Stecoah man tends three gardens on family land
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Billy Holder shows off a large tomato growing in one of his three gardens on family land in Stecoah. The 87-year-old has gardened his entire life. Photos by Charlie Benton/news@grahamstar.com -
Billy Holder explains some of the finer points of tomato horticulture in his Stecoah vegetable garden.
* Green Thumbs: Conclusion of a 5-part series
Stecoah – Even at 87 years old, Billy Holder hasn’t yet stepped back from tending his gardens throughout the year.
A retired heavy equipment operator and resident of Stecoah, Holder tends three gardens off Gunter Gap Road, on land that has been in his family for generations. Across his three gardens, he grows several types of produce, including tomatoes, corn, beans, squash, okra and cucumbers.
He also keeps a small herd of beef cattle and formerly kept honeybees until his hives died off about 15 years ago.
“I’ve gardened all my life,” Holder said. “I love watching vegetables grow and I love to eat them.”
He said his favorites to grow were tomatoes and corn. While his tomato plants are producing, he sets up a “tomato table” in his carport, making the surplus tomatoes available to his neighbors.
Holder also said that on occasion, he would carry a salt shaker into his tomato patch and eat a tomato right off the vine.
“I try to plant enough for the neighbors and grandkids and all,” Holder said.
He added that although he was getting a good number of quality tomatoes this year, they were taking longer than normal to ripen, attributing the wait to the weather.
“Some years we get an abundance of rainfall and maybe the next year … it all depends on the weather,” Holder said. “I pay close attention to nature and I always have.”
He said watching a tiny seed grow into a tomato vine or cornstalk had always fascinated him.
“You’ll get a tiny tomato and in a short time, those tomatoes will be like that,” Holder said.
He spoke to changes in gardening over the course of his life, including hybridized corn varieties that could only be planted for one year’s crop, forcing the consumer to continually purchase new seed.
“They’ve got it now to where you have to buy seed every year,” Holder said. “You can plant a year of corn that’s hybrid. That hybrid seed will make the best ear of corn you’ll ever eat the first year, but you plant that ear of corn back next year, you’ll have to go buy seed.”
Despite planting some hybrid-corn varieties, some of Holder’s seed can be traced back for generations in his family. He said that he could remember one bean variety all the way back to his boyhood.
Even at his advanced age, Holder said that he does most of the work on his gardens alone. However, he said that he taught his children how to garden at a young age. He said that some of his children kept their own gardens. He advised anyone wanting to plant a garden who had not done so before to find a skilled gardener willing to teach them.
He said he taught his own children how to garden – not so much because they needed the skill to survive, but so the skills could survive.
“I told them; I said, ‘Girls, boys. I’m not making you do it because you have to, I’m making sure you know how to do it in case there comes a time when you have to know how to grow something to eat,’” Holder explained.