Our garden is in full swing, coming into its own. Fred goes to the garden every other day to pick it. But this time, when Fred went out to pick it as usual, I felt sorry for him, and joined him. You see, it was his idea to plant a big garden, and his idea to never turn away a helpless little plant that someone might just discard. So, what if we have 15 tomato plants and umpteen squash bushes?

I dived in. Look out chiggers, here I come.

We picked at least 100 tomatoes. I counted until I lost count. Isn’t that crazy? We were thinking, “Oh man, in two days, we might pick at least that amount again. What will we do?

We hauled the veggies into the kitchen. I could see the well, dismay? Panic? Confusion? On Fred’s face.

What would we do with all of these? Of course we give some away, but this? And no, I am not going to can this year. We still have tomatoes from two years ago. Decisions, decisions.

I said ... brainstorm ...” I will call Mason, (our 9 ½ year old grandson) and get him to set up a tomato/cucumber/zucchini stand with me! After all, I don’t have anything else to do!” Fred replied, “OK, if you want to ...”  Me: “I think it might be fun!”

I don’t know how long it has been since I have made signs on poster paper with magic markers. But it has been a long time. Mason helped. Excited. But he really didn’t know how to do any of this, and it had been a while since I had sold lemonade as a kid. We would learn! 

We decided to run a 2-hour sale in our front yard. It’s a bit difficult to get to our house, but hey, this was short notice. I put the notice on Facebook.

Fred helped me get the card table, chairs, and tomatoes hauled to the front yard by the driveway. 

Once Mason arrived, we got situated and sat at our station. Staring. Waiting.

Selling anything is intimidating to me. If I had to make a living by selling, I would go hungry. But this was a cause, after all! The garden was going nuts.

God was blessing us. 

I cannot stress how nice people were to stop. And the learning curve for a little kid went straight up. Learning to make change, figure the total price, talk to people instead of mumbling, saying thank you, bagging the food. What a wonderful treat it was to watch this learning process and pride when he earned some of the money himself.

So now, it’s picking day again, and when I am writing this column, we are preparing spontaneously to set up another stand, but this time it will be in town on a corner where people can see us. 

Wish us luck!   

Judi Tabler lives in Pawnee County and is a guest columnist for the Great Bend Tribune. She can be reached atjuditabler@gmail.com.