Howard and Stella Stevens, who had built our home and lived there for thirty years, called their land in Mapleton “The Farm”. They also owned several acres of land behind us where they had pasture for their sheep, and a large orchard. On a corner of their property they had built their home and planted many fruit and nut trees and berry bushes, grape vines, and a very large garden on the third of an acre which they sold to us.
They lived next door to us in a smaller duplex which they also had built. Though they were very kind, especially to our children, and very supportive to us as we struggled to learn how to care for their old home, we quickly decided that we never would sell our home and then live next door to the new owners. Though they were in their 70’s and had experienced many trials, I think we were a major one. They worried when we didn’t water the lawn, or when we heavily pruned an overgrown bush, and I thought Sister Stevens was going to cry when she saw that I had changed her contact paper on the kitchen backsplash and by the stove.
We tried many of the things they suggested such as using a hand grinder to make plum/pineapple jam (took all day) and using a fence post they stored in their sheep shed after we scrubbed it clean, of course, to pound apples into pulp to make apple juice. It took me the rest of the day to clean all the splattered apple juice off the walls and cupboards. It never occurred to us to do this outside like they probably had done. What amazed me was that we did all this again the next day and all for a few cents worth of apple juice!
At first we even planted most of the back yard in garden as the Steven’s had done. When our broccoli had yellow flowers all over it, we realized that we had no idea when to pick vegetables. I even remember when Garrett was still working evenings, having to put on big rubber boots and get a babysitter so I could stand out in our backyard late at night. I waited and waited for our turn at irrigation only to find out hours later that the water had run out before it got to us, the last house.
For a short time we even followed all the instructions to spray the garden and trees every couple of weeks. Our acceptance of how things “had to be done” only lasted until an early summer day. Garrett had put poison on the strawberries as we had been instructed. I was concerned about our two young children eating the poison. Garrett assured me that they would never eat green strawberries. Remembering eating my grandmother’s green strawberries when I was a kid, I wasn’t so sure. The next day Julene was ill from eating green, sprayed strawberries. That ended our time of using poisons in our yard or home.
We weren’t sure what to do about bugs though. One day I looked up at our apple tree and saw these small caterpillars up in the tree. What could we do?!! After looking at them for a few minutes I realized that not only am I smarter than a bug, I’m a whole lot larger. I reached up and picked the three leaves which had tiny caterpillars on them and stepped on them. Problem solved! That’s how we became Organic Gardeners.
Though we tried for several years and did have some fun having “grasshopper roundups” where we “herded” the grasshoppers onto a sticky board, and the kids enjoyed earning money by picking our sweet Lambert cherries, we soon gave up farming. We quickly tired of weeding, picking raspberries, and all the cherries, peaches, apples, grapes, apricots, and plumcots. Then there was all the canning, juice making, fruit drying, peach and apple pie making then freezing the pies, and all the vegetable freezing. Though it was satisfying to have our two freezers full and to see the rows of grape juice lining our pantry under the stairs, it was too much!
Garrett was not only going to school full time at BYU, but he was also working full time commuting two hours each day to the post office in Salt Lake. My health wasn’t good, and I had two children under the age of three. Yes, it didn’t take us long to realize that farming and canning definitely weren’t for us.
Soon, most of the garden was planted in grass giving a large yard for the kids to play in with only space left just enough for small kid gardens where they grew peas, and for them to dig large pit forts. Harvesting consisted of the kids sitting there and eating their peas as they picked them. Slowly, the fruit trees grew old and were removed as the land morphed from a farm to a suburban backyard for our children. We also changed from blindly following other people’s advice, to prayerfully making our own decisions. Garrett and I finally knew that what we wanted and it was a home, not a farm.
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