Back to the land

Taken from the land, many of us are happy about it, but many others miss it. My grandmother and my mother were both gardeners to some extent. I lived in an apartment for many years where gardening potential was minimal. In my early 60s I went out and bought a house almost enterely because I wanted to garden on my own turf.

Here's a story from Garden Rant about a German lady who migrated to Canada in middle age in order to farm.

...her younger brother got the farm, and she started a heating and plumbing business with her husband and was very successful. Then in middle age, as often happens in middle age, she suddenly no longer had any patience for anything that kept her from the life she'd always wanted. She couldn't stay where she was. Land in Germany is so expensive, there was no way to assemble a farm if you didn't inherit one. So Marl sold everything and got ready to drag her two small children and her husband out of their home, their country, and their culture and head for Canada to become a dairy farmer. ...

She told me, "I was about to leave Germany when I ran into someone I went to grade school with. I told him I was going to Canada to farm, and he said, 'Oh, that's the kind of thing young people do, not people our age.'

"'No,' I said, 'I am going to Canada.' So he said jokingly, 'Maybe I'll move to Canada, too.'

"'No,' I said, 'you're too old. You've been an old man since kindergarten.'"

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