Edmonton couple tends local vegetable garden for 70 years

Ted and Irene Goldsack wake up at 5:30 every morning, eager to work intheir garden.

The routine has been the same for 70 years planting seeds, plucking weeds, picking ripened tomatoes, cauliflower or lettuce.

The Goldsacks, both 92, tend close to 1,000plants, growing fruit and vegetables for their children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

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"Gardening means everything to me, it keeps me healthy," Ted Goldsack said.

"We actually get depressed when it's raining and we can't get out," said his wife, Irene.

The couple lives on a three-lot property, complete with a homemade greenhouse, in Edmonton's northeast Newton neighborhood.

Irene has lived her entire life in the same small house off118thAvenue. Her father gave the house to the couple in 1947, the year they got married. They raised their three children there, and have always used land as a small urban farm.

"When [the kids] were going to school, I didn't allow them to stay in bed," Irene said. "They got up, had their breakfast and each one of them had to weed a row of gardening."

In recent years, the couple cut back some of their production, making fewer jams and vegetables because they have fewer people to help out.

Though the Goldsacks do a lot of their own work, vegetable planting was always a family affair.

"We've passed on our gardening to our children, and they're passing it on to theirs," Ted said. "Hopefully it'll carry on."

anna.desmarais@cbc.ca

@anna_desmarais