News flash - vegetables don't always come bubble-wrapped and beans, when picked fresh from the vine, actually taste good.
But, as any gardner will tell you, it takes a lot of work to grow your own vegetables but for New Westminster residents Peter and Mary Joe Dawe it's a labour not just of love but for the taste buds.
"They just taste better," acknowledged Mary Joe as she plunged her hand deep in the foliage of a tall pole bean plant to pick out a sample as long, and slim as a pencil.
She dropped it into a sack of its bean brothers and sisters - the bag must have weighed a couple of pounds - and handed another to the reporter. The fresh bean was as crisp as an apple and tasted just as sweet and there were hundreds more treasures just liked it tucked away in Mary Jo's bean plants.
Wearing a broad-brimmed hat and dark glasses, Mary Jo deftly snapped the beans from the vine while she talked about what she would do with the produce once she got it home. After snapping, washing, bagging and freezing the beans, she'd have enough to keep her and her husband, Peter, in beans until next spring.
The Dawe couple, formerly of Port Moody, have been tending their rented plot at Colony Farm Regional Park Community Gardens in Coquitlam for about seven years and grow hundreds of pounds of produce for themselves and the foodbank. Besides beans, they grow butternut squash, cabbage, potatoes, peas, garlic, onions and herbs.
"Just the things we like," said Mary Jo, who grew up on a farm in Iowa and knows a thing or two about growing, storing and cooking vegetables.
But no tomatoes. "They are too much work," she said. Blight is a problem in the soil and while they could set up a small greenhouse on their plot to keep the plants healthy, they'd rather spend their time on more durable produce, which they freeze or store in rubber containers in their apartment storage locker.
WATERLOGGED
This wasn't the best year for growing your own organic veggies, especially down at Colony Farm, which was pretty much under water until July 1. The Dawes have raised beds, which helped a little but still planting was delayed. Other farmers have put down bark mulch and straw to protect plants. "We're about a month behind," Mary Jo said, but if the good weather continues, she'll be harvesting into October, some winter crops a little later.
Besides tending their own plot, the Dawes take part in work parties to keep the seven acre organic garden in tip top shape, a requirement of participating in the community garden, along with membership fees and annual dues. Recently, the farmers started a neighbourhood composting project, which Mary Jo is pretty proud of, and the flowered borders, bird houses and closely-shorn lawns make the seven-acre garden a lovely spot.
If there's one thing that bugs Mary Jo, though, it's the theft of the five-fingered kind and she thinks few people understand the personal investment in money and time that goes into the gardens. But she'll never give it up.
"I love it because I know its organic and I know where it comes from. It's good exercise and it's part of my heritage."
And the beans taste good, too.
