I asked my participants to write a short biographical sketch about their gardening experience. The following is one that I really liked. I did not edit it so there could be grammatical or spelling errors.

My husband and myself both work at our little community Prison.( well for now – it is closing )

We are raising two boys. Corey is 16 and Connor is 9 years old.

Needless to say our grocery bill is quite large. I started watching and budgeting how much we was spending each month on groceries and needless to say BOYS EAT A LOT. ( About $600.00 a month lot )

Connor also has a long story about foods affecting his behavior. I know some people will never believe this and I wouldn’t have either if it had never happened to my family.

I know people have heard about the growing Autism in our country. Well long story short when Connor was younger you would have called him Autistic.

Years into research and prayer Connor got much better. Yet he still has some behavior problems that are so much worse after he eats certain foods.

Some examples are processed foods ( bologna, sausage, hot dogs/ tomato products – pizza, spaghetti , anything with red dyes )

This lead me into a deep research about all the ingredients in these foods and if they can effect a child like this what are they really doing to our bodies that we don’t notice.

Along came all the organic foods and then it hit me.. Garden..

I have always enjoyed growing anything I could get my hangs on and if it was going to help our family be more healthy why not.

Gardening also brings back good memories of when we was little and my parents would take us to the garden to help. I think we all eat way to much processed foods and if one little garden in my backyard could help make my family healthier and I got a little exercise out of it in the process why not? After all we all know that food does taste so much better when you really work for it.