A major aspect of the garden living lifestyle is the understanding of each season’s produce. In a culture where summertime fruits are available in winter, I feel that a true garden lifestyle is marked by the gardener’s knowledge of “in season” produce for the freshest garden experience possible. Having an understanding and knowledge of your garden and the land’s timely bounty is a must for garden living, for the rewards of this understanding are delicious. For this Farmer, knowing when peaches, blackberries, and other seasonal delights are at their finest is a memorable stopping point on the garden living journey.
As a Georgia boy, I have grown up under the shade of pecan groves and amidst the rows of peach fields. In fact, the Peach County line is only a stone’s throw from my home. Growing up on a farm lent the opportunity for an education with nature as professor, learning in relation to the seasonal and native crops perennially noting the time of year.
Each season is marked by its produce in my mind, a marking that has imprinted itself into a garden living mindset and thus lifestyle. I know we’ll have blackberries in late spring and summer, followed by peaches, watermelons and wild plums, muscadines and scuppernongs in late summer and into fall and finally pecans in the year’s latter months. From the brambles and briars yielding scores of deep purple blackberries to the fields laden with peaches, I have come to rely and respect nature’s bounty for its simplicity, its flavor, and beauty.
What do potato salad, corn-on-the-cob, watermelon, and bean salad all have in common? They're requisite summer cookout foods.
Summer is here and our bar-b-que is cleaned and ready to roll. I love summer grilling. Not just the food and the luscious flavors that come off the grill, but the whole idea of being outside. The bikes get used more, the art supplies emerge from the garage, and the use of “screens” becomes almost non-existent(the key word here is, “almost”).
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To be honest, I haven't been feeling very inspired in the kitchen lately. I've been busy with lots of things including travel, and when I'm home I've been trying to eat the food in the freezer since it is on the verge of overflowing. But yesterday I was at the store and I found local king salmon on sale and some beautiful white corn. I thought about the mango I had and just like that, a plan came together.