John Coykendall is 65 years old and lives in the house that he grew up in, the house that his great-grandfather built, in the Sequoia Hills section of West Knoxville, Tenn.. His great-grandfather was a senator, his grandfather was a manufacturer, his father was a banker. Coykendall, however, is an artist, a master gardener, and a seed saver. He specializes in finding heirloom beans from the mountain South, particularly the swath of hardscrabble land that stretches from east Tennessee through western North Carolina.
Coykendall is one of the foremost seed savers in the United States and has saved 175 of the North Carolina region’s legumes so far. Last year, he began to train his successor, his grandson, Brandon.
Coykendall hadn’t thought about passing on his skill and passion until Brandon, who was then 5 years old, began following him in his garden rows.
The gardener’s son had moved home with Brandon and the little boy was dumbstruck by the rows of beans in glass jars in his grandfather’s study, by stringing and shelling beans, by standing next to his grandfather in the kitchen and helping to make pots of stewed butter beans and by the stories that Coykendall told about the people who had given him the beans. The little boy reminded Coykendall of himself.
“Nobody knew where I came from, but they could never get me out of the dirt,” he says. “In 1954, my grandfather and father dug a little garden out by the brick garage and helped me plant it, and take care of it. That’s how I got to know them. And the rewards, that first harvest, digging the potatoes, picking the first peas. Well, there was nothing like that moment.”
He wasn’t conscious of doing it at first, but over this past winter he found himself drawing pictures of the garden for his own grandson and describing how they would clear it out and condition the soil in the same 20-by-20 patch by the brick garage. They looked at gardening books and seed catalogs together. Coykendall also began drawing pictures of the potatoes and onions and cabbage and beans that he and his grandson would plant.
Once the frost receded, grandfather and grandson began clearing the little patch, pacing off their furrows, planning where they’d put the potatoes, the onions, the cabbage, the peas.
“That’s what my father started me off with,” says Coykendall, “By planting time, Brandon couldn’t get into his overalls fast enough."
The potatoes went in the ground first. “I showed him the eyes, drew pictures of how each goes in the earth, becomes a potato, gets dug up and cooked." Now 6, the child was soon able to carve the eyes from last year’s potatoes with a table knife, to help dig furrows, to lay eyes in right-side up,” he says.
“I explained to him that potatoes are like us, they have to see, they don’t like the dark,” says Coykendall. A little bit of anthropomorphizing goes a long way in helping a child understand what a seed needs to grow. So do pictures and stories that build familiarity, confidence, and anticipation.
“I make him ask to do something. I make him ask a few times to dig, to lay seeds, to water, to weed,” says Coykendall, “I tell him he can’t start until he knows he will stick with it. And he is. We are out there every night, a couple hours on a weekend.
“It’s a good bonding thing,” says the elder gardener. “Nothing like some good dirt to work in, help somebody to plant and work the garden. There is a spiritual energy that comes up from the earth.”
Coykendall, who is a gifted storyteller and comedian, is typically reserved about his own inner workings. But when it comes to growing food with his grandson, his voices wavers, uncharacteristically.
“Planting the same patch with my grandson that my granddaddy and daddy planted with me. It’s powerful stuff. I am thinking about the day in late June when we will dig our first new potatoes, pick the fist peas. I’ve been telling Brandon about how we will cook them up the way my grandmother did, tossing them together with a little butter or bacon fat. I get very emotional,” he says.
One day, late this May, after waxing about the first harvest and its feast, Coykendall’s young student and shadow nodded and looked up at him.
“That’s going to be a real good day, Granddaddy,” the little boy says.
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Continue to Recipe: Granddaddy John's Potatoes & Peas
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