The Real Harvest: What we gain when we grow our own food.

As a child, I hated peas.

I mean really hated peas.

My Nan would let me get away with refusing them, but my Aunty would dob me in to Mum, who would then make me eat them. I developed a strategy: I would swallow them whole so I didn't have to taste them.

Then, many years later, I tasted a pea straight from the pod.

I remember the disbelief.

I had never tasted anything that sweet.

That little green pea completely changed my opinion. These days, peas are one of my favourite garden snacks. They can be a bit of work when you're standing at the kitchen bench shelling a big bowlful, but when they're this sweet and fresh, they're worth every pod.

And that's one of the reasons I think everyone should grow food.

Not because I think we all need to become completely self-sufficient. We don't.

Not because we all need acres of vegetable beds, a greenhouse and enough produce to feed a family year-round.

But because growing even one thing changes your relationship with food.

The harvest isn't just what's on the plate

When I walk out into the vegetable patch, there is something deeply satisfying about wandering around in the sunshine deciding what to pick for dinner.

There is no shopping list.

No packaging.

No wondering where it came from.

I simply look at what's ready.

Perhaps there are some beans, a few tomatoes, lettuce, herbs and a handful of carrots that have reached the right size. I pick what I need and wander back to the kitchen.

The food has travelled only a few metres.

It hasn't spent days being transported or sitting in cold storage. I know exactly how it was grown and what has — and hasn't — been put on it.

And then there is the taste.

People often talk about how much better garden-fresh vegetables taste, and they absolutely do. But I think texture is just as important.

The crunch of a freshly picked carrot.

The crispness of lettuce.

The snap of a snow pea.

The juiciness of a tomato.

I once picked far too much lettuce and put the excess into a container in the fridge. Two weeks later it was still as crisp and green as the day I picked it.

Try doing that with a supermarket lettuce.

It makes you wonder how long some supermarket vegetables have already spent in cold storage before they reach us.

We eat differently when we grow differently

Having a productive garden has changed the way we eat.

We eat more vegetables and we eat more seasonally. When something is growing abundantly, it naturally becomes part of our meals.

And we snack differently too.

Instead of reaching for something from the pantry, I might wander outside and grab a handful of snow peas. My grandchildren do exactly the same.

They raid the vegetable patch.

They eat peas, beans and baby carrots straight from the garden. They pick tomatoes. They even eat asparagus straight from the patch — something that genuinely surprised me!

And I think that is one of the wonderful things about growing food with children.

You don't have to convince them that vegetables are good for them.

They discover that vegetables taste good.

They learn which ones are ready and which ones need a little longer. They learn patience. They become curious. They are more adventurous about trying something new when they have been involved in growing it.

And there is enormous pride in watching something they planted grow.

My grandchildren check on their plants when they visit and are so excited to show their parents what they are growing.

They aren't just learning about vegetables.

They're learning about care, patience, responsibility and where food actually comes from.

A garden is good for your body

Let's not forget the physical benefits.

Gardening is a full-body workout without the gym membership.

Digging a new bed, moving compost, hauling mulch, planting, weeding and turning soil can be surprisingly hard work. Even everyday gardening involves reaching, stretching, bending, squatting, walking and carrying.

But unlike exercising for the sake of exercising, there is always something to show for it.

You might finish tired, muddy and a little sore — but you've also prepared a bed, planted something or harvested your dinner.

That's a pretty good workout in my book.

And then there's the soil itself.

We're beginning to learn more about the relationship between humans and the enormous microbial world around us, including the microorganisms we encounter through contact with healthy soil. The science is still developing, so I'm not going to claim that getting your hands dirty is a miracle cure for anything.

But I do think there is something wonderfully healthy about being outside, moving your body and getting your hands into the earth.

And then there's what the garden does for your mind

For me, this is perhaps the greatest gift of all.

When I'm stressed or upset, I go to the garden.

Within a few minutes, I feel different.

It's more than simply relaxing. It's restorative. It's grounding.

My mind seems to put my troubles away for a while.

I become completely present.

I notice the plants.

The smells.

The textures.

The insects moving between the flowers.

The feel of the breeze.

The warmth of the sun on my face.

There is something about working with living things that brings me back into the present moment.

The garden doesn't solve whatever problem I walked outside with.

But somehow, when I come back inside, I feel better equipped to deal with it.

Growing food gives us something else: confidence

I think this is one of the benefits we don't talk about enough.

There is a particular kind of confidence that comes from knowing you can grow food.

Not everything.

Not perfectly.

But something.

You know how to plant a seed. You know what a healthy plant looks like. You begin to understand seasons, soil, weather, pests and the rhythms of your particular patch of earth.

You learn what works.

You learn what doesn't.

And you learn that even when something fails, you can try again.

For me, there is also a sense of independence in knowing that I'm not completely reliant on an outside system for something as fundamental as food.

We live in a complicated world. There is so much happening around us that we have little or no control over.

I'm an optimist, but even I sometimes worry about what the future might look like, particularly for my grandchildren.

Yet there are things we can control.

We can choose what we eat.

We can learn how to grow food.

We can learn how to save seed.

We can learn how to preserve what we grow.

And we can learn how to care for the piece of land we live on.

That feels important to me.

Perhaps simpler isn't always worse

We've spent a long time believing that increasingly complicated lives are automatically better lives.

More convenience.

More choice.

More technology.

More things available to us at any hour of the day.

And of course, modern life has brought enormous benefits. I'm certainly not suggesting we all need to abandon the supermarket and return to some imagined version of the past.

But sometimes I wonder whether we've lost something along the way.

There is beauty in knowing how to do things for ourselves.

There is satisfaction in baking bread, growing vegetables, preserving food or saving seeds.

There is something grounding about knowing the seasons and understanding what your land can provide at different times of the year.

Perhaps we aren't meant to be completely independent of nature.

Perhaps we're meant to be connected to it.

You don't have to grow it all

This is something I want to make very clear.

Please don't read this and think that growing your own food means producing every vegetable your family eats.

We don't.

We still buy things from the supermarket.

It took us a long time to get to the point where the majority of our vegetables are grown here at Silky Oaks, and we're certainly not perfect.

But there are days when we sit down to dinner and realise that everything on the plate was grown here.

Those are the days that give us an enormous sense of satisfaction.

Not because we've achieved some perfect version of self-sufficiency.

But because we know that, for that meal at least, we grew our own food.

And that's something worth celebrating.

So grow something

If you've never grown food before, don't start by planning a massive vegetable garden.

Grow one thing.

A pot of herbs.

A tomato.

Some lettuce.

A few snow peas.

Plant something and watch what happens.

Feel the satisfaction of nurturing it from a seed or seedling to harvest.

Go outside and pick something you've grown yourself.

Taste it while you're still standing in the garden.

Experience the difference between supermarket fresh and garden fresh.

Because you never know.

That one little plant might start you on a journey.

It certainly did for me.

And perhaps that's the real harvest.

Not just the vegetables we bring inside.

But the confidence, connection, knowledge, health, memories and sense of possibility that we grow along the way.