Human Flower Project
Orrington, MAINE USA
Murrieta, CALIFORNIA USA
Princeton, MAINE USA
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Singing through the Soil
Allen Bush pays homage to one of his mentors—a Western North Carolina farmer who orchestrated crops and equipment, and sang gospel music, too.
Paul McKinney and his trusty 1949 Farmall tractor
Photo: Paula McKinney
By Allen Bush
Up Avery’s Creek and around Mills River in the North Carolina mountains, between Asheville and Hendersonville, folks love Paul McKinney. He is a good man, a remarkable man. He and his wife, Mary, own McKinney’s Small Fruits and have been partners in love for fifty-nine years. Paul is old school though not old-fashioned, except for his customary overalls. He stands tall, over six feet, a wise, handsome man who shakes hands as firmly as he strung barbed wire.
I lived a half-mile down the road from the McKinneys between 1979 and 1995. Paul came down to introduce himself soon after I arrived. It was the neighborly thing to do. I had bought 37 acres and started Holbrook Farm, named after my mother’s side of the family. They had come from Trap Hill, a few ridgetops away in Wilkes County. My retail mail-order nursery published a spring and fall catalog and shipped rare and unusual perennials across the country for fifteen years. I moved to the farm from Louisville, Kentucky, after a year’s training at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, England. The summers were cooler and the winters milder in western North Carolina. I was a suburban boy turned nurseryman, full of myself, but actually not quite sure what I’d gotten myself into.
Mr. McKinney worshiped Jesus, loved his family and made no pretense. He drew no distinction between sinners and the saved. He was fair to everyone, especially his newly arrived, suspect, bearded neighbor. I was young, had some backing – the support of a family and new wife – and fell into the might-be-saved-someday category. Paul and Mary McKinney had bought a small place up the road, two years before I arrived. They had little financial backing but never lacked for loving family or devoted friends.