Enjoy this profile of our oldest gardener, Hazel!
In the past
sixty-five years, there have been twelve different presidents. The United States has gone to war and
withdrawn from conflict. The Internet
now extends to all corners of the nation and cities and towns have seen
accelerated development like never before.
And each of these past sixty-five years, Hazel Rayburn has grown a
garden. Like clockwork, in the spring
beans and corn and potatoes and onions go into the ground, and for the next
couple of months there is the weeding and the canning and the cooking and the
harvesting. And it all began with a few
chickens.
During
World War II Hazel lived in Baltimore, working in an airplane factory. It was here that Hazel fulfilled the smiling
all-American image of the posters: she went to work everyday, made planes for
the boys overseas, and lived outside of Whitesburg and by herself for the first
time in her life. It was in Baltimore
that Hazel met, and fell in love with, Earl.
With the end of World War II, Hazel moved back to Whitesburg, the only
home she had ever known, with her new husband.
The era of rationing remained, despite victory over Germany and the extension
of U.S. hegemony. Rationing of food was
felt particularly hard in Appalachia, a region that has long-suffered from
poverty and welfare concerns.
So with this context, the first winter living back in Whitesburg was
fated to be a difficult one. But Hazel
knew the solution.
“I’ll bet
you a dollar,” Hazel said to Earl, “that if we make it through the winter,
we’ll have more food than we know what to do with.”
Making it
through the winter was no guarantee, but as soon as the snow and cold began to
let up, even in the slightest, the chickens began. Before grass even turned green they brought
chicks into the house, keeping them pushed right up against the stove so that
they would stay warm. The chicks were
mail order, and it turns out raising two hundred chicks gets crowded. When the ground softened and the chickens
began pecking around outside, Hazel put in their first plot. The plot was huge, producing more than enough
vegetables for their day to day cooking, and plenty to can: beans, cabbage for
sauerkraut, cucumbers to pickle.
The value
of a garden doesn’t come from some inherent value of the gardening process, but
rather from the nutrition, vitality, and self-sufficiency that it lends to its
gardeners and their families. You won’t
find an individual who loves gardening more than Hazel Rayburn; if she could
make every person living up and down Cowan grow a garden, she would. But to her, being able to stick something in
the ground and see corn come out isn’t really valuable in and of itself. What she truly values is her family’s ability
to eat kraut all through the winter, independent of the economy. John Paul Dejoria said that his vision for
Grow Appalachia included a “return to the self-sufficiency of our
grandparents,” and all you have to do is walk into Hazel’s kitchen when she’s
stringing beans with her great-granddaughter Katie, or when her granddaughter
Becky is canning over a hundred quarts of kraut, or when they’re eating the
fruits of their labors for breakfast lunch and dinner to see that in action. The transmittance of the collective knowledge
and wisdom of gardening is invaluable and yet also organic; Hazel Rayburn is
living proof.
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