Today’s trip down memory lane comes from the back of Dad’s house in Port Orange in November 2006.
Mind you, this was many years after the crops of corn and other vegetables he would help grow on Grandpa’s farm in Hutsonville IL. Grandpa’s farm wasn’t huge by the corporate farming standards of today but it was a decent and respectable size and that with his job as a turbine operator at Central Illinois Power helped pay the bills during the tough times.
Every now and then and usually when there were other members of the family about, Dad and Grandpa would both start talking fondly about life on the farm which was something I only had a passing familiarity with as someone visiting occasionally rather than staying for the growing season.
But farming was always important to his side of the family though I really can’t say I’ve got the knack for agriculture other than at least the aucubas I planted behind this house many years ago amazingly are not dead even though I’ve never done anything really to help them since! And I’ll give props to the nice lady at the State Farmer’s Market who sold them to me…they truly have been completely idiot-proof as I’ve managed to prove conclusively! 🙂
But that didn’t stop Grandpa from insisting on telling me his stories of life on the farm and his tips and tricks for being successful at it even when the weather is utter rubbish and the times were hard and proper supplies even harder to come by. You’ll be amazed how creative one can be to come up with fertilizer when you can’t afford the store-bought stuff and I’ve never forgotten that corn needs to be planted in rows of two with marigolds amongst them (the rows allow for cross-pollination and the nasty bugs find marigolds more tasty than your corn!).
I always thought of these tales as his version of “The News from Lake Wobegon” but far more upbeat and happy! He’d tell these stories (sometimes for hours!) when we’d have our time alone together in his Florida room on a Sunday afternoon, especially in the months leading up to the day he left us.
It was important to Grandpa to give someone the gift of knowing that he was happy with how his life as a farmer turned out to be and wanted to be remembered with love and respect. That is a gift beyond words.
It’s also a legacy that lived with us for all the years I lived with Dad. I can’t remember a single posting in our itinerant wanderings courtesy of the US Army where there wasn’t SOMETHING growing near our home. It didn’t have to be much but there would be a vegetable garden or plants of some sort. There had to be because nothing to tend to sorted ill with him…even though he was a soldier by profession, he was still a farmer’s son at heart.
And that’s what brings me to this picture. When we moved into that house after he retired in 1986, soon after he had a proper vegetable garden that produced tonnes of tomatoes and cucumbers. When the garden got to be too much for him to deal with, he planted that orange tree right behind the kitchen window where the garden once stood.
That navel orange tree has a bit of a story to it. It is one of the few survivors of a very nasty citrus canker outbreak in Volusia County years ago and through it’s life has produced a PRODIGIOUS amount of fruit.
The back and side yards also had a couple of huge banana trees that would produce massive amounts of bananas every year (rather than the every other year which is usual). He’d often give them away because ever since the infamous “banana tacos” incident whilst he was stationed in Jackson MS, neither of us could ever stand to eat bananas again!
But that orange tree is what I’ll remember most. Even though oranges and bananas are not indigenous crops in Illinois, he still managed to make a fair go of farming them at his retirement home in Florida.
It seems only fitting that that orange tree was still standing guard in the back yard on the day I removed the last of the household goods and three months later when I sold the house.
That tree stayed there longer than any of us and is the ultimate survivor. No wonder Dad loved that tree and why he thoroughly enjoyed having Nick catch the oranges in that butterfly net.
There was another generation to appreciate his farmer’s nature… 🙂
