GOATS, RABBITS, CARROTS AND A BAR OF SOAP

Written by: Attila Farkas

Do you listen to certain music that takes you back in time and gives you the feeling of childhood memories, dreams, aspirations, promises, and friendships? I am not a huge fan of Trailer Park Boys, but the opening music reminds me of my childhood. Running down from our farmhouse to the potato fields, passed the two giant walnut trees and after a two hundred meter run, rest up a bit on the riverbank and study the water for signs of fish. I remember the smell of freshly cut grass and the aroma of the golden ripe pears that had fallen from our only pear tree. We hurriedly picked up a few with my brother, Peter and made sure that there are no yellow jackets on them before we ate a few. They gave us the energy we needed for fishing with our bare hands under rocks in the river.

When I was a kid I never thought about pollution in the river because we had none. I have never worried about pesticides, or herbicides and other chemicals because we did not use any. It never crossed my mind that the healthy, clean, natural environment was the most valuable treasure a child can ever experience. We had wooden swords and castles made from cornstalks, our pets were rabbits and goats. If we wanted eggs for breakfast we had to go out and find some in the giant haystacks on the farm that the hens used as a nesting ground. We picked the potato bugs by hand from our potato patch because we didn’t want to use chemicals. Those childhood memories seem like fairy tales now from a distant past and I often tell my kids stories about our crazy goat that stole bagels and cigarettes from the local store and ate the bar of soap that we left outside. The stories about the homemade bread and butter that tasted better than anything you can buy in the store and the carrots that grew as big as half of your arm.

Instead of yearning and wishing, I have decided to give my kids some of these experiences even if I had to transform my backyard into a vegetable jungle. I have created a living fence that keeps our dog, Nero out built a tree house that backs onto a rooftop garden, where everything is organic. Even in a small backyard, we have had a thousand heads of lettuce, hundreds of tomatoes, countless cucumbers, lots of yellow beans, sunflowers, corn, sweet peas, and other organic vegetables.

Please let me know if you want to hear more about the crazy goat, or receive some organic gardening tips. I welcome your questions and comments. It is January 20, 2013. In about two weeks I will start planting hundreds of tomatoes seeds by the sliding window in the kitchen. I feel the gardening fever coming on and I can’t wait to get my fingers green...