Gardening: A way to cut expenses on food.

Hello, everyone.

We all depend on food for our survival as humans; the energy to go about our everyday activities is generated from the food we eat. Failure to eat simply means that we won't have the energy to go about our day to day activities. The importance of food cannot be overemphasized. It is necessary that we consume food to stay healthy and energetic; we cannot just consume any food but food that contains at least the six classes of food. I doubt if there is anyone out there who does not know the importance of food and the important role it plays in our lives.

_{designed in canva.}

I never believed a day would come where I would ever see the importance of farming. I so much dislike farming, but the country's economy became rough, and now we see the importance of my mom's little garden and farms and how it supports the family. When she first started, we thought she just wanted to stress us out, but not anymore.

_{mixed cropping as always, cassava farm with maize planted.}

It is quite disheartening when I see people with white collar jobs speak so lowly of farmers or treat them wrongly. Many people with white-collar jobs do not know that our livelihood totally depends on what these farmers produce. If the farmers fail to produce anything, then we all suffer hunger and starvation. Farmers are the only thing standing between us and suffering famine, hunger, and starvation. Farmers are of great value to every country's economy. Farmers contribute greatly to economic growth, and without farmers, the country's economy comes crashing.

Living with a mom who is hardworking and only aims at doing things that will help and support family growth really exposed me to a lot of things. She made me see the importance of owning a garden, and even if I leave home, I would love to have mine. It helps cut expenses; you cease to buy a lot of things as long as you have a garden of your own. Most importantly, she practices mixed cropping in her small garden. Aside from having a farm where we process cassava, her little garden even serves as a better source of food compared to her big cassava farm, where only cassava and maize are cultivated.

_{fluted pumpkin and pepper stem.}

Currently, in her small garden, she cultivates fluted pumpkin (called ugu in my country), which we use to prepare soup every now and then, as well as sauce for rice and even yam. Her small garden has also been a source for pepper, okra, water leaves, and curry-scented leaves. Our town suffers from drought, as there hasn't been any rainfall for the past three weeks. A lot of crops that were planted have started to wither, and experts say if care is not taken, we might suffer a kind of famine this year. Many people have been complaining and ranting about how their yam stem ended up drying up after germination. It is cause to worry, and we are in need of rainfall before things get out of hand.

Rain or no rain? My mom's little garden stays fresh, as we have made it a habit to water the garden every morning and evening. This has helped the garden survive the drought. Owning a garden gives one access to eating freshly harvested food directly from the source, but as much as we are in contact with the source of our food, that does not mean we should cut off the use of prepackaged food. We cannot cultivate everything, even if we try to, so we need prepackaged food to combine with our farm produce and eat healthy.

Thanks for reading my post.

_{This is my entry for day 2 of the InLeo monthly prompt. You can join by clicking the above link.}