Planting By the Signs: Mountain Gardening: The Foxfire Americana Library (10)

by Edited by Foxfire Students

  ANCHOR BOOKS EDITION, SEPTEMBER 2011

  Copyright © 1972, 1977, 2011 by the Foxfire Fund, Inc.

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Anchor Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  Anchor Books and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  “Gardening” originally appeared in Foxfire 4, © 1977 by The Foxfire Fund, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

  “Weather Signs” and “Planting by the Signs” originally appeared in The Foxfire Book, © 1972 by The Foxfire Fund, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

  “Raising Native Azaleas from Seed” originally appeared in The Foxfire 45th Anniversary Book, © 2011 by The Foxfire Fund, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Random House, Inc.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-94829-8

  v3.1

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Gardening

  Clearing the Land

  Preparing the Soil

  Tools

  Seeds

  Signs

  Common Vegetables

  Potatoes

  Onions

  Lettuce

  Peas

  Turnips

  Carrots

  Beets

  Mustard

  Cabbage

  Corn

  Sweet Potatoes

  Tomatoes

  Peppers

  Okra

  Squash

  Cucumbers

  Melons

  Pumpkins

  Beans

  Fall Garden

  Other Farm Crops

  Perennials, herbs, and spices

  Fruit

  Cane

  Tobacco

  Hay

  Rye, wheat, and oats

  Pests

  Fences

  Differences in the Old and New

  Weather Signs

  Forecasting Winter by Animals

  Forecasting Winter by Insects

  Forecasting Winter by Plants

  Forecasting Winter by Weather

  Forecasting Winter by Fire

  Forecasting Winter by the Moon

  Forecasting Weather

  Planting by the Signs

  The Zodiac

  How It Works

  The Rules

  Those Who Believe

  Those Who Doubt

  Raising Native Azaleas from Seed

  A NOTE ABOUT THE FOXFIRE AMERICANA LIBRARY SERIES

  For almost half a century, high school students in the Foxfire program in Rabun County, Georgia, have collected oral histories of their elders from the southern Appalachian region in an attempt to preserve a part of the rapidly vanishing heritage and dialect. The Foxfire Fund, Inc., has brought that philosophy of simple living to millions of readers, starting with the bestselling success of The Foxfire Book in the early 1970s. Their series of fifteen books and counting has taught creative self-sufficiency and has preserved the stories, crafts, and customs of the unique Appalachian culture for future generations.

  Traditionally, books in the Foxfire series have included a little something for everyone in each and every volume. For the first time ever, through the creation of The Foxfire Americana Library, this forty-five-year collection of knowledge has been organized by subject. Whether down-home recipes or simple tips for both your household and garden, each book holds a wealth of tried-and-true information, all passed down by unforgettable people with unforgettable voices.

  GARDENING

  All my life I had heard talk of, and even watched my family make, a garden. But because I was younger and the grocery store was just down the road, I never felt that I should go out in the hot sun and hoe the garden. Suddenly last year the fact that I was going to have to plant a garden dawned on me. The first thing that came to my mind was, “I don’t know anything about a garden.” That’s when I started working on this article.

  My first question was why did they plant a garden? Esco Pitts, one of our contacts, said, “Then you couldn’t just go to the store and buy much stuff, ’cause they wasn’t much stuff to buy. And the people just made their living, just got the practice of making their living at home.”

  And that’s just what they did. The women would take care of the vegetable garden. Mr. Pitts recalled, “My mother would always put one row of flowers in the middle of the garden. She took care of them just like she did the vegetables.”

  What did the men do? They took care of the field crops—things like two acres of corn or wheat. The corn was saved to take to the mill for their cornmeal and the wheat was made into flour. Sometimes they grew cane for cane syrup, which could be used in the place of sugar.

  Yes! People really did get out and work in the field. And if you got sick and couldn’t work, you didn’t worry about it much because some of the folks that lived near would come over and help. Aunt Arie said, “People wasn’t a’scared of each other, like they are now.” All the people far and near would gather at one house. They would have a barnraisin’ or bean-stringin’ or cornshuckin’. The families would all bring food and after the work was done, all would eat and talk. Lawton Brooks said, “We had a many a cornshuckin’ way back yonder, but no more.”

  After getting the land ready and planting the seeds came watching it grow and keeping the animals out and the bugs off. Finally came the harvest. That was the time when everybody worked. They worked not only to gather it, but to store it for use during the winter. The mother would can the vegetables and dry the fruit. The father had to bury the things like potatoes and cabbage. He buried them to keep them from freezing. Florence Brooks said, “You could go back in the dead of the winter and dig out a cabbage and it would be just as good as the day you cut it.”

  ILLUSTRATION 1 Ednie Buchanan’s vegetable garden.

  The people raised their pork and beef, so they didn’t have to buy much. They only bought what they couldn’t grow, going to market about twice a year. A family would raise enough vegetables to have some left to sell after putting up what they needed for the family. Kenny Runion remembered, “We loaded up the wagon and it was so far [to market] that we would have to camp on the way there or back.”

  When they sold the vegetables, they would buy their supplies consisting of pepper, salt, some seeds, and coffee beans. Mr. Pitts commented, “I’ve woke up many a’morning to the smell of coffee beans roasting on the fireplace.”

  After about ten or fifteen interviews I found that I had not only learned how to plant a garden, but I had gained a small amount of understanding of what life was like thirty or forty years ago.

  MARY THOMAS

  Interviews and transcriptions by Bit Carver, Mary Chastain, Vicki Chastain, Susie Nichols, Cheryl Stocky, Mary Thomas, and Terese Turpin.

  Organization and editing by Mary Thomas and Lynnette Williams. Photography by Brenda Carpenter, Myra Queen, Annette Reems, Barbara Taylor, Mary Thomas, and Lynnette Williams.

  CLEARING THE LAND

  Families in the mountains generally settled on land that had not been previously homesteaded. They, therefore, had to build their homes and clear their land for farming using only simple tools, manpower, and ox-power. To cut the trees, many of them two and three feet in diameter, they had only large two-man crosscut saws and axes. They chose the levelest, richest-looking land, and cleared that for their crops. This was very important, because those mountaineers were not gardening casually; they were, of necessity, farming for their survival. />
  R. M. DICKERSON: All this country, this bottom land here where we see it now, in my father’s and mother’s day and my grandfather’s day, was in a swamp. It was growed up in woods. And the first settlers here settled around the foot of the hills above the swamp. The swamp was full of water and you couldn’t do any good down there until it was drained out, so they first settled around the edge of the mountains and up on the mountains. They cleared the land there and got the logs and built log houses; that’s the kind of house I was raised in—a log cabin. They built those log cabins out of logs that they took off the land they was going to cultivate. They took those logs and used this kind of tractor [a horse and sled] and skidded them up to where they was going to build a house.

  They [sawed] the trees down on th’place and cut’em up. The ones that they was going to use, they rolled them over to the side. But they rolled the old rough logs and the stuff that was too big for a house log, they rolled that up and built’em a fire and burned’em all up in the brush. Sometimes it would take two or three days to burn all the logs. They’d just keep rollin’ the logs together till they got’em burnt up.

  Never thought anything about getting them stumps out. You’d just plow around the stump. In the middle there might be some little stumps or rocks in the way. Come time to take a big stump, they might lay some loose rocks up on it to get them out of the way of the plow or the hoes or maybe a stump that wasn’t burnt up quite in the pile they would lay it up on the stump and let it rot.

  MARY CARPENTER: You’ve seen them big bottoms in the valley. That was all in timber once, and that was all cut down. [In order to clear the land], they’d go out with their crosscut saw and an axe, and they’d chop down the trees and they’d work them into logs if they wanted to build a house. If not, they worked them into firewood; saw it and bust it up. Then they take the mattock and the shovel and dig the stumps up. It took a long time to dig a stump up, but that’s [what they had to do]. Sometimes they dig down to a tap root. That was a root that went straight down, [the others spread out] and sometimes they’d be so big that they couldn’t hardly roll the stump out of the hole. So they’d hitch a mule to it with a chain and pull the stump out. Then they’d fill the hole back up.

  ILLUSTRATION 2 It took a tremendous amount of work years ago to completely clear this fertile bottomland.

  People would sled rocks off a field. Why, we used to have an old mare and we made a sled, and put rocks on it. We’d load that old sled with rocks—every one we could put on it, and Oshie Holt would drive the old mare. She was a big and mean horse, too, if she wanted to be. And we’d take them down in between Grandpa’s place and Bleckley’s and add them to one side of the rock fence. Mr. Bleckley would haul and pack the other side of the rock fence. It was down in the valley, just old loose rock out of the field: we’d just take a sled load, place them in there, and keep filling the wall up. We didn’t need any wooden fence; see, there wasn’t no cattle grazin’ in there then, but it was a line marker between their place and Grandpa’s.

  PREPARING THE SOIL

  A man couldn’t walk into the general store and buy his fertilizer and lime—no such things existed. The people had to provide for the enrichment of the soil from what was available on their farms. Every scrap of chicken and animal manure that could be collected was put back in the soil. Some folks made compost piles, and many spread ashes on the ground to sweeten and enrich it. They were true organic farmers.

  ANNA HOWARD: We’d terrace if we had a really steep place. Sometimes you’d have t’do that. You know, the way they’d do that [was to] make a ridge right through here, an’ they’d put some sage’r’somethin’ through there, and it’d stay there all th’time, an’ th’sage’d hold the edge of the ridge.

  LON DOVER: Now that new ground with natural soil that’s not been disturbed maybe for a hundred years or longer, see it’s got everything in there it needs. Until you tended it an’ got nutrients out of the soil, why we didn’t have nothin’t’do but plant it. When we’d grow stuff till the ground wouldn’t make any more, we’d sow grass for th’horses on those bald places.

  ILLUSTRATION 3 Belle Dryman’s father built this pen for composting organic matter, and Belle still uses it.

  HARRY BROWN: We took the manure out of the barn and put it in a pen as big as this room. We’d clean out the stalls of the mules, cows, hogs, and chickens in the early part of the fall. And then we’d go to the woods and get a load of leaves to throw in there. From time to time during the winter, we’d mix it up and keep addin’ to it till it was time to use it. We had big sacks we made into big aprons, and we’d go to th’pile and somebody would fill up our apron and we’d go scatter it around the gardens.

  I was raised at Scaley, back in th’mountains, and you’ll find that nearly ever’body has a different way of farmin’. Our garden, we kep’ it special. We’d clear it in the spring of th’year, cleared off every little briar, an’ took a rake an’ raked it; then broadcast it with stable manure—tried t’broadcast it ever’year. Now farmin’ is different—like a broomsage field, we’d burn that off, where if we’d had somethin’ t’turn it under, see, that’d be just like good fertilizer. We didn’t know that back then. Land was cheap back then and people cleared up new ground nearly ever’year or we’d just leave. ’Course, that’uz hard—plowin’ with those stumps all around. An’ we’d tend that every year till it got where it wouldn’t make nothin’ and then we let it grow up. That’s th’reason s’much of this mountain land washed away.

  We’d try t’plow it th’first year—we’d just go along an’ it’d hang up, an’ we’d take it out and go again an’ hang it [the plow] up again—it’uz kinda aggravatin’. Some folks just dug holes and planted in the hills th’first year. Y’know those sprouts an’ briars in that rich dirt’d grow some times six inches in one night. You could buy two, three acres of land back then cheaper than you could buy a two-hundred-pound sack of fertilizer. My daddy bought three hundred acres for less than a dollar an acre!

  MARY CARPENTER: We’d cut those weeds and things all down, then we’d rake them to the middle of the garden. Just put them all into rows; one at one end, and one at the other end, and one in the middle, then light a fire to them. We’d light a cornstalk and keep stickin’ it along—it don’t make a big fire. Just let it burn a little at a time. You know, if it had been burning from one end to another it would have made a fairly big fire. It’ll just burn up so high and go out—just stir around with a fork and make certain it’s all out. Then we went to plowing with a horse or a mule.

  LAWTON BROOKS: They’d let the old cornstalks and vines and ever’thing rot on the ground, and that fall, they’d plow’em under. They usually plowed in th’fall or through th’winter, because the freezin’an’-thawin’ would break up that dirt an’make it s’fine. Made your ground better. It don’t have clods’r’nothin’ in it. You plow it in th’spring of th’year an’ it happens t’be a little bit damp, you’ll have clods in there all year you couldn’t bust with a durn hoe. I’ve hoed old cloddy ground when you couldn’t do nothin’, only roll the clods. I despise that—just like gettin’ in a rock pile. [They used ashes for fertilizer.] I’ve hauled many a’wheelbarrow load of them. They used’em kinda like they use lime to sweeten th’soil. An’ that’s where they get their potash. They put that mainly in their vegetable garden, not in th’cornfields. Put’em down through th’winter. Every time y’clean out th’fireplace, get your ashes and fill up your wheelbarrow and go spread it on th’garden.

  WILLIE UNDERWOOD: Before we planted, we’d have to plow it; back then we’d have to plow it with a mule, ’cause we didn’t have any heavy equipment—like big harrows and things like that. We used a low gopher plow and what we call a single-foot mule and plowed through those things. We didn’t tear it up too much the first year after it was cleared. We worked it then through the summer, and the next year it would be a lot easier, and we could do a lot better job plowing because we could break those roots up; they died out and
started to rot out. And that helps your soil, too. When I was growin’ up it didn’t take too many years for the soil to stop producing a good crop; we’d let it grow up in stubble one year and the next year we’d plant it in rye and the next year we’d plant it in corn. We rotated then. Now a lot of times, we run year after year with the same thing. We put a lot more stuff back into the soil than we used to. You grow a lot more in soil if you put back in it. Soil builders, you know. They rot in there and make better soil.

  ILLUSTRATION 4 Gay McClain uses an old push plow to lay off his rows for planting.

  TOOLS

  The tools available for farming in this area fifty to one hundred years ago were relatively simple and non-mechanized, except for the wood-burning, steam powered grain thresher which people hired out on a shares basis to thresh their rye, wheat, and oats. It seems almost every family had a plow, shovels, hoes, spades, rakes, and mattocks; but some families had several kinds of plows, harrows, a corn planter, and a grain cradle. And then some people just made do with what was on hand—Florence Brooks told us that since her father didn’t have a harrow, he took a big old pile of brush and hitched it to the mule and dragged it over the field until it was smooth.

  R. M. DICKERSON: Well, people used about the same tools—hoes, rakes, mattocks, and a plow—that’s about it.

  My grandfather used to have a braid hoe. When they come out here to a pretty good-sized sprout or grub that they wanted to dig up, they’d use this hoe as a mattock and dig it up. And as th’sprouts come out on a stump, they could take this old braid hoe and go around th’stump and knock’em off. But these ol’ light hoes we got now, you’d break the handles out of them. This one had a good, big, strong handle in it and it was what people called a grubbin’ hoe. I don’t know how come them to be called “braid” unless [someone named] Braid invented them.

  ILLUSTRATION 5 Kenny Runion has used this hoe for over sixty years.