When I was 6, I was told that I couldn’t leave the dinner table until all of my broccoli was eaten. My mother woke the next morning to find me sleeping underneath the table, broccoli still uneaten. But, I consider myself one of the lucky ones because my family actually had a vegetable garden while I was growing up, and although I hated to be assigned the chore of weeding it, I quickly learned to appreciate that fresh, homegrown food tasted better than anything you could ever buy at the grocery store.
We had a vegetable garden for several reasons; to save money, to know exactly where our food came from and how it was raised, and to become little more self-sufficient. It didn’t take long for both my brother and I to realize that practically everything (including broccoli) was cooler when it came from your own backyard. Those early life lessons stuck with me, and that is the reason that I still grow broccoli, nearly 23 years later.