Urban farming with the Nonagenarians

Robert Lewis Reid (American painter, 1862-1929) The Old Gardener 1920

non·a·ge·nar·i·an – A person who is from 90 to 99 years old

By Deanna Duke
Crunchy Chicken
March 3, 2011

Excerpt:

A few weekends ago I went to a book release party and ended up hanging out with the parents-in-law of the author. The dad had a birthday coming up that week and was turning 91. His wife was also turning 91 this year, in August.

I don’t know how we got on the topic, but our conversation turned to gardening, raising chickens and canning. They had been doing it all for decades and still grew a huge amount of food in their yard and canned like fiends every year.

They were excited to find someone my age so involved in doing something that, in the intervening decades had lost its “popularity”, so to speak. Having lived through the Depression and WWII, victory gardens weren’t something they did just during time of need. They were a wealth of information, sharing tips on pressure canning, canning peaches and nectarines and secrets of canning green beans.

Read the complete article here.

Also see “103-year-old gardener is Britain’s oldest worker”.