Grandmas' Gardens
My Polish grandmothers had their backyard gardens in a prairie city. North of the 40th and West of the 2nd Meridian. Fairly dry. Cold winters. Hot summers. Four distinct seasons. About 120 days growing season. Big blizzards in winter. Massive thunderstorms and hailstorms in summer. Highs in the 90s. Maybe even 100. Winter lows to minus 40.
My mother’s parents farmed out in the country before they retired into the city. Their gardens were on their land near a correction line. Do you know what a correction line on a rural gravel road system is? Hint: It has to do with the lines of longitude according to which the Dominion Land Survey marked out a section of land. One mile by one mile. Six hundred and forty acres. Soused teenagers regularly rolled their pick-ups when they would miss the correction line 90 degree turn at midnight because sometimes the curve signs were shot out with 22’s. You can’t do a 45er at 60 miles an hour. They just didn’t seem to learn.
Both grandmothers knew the exact day to plant outdoors, having started their tomatoes in the house.
They taught us the right depth for peas, beans, lettuce, cauliflower, onions, etc. They showed us the right distance apart, the right row width, and the way to water initially.
They hired me to till their gardens with our gas powered tiller. Seconds after I was finished, they were barefoot, feeling that rich warm topsoil which they remembered from the old country, working their way up the rows, setting out their strings to keep the rows straight, seed packages at the ready, and big smiles on their faces.
They would watch for the little shoots to emerge.
Then they would pray for rain or sunshine or against hail and massive flooding thunderstorms. Some years were great. Others were poor. In Polish they would tell me: “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away”.
Every day they were out there checking on this or that, plucking those little tares, contrary to the gospel that says the tares are to be left till harvest time when they will be gathered into heaps and burned!
They would eagerly bring those first tomatoes in or those first peas.
My dad’s mother used to make dandelion wine. We have no idea what her secret mixture was, or even when she did it. But to a 15 year old it was pretty cool to have her sneak me a glass.
They taught me about potatoes.
When my friends were at the beach on the May long weekend, or on the July holiday or the Labor Day weekend, we were planting, weeding, hilling, digging and bagging tons of potatoes from what looked to us like mile long rows! We used to load our station wagon and pick-up down to the limit of the shocks.
What’s my point?
Well, they were entrepreneurs.
They bought some seeds but mostly made their own. They had secret weapons against crows, cutworms, cabbage worms, potato beetles, and all the other devilish pests that lay in wait for such poor old women. Powders. Shiny tin lids from soup cans hung to reflect sunlight. Odd concoctions of liquids that would kill caterpillars on contact. They eventually would bring out poisoned powders that they bought at the hardware store in desperate moments. They could shake their finger at crows and I think those crows became a little bit more careful. Don’t get between grandmothers and their gardens!
My son recently told me that crows remember their enemies to the second or third generation and will recognize and attack their enemy months later and next season too.
Grandmothers don’t swear. But I learned certain Polish expressions that I later learned are not in the Kosciuszko Foundation Polish dictionary.
Their customers were their families. With pride they would fill up the potato bin, can all the produce in jars labelled carefully with the year. They kept strange little coded lists with yields, weather information, and soil conditions.
They had a grandmother network in which they would share information, in Polish, after Sunday Mass, secretly doing competition analysis under the guise of friendly chatter.
In the evening they would go out just around sundown and water the plants by hand with a watering can or, later, a hose. No automatic watering for them. Hand sprinkled amounts lovingly applied according to ancient rituals of how much and when. Then sit in the dusk and admire it all.
In the fall they would watch for first frost. For the first or second frost they might extend the season by covering plants with old sheets and towels carefully stored and brought out, weighted down with rocks.
They cut costs, watched the competition, and increased yield far better than Monsanto engineers. They didn’t know the term “regenerative ag” but they practiced it.
They knew how to measure inputs and ration everything to yield. Sometimes they would shade this section or under water another section. They knew the secrets of the little corners of their gardens. Companion planting? Ha. Way before the farmer’s almanacs taught this. Crop rotation? Ha. Before grain farmers figured it out. Flower borders and fence side rhubarb plantings? Ha. Better than the Ukrainian, Slovak and Serbian neighbors. Oh yes, the competitive atmosphere was on full display.
They did all the things you do as a business leader. We could learn from them. Too bad they didn’t write it down. Especially their potato pie recipe! I LOVE that and no one knows anymore how to make it. If you know how, contact me and I will do a deal with you.
God bless you and your family. You can be Catholic and successful in business. Believe it.
The Catholic CEO
Henry Kutarna