How Grandfriends Helped Us Grow
Grandfriends Day at the farm is coming up on June 27th, and we asked our team how their grandparents influenced their growing journeys. Here were some of the stories they shared:
From Farmer Will:
This is my grandad Thad Humphries. He was OBSESSED with farming, birds, and the Mississippi State BullDogs.
Will and his grandad Thad in a cotton field outside of Helena, Arkansas.
He knew all the new and different corn/bean/cotton varieties like they were common knowledge. He would watch corn grow. His south Mississippi mud accent was so thick you couldn’t understand a damn word he said. He was an incredible gardener and well known around Helena, Arkansas for his tulip beds in the front yard. He watered his tomatoes like a farmer waters rice. His water bill was probably hundreds of dollars in the 90’s…He was so goofy I didn’t understand him as a kid and actually found him to be annoying. The older I get the more I realize I’m just a younger version of Thad, and I’m proud of that. He got to see me become a horticulturist right at the end of his life and it made him so happy.
From Jess, our Program & Storytelling Manager:
My Southern grandma, Mary Earle (aka gramsie), first connected a reluctant 8-year old me with fresh veggies from the garden.
It was a sweaty Mississippi morning. She cut a tomato off the vine and held it up for me to smell. I’m sure I made a face ~ so specifically sharp, earthy, and a little grassy. But weren’t they all slimy and flavorless?
We took it inside and washed it together. I was belly nervous as she sliced into, then salted and peppered it – the seeds oozed a little. She cut a small bite with the side of a fork and fed it to me, and I can really still taste it – sweet, tart, not too slimy. Not the worst! Not a conversion tomato either. But it did open me up to the knowing that food fresh from the garden is not the same as produce from the grocery store.
I was a dedicated dirt digger as a kid, but I think she’d be surprised and happy to see me now. Mary Earle’s gentle green thumbs for sure helped connect me with gardening and, eventually, with deeply loving this work (and play! and joy!) in farming and food equity at EarthDance. I am so thankful.
From Jena, our Director of Agriculture and Education:
Post-college, I had been growing some stuff in a raised bed, and I really wanted to grow something besides just herbs, so I started growing tomatoes. I called my mom, who has a green thumb and knew she’d be able to walk me through what I needed to do.
Jena with their grandma, who showed them the different ways to prepare and preserve okra. Jena still grows okra today because of her!
My Grandpa Gilly had passed her down this list of things that he used for every tomato plant that he ever grew. It was mostly very common things: an all-purpose fertilizer, a handful of worm castings, a handful of bone meal, a couple crushed eggshells, and one aspirin. I was like, “Okay, those first ones you said make sense. But why the aspirin?” She didn’t know why, but that was his recipe.
Fast forward several years later, I’m sharing this recipe with people, and I get the question again, “Why the aspirin?” I’m like, well, I should probably know the answer by now. I looked it up, and learned that aspirin (acetyl salicylic acid) mimics a natural hormone tomato plants produce (salicylic acid); it’s a major part of their immune system. When you apply it to the plant, either as a spray or by including it in fertilizer, it boosts the plant’s immune system and makes it more resistant to disease. Kind of like a plant vaccine!
I still use that trick to this day. Any time I plant a tomato, I put some fertilizer in the ground, along with one aspirin, because of Grandpa Gilly.
Grandparents, and all kinds of elder figures in our lives, can make a huge difference in how we see and learn about the world. Our EarthDance team is proof!
Inspire your grandchild or grandfriend to learn more about EarthDance and farming! Join us at the farm (233 S. Dade) on Saturday, June 30th from 9:30am-noon. It will be a multi-generational day of fun, including bubblemaking with Simple Positive Play, family-friendly yoga, meet-and-greets with goats and chickens, + more!