Back when I was not even a teenager, it was quite common for children to spend summer days in the family garden plot. Those garden were situated in villages around big cities - usually the birthplace of grandmothers and grandfathers, village plots with an old dilapidated house and a tool shed.
When asked by a curious neighbor over the fence what are you doing this early in the garden, the cursory answer was "helping grandma and grandpa". In hindsight, I think those days spent working in the garden were much more helpful, educational, character building and therapeutic for the kids, me included.
Those were simple, happy days, filled with sunshine, ripe fruit and vegetables, outdoor games... All my friends anticipated the summer holidays and the ritual of "going to the garden". The garden, for a child, was a place abundant of things to do and means of entertainment.
And it's a place where most literally food grew on trees! Being able to pick your own food and understanding the life cycle of a fruit or a vegetable was a turning point in my child years. I believe each child must know where the food comes from (hint: it's not from the supermarket!). Deep inside even at that early age I must have known (or sensed) this connection to soil, plants and Nature will be formative and influence me in my future life.
My grandpa Iliya (a slavic name, related to "Elijah"), without any conscious effort, was very inspirational when he talked with much love about his garden, the plants and Nature. And not just about trivial stuff like irrigation ditches, tomato stakes and hoses, but really interesting topics like germination, care for seedlings, dealing with pests and problems in the garden, propagation, grafting...
I remember vividly one late summer day, when grandpa gave me a pair of pruners and asked me to help him cut down the raspberries.
The usual reaction of a child when asked to do an unusual and potentially boring and time consuming chore is strong resentment. Mine was double that, because I absolutely love raspberries and the though that we have to cut them down made me shiver.
Ever so patient, grandpa Iliya explained in simple terms that the stems that already gave us raspberries won't be able to do it again, so we need to remove them in order to make space for new stems to grow and new raspberries to fruit.
Needless to say, I jumped to the task right away and started to cut with great vigor and without much care. Almost immediately after that flying start (and with much, much more care) grandpa started pulling raspberry thorns out of my palms.
Later in the evening, while in the car back to the city, I asked grandpa a hundred questions about raspberries. Why do their leaves fall, how do you know which stem fruited, what if you cut the wrong stem, where do all those stems come from?! and so on, and so on... Grandpa just drove on in silence, white knuckling the steering wheel. It was a good 10 years later when I learned he was not a very good driver at all, hence his stoic silence in the car.
But when we got back to the city, he presented me with a small book that contained all there is to know about raspberries! It must have been all, because back at that time I could not image a whole book with dozens of pages on a trivial topic, that I already knew all about - raspberries. You water them, you cut them, you eat raspberries!
During that summer, and many, many others, I learned why do you have to move and replant your strawberries regularly and how to choose the best plants, how to best harvest potatoes with a digging hoe without damaging them, why sometimes the irrigation ditch has to be wide or narrow, what to do with freshly cut hay, how to sharpen a spade, when is the rain a problem, why is the soil clumping and why you must not walk in the ditches, how to connect two pieces of hose, when is the best time to pick a tomato for eating right away or a peach to bring back to the city, how to make a scarecrow out of jar lids, why fertilizing can kill the plants... and countless, countless other things!
Things I remember I know when I'm thinking I don't know them. It's a sort of an instinct that was... cultivated.
In those 15 summers I spent helping occasionally grandpa and grandma with their garden, a strong and resilient bond with Nature developed in me. It's a state of mind that makes you dig your bare hands in the soil without worrying you'll get dirty. Because you know earth is not dirty, even if we call it dirt.
So, to answer the question of the challenge by @kiaraantonoviche and to conclude this very personal (and I hope inspirational) story, my grandparents were my favorite source of knowledge that set me on the path to sustainability and homesteading without even knowing it. I am forever grateful for the time I got to spend with them.
Dedicated to my grandfather Iliya (1925-2016) and my grandmother Lilly (1927-2015).
That's the last good photo I have of them.
All other photos in this post are from our family gardens.