Gardening Lessons for Budding Entrepreneurs

Spring seems to be knocking on the door here in the Texas Panhandle.  The high temps all week have been in the 60's.  I'm getting in the gardening mood!  That's not a good thing though because I expect to be traveling much of the time through the Spring and Summer and won't be here to tend a garden if I planted one.

I tend to be fairly traditional in my gardening -- when I do plant one.  My gardens in the past have been fairly simple.  I like to plant tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, green beans, black-eyed peas, squash and okra.  Rarely do I add anything else to the mix -- UNLESS one of the kids wanted to plant something else.  In the past we have added pumpkins for a roadside pumpkin stand that was going to make tons of money but yielded only experience.  We also planted ornamental corn one year.  Similar source of experience.

If they were young and still at home and wanted to do something similar, we would plant some more "experiential" crops for them to tend.  It is the seeds of entrepreneurship that were the most important part of that experience.  Teaching them how to risk their capital, provide their labor, and approach the marketplace in the hopes of profit was the real benefit of planting those pumpkins and ornamental corn.

As a society, we have for the most part failed future generations in the area of teaching them about free enterprise.  It is obvious in the trends we see in our government today.  They believe that a great and benevolent government is the source of their livlihood.  They don't understand that it is not the government that creates the wealth, it is private business.  It is individuals who wake up every morning and risk their capital, their labor, their time, their future -- in the hopes of turning that small seed into a bountiful harvest.  It is time that we return to teaching our children those concepts.

I see hope in some areas.  There are many in the Millenial Generation who see the failure of our government.  They are looking for a better way.  I pray that the pendelum will swing back to a time of personal initiative and self-reliance rather than a collective dependence on Big Brother.

Life is good.