Published: June 22, 2009 04:23 pm      

Living on the farm in the rolling hills

By Mark Pace



Standing on the backyard lawn, and at times casually walklng around the premises as they gazed across the lush green rolling knolls, the memories of John and Catherine Parrott were in a flashback. They recalled mentally and vocally, the labor for bountiful food produced on the expanded acreage of numerous farm products in years gone by.

The hilly countryside was not always green on the plot of more than 100 acres that has been in the family for neigh into a century. There were the rows of red soil opened by the plow shears for seed beds. And in season, there were the white-headed cotton tops, red tomatoes and yellow squash, the brown corn stalks in pictrorial rows that rose and fell with the sloping landscape and the contours of the terrain. Tomatoes and squash were on the home consumption, not the commercial list.

Among the aged wooden outbuildings still standing are the barn, the  corn crib and the well house, where an ancient tractor stands beneath the front entry shed. There was no natural spring well on the premises, and to keep milk and other commodities cool, the Parrotts excavated a deep well near the house. In the earlier days, a coal heater was placed in every room in the house, and in two large chicken houses. In the laborious task of cutting and removing trees for a right-of-way, kerosene lanterns were used for night work.

There was much more activity on the landscape than the eye-catching views, Parrott said.

“Cotton was the main crop,” Mr. Parrott recalled. “But then there were such items as corn, sweet potatoes and peanuts on the lists, and there were cows, mules, chickens and pigs.”

Cotton, a major cash crop for as many as 150 bales at a time was processed at two Shugart family gins. Chickens were consided the most popular, and gathering and crating  them for shipment to Chattanoga buyers was no easy task.

Visits to the farm by buyers of produce and meats were frequent pre-marketing experiences. Those were the financial factors. For home food consumption, there were adequate vetgetables and meats available for family and neighbiors.

During the cool hog-killing weather, Mr. Parrott said fresh tenderloins were part of the rewards. “Dad also gathered the nerighbors around and they canned shoulders ... and he always threw the hides away.”

Incoming cash from farm productions was not the only prevailing financial matter, as Mr. Parrott remembered the necessity of cash outflow. “Dad had to purchase a lot of chicken feed, hay and other foodstuffs for both the cattle and the pigs,” he said.

The present two-story house also on Crystal Brook Drive in Apison, Tenn., northwest of Cohutta, was built in the 1880s by Mr. Parrott’s grandfather, Julis Waston Parrott. It first was a single story house, but later a second floor was added. Mr. Parrott's father, Garvin, was born there, and 80 years later, in 1993, died in the same room in which be was born. Mr. Parrott, likewise, was born in the same room, and later purchased the farm from his father.

While Mr. Parrott’s father was busy with farm matters, his mother, the former Wahlice Wear, was involved for 33 years with the Cohutta school’s lunch room program. Her last year in that service was in the school’s final 11-year program, before it went to the 12-grade system.

“Mother also was a hard worker. She helped can commodities, and did household and yard work. She tenderly took care of a rose bush planted there some 30 or 40 years ago by her grandmother, Minnie Belle Wear.

Farm life was not Mr. Parrott’s number one attention. Following his graduatoion from Cohutta High School, he graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in chemical engineering.  Following that, he worked in communities in Alabama, Tennessee and Texas. Following her graduation from Orrville High School in Alabama, Mrs. Parrott graduated from Judson College in Marion, Ala., with a degree in elementary education.