Living the Good Life

Ooo children love digging! Helping to remove the last of the grass to make way for new veggie garden beds

I always dreamt of having a veggie garden where the vegetables would tower over my children as they walked down the paths, enticing them with a smorgasbord of flavours and smells. And there really is a lot of power in the mantra of choosing the life you would like to lead. Although my children are growing rapidly and the new veggie garden is not as yet towering over them I still garner such satisfaction from watching my fussy 'I-don't-eat-vegetables' 3-year-old picking fresh mange tout by the handfuls and happily crunching all their sweet nutritious goodness right there in the garden. My reasons for wanting to leave the city with my first-born and lead a simple country life with an emphasis on fresh air, open spaces and healthy living are coming to fruition and I’m realising that we’re living the life I’ve chosen and dreamt of.

“Joy is what happens when we allow ourselves to recognise how good things really are.”  - Marianne Williamson

Eating our own home grown veggies is such a vital element of living the good life because it covers so many bases, it’s the ultimate manifestation of thinking global and acting local! By growing your own veggies you cut out the whole string of events that finally allows a well sprayed and well travelled veggie from landing up on a supermarket shelf. I was so amazed to find out from a local organic farmer (who unfortunately stopped farming and selling at the local market because it just wasn’t viable) that although it was great that a huge national supermarket chain was buying her produce to sell at the local store, the poor veggies had to travel 300km to the nearest city and it’s distribution depot and then back again before landing up in the local store’s display fridge. Instead of travelling 15km from farm to shop they were travelling 600km just because they had to be part of the formalised distribution process! Crazy, but true. Especially when those lovingly grown organic veggies would have lost most of their nutrition on the journey. Veggies only have a set amount of nutrients and begin losing them the minute they are harvested as they consume their own nutrients to stay alive. So, the shorter the distance between farm and fork, the better. Which multiplies my joy when I see my children eating straight out the garden because the distance the nutrients are travelling is literally from hand to mouth! And I would far rather wander down the paths of a veggie garden with all it’s interesting diversions than down the aisles of a supermarket and ITS diversions with two small children. Any young mother will know what I’m talking about! Never mind the actual effort of getting them in the car, out the car and into the shop. I’d choose to walk down the garden path any day…

And yet the dream and the reality take time to merge, having our very own veggie garden has certainly met with a few obstacles along the way, which is why although we having been living in our cottage where the forest meets the fynbos for almost 5 years our viable garden is still very new. We are solely dependent on rain water and this water for our home has been too precious to use on the garden. So in order to water the veggies I had to walk down to the dam with a watering can, collect water and walk back up to the garden to water them. And because I was pregnant or breastfeeding for 4 years straight and at the same time we suffered a crippling drought where our small dam actually dried up, you can imagine that my lovingly planted veggies died a slow, hot death. It was very disheartening, but my focus was on nurturing and nourishing my own babies and not the plant babies and I’m happy to say they survived and thrived even though we had to make do with veggies that were not always local or organic. But that has all changed and the dream has become a reality thanks to a number of factors. We always had a grey water system which directed our bathroom water to a small garden and it produced some happy herbs and an artichoke or two, but nothing very efficient. But thanks to a groundswell Permaculture movement initiated by a passionate newcomer to our area we have all started working together in each other’s gardens and transforming them into productive spaces. It is the most satisfying endeavour to experience the true meaning of community. Our greywater garden was revolutionised in a day by a group of dedicated, spade-wielding friends, it was moved to a bigger space and the gradient was put to good use to filtrate the water through the landscape. It was truly humbling, inspiring and very exciting!

 Another factor which has made our garden viable was that our car port collapsed. Hmmm, yes, I did just write that. It was made with locally harvested untreated wood and the ants got the better of it, but it lead to great things. Firstly, the poles and latte were used to build a fence round the new veggie garden to protect it from our digging and dumping dogs, very important! Secondly, my actor/director husband built his very first structure ever, a new car port with a tin roof. And that meant we could harvest the rain from the roof and use it in the veggie garden, for the first time I would be able to water my precious seedlings without carrying water from the dam. And today was the day the tap was installed in the garden and the children and I braved the cold Easterly wind to turn the tap for the very first time, fill our watering cans and water the new seeds and the thirsty strawberries. I never thought I would experience such joy from seeing a tap on a post! Bliss! Round the supper table this evening we were all saying what made us happy and thankful today and when I asked my 3-year old boy what made him happy he replied without hesitation “The tap in the garden”. Well, that sums it up then, we certainly are living the good life!

I have learnt 1. To choose to live the good life  2. To be patient and  3. To endeavour to make dreams a reality… with a little help from my friends.