You may think that ripping kale shreds into a bucket may be boring, but to me, it’s actually quite enjoyable.

In my Stewards in Action Class at Woodside Priory, I was given the opportunity to do some vegetable picking (there were too many people doing the other activity). Jill, the person who helps out in the garden, showed us how to pick various crops. She was going to make a salad for the builders who helped construct the garden.

Our first task was to pick kale, one of the healthiest greens out there. Sometimes kale is a hard food to chew, but it surprisingly ripped at the slightest pull. One bed of this vegetable gave us a whole salad spinner full of kale (I mean the big spinners). I can’t really describe this, but sometimes when you do something repetitive, it can turn into something entertaining. I worked like a cheetah, ripping, pulling, and tossing every which way.

Task number two was picking cherry tomatoes. Before we started, Jill let us eat one and boy was it sweet. Maybe cherries grown in a garden are tastier than ones in a field. It’s kind of amazing that one mini tomato plant can produce hundreds of those little round things. In my opinion tomato picking is quite fast because they come off decently quick. I could pluck 20 or so in ten seconds. Finally, the most satisfying thing was that my hands had a small tomato smell the rest of the day, so I always had the scent of one of my favorite vegetables in my nose.

I actually got to do other things like feed the chickens and pick bell peppers, but the tomatoes and kale were the best part.

Another thing I enjoyed and noticed was that when you’re doing something with vegetables before they are turned into food, you realize a lot of things. For example, I actually didn’t observe that cherry tomatoes were so small, until today. At the end of the day, I really enjoyed doing garden work, even though I didn’t get to help out with the other project. It felt good to participate in the healthy harvest!

Please Read: If you wanted the recipe to my grandmother’s stew, please look here and scroll down to the comments section: Stew Post