...My Grandpa Was a Farmer

This afternoon I called my grandmother and we got to talking about the vegetable beds. I told her our fall garden is starting to come up, and she said, "Well it's just about time for that, dear." And then I told her that I like to think my grandfather would be proud of me, now that I have a small farm in my backyard.

My sister and brother and I grew up on my grandparents' farm, our house nestled between fields of corn, cotton, and maize. My grandpa raised cattle and had a big garden in between our house and theirs. My mother inherited his green thumb, and now I have a feeling I got a little of it too.

And then my grandmother said something interesting: "It sounds like everybody has a vegetable garden nowadays. I mean, that's sure what I've been hearing."

Hold the phone, what's that? Even my grandma knows that backyard farming is coming into the norm? And I'll just come out and say that she's not getting this information from all the hipster blogs she's reading. No, this comes from network television and what she reads in the newspaper.

This is totally encouraging. Friends and coworkers are telling me that they're venturing into gardening—one took the simple step of getting a galvanized metal trough, filling it with dirt, and picking up a packet of lettuce seeds. She and her husband are tired of second-guessing how clean grocery store lettuce is, so they're going to grow their own. Another friend is excited to move to a house so she can try her hand at square foot gardening. And good friends of ours have been sharing their amazing okra harvest with us (we like it tossed in olive oil, sprinkled with sea salt, and grilled until they're charred).

Are you jumping on this backyard gardening bandwagon? What questions do you have about getting your garden started or keeping it going?