TIME TO REAP
WHAT OTHERS HAVE GROWN
Journal of Healing – Sept. 17, 2003

By Mary Koch

If people who heat with wood are twice-warmed, then people who grow vegetable gardens are twice blessed. Maybe even thrice.

Gardeners are blessed with bountiful harvests – so bountiful they can't use it all. So they share with non-gardeners, and that's their second blessing.

I’m not a gardener, which makes me a highly desirable friend at harvest-time. Apparently there are so many bumper crops this year, even friends of friends are sending me their produce.

"How’re you doing for zucchini?" asked one desperate gardener.

"Sorry, got more than enough. Several other people were here ahead of you."

"OK," she said. "Just remember to keep your car doors locked."

She was referring to the joke about people stealthily leaving their abundance of zucchini in strangers’ open cars.

Harvest bounty is not without its irony. Despite our best efforts, our farmer’s markets and our food banks, we who already have so much continue to have too much when too many have too little.

My husband and I add our own twist of irony. We’re the updated version of an old nursery rhyme. Instead of "Jack Spratt could eat no fat, his wife could eat no lean;" we’re more like "John is in no mood for food, and Mary is quite the contrary."

Ever since his stroke nearly 10 years ago, John’s nutrition has been poured into him via a tube surgically implanted in his stomach. He has worked steadily to regain the ability to chew and swallow and has made significant progress.

But healing, like life, does not follow a straight and steady path. John’s desire to eat hit a Mariner-style slump just as food donations began flowing in. More food than one woman could or should consume on her own.

Along with glut came guilt, instilled by the generation that raised me. They survived the Great Depression – and never let me forget it. No morsel of food could be wasted. As children we were admonished to belong to the "Clean Plate Club."

Even as an adult I once scraped the tired remains of an oft-reheated casserole into the garbage. My mother-in-law caught me in the act and exclaimed with horror: "That’s wicked!"

My late mother-in-law’s judgment still rings in my ear as I survey the real-life cornucopia in our kitchen.

Some years ago I wrote news stories about strengthening our rural economic base through "added value," enhancing natural resource products before shipping them out. Now I find myself doing the same thing, motivated by the economy of using fresh produce before it goes bad.

I cook and bake and freeze. A casserole or pot of soup is shared with an elderly neighbor who lives alone. The gardener is now thrice blessed.

Sometimes I turn the tables on the gardeners. The other day I left a small loaf of zucchini bread on the front seat of a pick-up truck belonging to a couple who have shared generously from their garden.

Then I got to thinking about it. Maybe a mysterious gift wasn’t such a good idea. In today’s world we worry less about waste and more about anonymous threats to our security. Even a loaf of bread still warm from the oven could be perceived as a danger.

I called to confess my good deed. They’d already figured it out and by the way, would I like some more okra?

(Mary Koch writes about health care issues and her experiences as a family caregiver. Her husband, retired newspaper publisher John E. Andrist, was severely disabled by a stroke in 1993. They welcome your letters at P.O. Box 3346, Omak WA 98841 or e-mail them.)