For years my father spent every minute of his spare time in the garden, originally it was out of a pure need to feed the family. Times were a little hard financially when we were all kids and my father had been brought up in an environment of self sufficiency which not only meant growing vegetables in the garden but also included rearing and slaughtering a family pig to provide the meat for a year.
Hard to believe in these days of fast food and supermarkets, which supply every kind of produce that you can imagine from all around the world, that I am only talking about one generation removed where literally if you could not grow your own vegetables there was a good chance you were going to go hungry. Clearly over the years things improved and gardening out of necessity turned into gardening out of a love for it. There is a lot of satisfaction to be gained from growing your own fruit and vegetables, being able to put the freshest possible produce on the table and to have the satisfaction of having grown it yourself.
My father as he was, could not help himself from turning the extra he produced into a tidy little profit by selling it on to the local villagers who would be very happy to pay for the extra vegetables and tomatoes that were invariably available, he had in absolute abundance what we and many others referred to as ‘green fingers’.
