A Regular Gardner!

Today was beautiful and sunny and I was a little confused....is it really Wednesday? I worked today with Jan in her garden as Crissa, Michelle and another women worked to prepare the dock in the pond for the Memorial Day group that was coming in to camp. They are a group of women from Columbus who have been coming to SuBAMUH for 20 years to camp and relax. Jan told me they think of SuBAMUH as their Woodstock. My friend Kat is planning on coming out to take pictures for her class and I can't wait to see how many women show up and what it is like to have the campground full.


Jan and my first task was planting some sweet potatoes. They are strange, not a seed, and have to be kept in water before you plant them. You have to build up a mound almost 12-inches high and then plant the sweet potato in that mound, about a foot apart from each other. After we had three rows done and I was watering them a bit Jan started to wonder if Crissa's chickens would peck at the plants...the chickens, by the way, are so funny! They act like dogs and follow you around in a pack. They haven't come up to me yet, but Jan said that they have come all the way up to her and started to peck at her foot. I found it very interesting that they were so darn personable. After the sweet potatoes we planted four rows of corn. I had no idea that to plant corn you just use corn kernels...now that I write that it sounds very stupid, because what else would you use. Just goes to show that I am learning something different everyday! We marked the rows and moved on to plan these flowers she has told me about that grow 6-feet high. They are big roots and since the ground was so hard Jan had to bring out the rototiller. I had seen my parents use one before and never relaized it was such a crazy machine! So I used that for the first time to get the dirt turned up and the weeds out...I had visions of running over my foot and becoming an amputtee, but I managed to do the entire plot and still had all my toes. I then had to dig holes for all the plants, plop the blulbs in and cover them up. Jan helped cover them and I did too, getting down and dirty and just using my hands to scoop dirt overtop it all. As always, using my hands and watching something actually get accomplished is so rewarding. I am always a little apprehensive about working in their garden at SuBAMUH, because these women really rely on what they grow. Michelle last week was telling me how she tries to grow enough to support 4 people and Jan growns enough so that she hardly has to purchase veggies. I get so nervous that I will plant something wrong and ruin their harvest that I made sure to ask questions anytime I felt I might be doing something wrong. I can not imagine having to rely on what you grow to live...what do you do if your food doesn't grow and you haven't budgeted enough money? Of course I know that the women on SuBAMUH land would never starve of anything like that, but still it was a bit of pressure to make sure I didn't accidently rototill over the wrong thing.
This is one of my last weeks working at SuBAMUH, and I am partially happy about that and partially sad. I have learned just about as much about myself as I have about SuBAMUH, intentional living and women's communities. It has been such an experience for me and I feel blessed to have been placed here. I've still got some fliers and things to finalize and send over to them, but I just hope that Michelle and Jan and Crissa haven't minded me bumbling around with them for the past few weeks!