Our first summer on the little farm was the beginning of my education I guess. I was fascinated by the garden. Dad had shown me some of the seeds he was planting and I kept a close watch, curious to see if what he had said about food growing from the seeds he was planting was true. Sure enough in a few days when I went to check I saw some little brown beans coming up from the ground. I picked one up, wiped off the dirt with my shirt tail, and stuck it in my mouth. Biting down on it I got a very unpleasant bitter taste and headed for the house spitting it out on the way. I hollered for Mom and told her that there were some beans in the garden but they weren’t any good. That evening Dad explained to me that the beans had sprouted little roots and they were making new plants under the ground and that the plants needed to get out of the ground to grow and being so tender that the only way they could do that was to hide under the bean shell and push it up through the ground. Sure enough, the next day when I looked at them again the bean shell was lying on the ground beside two little green leaves.
I liked to follow Dad as he worked in the garden, digging, pulling weeds, and picking up rocks. He showed me some weeds that I could pull and some that I could not and when he carried rocks to a rockpile I would follow along with a handful of pebbles and add them to the growing pile.
That interest got me my first garden tool. A little four-pound lard bucket which to me was a real treasure. I worked twice as hard after that pulling weeds and carrying them from the garden in my bucket. I also carried little rocks in it and dumped them on the rockpile.
Dad got a wheel somewhere and made a wheelbarrow which he used but I continued to use my little lard bucket.
I suppose that little bucket got more use than any tool I’ve owned since. I carried vegetables from the garden, water from the spring, feed for the chickens, and used it when we picked wild strawberries and blackberries. When Dad chopped wood I would carry the kindling and chips in it that were used to build fires.
That little lard bucket was almost worn out by the time I graduated to an eight-pounder like the one my big brother used.