Everyday I’m finding on the kitchen counter more of the “fruits” of daughter Susy’s daily gardening harvest. So far, it’s green beans, radishes, tomatoes, carrots, pea pods, cucumbers, potatoes, beets, and zucchini. My granddaughter Josie and I helped with some of the planting but Susy’s done all the sweat-labor since. 

It’s likely that people like me who spent their formative years during the hunger years of the Great Depression, regard this kind of earthy God-designed bounty with the same reverence I have for it. And we don’t want to squander it. Waste not, want not! 

Of course, each summer the farm also produces several bushels of apples, pears, figs, grapes – more than anybody could eat or give away. This is – yes – forcing me to have to research how to build a still so we can market Kartar Ridge Ranch Genuine Moonshine. (You don’t need to mention this to the Feds).

Everyday, we’re consuming the garden treasures Susy’s hauling in. Yesterday, we had vegetable kebobs laced with Costco sausages, and today roasted vegetables with a roasted chicken (imported from QFC) and a side of dill-seasoned marinated cucumbers slices. Considering the fertility of this summer’s cucumbers, this is the year we’re going to have to learn how to “pickle”.

In the midst of all this plenitude though, I am continually haunted by a memory I wish I could forget.

I think it happened one Saturday in late winter when I was still a runt of 7 or 8 years old. I remember there was a kind of urgent frenzy of activity going on in the house and my mom and dad seemed stressed. When my mother gave the order, my sister and brothers and I all piled into the car. My baby brother Richard was up front with our parents, and Joan, Jimmy, Leo and I sat as usual in the back seat of our rattletrap family car.

This time though, crammed in with us in the back seat, were sacks full of food. We didn’t know where we were headed till we got there, but every kid in the car seemed aware that we were on some kind of an urgent, grim mission.

When we arrived, we discovered we were at the farm of one of my aunts and uncle. We kids expectantly hustled out of the car ready to play with our cousin Jimmy. It was odd, though. I can remember other times we were there before, our aunt usually sent us home with a bushel basket of harvest from her garden or a covered bowl of fried chicken. This time, though, my dad was passing out to my uncle the bags of food we had brought.

I was standing by the car when my uncle reached into a bag and grasped an apple. I remember the shock of watching him tear into that apple. He devoured it core and all. It was the first time – maybe the only time –  I ever witnessed, up close, the desperation of extreme hunger. And I never forgot it.

I didn’t understand it then, but I later learned that that scene was taking place on similar farmlands in the Iowa corn belt – which contains the richest soil in the world. Recovering from World War I, farmers borrowed money to buy more land or machinery, but after the stock market crash of 1929, the value of their crops dropped so drastically that they couldn’t meet the loan payments or could even afford the cost of reseeding and planting the next season’s crops.

Among those who became enriched by the ravages of the economy were the life insurance companies who owned many of the loans and mortgages held in the Midwest. My grandfather James Gorman had eventually acquired enough acres of Iowa farmland so that each of his sons could eventually have “a farm of his own”.

I have a childhood memory of fragments of recurring conversations among the Gormans in my family. They always spoke with resentment and bitterness specifically about one organization – the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company. It left me with the belief that that company had swallowed up the family farmland in foreclosure. And, in fact, in two states alone – Iowa and South Dakota – 750,000 farms were foreclosed on by similar insurance companies and banks.

One thing God may have appreciated about the Depression years, is that so many people always said grace before meals – even if it was just a plate of beans or a peanut butter sandwich. We’re too spoiled and over-indulged to remember to do it regularly now, but the next time we sit down to dine on the fruits of Susy’s harvest, I’m going to try to remember to say it!

“Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen”