When you started your home garden, what was your primary motivation to do so?

Hi fellow gardeners! We are working on a research project for school and would love to hear from you! A simple question...when you started your home garden, what was your primary motivation to do so? Please add a comment with your reason and if you're feeling really generous, we have 8 more vegetable garden questions at the link below.  It only takes about 45 seconds to complete and would help us immensely! Thank you in advance and happy gardening
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6VS3698

Grow organic, rebuild soil, save money on vegetables.  I have 3 3x24 beds.

I've been obsessed with self-sufficiency since before I even knew there was a word for it. Gardening is just a natural part of that.

I think my first garden that was 100% mine (as opposed to just helping a grown-up) was when I was 6. After much begging, I got permission to plant in the little 8" strip of dirt where the wall of the garage failed to meet the walkway. I think I got about 8 beans out of it, which I dutifully stuck in an envelope to save for winter.

My parents still don't know where I got that idea from.  

Now I own a little over 10 acres, 1 acre of which is my garden, and the rest is slowly being turned into an orchard. I get paid to produce seeds for a major heirloom seed company, and have several plant-breeding projects of my own going.

There have been times in my life when I didn't have a place to garden, and I always went a little nuts during those times. For me, this is how I'm wired. It's just who I am.

My own motivation was that my parents grew a garden, so that seemed like what you do.  When I had my own place I found that, whereas stuff grows well in fertile soil under sometimes rainy skies (southern Minnesota), it’s much harder to be successful in in the high mountain desert!  I’ve been enjoying learning to work with the landscape, but it’s been more failures than successes.  And yet, people have been farming this mountain for at least 800 years, so I probably can make it work too.

Cause I'm poor.