I was reading the ads for the local stores the other day and got to thinking about what really good fruits and vegetables we had when living on the farm! Mother was quite a gardener and had a good "Green thumb"! Seemed like anything she planted grew!! We, I say we, because when we got old enough, we did help plant our big vegetable gardens! Dad, of course plowed up the field and all and then we helped to plant the garden. We planted radishes and green onions which were the first "spring" vegetables. Dad planted three kinds of radishes. There were the little round red roly-poly ones, some red ones that were a little bit oval and white radishes. I think these were my favorite kind. Each kind seemed to have a taste all their own! Then the rest of the vegetables we planted were corn, peas, beets, carrots, turnips, parsnips, tomatoes, (two or three different kinds, all with their individual flavors! But all red tomatoes!) , lettuce, (leaf lettuce) cabbage, cucumbers, big old Hubbard squashes, (no Zucchinis. Never heard of them or summer squash till we moved to California!) watermelons, cantaloupes,string beans,and I could go on and on!!!! It was so nice to just go out into the garden and pick or pull up what you wanted to fix for dinner or supper! To say nothing of the fruit that we had in our orchard. Cherries, apricots, peaches, and pears. If we wanted apples we had to buy them!!! But the town of Wenatchee in Central Washington grew all that one could want and some of my Aunts and Uncles used to go to Wenatchee after their/our crops were done and work in the apple orchards and would make sure we all had plenty of apples in our cellars!!! Mother told me when I was a small one, before we moved to Everett, etc. that she could find me in the garden in the Spring eating radishes and green onions, dirt and all!! Now I can't even eat things like onions, radishes, lettuce, and a few other things that I so dearly love!!! When the watermelons got ripe we would "plug" them, (make a small inch cube right down into the watermelon while it was still on the vine and then taste it to see if it was ripe enough!!!) One year Dad let us put up a "fruit stand" in front of the barn. There was a spring up in the canyon that brought down ice-cold water to the barn, not enough I guess for the house water but Dad put a big tub under a faucet just inside the gate of the barnyard and we would drop those watermelons in that and then when the visitors who came from town to get their fruit for canning (peaches, etc.) we were right there, usually with a watermelon cut open and on a plate and would ask the people if they would like to taste the melon and see how good they were!!!!What money we made and we did pretty good for the times, we got to keep but by the time we divided it three or four ways, we didn't get rich. But did we care? Noooo! We were in the shade of the barn and had that ice cold water out of the faucet over the big tub and were were very happy!!! The people got a big kick out of us and I'm sure we got more money than what we were asking for our fruit!! I can almost taste those watermelons! What happened? Now the farmers or whoever, are so anxious to make that "Big" money that everything is picked green and ripened in a warehouse of some sort. Nothing tastes as good as in the old days!!! The farmers in California, my Dad used to say, water everything so much that there is no flavor in the farm produce!!! Father really DID know best!!!!
