Sometime during the winter or early spring months, the seed catalogs would arrive at our house via the U.S. Post Office. This was the time to plan the garden for the coming year. During the Great Depression, vegetable gardens were not planned as a recreational event or a hobby. For most families who lived in the Western North Carolina Mountains, gardens were a necessity. Of course, the Victory gardens were encouraged by our leaders during World War II, and many people who lived in towns dutifully raised some of their own food.
Planting, tending and harvesting the vegetables was a family affair, although Dad did most of the heavy lifting, so to speak. The garden plot had to be plowed, and it seems there was always somebody who lived nearby who owned a mule or horse who could do the job. Maybe Dad would just borrow the mule and plow and do the job himself since he grew up on a farm and knew their skills. When the garden “came in,” Dad might take the owner of the mule a “mess” of vegetables in payment for the plowing. This was how it worked, neighbor helping neighbor.
Let’s just follow one item in our garden through the complete cycle from planting to a delicious dish on mother’s table. Naturally (pun intended), fertilizer was removed from the barn and spread on the garden area before the plowing was initiated if one wanted a flourishing garden.
Dad would lay out the rows and, for sweet potatoes, the soil would be mounded up. The youngest family member would walk along the row and drop the potato slips (young plants) with predetermined spaces between the plants to allow proper development of the potatoes. Another family member would follow next to install the little plants carefully with a bowl like space around the plant that would hold water. Then, buckets of water would be carried from a nearby branch (a small creek) and each plant would receive a generous share. During the growing season, the natural fertilizer from the barn also made the weeds flourish, so pulling weeds became a necessary chore. The potatoes grew and the vines covered the mounds until fall approached and they began to die.
Now comes the harvest – the last of life for which the first was lived, to borrow a phrase. Care must be taken in removing the sweet potatoes from the mounds because a cut or scrape on the potato might cause spoilage or rotting during the winter storage. After a short drying period, the potatoes were carefully wrapped in newspaper, placed in cardboard boxes and stored in the attic above the kitchen where they would not freeze. There was a fire in the kitchen stove every day and the heat rose into the attic.
Now comes the good part. Anytime our family had a hankering for sweet potatoes, they were readily available. Sometimes we might want the long and slender white sweet potatoes, a variety preferred for baking by many mountain families. Other times, Mother would choose the chubbier yellow variety, which was good for candied potatoes. They were sliced and cooked with brown sugar that made a syrup that appropriately complimented the lowly potato. To be sure, the kids in the family got their rewards for helping in the garden when Mother cooked her sweet potatoes casserole with delicately browned marshmallows on top.
I do not remember this working and sweating in the garden as entirely drudgery. There was laughing, teasing and joking as we worked together as a family. Today we might call it bonding, but then we never even knew the meaning of the word.
As I recall, Dad received a publication from Stark Nurseries advertising apple trees from which Dad ordered a variety of apple trees. When the tiny trees arrived, they didn’t look so good to me and I wondered if they would live, but my Dad had more faith than I. I suppose that I was about age 13 when it fell to this unfortunate soul the duty to plant these scrubby little apple trees. Following my Dad’s instructions, there were trips to the barn yard for what the cows contributed to this noble endeavor. Large holes were dug and this material was worked in the loose soil.
These trees, which were properly planted along the little creek which ran along the lower side of the garden, flourished and Dad’s visions when he looked at the nursery catalogue, were abundantly fulfilled. Over the years, Dad harvested bushels of apples from these trees. He put them in storage at the Francis Orchard facility, and withdrew them a bushel at a time. He relished the opportunity to give apples to family and friends, and when I visited Mom and Dad in the winter months, I always left with a bag of apples.
Our mother spread happiness to our family as she put before us her famous clear (you could almost see through it) apple jelly, apple cobbler to kill for, stewed apple slices in a sweet sauce, apple turnovers made from dried apples, apple butter, and the not to be forgotten apple sauce layer cake. This cake became the wedding cake for Sharyn Hyatt Wade, granddaughter of Frank and Willie Boone Rogers. It seems that Mother would create miracles with just a few apples and a lot of talent.
Memories of Dad sitting by the oil stove peeling an apple on a chilly winter evening with his bare feet on the cold, wooden floor (he always removed his socks) shall forever be cherished. May his children, his grandchildren and his great grandchildren and even additional generations know this, for this is our heritage.
