It may appear that I am obsessed with parenting and adoption, and while it is my priority, I am nearly as emotionally involved in food production.

For some reason, this endeavor has always made me deliriously happy.

That’s a good thing as I take my role as food provider for 39 children seriously. I want to teach, model and enable good nutrition and there’s no better way than in growing one’s food organically.

Children coming from backgrounds of lack and deprivation such as my kids, all adopted from the foster care system, are always amazed to simply walk outside and be greeted by delicious food, seemingly free for the taking.

Trying to raise my children as green as possible, I find the garden and compost piles to be perfect teachers.

All of my children enjoy picking the produce, some don’t even mind weeding, but I’m the only one who bounds outside with joy, eager to plunge my hands in the dirt, dreaming about soil structure, and now I know why. I’d always figured it was simply therapeutic; a remedy for my own PTSD after years of absorbing my children’s anger at their pre-adoption circumstances.

This month’s issue of Organic Gardening explains what I’ve known internally for years.

“A common soil bacterium, Mycobacterium vaccae, is an effective vaccine for leprosy. Researchers began to evaluate its value in treating asthma, TB and cancer. When cancer patients treated with M. vaccae reported feeling inexplicably happier, neuroscientist Christopher Lowry, Ph.D., of the U.K’s University of Bristol injected mice with the bacterium, then examined their brains. The mice’s immune systems were stimulated, causing brain cells to release serotonin, a mood-altering, pleasure-inducing hormone.”

There you have it. Maybe God planned it that way to make us hunger for the work of food production?

I’ve found total fascination from my children as they’ve picked fruits: cantaloupes, watermelons, strawberries, figs, blackberries, blueberries, pears and raspberries. Many vegetables are all the more palatable when grown and picked from the garden.

Not everyone has acreage but it is amazing the pounds of produce that can be picked from same square foot plots. Edible landscaping is the key.

These are the memories that my children carry into their adulthood; the strawberry smoothies, tomato and cucumber sandwiches, handfuls of berries and the very strong taste in home-grown produce that’s not found in the tasteless products of a grocery store. Opening a jar of home-grown fire hot pepper sauce in the winter with its pungent summer-reminiscing fragrance just can’t be purchased.

We have one lone watermelon left to cut from the garden. Its lonely self sitting on the kitchen counter, a joyous reminder of warmer temperatures and swimming outside. If we eat it, then automatically it’s now autumn, we might just let it sit there a few more days for its ability to provoke smiles.

For children, adopted as older children and once so traumatized, I have very few years left in which to pump them full of happiness and decent childhood memories, and the feeding and nurturing of my kids is of utmost importance both to me and to them.

Photo Credit Tony Bodie