Gardening with Men

By Penn Parmenter / June 2016

“All men all the time.”  That’s what I say to people when trying to explain how I live.  Then I say, “In a tiny house – all men – all the time.” 

I like men. I’ve always gotten along famously with them.  Perhaps that’s why I ran off to the woods with my mountain man husband and made three giant boys.  Now that I’ve been gardening with men in the wilderness for 25 years I think I’ve gotten pretty good at it.  I try to learn their ways and then utilize that to my benefit.

I’ve heard tales about the difficulties some people have working together with their loved ones in the garden - the competition, even stories of drawing a line through the yard and each gardening half.  But for us, it started as a team effort since Cord and I were learning together.  We built one garden together and then another.

As the years went by and the boys came it became obvious that we each had our specialties.  For instance, I do most of the seeding and transplanting of all of our vegetable starts.  Cord started a second bio-intensive garden after we built mine in the trees, and has been developing it for many years.  He specializes in building whatever we need to grow, from wooden flats to greenhouses. 

We both plant and we both grow and we both defer to the other when we are helping each other with a specific project.  We ask, “How do you want to do this?”  Luckily we have plenty of room and beds for both of us to freely have our individual projects.  We learn a lot from each other.

We put our heads together to figure out what plant needs what, and then match the plants and the structure.  We add second covers or thermal mass if need be.  Cord designed the Tomato House taller in the back than the front so I can grow a double crop of tomatoes with the indeterminate (viners) tomatoes at the back and the determinate (bush) tomatoes at their feet on the offset in the front.  

In my forest garden, I have many 4’X 8’ wood garden beds so Cord made a 4’ X 8’ hoop to match the beds. I can easily attach it to any bed in the garden when I rotate crops, screwing it to the wood so it can’t blow away.

For many years my Mother’s Day gift has been an all day workday from the men in my life.  They have built hoop houses, tomato boxes, hail-guards, walls, benches; they have repaired shelves, fences and basically done all of the things I don’t want to do - all in one day.  I make the list for a year.  It’s been a brilliant plan for a long time and they seem happy to do it on Mother’s Day, even with the banter and the insults between them.

When they were growing up our boys just did everything we did, so digging potatoes, hauling wheelbarrow loads, shoveling compost in a spring snow, all seemed normal to them.  We often divvied up the work between the oldest two so they could wear music in their ears as they hauled wheelbarrow loads up and down the mountain-side.  If they resisted I’d shout, “Girls like pecs!  I promise – if there is a guy with pecs and a guy without pecs, they’re going to pick the guy with pecs!  Bring me another load!”

They would growl some answer as they passed by through the woods, and just when they thought they couldn’t take any more I would arrive with a snack or an icy cold beverage to take the edge off.  It’s a tasty way to say thank you and maybe, I’m sorry.

As for Cord – The Big Ol’ Man, our mighty leader - he has a mind of his own.  He patiently listens to me telling him what I want and how I think it should happen but I wonder if it’s too hard, and then he goes and makes something WAY better than I could ever dream up.  I used to ask him what he was doing or how he was going to do it.  I know much better now.  I describe what and why and then get the heck out of the way.  I come back later and gasp with joy.  That’s how to work with my man.  Go have an icy cold beverage and leave him to his genius. 

Two of my boys are in college and one is in middle school now.   When they are all home together working with Cord I call them “The Dream Team” and it’s true.  They seem to really like working together and look forward to coming home to help us build our new greenhouse or, as they did last spring, move the 20’ tomato house.  They liked figuring out how they were going to move it from one wall to another for crop rotation.  It is apparent to me that from a very young age, boys and men like to take things apart and then put them back together.  And that’s exactly what they did. Not saying girls don’t, I just don't know much about that.

The best gardening incentive of all is the promise of home-cooked food.  This is a very powerful tool, especially to college boys.  If I roast a couple of chickens or fire up the grill they seem to work harder and faster and happier.  When I come down the hill to pick the greens for the salad I tell them how the fried potatoes are coming along or what time the roast will be done.  They groan in anticipation.  If it’s elk pizza, I make four.  If I make a pie they tell me they love me.  This is one happy way to garden with men.

Even when they were little I can remember saying, “Move those rocks while I go make sandwiches.”

………

November 2025

It’s 10 years later and the boys are all gone. They had the audacity to graduate from college, get jobs, find stable relationships and make homes somewhere else. I miss them. It’s weird.

Last spring, as I was assessing the garden to plan my little seed farm, I decided that the usual prep that goes into waking up the garden in Spring needed to be different. I’m ten years older than when I had a crew of strong sons. I have arthritis in my hands and while I manage it pretty well, my knees and I know my limitations. Our beds are bio-intensive, a method that preps and feeds the soil in a way that produces a much higher yield. It also saves water and reduces weeding and space. Each year we would pull back the winter mulch, feed the soil with compost and/or horse manure and broad-fork it in. We’d rake, plant and re-use the mulch from the year before, adding more as needed.

I faced our 33rd growing season alone. No men in sight. So I planted straight in. I experimented, sprinkling carrot seed over the thin mulch instead of under it and pulling back the thick mulch just enough to fit in a single tomato plant with a hand trowel. When I troweled out my first beautiful, living, breathing scoop of fresh soil, I put it in my hands and gazed in wonder. It was so vibrant, worms were wriggling; it was crumbly and moist and dark and perfect. It smelled incredible.

As I stared at it for a few minutes, right there in front of my eyes was a vision of my family of men and all the work they had done, all the care they had given. Blood, sweat, tears and all those bantering insults had turned into rich, living soil. They were right there with me and it was as if I could hear the laughter and the fun and the shouts, and I didn’t even have to cook chicken.

I didn’t plant every bed last spring, there were too many. But it was ok, I planted the seed crops I needed and they all thrived, even the carrots. The fallow beds are chewing up the mulch that covers them, making that soil even richer for next year.

Thanks Men.

Penn Parmenter gardens and grows food and seed near Westcliffe. Both she and her husband Cord are regional high-altitude gardening instructors and founders of Smart Greenhouses LLC, a sustainable greenhouse design company, and Miss Penn's Mountain Seeds. You can see their work at www.pennandcordsgarden.com. Penn is also a spirited story-teller who is active on the Moth Radio Hour.