Garden/Allotment (Photo credit: tricky (rick harrison))
Steve Poteat, Unreconstructed County
When I was younger, most families had private gardens. My uncle plowed hundreds of gardens with his tractor. Even the houses with the smallest of lots in the city had small, personal gardens. Schools taught the youngest children how to start seeds and grow food. Most families canned much of their own food. Most everyone had a few fruit trees. Only the pecan trees remain. The more persistent and hard work produced the best gardens. Owners of their gardens took pride in them because they knew that they would enjoy the fruits of their own labor today, you don’t see many of these gardens in Salisbury or in the newer housing developments outside the city. It became easier to simply buy all your food at the grocery stores, or receive government food stamps.
Canning went the way of the dinosaur when women went to work in force and put their children in daycare. It was too much work. The call for collective gardens is another recent trend. I predict as a trend, it will not last. Like all collective schemes, socialism does not work. The altruistic people who will work to grow all this food – and it is hard, hot and dirty work, will only become disheartened when they see the lazy, and the irresponsible taking the fruits of their labor.
My grandfather lived on the corner of Boundry St. and Franklin St. He owned two, 50’ wide lots. On the corner was his large garden. He raised nine children while living there and raised much of his food on that garden. Later in his life, when he retired, he took much pride in his growing ability. He would sit on his front porch and watch his garden grow. He gave a lot of the produce away to his family. But, as the neighborhood went bad, he couldn’t keep the thieves from stealing out of his garden. When he went inside, they would steal him blind. Needless to say, he gave up his garden. If you go through that area of town now, you won’t see any sign of personal responsibility, including gardens. You only see the result of government and its parasitic recipients with their associated crime. There is nothing there now relating to personal integrity nor prosperity. If they would say, turn that old Cannon Mill property (which is a block away from my grandfather’s old home) into a collective farm, it would be a dismal failure. Though I suspect it would make a few liberals feel good.
Communists have always had a problem with food production. You simply cannot make people grow food productively and effeciently at the point of a gun. Especially when they have no vested interest in the fruits of their own labor. There is never enough to feed everyone. That is why famines are always a problem in collectivist countries. Only with private property and the profit motive do farmers produce an abundance. Capitalism produces excess of higher quality products but government collectives always produce low quality and shortages. Capitalism produces salesmen trying to sale and move excess products. Government always produces long lines of people receiving their “share” of the shortages from the bureaucrats. Those at the end of the line get nothing.
Of course, you already knew that
