Ken admiring his beans
Like many mountain people Ken loved to make a garden every year. He put up stuff for him to eat in the winter like most folks, but he grew much more than he needed. What did he do with the extra bounty? He freely shared it with his friends and neighbors.
Ken’s garden was down by his shop. His homeplace was high on the top of mountain and although he had more flat space than we do the soil by his shop was rich and perfect for growing things.
To access the garden you walked across a foot bridge that spanned a small creek. It was some of the best soil I’ve ever seen.
Over the years Ken shared many stories about his garden. Every time I’m in a bean patch where the plants have climbed to the top of the trellis and are reaching over for something else to hold onto, I always remember Ken telling me his beans liked to hold hands across the aisle.
Here’s a few more gardening stories from Ken.
When we first moved into Trim Cove in the early 50’s, we had about 15 Apple trees on our place then. I was just a little squirt back then. We had an old timey June Apple tree close to the house and Harold could climb like nobody’s business. We had already pulled all the June Apples we could reach, so Harold would shimmy to the top of that tree and get me a nice red one. Boy, that thing tasted good!
Mama would send us way up in the field and gather Apples from the orchard. There’s poplar trees now that you couldn’t reach around, where we use to have a Corn Field, and the lower end was full of potatoes. There was one tree, Mama called it Potts Apple, she’d cut holes in that thing and pour sugar in it. It was to get out the core, but to me it looked like a Volcano. Anyway, she’d fix about 20, put them in our old Wood Stove oven with the jacket still on, and your jaws would beat your brains out when they were ready.
All these Apple trees are all gone now, but I got to experience it.
I have got to burn off my garden as soon as it dries up again. And since the wind here blows from the southwest toward the northeast, I’ll start burning the upper side first and let it burn backwards. I hope to get everything plowed or tillered by the 15th and usually start planting after the 20th. And those Planting by the Signs Calendars of yours is a must.
As I pulled the ragweeds in my cabbage patch (which didn’t do any good at all), I got tore up from those sawbriars. They even found my Silver Queen after it got so hot. It looks like my Half Runners are having a second crop coming on, from all the blooms. My daddy and mama lived in the hard times, had a family started, and they were tough as leather-britches. I heard daddy say “they said we had a big depression, but we couldn’t tell any difference when it ended.” Their faith in God and family and country guided them through the sawbriars of life.
By the time the Silver Queen makes its supposed to be full of weeds and wildflowers. I love to take my smallest granddaughter thru the corn and watch her looking up trying to see the sky. Its the real jungle to her.
I’m tickled ‘pink’ with my German Johnsons. But I have to get them the moment they start turning or an ole tarpin bites holes in them. I just had too much garden and its been too hot this year. All the yellow Brandywines just disappeared, but the cream and sausage are really good producers.
It’ll be so nice to get my hands back into that black dirt again. I’m really looking forward to my garden again.
My daddy always planted those Octobers, and they were his favorite. I prefer White Runners or Greasy Cut Shorts. But to tell the truth, everything fresh from the garden is good.
Those blasted Rabbits are having a field day feast on my bean sprouts again this year. Hope they get full soon! Ain’t this world just full of pests? And the bugs ain’t bad yet. Those pesky crows will be watching me plant corn today from high on the mountain tops.
Seems like everything’s coming along just fine now. After just 10 days my green beans have busted thru, some are lifting their seed just like they scored a touchdown. I noticed lots of blooms on my cherry, peach, and apple trees this year. Hope the frost is all done.
My tomatoes won’t be ripe for about two more weeks, but I worked them boogers over last week. I’ll bet I cut-off a wheelboro load of suckered limbs that don’t have blooms. Now I can see under them and sprinkle lime powder underneath to prevent blossom end rot. Some of my neighbors are complaining about that.
The sunshine we’ve had yesterday and today is a welcome site. I’ll have to check out my wild blackberries tomorrow cause it looks like my green beans growed a foot yesterday. It’s amazing what a little sun will do, but everything is a whole lot slower about producing this year.
The Nantahala White Runners are the strongest lived bean I’ve ever seen. When the little ole 94 year old (who ate supper with me for the last 15 years of his life) gave me the seed, he said they were real runners. His wife’s family had been replanting this bean for over a hundred years and enjoying the harvest. I love ’em!
I got more rain than I need this year, but I made hills and planted my beans on top. That helped! But my Silver Queen is puney, hardly waist high. There’s a lot of work to gardening, just when you think you’re caught up, you get attacked by rabbits, coons, crows, and of course bugs. But I still Love it!
I hope you enjoyed Ken’s various stories and comments about gardening. You can clearly see he loved growing things.
Last night’s video: Updates: We Started Hospice Care, Channel News, & Upcoming Cookbook Events.
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Ken sure did have lots of good stories. I know you and Jim will miss him tremendously.
Words of a true gardener. I love the images conjured up by these snippets and descriptions. So much of the work of producing food is about planning for the future, but it’s also savoring special memories from the past: “All these Apple trees are all gone now, but I got to experience it.” Amen to that, Ken Roper.
Ken and I both grew up in families that were not dependent on other people to provide our every need. You knew the phrase “everything you have has been on a truck”. Well that didn’t apply to us. Our parents raised us to be independent. To only depend on others for what we couldn’t produce. We grew our gardens and corn fields containing pumpkins and cornfield beans. We learned to kill copperheads and pick blackberries and wild grapes. We picked apples, peaches, and wild strawberries. We learned to hunt and fish for food instead of trophies. We were instilled with the notion that other people depended on us to survive not the other way around. It became a part of our makeup.
Ken and I both left the life of subsistence farming but it never left us. It had become part of our nature. Ken is gone now but I still have to carry on until I leave this troubled land.
It’s just so sad about Ken. I didn’t know him personally but I feel like I did through Blind Pig And the Acorn. I’ve read many of many Ken’s post. He will be missed. it’s like we’re all part of Tippers family here. God Bless each and everyone one here.
I had a gardener friend like Ken. He’d tell me, “Now, Gene, that first row of sweet corn is yours.”
Good man, good fisherman, good friend, now deceased. We were on a lake all day, fishing for black crappie, when the Twin Towers went down. We heard the awful news on his truck’s radio.
I have thoroughly enjoyed all of the stories and comments this week about an amazing man that I wish I could have known. Feeding the 94-year-old man every night for 15 years touched my heart. Ken reminds me of my own daddy in so many ways. Daddy always planted way too much but he loved to share with family and friends. He also loved his Silver Queen corn, of course we all did too. I remember each Spring, he couldn’t wait to get back into the dirt. He was one of 10 children and he learned early in life how to survive. He used to say even when my brother and I were still at home, “we may not have been blessed with many material things, but we are beyond blessed with our bounty.”
Tipper, many prayers are being sent your way. May God be with Miss Cindy and each and every one of you.
I have been to funerals, as recently as Tuesday and along with my daughter’s where the preacher will talk about “the dash” between the two dates, the day you were born and the day you died, on your memorial. They are referring to the life you lived. I think from the things I have read about Ken, Pap and it seems like before too long Miss Cindy, they all left or will be leaving a mighty good “dash”. I missed it in my earlier comment, but Ken’s sentence about faith in God and depending on him could be said about all of the generations of both mine and my wife’s family. I often think of my Grandaddy Kirby, 1888-1971, raising a family of eight by farming 40 acres with mules and the things that went on in the world during his lifetime. He was one of the finest Christian men I have ever known. One other thing to do with Ken’ mention of critters and beans, the deer got my beans last night, they were about hand high, I hope they will come back (the beans).
I had the feeling of reading Mr Ken’s personal gardening journal as I read today’s post! What a wonderful tribute to your friend. This was followed by amazement that you were able to find the comments he had made through the years. Unless you have a file system for cataloging by name or category I can just picture the hunt and paste involved ( this comment ages me since I worked for many years on the old IBM systems).
I also want to thank you for last night’s video. Any of us who have watched a loved one in the grip of pain can recognize the struggle your family is facing. My heart breaks for all of you. If I’m not mistaken I believe that Matt is Miss Cindy’s only child so I have extra sorrow for him. Thank you God for family and friends, as well as the amazing Hospice nurses.
Ken’s post about the “pests” reminded me of this: Ecc 1:13 ..this sore travail hath God given to the sons of man to be exercised therewith.” We each have our share of “sore travail” but it as an ‘exercise’ for “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory”. Seeing as how God planted the first garden, that’s a mighty good place to talk to Him. Knew a preacher (now gone to his reward) who had a big garden the deer started getting in. He told the Lord, ” Lord you know how I depend on that garden.” The deer never bothered it again.
An old one from Reader’s Digest: The preacher stopped to compliment a church member on his garden. “Mighty fine-looking garden you and God have there,” said the pastor. “Yeah,” replied the gardener, “but you should have seen it when He had it by Himself.”
Ken’s last comment on this post says it all. He was caught up and then along comes the critters but he still said he loved what he was doing. I can tell he knew his seeds well. Mom was never willing to try too many bean varieties as she knew the old-timey white half-runners tasted good and were heavy producers. God bless Miss Cindy and her family.
Thank you for another good day of stories from Ken Roper. What an honor it would have been to know him. I love how he puts things like: “After just 10 days my green beans have busted thru, some are lifting their seed just like they scored a touchdown”. I can just see those beans with their “touchdown” arms held high.
Prayers for the entire Pressley family today as Miss Cindy gets closer to heaven.
Times with Ken were always enjoyable. I never went to his house, but regularly stopped by his shop when coming or going, with it being right beside the main road, just before you get to the four-lane at Andrews.
The name of that creek that runs between his shop and his garden spot is Worm Creek. It has a handful of feeder streams on the southwest side of Granny Squirrel Gap with names like Matherson, Kennedy, Radder, and Coefield Creeks. They all back up against the ridge that divides Worm Creek and Junaluska Creek. From a quickly scratched out boundary, it looks like there’s only about 1600 acres of drainage that collectively feeds Worm Creek by the time it gets to Ken’s shop, but the volume of water is enough to hold trout; you could see them below that foot log over to his garden. I recall seeing a nice one – maybe 10-12 inches – in there.
He never said so, that I remember, but I think Ken treated those trout as his pets and fed them. Now Ken liked to eat trout as much as anyone, and knew how to get them. In fact, Br’er Jim’s memory from a couple of days back about who caught the trout that we ate that evening (along with ramps I’d dug, morels Jim had gathered and some of Ken’s corn meal and flour cornbread) is faulty. It was Ken who caught those trout! (I have an e-mail exchange to back that up, by the way;-).
But I don’t think he’d ever try to catch one of his pets.
Ken gave me some of his Nantahala runner beans; they are good about germinating, productive as all get out, and will climb about as far up as you supply support. I have my two-row bean patch set up so that poles lean in toward the center from each row and form a shaded arbor underneath to pick the beans. The supports are cane poles, about 8 to 10 feet long, and have to get a step ladder to pick some of the beans.
Those beans would climb to the top of the tallest canes, so last year I put in a 20-ft pole just to see what would happen. The beans that took hold of it didn’t make it to the top, but they got every bit of 16 feet up it.
The way this world seemed headed bothered Ken, as it would any right-minded person. It’s a comfort to know that Ken is now tending another fine garden spot, just over on the other side of the creek.
What a man Mr. Roper really was! In the readings, it’s obvious he had a big heart. I liked the 94 year old who gave him the high producing white runners and who ate with Ken his final 15 years. He must have been the literal center of that old man’s heart and faith in his fellow man! He surely was a blessing! I liked the story of him taking the baby into the corn and getting a real charge out of her looking up as high as she could for the sky. I remember those days myself running through the corn with my sister. It was a little paradise and I surely do miss it. Sometimes what I read here touches my “feelers” and as my heart swells and recalls (even the laughter and wind as I ran) there is a part I try to bury inside that makes my eyes leak a little. What days we had in these hills, huh?
As I said yesterday, Ken’s stories should be collected and put in a book. My aunt that lived at Chattanooga had a large backyard of rich bottomland dirt and would plant a garden. She also loved the October beans and planted an old time running green bean (seeds were passed down to her) and made tee pees out of bamboo canes for the beans to run on. They would have to use a stepladder to pick the beans. Daddy always planted Silver Queen corn. When I was a squirt, we had an apple tree that we that we called a horse apple tree, that grew small green apples only good for jelly, drying and pies. Daddy had another apple tree I played under and would climb when I was about 4-5 years old. An older neighborhood lady was staying with my mother when my sister was born and after I had done something that she was going to “get me for”. I climbed the tree and told her she couldn’t get me, she said “yes I can” and pick up some small rocks and went to throwing them at me, it didn’t take long for me to come down! Nowadays , some of the parents would try to have someone that did that arrested. Daddy just probably whipped my butt when he got home from work and that was the end of it. The good old days of the past.
These are lovely stories. Ken seems like he would have had a helping hand, and smile, and wave for everyone. A true friend.
Thank you for sharing your friend’s writings. He did have a way with words. I know you’ll often miss his comments, but especially on your “planting by” days.
He reminds me of my Uncle Bill. He was a farmer and worked as a park ranger in Talladega National Forest. He knew every type of tree .
Really enjoyed todays stories especially talking about his parents’ faith in God and country getting them through the “sawbriers” of life.
By not only planting seeds for gardening, Ken Roper also planted seeds in his journey of life. What a legacy he has left!
Tipper, I pray that God will give you strength for today.
Love his stories!!! Tarpin – terrapin – he would have been wonderful to listen to.
Do Nantahala beans still exist?
I am so glad you have many of his stories – true treasures!!!
Lenora-I think Ken or the Casada brothers worked with a seed company to get them to propagate the seed. Hopefully if Jim or Don sees this they will chime in 🙂
growing is such a joy be it beautiful flowers or food. to know that you had a small part in creating (a very tiny part) a beautiful flower or something good to eat just by planting a seed providing water or food is overwhelming.
Mr. Roper sure could turn a phrase! I could “see” everything he was talking about! What a treasure he was! He really took me back…
I love his stories! Thanks for sharing!
Continued prayers for all y’all! May you all feel the Lord close to you!
While I didn’t get to see your video yet but prayers for you and your family.
My mother is not doing well either and is now in a nursing home for rehab. She had a stroke a little over a week ago and has the early stages of dementia along with other issues. If she gets to go home it will be with hospice care or possibly in home nursing care, but only time will tell.
God’s peace and comfort!!!
Ken surely sounds like the sort of man it would be an honor to know.