The vegetable stand

The vegetable stand
Originally uploaded by mlehet.

When I was growing up we had a huge garden, it was at least 2 acres.

We had everything from potatoes to cucumbers to bell peppers, tomatoes, beets, carrots and my all time unfavorite - green beans.

It's not that I don't like green beans, it's just I never liked picking them. I don't know why, they're actually pretty easy but it just took forever to pick and I always hated that.

We had such a large garden that we used to sell vegetables on the side of the road. We live way out in the country, but there's a major highway that runs right infront of our house.

We started out with just a little table and a jar. The stand was mostly on the "honor" system since it wasn't busy enough for someone to sit there all day, plus we had chores to do. But we never had any problems with people, they were always honest.

Somewhere around 1978 or so, my Dad built this shed for us. It was a great building, it had two rooms with a swinging door between them and the whole front had a door on it so we could lift it up to show we were open.

We would sell so many vegetables during the summer that we used the money to pay for our school lunches during the year. Of course lunches were like 35 cents back then.

I remember in the summer we used to fill the back of our pickup truck with fresh picked corn and sell out in a matter of hours. We used to sell a dozen ears for a dollar and when we raised the price next year to a buck and a quarter people about went mad.

This other time we had rutabegas and this woman from the country asked us why there was dirt on it instead of wax? I guess she didn't realize they came out of the ground.