What will the harvest be?

We have lots of large gardens.  In the spring, these gardens are filled with grand dreams of so many vegetables growing in perfect rows that people will be lining up to buy them with money falling out of their pockets.  (Imagine a screeching sound here)  What isn't part of those dreams are all the hours of sweat it takes to get rows of perfect vegetables.  Hours of mulching, weeding, watering and tending to the plants.  Hours in the sweltering sun.  Hours with bugs flying around buzzing in ears.  Hours bent over with your back telling you that hunched over is not isn't preferred posture.  Hours of hard work.

I am not about to go out there anymore and do all the hard work, lug the produce to the farmers' market, sell it while the kids go off with the other market kids and play and then hand part of the money over to them because it how they make their spending cash.  They are too old for that kind of coddling any more.  Last year I started a garden behind the garage just for our consumption and have been doing a so so job at it, we can see the plants and veggies anyway kind of job.  This year I planted the family garden but for the most part I am not out working the market gardens.  I mow back by the market gardens and helped do some planting and mulching and the beginning of the year a little hoeing but that is as far as I am willing to go any more.

The kids planted rows of cucumbers, a huge garden of tomatoes, squash and beans.  The beginning of July I told them, how are you going to find any of your produce if it is covered in weeds?  Fine, we will weed they told me.  Whatever, it's your garden and your profits.  While needing to bite my tongue, I did not say any more about it and for the most part was able to let it go.

Over the last month I have been doing a little PR work for them so they can get a few customers lined up for their veggies.  This morning Dad came home from work with the good news that a co-worker wants tomatoes, cucumbers and beans.  Out they went to pick with dollar signs dancing in their heads.  In they came crying and panting that it was too weedy and too hot.  News flash here - veggies grow when it is hot and humid and picking in weeds up to your waist is the reason you weed during the early summer.

So what will their harvest be?  Maybe a few dollars.  What could their harvest be?  Well, hopefully they will learn that next year.