Gardening with Dad In our little town of Barrackville, West Virginia, population 1200, gardening was a neighborhood pastime. Plots ranged from just a 4'x4' to 3/4 of an acre. The main vegetables were tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, corn along with some onions and lettuce. When it came to gardening, my dad preferred to do most of it himself. It started in late February when the ground was tillable with a shovel. Dad planted the onions first in the lower garden which was a 6'x8' well prepared piece of ground next to the grape vines. Later when the weather temperatures stayed above 30 degrees, lettuce was planted next to the onions. Fresh green salads were enjoyed during the summer months at every meal with the exception of breakfast. During those summer months, there were times when this young boy, went into the garden with a chunk of home made bread, from my mothers bread supply, pulled fresh onions and had brunch. That memory to this day simulates my salivary glands and produces a wish for yesterday. The lower and upper gardens were separated by the large chicken house and feed lot. It was my brother's jobs to clean the hen house and place the manure on the gardens. After spreading the manure, it was the lower garden's turn to be dug. This was started in May and was done by my brothers throughout their teenage years. I never could understand why they agonized over digging it. I loved the smell of fresh turned earth and it was a great time to get fishing worms. Later after my brothers left home, I took over that responsibility until my father got a roto-tiller. I can still see my father in the garden with his big hoe, after the soil had dried a few days, breaking the dried clods into fine lumps. My dad made soil preparation a fine art. Not too many people have the love for it, because it is hard work and entails many hours of devotion. The process was: Apply raw fertilizer two inches thick; dig the soil 6 to 9 inches in depth and turn it over; let set two days and hope for one freeze during that time; let dry and break the large dry clods with a hoe mincing it into fine soil. The process accomplished a number of things. It reestablished the hard pan deep to allow for good water storage and proper soil drainage. It divided and distributed the organic additives throughout the soil and encouraged micro-organisms to further break down the soil. This process produces fast, strong plant stem growth, encourages blossom set, by making the nutrients available as a power house liquid drink. I have always found it amusing when someone turns up their nose at the thought of placing manure in their garden. I tell them if that bothers you, then save your green grass clippings and dig them into your soil. This seems to please them as they think it is clean and pure. However the exact same process occurs with the grass as the manure. The only true difference, it has not gone through the digestive system of an animal whose system speeds up the process of decay- break down. My father may not have known the organic chemistry; however as you see, he did know organics and made them work for him. He taught me these things as he gave me proper instruction of how to use his big hoe. The "big hoe" as it was called, was a large blade 6" wide and 9" in depth. Attached to it was a special handle made of hickory wood. People today talk about ergonomics as if it were a new science. My father practiced ergonomics nearly 80 years ago and passed it on to me. His big hoe had a bent handle to provide leverage when digging and provided an easier return when pulling it out of the ground. To get one of these handles these days, requires one to whittle it from a well seasoned hickory post. My father was 5'11" and had very broad shoulders. You know the type--you see them every week when you watch TV. He would be the center nose guard on your favorite pro football ball team, short, broad, big boned, large neck and arms, yet gentle and loving with his family. When he was working in the garden, I would take him a drink of cool well water. We sat and talked about gardening, sports, his family from the old country, as he so often called it, from Southern Italy near Naples. My father came to this country with his mother at the age of five. During those this five years, he picked olives, figs and piled rocks with his mother to make stone walls though the orchards. A full day's work provided a pay day of two cents. His father had come to the United States earlier and had gotten employment in the coal mines near Clarksburg, West Virginia. After he saved up the boat fare, he sent for his wife and son--my father was that little boy. He told me the story; you brought your own food to eat....drink was provided. There wasn't any water but wine was available. He had a little tin cup and each time they served, he held it out and got a drink to quench his thirst. I have learned to make wine and every time I have a glass, I think of my daddy and his little tin cup. From my father's winter pig pen, the upper garden was given a coating of manure. All winter it was stored with a coating of lime and then spread on the garden just before John Ice plowed it with his team of two horses. Plowing the garden was always a big deal. The garden was plowed in the morning and allowed to dry in the afternoon. Late that day or the next morning, it was dragged with a heavy wooden sled to break the large lumps, disked with slicing blades to break it down further and finally harried to smooth it. If we didn't get in the way, Mr.. Ice, would let us ride on the wooden sled, to provide added weight. It was great fun to ride the sled. It was a herky-jerky ride and you had to hold on for your life or roll backwards into the freshly plowed garden. This happened a few times causing him to pause and let me climb back on again. This was upsetting to Mr.. Ice because once you got the horse started you wanted them to keep pulling. On many occasions, they refused to pull which led to a lot of yelling. If the horses, being tired, continued not to pull, he would have to take them home and come back the next day which also meant he would be getting paid a day later. To complete the garden preparation, the farmer would make you a few potato row and then call it a day. Horses were kept until they took too many breaks. The older the horses got--the more breaks they took. I liked riding his horses bare back along the second hill and kept them in shape during most of the late summer and fall. I'm not sure if this caused them to go through premature aging. I know that I rode them for hours until they were lathered and then let them run to the barn. My favorite two horse over the many years were Dick and Jack. When they got too much oats, fed by this little boy, they would blow blue stinkers with such velocity it would whistle your hat off your head. They were a little cantankerous at times, had good memories, and many times tried to bite me when I attempted to climb the steps into the hay barn. I really could not blame them for wanting to slow me down a step or two. The sprints from one end of the second hill to the other was quite demanding. The part I liked best....they always fell for the same tricks. I would nail a can of oats to the old hickory at the end of the field, climb the tree, and wait for them to indulge themselves. They just couldn't resist it. When the time was right, I could slip down over them and then it was yippee-ki-yeah!!! The potatoes were the first major crop to be planted and later after all signs of frost was over, the peppers and tomatoes plants were put in the ground. My dad and mother cut seed potatoes into neat little sections, let them dry, and spaced them in the rows--two or three in a hill--about nine to twelve inches apart. If we had potatoes left from the previous year, they cut them first and then purchased seed potatoes to complete the planting from Conaway's Feed Store. Mr. Conaway kept a good supply for the local farmers and made it convenient for us to get what we needed. Planting potatoes was a fun time. While we were planting, dad told stories about growing up with his father near Clarksburg. They planted many rows of corn and potatoes and hoeing them was as difficult for him as it was for us. He recalled the time his father on his way to work had instructed him to hoe the potatoes before being allowed to play. My father loved to run in the woods and have a good time. Most often bare footed, as he was this day, his mind was clearly somewhere else when he accidentally sliced his big toe in half. Not knowing how to stop the blood, he packed mud around his toe and continued to finish the hoeing. On his father's arrival home from work, he received a whipping for cutting his toe, had to soak his toe in Epsom salts, and was then given a piece of candy. Dad said, later his daddy held him in his arms and told him how much he loved him and the whipping was for not being careful. His dad explained, he could have bled to death and he could not bare the thought of losing him. He told the story about keeping the cows cornered at end of the field all day just so he would not have to chase them when it was time to milk. When his father caught him, he got a whipping with a three inch mining belt. My dad never believed in the mining belt but used as switches the water sprouts which grew from the pear and plum trees. Need I say at this time, I made it a practice of trimming the sprouts from those trees as high as I could climb. When he had switched us a time or two, he would go out side, behind the smoke house and cry. It really did hurt him more than it did us. To see my father cry, gave us more hurt than any of the switchings he could have ever given us. The best that I can recall, I only received two switching and on one of those occasions, I learned to fly. I always thought I was fast until that day. Accidentally during hoeing, I chopped four of my dad's prize tomato plants off at ground level. I was in a hurry to go to play baseball and simply wasn't taking enough time to do the job right. Oh, I straighten them and tied them to the stake, but later that afternoon when my dad and I resumed our hoeing, the plants had wilted in the hot sun. My dad ask me if I had cut them, and I made the mistake of telling a fib explaining we had cut worms in our garden. Upon finishing the fabrication, my dad yelled, "I'll show you a cut worm!" He started to chase me to the house. On his way, he pull off a plum tree water sprout, a fast growing sprout, from one of our trees and continued his pursuit. He soon caught up to me and gave me a tap on my behind. Feeling the sting of the plum switch, put me in high gear and my feet left the ground. Recalling correctly, my feet only touched the ground three times running to the house. That was the day, I learned to fly. Planting peppers and tomatoes were done primarily by my mother. Dad made the holes with his big hoe, and mother planted. A week before we planted, we went to visit an old friend who was of Italian's decent. They raised a variety of tomato and pepper plants and always gave my dad a good deal. The plants were grown in cold frames and were sheltered from the weather. It took about a week of gradually exposing them a few hours a day to the direct sun light to harden them off for planting. To put them straight into the ground without this process, would kill them dead. You could tell when they were ready for planting, because the stems had turned a rich deep green as opposed to when they were in the cold frame, a light transparent green color. My father tended the plants as though they were babies, and occasionally talked to them. After each rain, he would cultivate the entire garden, with exception of the potatoes, to keep the ground aerated and prevent weeds from growing. Weeds were strong competitors for water and nutrients and had to be eliminated. Hoeing was done in such a way, foot prints were not left in the garden. Where ever a foot print existed, a nursery of tiny weeds would start to grow. In less than a week, things were almost out of control. You either did it right or suffered the consequences and pulled weeds until your back was almost broken. To the untrained eye watching my dad hoeing and re-hoed after every rain, it must have appeared he was trying to wear the soil out. My neighbors did not use the big hoe like my dad's, they used a long handled smaller unit, which just barely penetrated the soil, they pulled weeds and their garden became baked like adobe clay bricks. With some rain and proper tending, staking the tomatoes was soon to follow. I liked staking tomatoes. We made trips to the woods to cut the perfect stake for each of dad's tomatoes. Locust was the preferred wood and lasted several years. One of my jobs was to sharpen the stakes to a fine point. I was notorious for losing my dad's hatchet or leaving it in the woods or somewhere along the fishing banks. The last time I lost it, resulted in me becoming the chief Indian, wood chopping, tomato stake sharpener. I had built a raft from sycamore trees at the pump house which when launched sank promptly to the bottom. I got no direct punishment for leaving his hatchet along the bank. However, he assigned me the job of cutting stakes and sharpening them. In addition, I was required to name the wood of any stake I cut. This experience made me the "Keeper of the Hatchet". Need I tell you, the hatchet was never lost again and trees like sycamore and slippery elm, which are by nature soaked with water and will not float, were never cut again. I believe the best part about raising tomatoes was tending them like little children. We always kept the dirt around there base, broken and loose, as my dad used to tell me--to let them breath. After the baby plants were in the ground for a few weeks, little lateral shouts grew from each leaf notch. My dad called these suckers and were said to be useless. He said they took the strength from the plants upward growth pattern. The removal had to take place about every week and a half and during the process, you tied the plant to the stake. After about eight or nine weeks, the plants had set tomatoes about every third leaf notch. The tomatoes took most of the energy from the plant and slowed the plant's growth. Now you just monitored the plants for an occasional sucker and tied them, here and there, to keep them from getting wild and falling into the pathway. By the time the third set of tomatoes formed, the first ripe tomatoes would be forming. The first ripe tomato was a time of great anticipation and a time of congratulations. When the first tomatoes started to turn red, dad would proudly take me through the garden and show them to me. The first ripe tomato was always given to my mother. When carrying it from the garden, he cradled it next to him, like a new born baby. Entering the kitchen door, dad held the tomato out to her with the biggest smile. Mother would give out a scream of great surprise, give him a big hug, kiss and make over it for several minutes. The coming of the first tomato meant fantastic tomato sandwiches with ham and cheese were just around the corner. Mother baked home made bread--loaves as large as a basketball. The home made bread made the entire summer a feast of joy. When we could no longer eat tomatoes faster than they were ripening, it was canning time. Canning time was a great time because it meant wonderful camaraderie and brought the family together for story telling and many laughs. Ever since my wife and I were married, going on third seven years, we have raised a garden. Our first garden was at my father-in-law's, the second, next to St.. Mary's Catholic Church, and ever since we have used the alley behind our house and continued to expand it to it's present size, 100'x150'. Gardens today, in our community, are almost a thing of the past. The garden we raise is the largest in the surrounding communities. During my early years, my daddy, taught me about the weather and how it affects plants, soil preparation and it's organic make up. What's most important, he taught me to enjoy working and he made it fun. When looking at my garden, I can see my father tending the plants and using his big hoe. But most of all, I remember his stories, the lessons, and his Herculean efforts to raise his family.

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