The scraggly green plants had little to show for their more than two months' growth. Certainly when I pulled up the first plant from the straw bale it had been growing in and found little more than a mushy mess instead of a clump of new potatoes, the inevitable seemed to have happened. Plant after plant told the same sad story. Our venture into straw bale gardening had come up short. Really short. Months of watering, watching, and waiting for a bumper crop of potatoes had not worked out. We tried, but in the end one thing was for sure.
It was our successful failure.
Back in the early days of March, Mike lost his job as the manager of the local hardware store here in town. The day that the door closed for the last time and the store went out of business was the beginning of a different pathway in life for us. To go from having two paychecks coming in each month to a time of learning to get by on only one, was a brand new experience for us. Immediately Mike filed unemployment papers, started the online job search, went to interviews for possible positions, and waited. For well over 5 weeks, there was no prospect really in sight and it was unnervingly scary to be sure.
In between looking for work and refiguring our life here along the Red River, we both took to the backyard to make some improvements we'd been planning on all along as well as get our garden going for the spring. Last year Mike had made a series of raised garden beds, all from scrap material that he had accumulated throughout our time here. The only thing that was lacking was good soil in order to fill the bed up to a reasonable level. All along we had figured to spend the $500 or more that it would take to finish adding enough soil to get the planting started. That was before Mike lost his job and now we were faced with the prospect of limited funds for the unforeseen future.
We made the decision to go ahead and get a single load of soil and build up one corridor of the garden area. It was disappointing, really disheartening to think that our plans would have to be altered in such a way. We had been talking about getting enough soil all winter long and I found myself dreaming of how wonderful the garden would turn out this year. I remember kind of moping around out there, wondering what on earth could we do to make it work out. For a moment, I felt like just giving up, and then came the idea of using straw bales to grow things in.
Mike had picked up 20 nice bales this past fall over in Haynesville and brought them home to be used as part of the layers in the garden. They were arranged neatly in one of the corridors just waiting to be utilized this summer. I remembered seeing that someone had used that kind of technique before, this growing things in straw bales, and had great luck. I began to think.
Why not us?
Couldn't we give it a try?
And so we did.
With about $10 worth of seed potatoes, Mike and I set out to try and plant them in the straw bales. It worked out great with 9 bales and 3 plants inside each one. As we placed them in, my sullen disposition began to lift. No longer was I fretting and worrying about whether or not we'd make it until Mike got a job. Instead, I felt like we were taking control of the situation and not letting it control us. I was happy and as I patted some earth around the last one, I felt such satisfaction in knowing that there is always more than one way to do something.
Even if there's not much money to go around.
In April, Mike found a new job and went to work immediately. We took turns each evening keeping the straw bales moist and hoped that the potatoes would do what potatoes are supposed to do. A couple of days before the hailstorm in late May, I noticed that they were beginning to bloom. When the first hailstorm of the season hit later on in the week, most of the plants were mowed off by the wind projected ice pieces. They never really came back from it.
At first I felt like maybe this had all been for nothing. We'd spent more than our fair share of time out there as we tried to nurture little Yukon Gold potatoes to sprout and to grow. Water came down from Heaven and out of the garden hose spout. Weeks and weeks went by.
Nothing happened.
I began to realize something this morning as I walked out into the garden to see how everything else was doing. I walked past those straw bales and in my heart I got a message and the message went something like this.
"God must have known we would not need a bushel of Yukon Golds in late June near as much as we needed hope that everything would work out ok in mid March. That's what the planting was all about anyways. We just had to wait a while before we saw it."
For the record, we made it just fine.
Thanks be to God.
In May of 2015, Mike and I took out from our old home in southwestern Colorado, climbed over the big mountain, and came down upon the plains of northern Texas. We had no jobs and no home to live in. We had no earthly clue of what the future would hold for us here along the Red River. The past 3 years have brought some sad moments as well as many wonderful times. We vowed to stick together, no matter what and that's our plan still.
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