew up with small garden plots my parents rented where we grew anything and everything from potatoes, corn, tomatoes, onions, garlic, carrots, and much more.

As a young child, I was already preparing the ground, pushing seedlings into the soil, and learned not to pull them out immediately because they don’t grow so fast.

I learned what it took to get a carrot. I learned that not all tomatoes are red and shiny and I also learned how much work was behind growing all those vegetables.

Below you can see me together with my dad and grandfather getting dung us fertilizer for our garden. It was my job to protect that load.

The new garden plot

The first garden plot my parents were renting after coming from Romania was in the middle of huge farming fields. It was just a piece of land with a cherry tree, some berry bushes, and space for our vegetables to grow.

Later my dad got his hand on one garden plot closer to the village they still live in. The piece of land is in the middle of many other garden plots. People with different kinds of backgrounds grow their vegetables here, celebrate family get-togethers and just live the outdoorsy lifestyle.

With lots of farming experience from their upbringing in Romania, my parents planted fruit trees (which, now, 15 years later carry countless apples and other fruits) and berry bushes. They planted grape vines from Romania from which my dad is making very delicious wine.

Those grapes are always a hit-and-miss depending on the frost, hail storms, and other weather occurrences that can damage an entire harvest.

The berries are my favorite. When I’m there for a visit during the time the berry bushes are carrying fruits you won’t see me. I’ll be eating raspberries, blackberries, and strawberries until my belly hurts. And until my face is blue and purple from all the coloring.

Well, and then towards September and October there are too many apples to eat in a day. My mom will be making apple pies, apple cake, apple juice, apple puree, and whatever other recipes she’ll come up with.

And of course, most of those apples will come into our cellar. They will get stored for winter.

Then there are all the vegetables. From cucumbers, tomatoes, squash, onions, peppers, and zucchini — you’ll find them all in their garden. They sometimes also experiment with new plants such as fennel.

Oh, and while you spent so much time working in the garden, you also need to eat and sit together. Every other weekend there will be a bigger family outing and my dad will make a fire to grill not only vegetables but meat as well.

The season is almost over but blueberries are another favorite of mine. Living in the region of the Odenwald last year, my husband and I went often into the forest harvesting blueberries.

We even made a liqueur from them.

Moving my garden knowledge to my new home — Namibia

When I left for my biggest adventure so far, I left most of my gardening jobs behind. But not my knowledge. Once I had a piece of a garden again living in Namibia, I started growing all kinds of vegetables.

I had no knowledge about Namibian soil, what grows in the sand the best and what doesn’t but just went in for the adventure.

I planted seedlings. I watered them and watched them peek through the soil.

I placed them out in the garden, watered them some more, and watched them grow.

It was such joy.

Tomatoes were doing the best but radish and the rocket were also a success in the sunny weather.

The one thing I still had to learn about growing tomatoes was the lack of seasons we had in Namibia.

I simply assumed the life of a tomato plant was about 6 months because they died in Germany somewhere around October.

But here they didn’t. When I left for Thailand in 2019 and returned a year later the tomato plant had transformed into a tomato bush. With nobody left with knowledge on how to control the growth, they just watered it.

And the tomato bush kept on growing and it kept on producing fruits.

I was amazed.

And once again, I learned something new. While traveling.

Tomato plants will live forever.

Harvesting your own seafood

Different countries, different foods. And while I'm not sure you will call it harvesting, I named it that way for this article. Living on the ocean we got lots of food from the sea.

My husband is an excellent diver and will catch countless crayfish on a single dive in the rough Atlantic ocean.

My job was to prepare the crayfish. A friend of mine taught me the skill and I soon became a known expert in preparing crayfish (and eating it).

Displaying foods

This article evolved mainly around harvesting and growing different kinds of vegetables and fruits I learned to harvest over the years but in my next piece, I’ll go deeper into the variety of foods and meals we’ve eaten.

While my culture is a mixture of Romanian heritage with German upbringing, I spiced it up with Namibian traditions and my experiences from in between.

“Striving for success without hard work is like trying to harvest where you haven’t planted.” — David Bly

This is a writing prompt response to the monthly writing challenge of Globetrotters. Jillian Amatt has published the introduction to the prompt and you can read all rules and regulations here:

Last month’s topic was road trips, read about the wrap-up here:

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