Charles Taylor Living
There is nothing more refreshing than the country air of Appalachia in April.
When I was a young lad growing up on Taylor’s Mountain in Central Pennsylvania, warm Spring breezes flowed like invisible Bounce fabric softener sheets across the farmland when the sun started to heat the world.
The winds spoke to me while growing up on that mountain, like subtle whispers from an imaginary voice in a psychotic delusion.
It was a blessing to live during a time when man grew his own food, when breezes sang songs and nobody was around to care that one could hear things that others did not.
It was many moons ago, this time of year, long before I turned gay and eons before I learned to ride a bike that I bowed down towards the ground and plopped potato pieces into the organic soil.
The smell of the air was fabulous in April and May working those potato fields.
Fruit blossoms were everywhere in our nearby orchard. There were no neighbors because we owned half the mountain– the very top of Stone Creek Ridge.
They came from all across America to buy grandma’s special cider.
There came a time each year following the butchered hogs of winter when the weather turned perfect for plating vegetables.
The family once again became more vegetarian.
The trees which produced fruit, with the exception of tomatoes vines, were planted only once. But vegetables required re-planting each Spring.
During a certain quarter of the moon, when the gods of time and astronomy collided in a little yellow book called the Farmer’s Almanac, the trees blossomed like flowers and grandma and I began working the ground and planting our fields of golden vegetables.
The smell of the soil was like a burp from mother nature after she finished off a pint of hard cider.
The chicken manure we spread with pitch forks sometimes steamed after we spread it upon our still cool bread and butter land.
"Be careful Charlie, make sure you point the little white roots down and stop eating all my potato eyes. Put one at the edge of each footprint" taught grandma Esther as we rushed to get all her blue potato sprouts into the ground before sundown.
Rakes glided effortlessly across soil as fine as sand yet as fertile as nearby woodlands.
I walked like a robot with my feet pointed in a perfect forty-five degree angle down the row, to pack the dirt down.
"How will it know how to start growing?"
"It just does. Now stop naming them all or we’ll never get all these potatoes planted."
When I was a young lad growing up on Taylor’s Mountain in Central Pennsylvania, warm Spring breezes flowed like invisible Bounce fabric softener sheets across the farmland when the sun started to heat the world.
The winds spoke to me while growing up on that mountain, like subtle whispers from an imaginary voice in a psychotic delusion.
It was a blessing to live during a time when man grew his own food, when breezes sang songs and nobody was around to care that one could hear things that others did not.
It was many moons ago, this time of year, long before I turned gay and eons before I learned to ride a bike that I bowed down towards the ground and plopped potato pieces into the organic soil.
The smell of the air was fabulous in April and May working those potato fields.
Fruit blossoms were everywhere in our nearby orchard. There were no neighbors because we owned half the mountain– the very top of Stone Creek Ridge.
They came from all across America to buy grandma’s special cider.
There came a time each year following the butchered hogs of winter when the weather turned perfect for plating vegetables.
The family once again became more vegetarian.
The trees which produced fruit, with the exception of tomatoes vines, were planted only once. But vegetables required re-planting each Spring.
During a certain quarter of the moon, when the gods of time and astronomy collided in a little yellow book called the Farmer’s Almanac, the trees blossomed like flowers and grandma and I began working the ground and planting our fields of golden vegetables.
The smell of the soil was like a burp from mother nature after she finished off a pint of hard cider.
The chicken manure we spread with pitch forks sometimes steamed after we spread it upon our still cool bread and butter land.
"Be careful Charlie, make sure you point the little white roots down and stop eating all my potato eyes. Put one at the edge of each footprint" taught grandma Esther as we rushed to get all her blue potato sprouts into the ground before sundown.
Rakes glided effortlessly across soil as fine as sand yet as fertile as nearby woodlands.
I walked like a robot with my feet pointed in a perfect forty-five degree angle down the row, to pack the dirt down.
"How will it know how to start growing?"
"It just does. Now stop naming them all or we’ll never get all these potatoes planted."
posted by Charles George Taylor at
5:35 AM
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