This is the story of three women horticulturists in Appalachia and how they use their resources to increase their household income. These women live in and around Scott and Morgan Counties, Tennessee. These counties are about eighty miles from Knoxville, Tennessee. I came across two of these women when visiting family and doing health ministry visits in the Appalachian areas of these Tennessee counties. The third, Alma Story, was from memory and was my grandmother.
The wisdom of these three women gardeners is one of those blessings I receive that has been passed down from generation to generation.
An 84-year-old woman whom I will call ‘Flower’ is one of those wise women. She is named after a flower, so this is the name she is given in this story. She has planted a garden since she was a child. She has had knee replacements and continues to garden if possible. Not long after her surgery, I saw her clearing her lot and the sides of the lot that she led up the road from her house. I could not believe it! She was supposed to be recovering from surgery. Instead, she was doing the exercise she allowed by clearing debris from the ground from her. When Flower is able to take care of her health, she will plant a garden and eat fresh vegetables in the summer. There will be no additives or preservatives in this food. Today, we would call this type of eating organic. She calls it clean natural food.
For years Flower preserved food in jars and dried vegetables and preserved everything else she could salvage. The family will eat this food all winter until next spring, therefore there is a table of abundance in this house. Flor knows the value of a bean seed. She knows that if the weather is good, this bean seed will produce many pints or quarts of canned beans for the winter. Flower holds her head high as she takes care of her household needs. Flower knows all kinds of plants in her land. She knows what is important to the flora in her landscape and what is a nuisance that needs to be removed. For example, she says, “a Kudgy vine will take care of a needed crop of plants.” She will have it cut. In the south, where this vine grows abundantly, baskets can be made from its vines.
Flor has many walnut trees that she uses for sweets and cakes. Over the years, squirrels have buried the nuts and these same nut seeds have now grown into walnut trees. Flower lets the walnut trees grow, as the neighbors can collect the extra nuts for their breads and cakes.
Flower lives on a meager pension from her late husband. In late summer, when Flower’s grandchildren visit, she can feed them from her garden. A table full of fresh vegetables and melons is abundant. Flower could never support her family like that if she didn’t go for the garden. When she eats canned food in the winter months, it cuts her monthly grocery budget, which can save a quarter of her retirement every month. For example, if you receive eight hundred dollars a month in retirement benefits and are able to save a quarter of that amount in the winter months of November through May of next year, you have saved $1,400 from the previous year’s food harvest.
Another lady named Wanda who lives in Morgan County, Tennessee also sees the importance of a garden.
Wanda and I had a conversation lately and she said that her garden was very precious to her. Here’s a bit of that conversation.
“That garden will save me about $300 in late summer eating the fresh produce. In the winter months I can save about $900 on that meal. That means a lot when you’re on a fixed income.”
Wanda continues about the value of her garden: “I had surgery once and still had the cast on. I put a plastic bag around my leg to keep the cast clean and worked in my garden. I had to do this so the crop grow with the season.”
Wanda is now teaching a new thirty-year-old neighbor how to garden. Watching Wanda and her gardening helped me better understand the value of stewardship. The third woman named Alma lived in Scott County, Tennessee. Her house was on a high ridge near the Clear Fork River. This is an area that is close to the Big South Fork Preservation Park that runs through parts of Kentucky and Tennessee.
Alma planted large gardens and a field full of corn. When Alma started collecting Social Security, he was getting $65 a month. Now, I admit that was about twenty years ago, but his story still has meaning today.
I knew this woman very well. She was my grandmother, Alma Jones Story. Grandma taught me the richness of what a garden can produce. She hadn’t exercised in public, but she worked very hard in her house and on her land. Grandma would plant that garden and by the end of the summer she would have a base full of food and dried vegetables in that entire cellar.
She would save the seeds from the past garden and show us the seeds and tell us to remember what could grow from those seeds. I still think about those big gardens and the basement full of food. When Grandma passed away, she had a basement full of food, a smart bank account, and she didn’t owe anyone anything. From childhood memory I can remember Grandma putting a seed in the ground and a few months later that same bean seed would be a big bunch of beans on that bush. She would later preserve those beans by cooking them and putting them in jars.
About every week, Grandma would use a hoe or her hands and remove any weeds that grew near the beans or any other vegetable plant. If it didn’t rain, she drew water from her well and watered the plants. I still remember how big that garden of a handful of seeds was. She still remembers those summer and late autumn dinners that she would put on the table that came from the garden. She didn’t need to use her meager Social Security money for the food at that table, instead she served the food with a smile.
My husband and I plan to plant a garden in our backyard this summer. We’ll keep track of our grocery bills and see for ourselves how much a backyard garden in the city will pay us.