SPILL THE BEANS 🫛

Hey Dads! Does anyone at your house plant a vegetable garden?  Nine of our 10 kids are pretty helpful in the garden.  We have a 4-month old baby, Juniper, and she hasn’t helped in the garden too much, but I’ll let it go.  The teenagers are really helpful in the garden, the middle class is somewhat helpful in the garden and the younger siblings are…well, they’re definitely in the garden too. 

Our 3-year-old daughter, Mabel, needs frequent reminders to walk up and down between the rows of plants.  She likes to hop through the garden over plants, through plants and on plants, crushing the tender growth beneath her stomping feet.  Usually, her bare feet because for some reason Mabel is allergic to shoes.  Whenever our family heads out the door someone is calling out, “Does Mabel have shoes on?”.  No problem in August but slightly inconvenient in February.  Sometimes she just wears socks outside without shoes and eventually abandons the socks somewhere around the yard where I can run over them with the mower.  

In the last few weeks we’ve been harvesting beans, peas, and beets.  There is typically great enthusiasm when I ask some of the smaller kids to come help pick beans in the garden.  The picking begins.  Children are excited.  Beans are placed in buckets.  Many beans are consumed by children.  I’m okay with that.  After all, isn’t that why we grow them?

I have my head down furiously picking away like a madman and after a few minutes I look up…to find myself alone.   I hear voices of kids around the yard riding bikes or removing socks or swinging sticks at each other which are all good activities for kids to do.  But not the activities we set out to accomplish. 

Sometimes I’ll try to wrangle them back to the garden and sometimes I’ll let them frolic in the yard.  The older kids are pretty good at sticking to the picking until we’ve got a great big bowlful of beans.  My teen daughters even broke out the Mason jars last week and canned bunches of beans and beets.  Did you ever look at the price of a teeny, tiny bag of fresh beans at No Frills?  Where I live it’s $6.00 for a 400gram bag!  (That’s a small bag, by the way)  At that price point I estimate we’ve picked over $600 worth of beans from our garden this year.  The cheap dutch part of me gets really excited about that number. 

So, hopefully our garden is saving us some money even if 10% of the product is getting stomped out by 3-year-old Mabel.  The memories we’re making in the garden are priceless (as long as I can keep my cool when my precious beans are being destroyed).  The kids love eating the fresh vegetables from the garden and I love watching them.  If they’re working and picking that’s a bonus!  Time flies, dad!  Make every moment count!  Even the bare-footed bean-stomping ones!