[RebelRidin]

When I was a kid my father had a couple old upright freezers and a refrigerator that he buried in the ground up against the garage wall. He used the refrigerator for winter storage of turnips, parsnips, carrots and rutabagas. He packed them in straw, sawdust and newspaper depending on what he could get. The freezers had their doors removed and boards attached making sloping frames that he laid his salvaged storm windows on. He would start one hot bed late in the fall and my mother grew various salad greens in it. The other one he started in late winter to grow his transplants.

I remember standing out behind the garage with Dad and men from the neighborhood who had happend by on chilly Saturday mornings to say hello and share a cup of coffee. They would talk about their garden plans and arrange for Dad to get to them when he borrowed his brothers tractor to plow. Invariably they would take a peek to see how Harry's hotbed was coming along. It was a good time. Winter was nearly over and spring was just around the corner. At least everyone hoped it was.

Dad always had many more plants than he could use and except for Mr. Drusselmeyer (who grew his own super-sized prize winning strains of cabbage) he supplied transplants of cabbage, brocolli, cauliflower, tomatoes, peppers and sweet potatoes to what seemed to me at the time to be half the town. The first ones passed out, of course, were to those folks who had happened by to stand out in the cold and peek in at the seedlings when the blanket came off in the morning. Gardening wasn't just something everyone happened to do, rather, it was part of our lives and our community.

Some really good things can come from manure...