Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 62
F L AV O R S
PLEASURES AND PROMISE . . .
Two Raised Beds
How one couple reconnected with their roots, went outside to play and realized the full joys
of getting your hands into the soil.
Text and photos by FRED AND JILL SAUCEMAN
I
can think of few things in life more noble than planting a garden. It's good for the environment. It's good
for the pocketbook. It's good for the waistline. And
probably most important of all, it's good for the soul.
Jill and I both come from a long line of gardeners. While her parents, grandparents, and greatgrandparents were cultivating the soil of Southwest
Virginia, mine were doing so in East Tennessee. The crops
on both sides of the family were similar: Kennebec
potatoes, Silver Queen corn, half-runner beans,
Rutgers and Big Boy tomatoes, and yellow summer squash.
Just as I treasure the people in my life who
cook, play music, read books and tell stories,
I deeply admire those who till the earth, who
live by the rhythms of the seasons. Gardeners
are giving people. My father operated on the
theory that the more he gave away, the better
his garden would produce. It worked.
Often, throughout the course of our careers,
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the busy lives Jill and I have led have taken us away
from that closeness to the earth that our ancestors felt so
strongly. I can remember years when I didn't have a single ear of garden-fresh corn. This from a person who once
ate 10 ears one night as a child, long after supper, when
my parents and I made an evening visit to the cornfield
and found that the crop was "coming in."
For our ancestors, having a garden meant eternal
hope and optimism. Even on the bleakest days of
winter, there was always a brightly-colored seed catalog on the night stand, reminding our families of
the cycle of renewal that would get going all over
again at the beginning of an always unpredictable
Southern Appalachian springtime.
We missed those lost days for too long, and last
year, we decided to do something about it. We built
two raised beds in the back yard. They were completed on June 29, and by the end of the day on
June 30, they were just about full of plants and
seeds. We watered, and we watched, every day. By
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Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - Intro
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - Cover1
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - Cover2
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 3
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 4
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 5
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Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 7
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Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 28
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Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 30
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 31
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Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 65
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - 66
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - Cover3
Blue Ridge Country - March/April 2019 - Cover4
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