Around the Kitchen Table: Spring plowing

Spring was Dad’s favorite time of the year. He always looked forward to “spring green-up.” This season brings back so many memories – running behind the old Farm-all tractor, wriggling our toes in the still cool fresh earth, picking out the roots, grass and rocks, seeing who could find the biggest or the most and our old hound dog Queen happily digging for disturbed gophers and moles.

Even now, when I pass a newly plowed field, I have to roll down my window and take a deep draw of that familiar smell. It makes me happy.

One of our favorite things to do when Dad was plowing was building “frog houses.” They were actually for the numerous toads we found at the edges of the field, but somehow “toad house” didn’t have the same ring to it. Finding a likely spot on the outside of a furrow, we would stick our foot in the soft dirt and mound it over our foot, patting it down and then slowly withdrawing our foot leaving a nice shady cave, just right for a large toad.

Sometimes we’d capture likely tenants and place them inside; other times we would wait to see if anyone had an interest. Most didn’t take up residence, only lingering until we were otherwise occupied, then they would hastily vacate. That lack of permanency didn’t deter us from building. Some days we created whole complexes, which we dubbed “froggie apartments.” We would go back the next day to see if anyone had moved in during the night, but usually by then, Queen had taken care of any notions we had about our amphibious real estate futures.

Part of the fun of spring plowing was getting dirty without getting in too much trouble. Mama would just sigh and shake her head. “Get out of those filthy clothes,” she’d say, pointing to the screened-in porch. We’d shed down to our underwear, and she’d take everything outside and shake as much of the garden plot out of them as she could.

We always left a ring of brown around the tub when we finished cleaning up. She would ask us, “Did y’all roll in the dirt?” We would laugh and say, “We sure did!” She tried not to smile, but we could tell she was amused.

Every spring, Dad would tell the story about how Grandpa and Ma saved their tomato crop back in the ‘30s. Grandpa McAnally was born in 1878 and spent the last years of the 19th century and the first few years of the 20th living among the Cherokee in Oklahoma. While there, he learned about the ways of animals, how to track and trap and how to read the signs of nature. The elders taught him how to predict weather by the signs and the sky. He was a true outdoorsman and passed along this knowledge to Dad.

As kids, if we wanted to know what to expect from the weather, we didn’t rely on the local TV weatherman in the late 1960s. We just asked Dad. He was right more often than the meteorologist.

Grandpa’s uncanny ability to “read the skies” paid off one year in the early 1930s, as Dad told it. Like everyone else in the community, Grandpa had borrowed money to pay the taxes and get enough for seed and provisions till the crop came in, a common practice during the Depression. This meant that everything was riding on the success of those tomatoes. That particular year was like any other – all the farmers around had their crops planted, including Dad’s family. They had about 10 acres in all, with young tomato plants they had transplanted from cold frames. It seemed as if all was pointing toward a good year.

One day after the plants had been in the field for a few weeks, Dad said he saw Grandpa standing on the edge of their wooden porch staring off into the northwest, his old bull-head pipe clenched between his teeth. How long he stood there, Dad couldn’t say, but eventually without taking his eyes off the sky, Grandpa said, “Boys …a freeze is comin.’ We got some tomatoes to cover.”

Dad took off to find his brothers and sisters and they all gathered at the tomato field with Grandpa and Ma (his mother). She showed them what to do. It was a monumental task. It took all of them working till night to try and cover as many as they could. Ma would gently bend the limber green stalk over and heap up the loose dirt, completely covering the entire plant. Even though they were racing against nightfall, they couldn’t hurry the job. More than once, before finding the rhythm of covering the stalks and moving to the next, Dad said he snapped some in two.

So on it went the rest of the day until dusk fell: push, cover, pat; push, cover, pat, till almost all of them were covered.

The next morning, a white frost covered the hills and valleys around the community. Grandpa and Ma’s tomatoes were the only ones to make it through the freeze that year. Everyone else had to replant.

Because of his unusual ability to determine the weather, Grandpa’s tomatoes brought a premium price that year, since his were the first to market.

I love to retell that story and share my love of frog houses with my grands. I have to say theirs are way more inventive than mine. After showing them how to “build” a house, the nine-year-old scampered off to find materials to build her lucky tenant a bed, table and other furniture. The little ones scattered to look for leaves and flowers to decorate theirs.

Imagination is a wonderful thing to foster in children. It doesn’t have to be flashy or new, just something you share that can spark their creativity.

I wonder what a toad’s favorite color might be.

by Tamra M. Bolton