I sometimes find myself wondering why I even bother with making a garden. It would be hard enough with an acre of bottom land next to a creek, but it is hell making an Appalachian “side hill” garden. That’s all we’ve had since we came into our Prime Hill property the year before I was born. So that’s over 50 years fighting rocky soil, Georgia red clay, and the steep terrain in general. Always an avid reader and a historian of the rural South, I’ve spent my whole life reading stories of the poor subsistence farmers of the Appalachians scratching out enough food to feed a family from a mountain side. Tall tales of cattle with two legs shorter from walking across steep slopes all the time. It isn’t all untrue. A man has to be creative to grow a garden on the side of a mountain year after year. We have almost four acres of land. The only “flat” land is the front yard and a half-acre on the ridge top. So we made terraces. I use a BCS “walking tractor” with a rotary plow to contour and create natural berms to hold moisture and stop run off. Whatever it takes.
As I get older I try my best to prioritize my time. Late each winter I ask myself if I want to go to the trouble and physical labor to make a garden. As cheap as they are at the store, potatoes are more trouble than they’re worth. It’s the same with several other vegetables. I do know that my garden is organic, Roundup free, and no chemical fertilizers have been used in decades, but damn, it’s a lot of work. It would be a whole lot easier to just go to the store. But I really do it to help remember my people.
Paw Paw Jess (my grandfather on Daddy’s side of the family) used to work his fields pretty hard. The old Hopkins home place had some good bottom land. Paw Paw was a good farmer when he wasn’t knee-walking drunk. Daddy always told stories that when he was a boy, Paw Paw led the mule to the field, placed a quart jar of his moonshine at one end of the field and a quart of buttermilk under a tree at the other end. By the end of the day, Paw Paw was dog drunk and he’d done worked the mule half to death. Ironically, his biggest crop was always corn, which he turned into more liquor, which he also drank.
For some reason I don’t know as much about Mama’s side of the family. My Great-Grandfather Emmett Roberts built the first housing development in Jefferson, Georgia over a hundred years ago, but I don’t know anything else about him other than he was a respected member of the community. My maternal grandfather, Ernest Roberts, went to work “up north” right after World War Two. Henry and Alene Phillips of Rabun County had moved to the Pontiac, Michigan area sometime around the end of the war. They had several related businesses in the area, including some type of boarding house. They recruited drivers for RoadWay trucking. My “Grandpa Ern”, as I always called him, procured a job through the efforts of the Phillips family and began driving a big rig.
Sometime in the late 1960’s, Grandpa Ern and his second wife, Grandma Lucy, moved back to Georgia, buying a few rural acres on the county line of Stephens and Habersham County. Behind their house was a big flat area of a few acres. The first thing Ern did was clear it and buy an old Ford 8N tractor. Him and Lucy always made one hell of a garden. They probably grew and put up most of their food every year. Ern was always fastidious with everything he did. He taught me how to shine shoes the right way. He kept his Florsheim shoes and side-zip boots polished and buffed to a mirror finish. He was always perfectly dressed (unless he was in the garden). When mowing grass or working the garden Ern broke out the very stylish one-piece, zip up coveralls. I have some of those myself, but Amy says she’ll file papers if she ever catches me wearing them. Maybe I’ll wear them on our next date night…
Ern always favored Pendelton shirts in wintertime. He was fanatical about maintaining his trucks. His garden was no different. I never, ever, saw a weed in it. Everything was always hilled, hoed, and looked like a photo from a seed catalog. Mama always said I got my anal-retentive and obsessive traits from him. Memories of his gardens are always a benchmark for me.
Well, Daddy was a drinker during my childhood, but not on a level that could match Paw Paw. Our side-hill garden tilling and plowing wouldn’t have ended well with a bunch of white liquor anyway. Somebody would’ve rolled the tiller or homemade tractor off the side of the mountain and ended up at Ridgecrest Hospital. Daddy made the most of what we had. There were four or five manmade terraces up behind the house where we planted our regular vegetables. Squash, okra, radishes, beans, cucumbers, and that type of stuff. Up on the ridge was where the potatoes and corn got planted.
The first crop I ever planted was in kindergarten. Our class took a field trip up to town to tour the farmer’s co-op. Monique Lunsford was a classmate of mine until we graduated from high school. Her parents, Rollin and Roanne ran the store. I loved the old feed and seed stores. Still do, but they’re few and far between these days. I still remember the way the co-op smelled, even after all these years. The Lunsfords let each of us kids pick out a pack of seeds to take home and plant. I chose a pack of watermelon seeds. I don’t remember the variety. I was excited to get them into the ground. We had a junky old front-tine tiller that Daddy used to till me my own “plot” at the edge of the garden. I threw the seeds in the ground and covered them with a rake. I was five, so the seeds were forgotten and they were never watered. I was too busy playing. Lo and behold, they came up. All of them. I bet we got at least 30 watermelons from that packet of seeds. They almost overran the entire garden. We ate them till we never wanted to see another one. We gave them away and still they kept coming. I’m surprised Daddy didn’t somehow use them to make liquor.
By the time I reached second or third grade we had moved our corn operation over to Nannie’s garden spot. My maternal grandmother, Arleisa Norton, known to everyone in the family as “Nannie”, lived a couple of miles away from us and had a prime creekside piece of flat bottom ground. Nannie, Daddy, and Mama planted it each year. She often kept me during those summers so I spent many mornings in the corn patch with her hoeing corn while I listened to her tell stories. Sometimes my friend Billy was roped into helping us. As an only child, Mama had to import playmates for me each summer. Nannie and Billy are both gone now, and I’d give about anything to spend one more day in that corn patch with them.
Time marches on and I’m still playing in a garden. This year’s crops have been horrible with all the rain. The tomatoes were a complete bust. So were the Brussel sprouts, although I might get an autumn harvest of them. Cucumbers, squash, and zucchini have been ok, and the carrots are consistent. The daily storms have made a mess of it. I actually had to weed-eat the rows instead of hoeing and weeding by hand. I’m just re-planted the last of the squash and cucumber for the season, and I’ll get some autumn greens. Covers over the raised beds will give me carrots through most of the winter, so all isn’t lost.
And of course, I’m already planning on what can be done better next season. Hopefully it won’t involve an umbrella.
