Everything that comes out of Wayne Bratcher’s garden goes into the can — well, the canning pot, that is. Bratcher, his wife, Yolanda, Yolanda’s sister Virginia Robert and other extended family all work together after harvest on the produce he grows, preserving it for winter nights when sunny afternoons on the porch are a mere memory.
Bratcher surveys his small sideyard garden from his perch on the crowded porch. Sometimes he watches his produce take leave.
“Once I saw a boy with a watermelon under his arms. He walked right by me,” Bratcher noted.
Yolanda is diplomatic about such thievery. “If they take it, they must need it,” she said.
Sometimes, the couple invites the practice.
“One year, we had so many zucchini we put up a pile with a sign that said ‘free’,” Yolanda said. They were gone by afternoon.
Bratcher has been gardening near his home at the corner of Spruce and South Jefferson streets for 10 years now. His main plot is across the street, adjacent to sister-in-law Barbara Wood’s home; the lot belongs to her neighbor, who allows Bratcher to use it.
Bratcher has been gardening “all my life, I guess, 50 or 60 years — I’m 75 now.”
He still counts the activity a hobby, raising green beans, salsa veggies, cucumbers, squash, okra and more.
“The okra we pickle,” Bratcher said. Even the squash are canned.
Robert puts those into a type of chunky spaghetti sauce.
The cucumbers become delightfully crunchy bread and butter pickles.
“Last year we canned about 40 or 50 jars of pickles,” Bratcher noted. And, he said, they put up 81 quarts of beans.
Bratcher prefers Derby beans, noting they are the best of all varieties he’s tried.
“They’re solid. They don’t get dry. And you can pick them longer,” Bratcher said of the Derbys, available only from Gurney’s Seeds.
This year, however, he has at least three bean varieties, because so many plantings failed initially.
“I had to plant those things three or four times this year. The ground was cold. I just kept planting them and finally I got a stand,” Bratcher said.
Yolanda plans to try the beans this year on the grill with bacon, a technique she discovered watching Paula Dean. Anaheim chiles will become chili rellenos, she said.
The one thing Bratcher doesn’t grow is corn.
“I just buy my corn off the Mennonites,” he said. “When I grow it, it doesn’t produce much,” he said.
Bratcher said the larger garden is established where a house once stood. “The ground is not very good,” he said. Full of rocks, he has it broken with a tractor in fall and spring to keep it arable.
“I use liquid Miracle Grow (throughout the summer) and regular commercial fertilizer when I first plant,” Bratcher noted. “And I water a lot.”
All told, the extended family puts up about 200 jars each fall, Robert said.
Canning is done at Barbara’s house because “she’s got central air,” Robert noted. The process becomes a party with all involved, the sisters said.
And it keeps the family together.
“When we were younger and raising our families we all scattered,” Robert said. “Then (Wayne) retired and moved here from Washington state, and we moved here (from Oregon).”
Yolanda explained, “We were heading to Oklahoma (where the sisters originally were from) but our kids rented us a place here and said, ‘live here a year, and if you don’t like it, then move.’ Wayne grew a beautiful garden that first year,” she noted. “And we liked it, so we stayed.”
That was in 2000.
Their sister Barbara purchased the home across the street about six years ago, they said.
All are retired, and all enjoy their shared hobby.
“The only thing my husband complains about is that I’m always bringing home jars,” Robert laughed.
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