Farmer B's Veggie Enterprise
Expect the Unexpected
My husband fancies himself to be a farmer. So, I was not surprised when he announced his intention to plant a vegetable garden behind our house. I did not, however, buy into his delusion that his green thumb endeavors would slash our grocery bill.
Seriously? Do I look like I just fell off a turnip truck?
No justification is necessary. If you want to go dig in the dirt, then fine by me. Just know up front, I don’t play well in that sandbox.
While I focused on minding my own business, Farmer B set about the business of preparing the backyard for his garden. This is a herculean endeavor few people would consider tackling, given that we live in sticks of the Piney Woods Region of East Texas. Our backyard is dense with vegetation, brambles, tangles of vines, trees, and thick foliage. Furthermore, it is home to all sorts of creepy, crawly, leaping, slithering critters that I never want to know about and certainly never want to see.
It’s a jungle out there.
The first task on Farmer B’s veggie tale agenda was to clear a patch of land, or in modern terms, to “repurpose the land.” That was easy. For a healthy chunk of cashola, five local workers were happy to bushwack, pull stumps and prepare the area.
I could have bought a year’s supply of fresh veggies at the farmer’s market for a fraction of what he forked over just to get the land cleared. But, if Farmer B was that desperate to get down and dirty in the backyard, then who was I to complain?
Next item on the agenda - two dump trucks full of topsoil were emptied in the yard. One was a load of loam, the other a load of manure.
Yup! Manure… stinking, yucky manure. Good old-fashioned, well-seasoned cow poo.
On second thought, I bet it was bull-turd. Understand that Farmer B is from the old school. His great-grandfather fertilized his garden with bull-splat, his grandfather fertilized his garden with bull-splat, his father fertilized his garden with bull-splat and, by gosh, his garden would be fertilized with bull-splat too.
Farmer B was pleased with his organic gardening agenda.
My dogs were over the top with excitement. After all, the biggest cow patty on this side of the canine pearly gates was dumped right in the middle of their backyard. They rivaled for top-dog position as “king of the poop castle”, then tested their mettle at four-paw-bull-poop downhill sliding. Finally, they honed their digging skills in the hound-bull-shpit-dozer competition. The winning pup, plastered with smelly muck, did a victory lap and roll.
I, on the other hand, was becoming very unhappy with Farmer B’s veggie garden project. Eau-de-Bovine is just not my scent of choice, I’m more of a floral type of gal.
I admit I might have become a tad obsessed about getting rid of the bull-tweet in my backyard. And I didn’t really listen when Farmer B expounded upon the benefits of fertilizing his garden with bull-plop. Neither did I bat an eye when he mentioned needing a new tractor to do the job. Of course, without said new tractor, it could take him weeks with a hand shovel to mix the mountain of poop into the other soil. And I absolutely HAD to see the new tractor because it was the best deal that ever just dropped out of the sky and conveniently whacked him on top of the head!
But, of course, if I didn’t think he should get it, he wouldn’t get it. He would just have to sweat it out and shovel the entire truckload of bull-schplit in the scorching Texas sun – if that’s what I wanted him to do.
Huh? Say what? Whoa! Whoa! New tractor??? What NEW TRACTOR?? What are you talking about? How many tractors do you need? What’s wrong with Old Blue?
Dumb question. Old Blue was a 1963 Ford tractor, a sputtering, clanking, back-firing old bucket of bolts running on its last cylinders.
Farmer B had me over the barrel with the gargantuan mound of bull-excreta in my backyard.
One new tractor was all it would take to get rid of the entire load of essence-de-bull? I knew I was getting snookered - he’d outplayed my hand. The dogs would just have to find another way to go renegade and come home reeking like buffalo butts.
Squash the cheap veggie garden theory. This little maneuver would cost Farmer B one serious chunk of change.
“Boomer” the new tractor, was delivered in all its shining blue glory. True to his word, Farmer B cheerfully put Boomer right to work and demolished the mountains of bovine nastiness and other rich brown stuff, spreading everything evenly around the backyard.1 The pungent odor was finally diffused. The dogs were deeply disappointed.
And that’s no bull.
Point to ponder: Did New Holland deliberately name this smaller line of tractors the “Boomer Series” to reel in Baby Boomer guys like Farmer B, who used to play with their toy tractors in sandboxes as little boys? Big toys for big boys?
Evidently, Farmer B and I had a bit of a disconnect communicating the size and extent of his vegetable farming operation.
How many veggies can TWO people eat? I could see where this was heading!
No, no, no. Absolutely not. I put my foot down. You’ve got the wrong gal, buddy! I refuse to sign up as head cashier of Farmer B’s Market Garden & Veggie Stand, hawking carrots, cabbages, and onions on the side of the highway, trying to recoup the cost of my Boomer husband’s brand-new Boomer tractor - the tractor that he urgently needed for spreading his bull-shod around in a timely expeditious manner… Trim the size of the operation down, Bucko, because we ain’t goin’ there!
Farmer B and I have been married for a long, long time, so he knows when to pull his horns in. Smart man, he made the executive decision to scale his veggie enterprise down a touch. He still kept the tractor, and the whole truckload of bull-snot, so he came out on top.
Of course, the garden is still a work in process. Currently, it has a six-foot fence around the perimeter to keep deer and other animals from dining on the vegetables. The blazing Texas heat can parch all but the heartiest of vegetation in the summertime. Plenty of water is essential. So, Farmer B installed an underground sprinkler system in the garden, with automatic timing options. And what garden would be complete without a potter’s shed and a greenhouse? Farmer B, the craftsman extraordinaire that he is, installed lighting, electrical outlets, fans, and a specialized sprinkler system in the greenhouse.
As long as I don’t have to sling cucumbers on the side of the road, he can do whatever his blessed heart wants with his downsized garden enterprise.
Surely you are wondering how well the first season of Farmer B’s vegetable garden enterprise has fared.
It has been hit-and-miss. Some plants have done very well, and others have bombed. Chalk it up to a growing experience.
Just this past week we had garden-fresh blueberries He had ONE and I had ONE.
And, we had garden-fresh carrots. He had ONE and I had ONE.
Farmer B checks the garden daily, for what he can harvest next for us.2
The prospect of his green thumb endeavor slashing our grocery bill any time in the future is looking very grim. Very, very grim indeed.
Recently, I received a telephone call from my son about Farmer B.
“Mom. You’ve got to talk to Dad. He’s working way too hard out there. All that building and gardening. He’s always got projects going. The man just can’t relax. He should be enjoying sitting on his patio, or out fishing. He’s getting way too old to be doing all that digging and stuff he does. If he keeps working like that, he’s going to have a heart attack or a stroke or something.”
To that, I simply responded, “Don’t worry about it. He’s happy. He’s doing exactly what he wants to be doing. If this is how he wants to spend his time, then that’s up to him.”
“Ya, I guess you’re right. That’s just him. But you know him… he can get a lot of projects going, and he’s not getting any younger. Do you keep an eye on him?”
“Of course,” I assured my son. “Every once in a while, he goes overboard, and I tell him to pull his horns in a bit. He’s pretty good about listening to me.”
“I know what that’s like. My wife has to do the same thing with me.”
“Hmm…. I’m not at all surprised. The apple usually doesn’t fall far from the tree.”
My son, Future Farmer B? He wouldn’t be the first, he won’t be the last. I’ll wager to guess, someday he’ll follow generations of family tradition and order a truckload of manure.
As the Good Book says, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”
There’s never a dull day being married to someone like Farmer B. I never know what major project he’ll tackle next.
He still has Old Blue. Today, for some reason, unbeknownst to me, he gave Old Blue to ME as my very own tractor! So now, we both have blue tractors. Isn’t that nice of him? I wonder why he didn’t give me Boomer, his new tractor? Hmmm???
To clarify information, for all my northern readers, in our region of Texas the vegetable gardens are usually planted in early March.
My dad had a garden every year. A bit bigger than your vision, about half the back yard. It definitely set us up for cucumbers and tomatoes and beans of various kinds. True about hit and miss when you experiment. The popcorn was stunted and didn't work, and it turns out you really can't grow peanuts in Minnesota.
Lol! That's not a garden, that's a F A R M! My husband and I are the opposite. I love planting and growing an ornamental garden, and I must say it’s been well worth the effort, because we enjoy the space around our families which is like living in a park. We live on a lot of land, and I’m tempted to fill it all in, but hubby says, no, enough is enough. We have a good relationship- I plan and plant, and he takes care of it all! So, I can’t blame him that he wants me to slow down!
Your farm looks incredible! ♥️