# Our neighbor just asked us what are those plants



## SouthCentralUS

TOMATOES!!!!!

City folks, sheesh.


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## kyredneck

It is funny, and sad too, in a way. More than one'city slicker' friend of ours has been astounded by our asparagus patch(es). They see the ferny mature tops and for the life of them they cannot connect that up with the slimy mess from the can which is all they've ever known; but then, what really blows their minds is if they're fortunate enough to be around when we lightly sauté some fresh in butter w/salt and find out what real FRESH, properly cooked asparagus is all about.

I love treating newbies to fresh cooked asparagus. It never fails to amuse.


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## Country Living

SouthCentralUS said:


> TOMATOES!!!!!
> 
> City folks, sheesh.


At least they asked.... maybe now they will plant some. Baby steps....


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## notyermomma

I was gonna say! It's a teachable moment. Give your neighbors that gift by opening a new door for them. You never know what might come from it.


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## Wellrounded

One of the lessons I learnt early on with our volunteers is NOT to send them to the vege patch with a list of vegies to pick. 

Most have no idea what a growing vegetable looks like, and NEVER get them to pick herbs LOL.

One of the funniest incidents I recall was an 'experienced vege picker' she came in with half ripe tomatoes and a bunch of perfectly identical carrots. When questioned further she told me she had striped all the 'overripe' toms off and fed them to the pigs (a wheelbarrow full ) and also had fed all the under and over size carrots to the horses. Took a while to convince her that we like the toms red and the carrots can still be used if not exactly the same, even the forked ones


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## SouthCentralUS

Country Living said:


> At least they asked.... maybe now they will plant some. Baby steps....


NO they won't. Too worried about their nicely manicured lawn in the back that no one sees.


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## JayJay

Originally Posted by Country Living View Post 
At least they asked.... maybe now they will plant some. Baby steps.... 



Ha--ha..ha...I'm still laughing!!  NOT!!


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## *Andi

I had the same thing happen to me a few years back ... But mine was about the farm critters and not the plants.

It dose make one stop to ponder ...

http://www.preparedsociety.com/forum/f114/im-going-charge-admission-6882/index2.html


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## gardenshepherd

I've got a better one, when I told a visiting friend that I was looking forward to the milking my cow. Her reply stunned me, didn't know milk came from a cow and from that milk I can make butter, cream, yogurt, cheese, feed my pigs, the list go's on and on. Crazy


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## Wellrounded

gardenshepherd we had one visitor that absolutely refused to eat the vegies as they were grown in the ground, even the things that were no where near the ground (toms, peppers, climbing beans). I should have printed out some info about the amount of dead mice and insect parts allowed in canned food for her to read .


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## gardenshepherd

I cant give away fruit and vegetables, No one wants fresh food. My daughter takes in the fruit to the rest home to make dessert's for the people there. We have had a few ask if we are doing pigs again this year, husband told them NO, we do all the work, so we will be eating the bacon.


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## readytogo

Please don`t laugh,my sister had chickens, she never would eat the egg,she said they look dirty and my wife promise never to eat pork again after seen our pig slaughter at the farm,she claim that it was a pet.:laugh:


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## HardCider

I'll get slammed for this, but I see the stupidity and disconnect of people these days as a bonus not a teachable moment. If they can't identify plants such as peanuts, carrots, turnips, jeruselum artichoke or potatoes, let alone wild edibles and I plant them randomly in a permaculture setting to mimic an overgrown field instead of in rows or in a raised bed, I can still have food sources and have them right under their nose and under foot without them realizing. Same goes for managing for small game and wildlife to jack up food populations. People think their meat grows on Styrofoam trays and couldn't do something as simple as snare a rabbit or squirrel or quietly drill a deer with an arrow, let alone break it down and can it. In my book these are all good things


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## Country Living

IMHO, maybe we should be better at how we react to such moments. 

In the tomato example, this is a tomato, they are easy to grow, their flavor is much better than store-bought ones, and it's a nice way to start learning to grow something you can eat. Tomatoes can be grown in the ground or in pots for those people who don't want to turn their yard into a garden.

That seems to be a much better approach than making fun of the question with "hey idiot, haven't you ever seen a tomato?"

At least they showed interest. Sometimes the smallest teachable moments have the biggest rewards.


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## k0xxx

Years back we had a neighbor, a single mom with a couple of children in tow, who was going through some tough times. I brought her a couple dozen eggs and she refused them stating that she only eats eggs from the store, not from chickens. When I told her that the eggs from the store are from chickens too, she looked at me like I had suddenly sprouted horns. Oh well.


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## SouthCentralUS

Country Living said:


> IMHO, maybe we should be better at how we react to such moments.
> 
> In the tomato example, this is a tomato, they are easy to grow, their flavor is much better than store-bought ones, and it's a nice way to start learning to grow something you can eat. Tomatoes can be grown in the ground or in pots for those people who don't want to turn their yard into a garden.
> 
> That seems to be a much better approach than making fun of the question with "hey idiot, haven't you ever seen a tomato?"
> 
> At least they showed interest. Sometimes the smallest teachable moments have the biggest rewards.


I have let them pick lettuce from my flower garden and shown them the pots on my deck. They dont want to bother.


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## HardCider

Country Living said:


> IMHO, maybe we should be better at how we react to such moments.
> 
> In the tomato example, this is a tomato, they are easy to grow, their flavor is much better than store-bought ones, and it's a nice way to start learning to grow something you can eat. Tomatoes can be grown in the ground or in pots for those people who don't want to turn their yard into a garden.
> 
> That seems to be a much better approach than making fun of the question with "hey idiot, haven't you ever seen a tomato?"
> 
> At least they showed interest. Sometimes the smallest teachable moments have the biggest rewards.


You're 100% right. You are a kind and patient educator who probably always sees the best in people.


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## HardCider

SouthCentralUS said:


> I have let them pick lettuce from my flower garden and shown them the pots on my deck. They dont want to bother.


They don't want to bother until the day the shelves are empty at the store. Then they will take a sudden interest on what's growing on your deck


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## Country Living

HardCider said:


> You're 100% right. You are a kind and patient educator who probably always sees the best in people.


Kind and patient.....not really....  However, with age and experience I have, hopefully, gained a bit of wisdom.

There's a huge difference between someone being nosey and someone wanting to learn and the first 30 seconds in a conversation tells a lot about the person who posed the question. If one more person could be added to the prepping community - even if on a very small scale - then that's one more person moving in the right direction.

For people who live in town, it's difficult to know if you're attracting a friend or an enemy. For those of us who live in rural communities, we're pretty much all of the same stock. When we first moved out here many years ago, I asked neighbors to help educate me on certain things and they did. I'm thankful they didn't shut me down as a stupid townie who moved to the country. The farms and ranches out here, including ours, share our excess bounty. We know this area will be in good shape when SHTF.

And it all started with baby steps.


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## cybergranny

One day our neighbor had the laugh for the day. She caught a man snooping around our greenhouse. She queired him and he said
he was a
Dea agent and he was checking us out as he thought we were growing marijuana. Of course the plants were tomatoes. She exclaimed "those people" and continued laughing.


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## lovetogrow

In the early eighties our home went on the market (100 acres of beautiful apple, pear orchards...lots of deer and some moose too). 

This city gal and her husband came out to have a tour. I just didn’t like her snooty attitude, but when she saw the beautiful heads of broccoli I had just harvested she turned on to the idea of perhaps living there. It was obvious she was clueless about anything natural, and so I pointed out the little green critters that were on those heads, pointed out my sink of salt water for clean up, and I swear she shuddered from head to toe. She couldn’t get out of the place fast enough...just the reaction I thought I’d get because I really did not want the place in her hands (my bad :laugh.


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## weedygarden

These may just be random examples, but I have hope that when SHTF, we might be safer. The OCD and clean freak types will probably have a really hard time. 

There will be some who would never consider leaving the city. It is just too dangerous in the country! (Not)
There will be many who wouldn't know what to do with gardens and other stuff that is growing.
There will be many who wouldn't know what to do with it if they could get it! Cooking is something that so many think involves opening a box and heating it up. When the boxes of prepared foods are all gone, then what?

The things that I think would be most likely to get taken from a garden are the obvious: cukes, tomatoes, green beans, maybe some more.


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## TheLazyL

My little wooded area of heaven has wild raspberrys growing all over the place. I was picking and eating till I was full. So I picked a handful and took them in to the wife.

_"What's those!?"_

"Raspberrys"

_"Where did you get them!?"_

"In the woods"

_"That's outside!"_

"Yep."

_"They are dirty!?"_

"Well you can wash them if you rather."

_"NO!"_

Moral of the story?

Just because 44 years ago that beautiful long hair brunette wearing a short waitress uniform with a severe case of hip wiggle was country bred doesn't mean she doesn't have some big city moments later in life.


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## Viking

Wellrounded said:


> gardenshepherd we had one visitor that absolutely refused to eat the vegies as they were grown in the ground, even the things that were no where near the ground (toms, peppers, climbing beans). I should have printed out some info about the amount of dead mice and insect parts allowed in canned food for her to read .


Oh yeah, I worked for a guy that had a landscaping/gardening business North of Seattle and he told me about how much sand, dirt, insect parts and rodent hair was allowed in wheat shipments for overseas. My guess is that they didn't clean it up all that well before grinding into flour. Actually those who do their own canning are much cleaner and the thing we can are fresher and ripe. I've known people that had fruit trees and wouldn't eat from them but go to the grocery store and buy it.


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## PrepN4Good

DH was raised in Harlem, bless his heart...oh, the stories I could tell you! He still doesn't "get" how potatoes grow, no matter how many times I've tried to explain it (& show him).

DH: So how do you grow pickles?
Me: You don't grow pickles, you grow cucumbers.
DH:
Me: You grow cukes & pickle them. That's why they're called pickles.
DH: Huh.

I'm an okay gardener, truthfully, but he thinks I'm a magician. 

Oh, & my neice refused to eat the eggs from our chickens once I told her they eat bugs.


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## SouthCentralUS

These are really nice people but they frustrate me. I show them the lettuce I have in the flower beds and tell them to pick some. They have huge flower pots on their patio with flowers in them. I point to my deck and tell them you could also grow some tomatoes in pots out here. They have a very nice lawn front and back. Since they moved to our little community from the big city in PA they still live like they live in the big city. I remind them every winter about the big ice storm we had before they moved here and we were out of power for 2 weeks. They don't have a genny or any other way to heat or cool their house. They do have a barbeque grill but I bet not much food even after the warnings. It is just frustrating that a couple in their fifties would not recognize the most common garden plant in the US. I think they are upset that 2/3 of our small back yard is in garden. Maybe a privacy fence is in order but hope not.


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## tleeh1

I bought some bulk pop corn one time and the little check-out girl and box-boy (barely 18, I think) were very interested in what I planned to do with the seeds. They were astonished that I planned to make popcorn balls for Christmas gifts. Didn't realize, I guess, that pop corn didn't come in microwave bags!


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## Viking

I took a couple of black cherry seedlings to our neighbor on the East side and I was telling him about this post and he told me of his niece (I think it was) who had been raised in the country and knows how to grow things in a garden and she told him that she was afraid for her generation because they are so totally ignorant of where groceries come from.


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## notyermomma

Wellrounded said:


> One of the funniest incidents I recall was an 'experienced vege picker' she came in with half ripe tomatoes and a bunch of perfectly identical carrots. When questioned further she told me she had striped all the 'overripe' toms off and fed them to the pigs (a wheelbarrow full ) and also had fed all the under and over size carrots to the horses. Took a while to convince her that we like the toms red and the carrots can still be used if not exactly the same, even the forked ones


Why did the blonde got fired from the M&Ms factory? She kept throwing out all the Es, 3s, and Ws ...


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## notyermomma

Sorry ... double post. What can I say? It was so funny the first time around.


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## Wellrounded

notyermomma said:


> Why did the blonde got fired from the M&Ms factory? She kept throwing out all the Es, 3s, and Ws ...


The funniest thing about this was that she had no idea that the seconds she picked on the commercial farms went for uses other than the fresh market. She thought they just went in a skip . She was really proud that she fed them to the animals rather than bag them up for garbage collection!


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## BillM

*Tomatos*

Back in the 1970's I worked in an engineering department at a local hospital.

Jim was a painter, originally from Pittsburg PA.

He was in his seventy's and had only recently moved to KY.

He had listened to us talk about planting gardens all spring and now having a back yard for the first time, he decided he wanted to plant some Tomatoes .

One morning he asked how to grow tomatoes and received plenty of advise.

He went home picked out a spot in his back yard and prepared the ground.

When he came in the next morning he asked where he could get tomato plants.

One of the guys told him , he could go out to his farm and pull all the plants he wanted from his tobacco bed, as he had already removed all the tobacco plants from it.

Jim planted tomatoes that very afternoon.

A couple of months later, he was complaining that even though he had fertilized , watered and stuck his tomatoes with great care, they had yet to produce a single tomato.

One of the guys agreed to go to his house to see if he could determine the problem.

He reported back the next morning that Jim had one of the best cared for crops of Ragweed he had ever seen !


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## BlueShoe

I heard an old cranky retired man at a just created home owners association meeting announce to the attendees that his neighbor had built a garage "as big as his house with no windows in it", and that he couldn't see what was going on in there. He had no problem declaring the man was illegally painting cars in there though.

That was his complaint. He couldn't see what his neighbor was doing, and thus couldn't turn him in for code violations. All he could do was defame him at a meeting.

Then he went on to complain that people weren't bringing their trash cans back to the house soon enough after trash pick up. Many of your neighbors are your problem.


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## Wellrounded

BlueShoe said:


> I heard an old cranky retired man at a just created home owners association meeting announce to the attendees that his neighbor had built a garage "as big as his house with no windows in it", and that he couldn't see what was going on in there. He had no problem declaring the man was illegally painting cars in there though.
> 
> That was his complaint. He couldn't see what his neighbor was doing, and thus couldn't turn him in for code violations. All he could do was defame him at a meeting.
> 
> Then he went on to complain that people weren't bringing their trash cans back to the house soon enough after trash pick up. Many of your neighbors are your problem.


I grew up living across the road from the neighbours from hell. They had the local council inspector visiting someone in our town as often as they could.

When I was about 7 Dad bought me 6 hens, he built a chicken run between the garage and side fence. He was aware that structures in that location had to be lower than the fence so the netting was attached to the top rail of the fence (6 inches lower than the top)and was on an angle up to a timber on the side of the garage.

Not long after the council inspector was at the front door telling us we'd have to lower the netting as it was slightly higher than the fence..... 1/4 inch higher up one end.

To even see the netting you would have needed to stand on a ladder as the ground dropped away steeply from the fence into the neighbours field and to determine that the netting was higher than the fence you would have needed a spirit level!

Dad did fix the problem he pulled every sheet of corrugated iron off the fence and raised it 1 inch . No rules about the height of fences.

The community eventually made life uncomfortable for our neighbours and they left. I remember their front yard being sprayed with herbicide on more than one occasion and I lost count of the number of times someone put food colouring in their pool.

Things got pretty bad when someone broke a piece of fence wire with their car, it was strung across our road. There were two or three motorcycle riders living on our road, my mother, dad and brother being three of them. Most people were pretty sure it was the neighbours but they found no proof.


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## crabapple

BillM said:


> Back in the 1970's I worked in an engineering department at a local hospital.
> 
> Jim was a painter, originally from Pittsburg PA.
> 
> He was in his seventy's and had only recently moved to KY.
> 
> He had listened to us talk about planting gardens all spring and now having a back yard for the first time, he decided he wanted to plant some Tomatoes .
> 
> One morning he asked how to grow tomatoes and received plenty of advise.
> 
> He went home picked out a spot in his back yard and prepared the ground.
> 
> When he came in the next morning he asked where he could get tomato plants.
> 
> One of the guys told him , he could go out to his farm and pull all the plants he wanted from his tobacco bed, as he had already removed all the tobacco plants from it.
> 
> Jim planted tomatoes that very afternoon.
> 
> A couple of months later, he was complaining that even though he had fertilized , watered and stuck his tomatoes with great care, they had yet to produce a single tomato.
> 
> One of the guys agreed to go to his house to see if he could determine the problem.
> 
> He reported back the next morning that Jim had one of the best cared for crops of Ragweed he had ever seen !


LOL!
But in truth that is an easy mistake if you are a first time gardener & did not know the weed smells different from the tomato plant.
I would never had let anyone loose on my farm/garden with out a guide!


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## machinist

I learned to hate citified folks early on. My mother had a twin sister who liked to come to our farm to visit, taking every chance to make deprecating remarks about how uncivilized it was out there. Our place had no sidewalks, only stepping stones for a walk. She knew this and always showed up dressed formally and wearing high heels! She would wobble into the house and ask when we were going to get a proper sidewalk? I was hoping she'd sprain an ankle.

Mom had this family psychology thing going on that had her thinking she had to put up with her snooty sister's put-downs. I had no such problem, being a kid. At each of these visits I would be told to pick a vast load of fresh produce from the garden for this aunt. I finally refused. 

I told Mom and auntie that since auntie knew the score out here, she should be courteous enough to at least help us pick her veggies. I got all kinds of hell over that, but I stuck to my guns and auntie went home without produce that time. I don't think she ever found the time to come back, either, IIRC. 

I will help anyone who meets me halfway, but parasites are not welcome at our place.


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## crabapple

machinist said:


> I learned to hate citified folks early on. My mother had a twin sister who liked to come to our farm to visit, taking every chance to make deprecating remarks about how uncivilized it was out there. Our place had no sidewalks, only stepping stones for a walk. She knew this and always showed up dressed formally and wearing high heels! She would wobble into the house and ask when we were going to get a proper sidewalk? I was hoping she'd sprain an ankle.
> 
> Mom had this family psychology thing going on that had her thinking she had to put up with her snooty sister's put-downs. I had no such problem, being a kid. At each of these visits I would be told to pick a vast load of fresh produce from the garden for this aunt. I finally refused.
> 
> I told Mom and auntie that since auntie knew the score out here, she should be courteous enough to at least help us pick her veggies. I got all kinds of hell over that, but I stuck to my guns and auntie went home without produce that time. I don't think she ever found the time to come back, either, IIRC.
> 
> I will help anyone who meets me halfway, but parasites are not welcome at our place.


AMEN!
I hate people who are so common to act like they are better then you are.
This remains me of the "Little Red Hen".


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## goshengirl

machinist, I don't think being citified necessarily makes someone snooty. Your aunt was just plain rude.


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