Truck patches were special things, ripe with humidity, a hard sun and an occasional rattlesnake.<\/p>\n
Looking like nothing so much as a great big garden patch, truck patches filled with the everyday vegetables of the Ozarks \u2014 for picking, eating… and selling.<\/p>\n
There is cultural heritage \u2014 and then there is something far above.<\/p>\n
That something is food.<\/p>\n
You want to really touch heritage and history?<\/p>\n
Skip the marble halls of legislature or the dusty, quieted archives populated with both book and librarian.<\/p>\n
Give me beans, shiny and black, brought to Missouri from far-off Tennessee; by none other than the Cherokee.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s an heirloom called Trail of Tears<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n Out in the burning August sun, with bees buzzing around your head, taste raw Country Gentleman<\/span><\/em> open pollinated sweet corn, white and milky.<\/p>\n Plates 1 and 2, July 19, 2009. Rural Christian County (Farm of Miss Harriet Wills-Hamilton).<\/p><\/div>\n The ears have a shoe-pegged, zig-zagged pattern to them, identical to that same Country Gentleman<\/span><\/em> corn planted by your grandfather and mine.<\/p>\n S.D. Woodruff & Sons started selling the variety in 1890.<\/p>\n There\u2019s Sugar Drip<\/em> sorghum,<\/span> likely near-identical to sorghum raised in Africa.<\/p>\n Early Wonder<\/span><\/em> beets dating back before the War of 1812 \u2014 and varieties of crookneck squash, growing and tasting the same since before Columbus put his foot on Hispaniola.<\/p>\n Forget your fancy, expensive hybrids.<\/p>\n Touch heritage?<\/p>\n Get out to the truck patch to see what you can find. Just watch out for snakes.<\/p>\n Particular\u2019 amongst the strawberries.<\/p>\n Originally published March 12, 2010<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Farming Heroes by Joshua Heston Truck patches were special things, ripe with humidity, a hard sun and an occasional rattlesnake. Looking like nothing so much as a great big garden patch, truck patches filled with the everyday vegetables of the Ozarks \u2014 for picking, eating… and selling. There is cultural heritage \u2014 and then there…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[955,938,582,947],"tags":[1299,1296,1298,1297,1295],"class_list":["post-7573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hillbillyhistory","category-ozarkeditorial","category-sotoarchive","category-sustainableozarks","tag-cherokee-beans","tag-country-gentleman","tag-early-wonder-beets","tag-sugar-drip-sorghum","tag-trail-of-tears","category-955","category-938","category-582","category-947","description-off"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7573"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7576,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7573\/revisions\/7576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/stateoftheozarks.net\/showcase\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/zinnia_patch-1-185x300.jpg\")