Returning to Her Roots: An Organic Food and Flower Garden in Minnesota
(Page 3 of 3)
March/April 2009
By Margaret A. Haapoja
Bounty for everyone
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Every year, Jennifer’s plants attract more wildlife into the yard. “As we added flowers and more nectar plants, butterflies, snakes, toads, frogs and birds came in,” she says. The family has counted seven bird nests, including bluebirds, house finches and chickadees.
Last year, Jennifer planted butterfly- friendly plants such as purple coneflower, swamp milkweed and Joe Pye weed. Emma and Dylan spend hours transferring monarch caterpillars from overcrowded milkweeds to less-crowded ones. Milkweeds are the only plant monarch caterpillars eat, and the family grows them all over their yard. The children bring several chrysalises into the house so they can watch the butterflies emerge 14 days later. With a butterfly book, they learn about them and about beetles that destroy some of the chrysalises.
By November, the Behms’ larder is filled with provisions to last until spring. At 40 degrees, the root cellar keeps potatoes, pumpkins and squash fresh all winter. Shelves in the basement shine with canning jars—60 quarts of a tomato-pepper mix for chili and burritos, 50 quarts of string beans, 20 quarts of pickles, 50 pints of jams and jellies, and 20 quarts of crabapple sauce. Two freezers overflow with bags of strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, broccoli, rhubarb and shredded zucchini. Dave brews beer with homegrown hops, and Jennifer dries basil, dill, amaranth, poppyseed, chives and baking beans, as well as catnip, catmint, spearmint, rose hips and rose petals for tea. In a few more years, a new orchard will provide apples and pears for pies.
“A lot of people wait to garden until they retire,” Jennifer says. “I can’t imagine that. There’s so much to learn that they’ll never catch up. I hope to live to be a really old woman so I have time to plant everything I want to plant.”
Margaret A. Haapoja left her teaching position at Greenway High School in Coleraine, Maine, to be a stay-at-home mom years ago. She and her husband have gardened at their Minnesota lakeshore home for more than 40 years.
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