Page 76 - Flathead Living Fall 2014

homE ExtEriors
as many delicious, healthy foods as economically as possible.
For example, Jan Kienas has been farming her 4-acre garden plot west of Kalispell for the last 44 years. Since 1970, she has grown as much food as possible for her family. Aside from battling frost, and ever-the-nuisance deer, Jan solves most other problems with a garden hoe – and her hands. Jan can be found tending to her chores in the garden that surrounds her home six days a week in the late summer and fall – sometimes for 16 hours a day. Her hobby may seem like a back-breaking job of more desperation than choice, but Jan summed up her passion just as tidy as her garden rows: “It’s therapy ... and it’s delicious.”
For Crystal Clark, gardening is a family affair. Three generations of her family work together to not only grow nutritious food, but to pass down
But fall is the most anticipated time in the garden spaces. A time teeming with energy as most vegetables finally reach their ripened state – or bumper crops of early veggies deliver delightful surprises.
wisdom and know-how from one generation to the next. Crystal has a few garden plots on the land she shares with her in-laws. Her sons Ezra, Jubal and Gideon make gardening seem like child’s play (which for them, it truly is).
And boys will be boys. Their mother Crystal and grandmother Ginger tended to the more difficult chores, as the boys used more unortho- dox gardening tools and methods for harvesting the evening meal for the family, including a toy dump truck (aka carrot hauler). The boys made work look easy and made life seem simple again as they snacked on fresh tomatoes plucked straight from the vine, or cracked open snapping, fresh pole beans while tending to their “chores” (and corralling wayward grasshoppers).
Indeed, for many across the Flathead Valley, fall is perhaps the best time to enjoy one of life’s most simple pleasures: picking food grown from the ground and savoring it at its freshest, ripest moment.
And in that moment, no matter the style, form, or function of the “garden space,” it becomes an other-worldly place. A place like no other, where even time seems to wait while savoring food straight from the garden. But such moments are fleeting and won’t come again until next year – when the garden transforms itself once again. FL
leFt In the time it takes to drive to the grocery store, Crystal Clark harvested a meal for her family – with unrivaled taste
and nutrition, and without pesticides and chemicals.
riGht Jubal Clark picks a handful
of radishes while helping his mother and grandmother in the family garden.
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FLATHEAD LIVING | FALL 2014