Frank Simpson and Dorothy Gradey-Scarbrough in Dorothy’s backyard garden.(Michael Hanson photos)
We drive south down Route 61 (aka the Blues Highway) in Mississippi,finding Dorothy and Owen Gradey-Scarbrough after church and Sunday Supper.
Dorothy and Owen stay beside Country Road 32, a half-mile and oneleft turn out of downtown Shelby. They live in a simple one-story ranchhouse with similar homes on either side. Yellow-green coco grass coversthe front yards, with the greater landscape a mono-color green ofsoybean or corn. This is the Mississippi Delta, home of the Harvard ofhigh-tech agriculture research stations (the USDA’s Delta States Research Center in Leland/Stoneville), and tothe highest rates of diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease in thenation.
Dorothy believes one of the solutions to these communities’ healthissues lies in the backyards and side-yards and churchyards. Behind theGradey-Scarbrough’s house lies part farm, part folk-art installation.On one acre, Owen and Dorothy raise rabbits (in cages suspended over acompost pile), chickens, and a few goats that climb up and down theupturned baptismal tub that welcomed both Dorothy and Owen into thechurch as infants.
Peaches, plums, apples, and pear trees offer occasional shade andtheir trunks support a series of life-size hip-hop celebrities (50Cent, Beyonce, Eminem) on wood paintings salvaged from a shuttered jukejoint. there are rows of okra, butter beans, squash, cucumber, spinach,watermelon, grapes, lavender, lemon balm, oregano, basil, sage.
And, ofcourse, tomatoes.
“Back in the day, you could find tomatoes out there in the cottonfields,” Owen says. “You just go pick you a tomato, brush it off,and eat it right there. We used to pick okra in the middle of thecotton field. They’d just grow wild. Now they’re spraying this stuffand killing it out. I used to like walking through those fields.”
Dorothy and Owen, like most Delta residents over the age of 50, grewup on sharecropper farms. They chopped rows of cotton for 12 hoursa day and made $3 to $12 for the work. the families never got ahead.That’s just how it worked until they started leaving for city jobs inthe north.
“There was no option but to work in the fields,” Dorothy says.“That’s why a lot of people left the south — to get away from thefields.”
“To get away from this,” Owen holds out the hoe he’s been leaningon. “I did. moved to New York and didn’t come back ’til I met thislady.”
Dorothy has been backyard gardening for almost 20 years. What began as a gift of chickens from HeiferInternational to Dorothy and Shelby has become the next satellitedemonstration garden for a national movement aimed at teachingindividuals about backyard and community gardening. in atown as small as Shelby, people notice and people listen to someone asstrong, proud, and rooted as Dorothy, especially when she speaksthrough the 10 churches in town. but even the churches hesitated backin the mid ’90s.
“The churches weren’t ready [for farming/gardening],” she says. “Ourminister said, ‘Isn’t that what we’re getting away from?’ I said, ‘We’vealready gotten away from it.’ It’s been a lost art. I tell them now ithas nothing to do with sharecropping. It’s for you. it can save youmoney and can make you money when you sell at market. This isn’tworking in the fields. This is bettering your family and your health.People are getting into it.”
And Dorothy’s ripples reach outside of Shelby. Will Allen of Milwaukee’s Growing Powerorganization, a national leader inthe urban farm movement (see Grist’s coverage), has christened Dorothy and her MEGA operation(Mississippians Engaging in Greener Agriculture) as its first Regional Outreach Training Center in the country.
We meet Richard Coleman, the county supervisor, at his ranch housein town. the family crowd is just leaving from their Sunday supper — abig one since there was a birthday.
Richard shows us his plot out back, about 120 feet by 50 feet and full of okra, squash, butter beans, peas, tomatoes.
“I just sit indoors in an office,” he says. “I didn’t know whatsweat was. so it’s a twofold thing for me — it provides vegetables formy family and a pastime for me. I’ve already lost ten pounds thisseason. And you have to travel to Cleveland south or Clarksdale north to getwhat you need and that gets expensive, just with gas bills. It’s nocomparison to get it right here.”
About 20 yards away, a smaller plot of the same produce thrivesin a small square amid the coco grass. A dozen kids stay cool in alarge inflatable pool nearby. Sean Jefferson walks over.
Sean Jefferson gardens just like his grandfather taught him.(Michael Hanson)Sean’s 32 years old and lives in the trailer next to Richard’s home.He works at Nature’s Catch, a bass-raising plant in Clarksdale, 20miles north. his wife and four kids stay in the trailer with his momand stepdad.
“My grandfather used to raise food,” he tells us. “I was about 11 or 12 when I hadmy first garden. I try to grow one every year. I usually just shovel itout but this year I tilled it. it cost me about $7 or $8 for seeds plusone bag of fertilizer. I grew it all from seed except for the tomatoplants — bought those at a nursery.”
He tends to it every day. comes home after work and chops a little bit, does it all by himself.
We visit a few other gardens. Louise, Dorothy’s sister, shares a longrow with two other gardeners. She describes some of the local lingo: “choppin’” means weeding down the rows with the hoe. “Rippin’ andrunnin’” means staying busy and getting things done. Nearby we see theShiloh Baptist Church’s garden, where members of the church work arotational schedule to grow produce that’s available for pick-up fromthe church fridge.
Dorothy at one of the experimental greenhouse operations on Cornelius Toole’s property.(Michael Hanson)And our final stop takes us to Cornelius Toole’s rambling propertydown in Mound Bayou, five miles south of Shelby. It’s like thebackyard, down-home version of Stoneville’s big Agexperimental research station.
Maybe an answer to the Delta’s and the nation’s food deserts liessomewhere here among Toole’s mad-farmer-scientist laboratory of tilapiatanks, hand-built backyard irrigation pipes, chicken coops,greenhouses, and one huge, faded-green John Deere sinking into theweeds.
A return to the land, and fresh food, in the backyards
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