When lane was a girl growing up in rural North Carolina her family were share croppers. Lane lived on a six hundred acre piece of land and her dad took care of it for a park ranger who lived in Maggie valley. Daddy worked for a dollar a day for this man so you can imagine how poor lane’s family was but she says they didn’t know they were poor cause they always had food on the table and a lot of love. To feed their family of four kids plus mommy and daddy they grew a big garden. Every spring when the ground was warm enough to be planted lane’s daddy hitched up the mules and plowed the garden. It was a welcome sight to us kids says lane cause they knew when this happened that it wouldn’t be long till they had something really good to eat.

The first thing lane’s daddy planted was lettuce, onions and taters. Oh boy, she says, they could hardly wait for the lettuce to grow big enough for them to eat cause there ain’t nothing like that first mess of killed lettuce and onions, pinto beans and corn bread. Of course you had to wash it down with fresh cow’s milk.

This is where lane says she learned to appreciate the value of growing a garden and how important it was and is for our survival. Out of four kids lane says she’s the only one that grows a garden. Neither her brother or her sister knows squat about planting anything. Heck, they don’t even know the difference between a tomato plant and a weed. As lane has told them if you don’t garden you better learn cause foods getting so expensive that you can’t hardly buy it and if you grow your own food you will appreciate it a whole lot more and it will taste a whole lot better too.