My hometown is a small village by the Yangtze River in Nanjing, where there is a small vegetable garden, about two-fen in size. Though not large in area, it has witnessed the passage of time and the inheritance of a family tradition across three generations.
This small vegetable garden was cultivated by my parents. According to my father, it was originally a wasteland overgrown with miscellaneous trees, where thorns and wild mugwort grew taller than a person. Life in the village was hard back then, and having a family vegetable plot meant more variety on the dinner table. From then on, my parents embarked on a long journey of reclamation, digging with hoes and carrying loads with poles, season after season, until they finally turned the wasteland into neat, square vegetable beds, creating the family's most reliable "vegetable basket."
For more than a decade afterward, they meticulously tended to the garden, planting in spring and harvesting in autumn without fail. This small vegetable garden became an admired model in the village.
After starting my career as an organic auditor, I began working closely with the land. I introduced the concepts of organic agriculture into this familiar garden. I taught my parents to practice crop rotation and fallowing in the small plot, allowing the soil to rest and recover; I showed them how to ferment rapeseed cake and chicken manure to make organic fertilizer, and to use chili water and garlic water for pest control, eliminating the need for chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Through our joint efforts, the soil in the small garden became soft and loose, and the vegetables grown there were exceptionally fresh and sweet. The garden seemed to be rejuvenated, brimming with a vibrant, healthy, green vitality.
Later, my two sons grew up around the small garden. As toddlers, they followed their grandparents around the vegetable beds, picking up leaves, chasing butterflies, treating the place as a natural playground.
Now, every weekend, they look forward to returning to the old home. Their first task upon arrival is to rush to the garden to work—picking vegetables, weeding, catching insects—working up a sweat but thoroughly enjoying themselves. Their mud-covered clothes reflect a fine character that values hard work.
The small garden of three generations has nourished the mouths of three generations and has also cultivated the temperament of three generations. The so-called family tradition is perhaps this kind of wordless inheritance; this piece of land bears the cultivation of our three generations and allows our family ethos of self-reliance, diligence, and simplicity to be passed down through the years, flowing silently within our bloodline.
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