What a great story - especially having a fiddle player on board, it's a super sound!
My guitar days started around 1962, when I was at school! I never went 'pro', but we used to have a lot of fun later in pubs and my rugby club! The best we ever got to was a cabaret for the Annual Dance, and I still have the script, and a tape of the 'dress rehearsal' somewhere...
Stating to grow veg was an even simpler intro! Mrs Growster's dad once turned up at our new farm cottage (rented), with a couple of pots of runner bean plants and later some toms, and we started properly in 1974 and never looked back!
The first allotment days were down to a great chum who ran our local ironmongers, and was a keen gardener! He organised our 'Patch' from the council for us, and we worked it until we moved here and had to stop as the place was a wreck! We restarted again around 2010, when the UK had an awful recession problem, and I really needed to get out more and feed ourselves! We only gave up a couple of years ago, when we were just giving everything away, so now we just garden at home, and that's about right!
Back on topic, I've just checked our toms for nasties, and touch wood and whistle, they're OK, but still so slow...