| Cover story |
From the Editor
By R.D. Hohenfeldt Managing Editor Where has the year gone? It’s already August, so it’s almost time for school to resume. Those of you who are serious gardeners and have kept your growing plots weeded and watered have been pulling lots of produce out and will continue to do so this month. The really serious gardeners have planted a fall garden for a fall harvest. What
if we had to grow all of our own food? For fun, I recently reread Little
House in the Big Woods, by They had a good life, at least according to the story (which is shelved in the juvenile fiction area of the library, not the non-fiction section, so I don’t know how much of it is true), but there was little time for anything except work. There was no running off to the lake for the weekend, no trip to the gambling boat, no day at Six Flags or Silver Dollar City. They were constantly busy in the garden or in the fields, planting, weeding, picking and preserving. They were always on the lookout for a way to add something to their diet without expense. Pa Ingalls one day saw a bear by an old tree, swatting something way. Pa figured it was bees, so he got a big stick and chased the bear away and robbed the hive, so they had honey throughout the winter. How would you like to chase a bear, rob a hive and then find enough containers to keep the honey for several months. It’s a whole lot easier to go to the supermarket and buy a jar of honey or one of those bear-shaped bottles of honey. Most of us, even the poorest, have a life of ease, because we don’t have to scratch (literally) our food out of the soil by raising produce, picking berries and nuts, hunting for our meat or raising animals to provide us with meat and milk. We don’t have to do as the Wilders did, get out in the hot August sun and dig potatoes or pick tomatoes. On a hot August night, we can cut a slice of chilled watermelon, kept cold in the refrigerator, something the Wilders didn’t have. Our society is fortunate to be able to live as we do. We need to remember that and be grateful to everyone who has made our life of ease possible.--RDH |