Steve Bryant of the Old Town Community has been growing vegetables virtually his entire life. “We had big work horses when I was a kid, and I plowed behind them for days,” Bryant said. “That’s all we had, what we raised.”
Bryant isn’t plowing behind a horse any more, but has one of the larger gardens in the county growing almost everything and giving much of it away.
“I just enjoy raising everything and watching it grow,” Bryant said of his gardening hobby. “I give a lot of people tomatoes, cabbage, green beans, whatever I’ve got.”
Bryant believes the success of his garden is largely a result of his determination to share much of the produce with the community.
“ I haven’t watered in years,” he explained. “I feel like the good Lord has taken care of my garden on account that I give so much of it away. I truly believe that.”
Around his many tomato plants he puts out double layers of newspaper and pine straw to help hold the moisture in.
“I love to grow tomatoes,” he said with a big smile. “Once they get up and you get your basket around them, they’re really the easiest to grow and you can gather so many of them quicker than you can anything else.”
Butter beans are the most labor intensive, he said, because of the harvesting.
“You just about have to crawl to get them. Peas are really easy. You can pick them real fast. I can pick six 5-gallon buckets of tomatoes in about 30 minutes. Butter beans are definitely the toughest to gather.”
The squash had a bit too much rain this year, but otherwise his garden has held up well this year with all the rain. He does have to keep electric fences around his gardens to keep the deer out.
“I’ve had a lot of trouble with rabbits on my tomatoes this year, too,” Bryant said.
His okra is just beginning to come out. He’s pulled some monstrous cabbages and the tomatoes keep coming by the buckets full.
Bryant, 67, is retired from the paper mill in Grenada and still drives a tractor for his nephew, Pepper Watts, during sweet potato season. When he’s not on the tractor, he’s sometimes working on one.
He’s well known in these parts for his tractor work, but said he’s just about quit that.
“I still do a little,” he said. “Age has caught up with me, that mechanic work on tractors can be tough.”
The garden work suits him best, he said, and it’s where he feels most at ease.
“I just love it, everything about it.”