The Rural Voice, 1980-04, Page 33Zucchini anyone?
BY GISELE IRELAND
Our marriage usually gets pretty rocky
when I pull out the seed catalogues and
wonder what to order this year. Last year I
vowed never to plant a garden again after
what I go through to get it harvested. Upon
discussing this with several friends I find I
have lots of company.
Men seem to feel that the hoe was
invented for women only. My husband felt
the hoeing was too hard too so he bought
me a garden tractor. Now I am a good
strapping hunk of woman but no football
half back and that is what it takes to run
one of those things. They take you
everywhere but where you want to go.
They run out of gas at the most
inopportune times and get stones stuck in
them and stop.
It has been suggested that the stones be
picked up in a garaen but I'm sure mine is -
on top of a quarry and they grow up every
year. It would take all the joy out of my
kids' lives not to be able to turn stones over
and bring me nice fat worms. They have a
weird fascination for the furry ones or the
ones with lots of legs.
I never get the darned thing plowed in
the fall because my husband is mucking
around up to tits armpits in mud to get the
corn crop off. I would like to get it plowed
in the fall with a good dressing of manure
but what I want and what I get are
different things.
He offered me the use of the wheel-
barrow at the other farm to manure Toad
the plants but when I went over I found it
had no wheel and only one handle. Some
help. It would only take a few minutes ofthe
;master's time to bring a few bucket fulls
on the loader but I can never catch him at a
good time. Come to think of it he hasn't
had a good time for it in 15 years. Some
track record. Maybe I'm not using the right
persuasion. I wonder if you printed the
message on a two by four and got his
attention with it if it would catch on? I 'd
better be wearing good running shoes
when I try it.
Everything on this farm is fertilized and
weed sprayed for weeds except my part. .
. the garden. I have a test plot for every
weed variety grown in Ontario and then
some. When my husband does plow it, it's
with a huge tractor and five furrows that go
over everything, fences, lawns, rhubarb;
and me, making obscene gestures at him,
directing from a safe distance. The big
equipment they have now can't go around
little corners and the whole thing looks like
a bad patchwork quilt when he climbs
grinning off the tractor and expects praise
for a job well done.
I also have to protect it later from my
father-in-law who loves to tease as close as
possible with the atrazine spray. Every
second year the cucumbers and beans die
agonizingly and he tells me it couldn't have
been him because he wasn't close enough.
He's even worse on the swather because he
zealously becomes a one -man army to
campaign against weeds and the garden is
his first choice. I have a heck of a time
convincing him that there are tomatoes,
pumpkins and potatoes hiding in those
weeds that I want.
The kids really love the first harvestof
gardening, except for the stuff that is good
for them like spinach. My son decided one
year that he had the last zucchini he would
ever eat and axed the plant to death.
cooked them every way possible, fried
them, baked them and even made pan-
cakes out of them. All the kids would ever
do is gag on them.
My son likes fresh carrots and pulls them
out regularily to "check" them. You can
imagine how many carrots make it through
the summer. The fresh peas are another
attraction, if only they would eat the peas
and leave the bushes in the ground so the
rest of the peas would make it too. You can
figure on half the bushes pulled out by
greedy little fingers when the first pods fill
out.
They also find that those nice green
tomatoes make terrific balls for baseball
practice on the lawn. Such are the joys of
the happy gardener around here.
Just think of the work and blood
pressure relief I will get if I don't plant one
this year. Just think of the things the
neighbours will say when me. . .a farm
wife . . . buys all her spring vegies?
Well, maybe I'll make a deal with the
head honcho and see if there can't be
negotiations made to suit us both. Maybe
when he reads this it will shame him into
co-operation?
HOW IT WORKS:
20" disc. blades, mounted on individual pivots, are
rotated by hydraulic motors to cut bean plants off
below ground surface. Each pivot -mounted section
rests on two depth wheels. Two or three windrows
are produced, depending on the number of blades.
The Smyth Bean Cutter can be mounted on the front
or on the rear of a tractor. This compact machine is
not bothered by mud or trash.
Canada's first rotary bean cutter is a product of
the George Smyth Welding and Machine Shop.
THE FIRST NEW IDEA IN BEAN
PULLING IN 70 YEARS
SMYTH
Welding and
Machine Shop
RR 2, Auburn, Ontario (519) 529-7212
PG. 34 THE RURAL VOICE/APRIL 19au
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