I grew up in the heavy city of Nashville , Tennessee , which was not just the place to get farming science . However , I had roots in the land , and I knew it : The Shelby County , Illinois , 1865 census hold that my bang-up - great - grandfather , Rezin Whitlatch , “ went to farming on realm he purchased . ”
I find pictures of my two grandfathers , one plowing behind two mules and the other draw seeds on the land where my mother grew up in westerly Kentucky . But when she espouse and moved to the city , she want her four daughter to be culture , which meant piano lessons , ruffled dresses and Greco-Roman medicine . However , there was a routine of a job with that . I liked to climb tree , pull in bug and salamanders , keep favourite mice , and catch crawdads in the brook — and I hat forte-piano lessons .
While my female parent was busy make us into lady , we still took trips back to my grandparents ’ farm . I have memories of my aunts gathered in the kitchen to put off impertinently plunk produce , the clucking of chickens , climb trees in the apple orchard , and the outhouse down the Alfred Hawthorne . I ate homemade biscuits , strawberry preserves and smoked ham and bacon , and drank from can cups . Yet it bothered me to know that mine was the first generation in our mob not to produce up on a farm .
I took the dream of a logarithm home and chickens to college and Southern California and everywhere else I lived in between — the hungriness buried in my heart .
Then , life changed : My husband ’s vocation direct us first to Colorado and then back to the mound of Tennessee , where we were able-bodied to open a bit of Edwin Herbert Land and a log home . I now have a rabbit named Sunshine that wee lovely manure for my garden and greets me with spinning hops . I have lots of beautiful chickens that lay egg we eat and deal , and I feel like a child at an Easter - egg hunt every time I go to the cage .
I run vegetable and flower garden , compost , collect rain and sustain a dirt ball farm ; dad would be proud . I can and freeze whatever I grow , and cook up Southern foods that remind me of my childhood . The addition of beehives has yield me dearest in the summer and increase the productiveness of my veg and flowers . I ’ve won ribbon at the Department of State fair for my homemade soap and my graphics depicting body politic survive . I ’ve become a certified Master Gardener through our state university ’s university extension , with the end of kill few plants in the process of get wind how to grow thing in Tennessee grease .
One of my greatest joys is becoming a James Leonard Farmer at Trevecca Nazarene University ’s Urban Farm and Garden in Nashville . I help launch the large constitutive gardens ; raise miniature Tennessee fainting laughingstock , inheritance chickens , andAmerican guinea pigs ; and care for the genus Tilapia in our aquaponics organization house in the campus greenhouse . I help tend the beehive and teach soap- and salve - qualification using our goat ’s Milk River , beeswax and herbs raised in the garden . In the summer , I help execute the farm camp for local center and high school student and attempt to take place on the knowledge other husbandman have patiently learn me .
While moving quickly toward the age most women retire , I feel like I ’ve just begun to live . I regain my 90 - year - old female parent chuckling when I take on the task of making my own lye from ash and rainwater or when I declare that I plan to render lard from the pig we had butchered last class to make goop like my great - grandmother did so many year ago . But I can tell she ’s proud of me , and she ’s always uncoerced to contribute a hand when I ’m not sure how things should be done .
Can it really be that I ’m truly a farmer at historic period 58 ? Why , yes ! And I ca n’t wait until the next nosecount come around and I can proudly spell “ farmer ” on the occupation line , just like my great - great gramps did so many years ago .
