Forking Tasty

‘Mata’s

When I was a little kid we always had a garden. I hated it. It was a lot of work. When you are 5 the last thing you want to do is clean up weeds, pick ripe specimens and protect the growing crops from horn worms, flying things and the occasional 4 legged mammal. The garden was large, about a third of my backyard at its largest. That translates roughly into a 40×60 foot plot of peppers, radishes, tomatoes, zucchini, carrots, lettuce, blueberries, strawberries, eggplants, cucumbers and all types of herbs. To add to my misery, I found little logic with the garden and its yield. In the height of the summer we could barely the pick ripe fruits and vegetables fast enough, let alone eat them. This led to a weekly delivery service run by my parents with my brother and I as the primary delivery boys. We would bring crates of tomatoes and zucchinis to our neighbors on the block without as much as a dime. The occasional pat on the head and a “tell your mother she is too kind” was about as rich as we got.

As I look back now I see…