D e s e r t E x p o s u r e
June 2008
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Voice of a Ranch Woman Seventh in a Series |
Roots That Grow Deep
Sometimes a gardener just knows that this is the place for her.
By Linda McDonald, as told to Victoria Tester
This first-person reminiscence is excerpted from recordings of Linda Nielson McDonald at her home on the McDonald Ranch. Established in 1903, the McDonald Ranch is among the five oldest continuously working ranches in Grant County. Linda McDonald, born in Moab, Utah, in 1942, is the wife of Jerry McDonald, the son of Jonnie McDonald and Evelyn McCauley. These recordings are a collaboration between McDonald and author Victoria Tester, whose book Miracles of Sainted Earth (University of New Mexico Press) won the nationally recognized Willa Cather Literary Award. Their efforts mark the beginning of a project by the two women to record and publish a book of oral histories of ranch women in southern New Mexico.
When I was a young girl living on my Granddad's ranch up in Colorado, my Grandma Dee, the one that twisted that famous old Chief Posey's braids up into her wringer washer long, long before I was born, had a garden. Grandma Dee was a Burdich, and her ancestors came across the plains with the Mormon pioneers. One of her ancestors is buried in Nauvoo, Ill. They converted to the church back there and came across the plains with the Saints that were coming to the Salt Lake Valley. My mom had a big garden, too, that was planted down on the Dolores River. So I was acquainted with gardens all my life, and then I married Jerry and moved down to New Mexico. Everybody in this community grew a garden — Jerry's mom grew a garden, and our neighbors grew gardens — so I decided I should grow a garden, too. There was a nice garden spot at the Cienega where we lived, and there was quite a bit of water down there. But I had to learn about the water.
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Harvest from Granny Evelyn McDonald's
garden |
One of the first things I learned when I moved to the Cienega is that you were very careful with water. I think my experience at the Cienega, under the training of my mother-in-law Evelyn McDonald, goes back even further to her own mother, and what she learned growing up as a girl at the A-Bar Ranch at White Signal. Her mother was Nancy Morton McCauley, who was born in 1893 and lived in Arkansas, and they came out to this country because of their health. And so they bought the A-Bar Ranch, and when you move into a place, you move into the circumstance.
Evidently the A-Bar Ranch didn't have as much water as some places did, and being as their occupation was raising cattle, they had to worry about the cattle getting water before there could be water for anything else. I didn't know Grandma Nancy McCauley — she died before I came — but they started having a family and they had nine children, and so she tried her best to grow a garden. But there were many times, I'm told, that she would plant her garden and it would die because of lack of water. Because the cattle had to have the water first.
The McCauleys were good friends with the McDonalds, who lived four miles south of there, and the McDonalds had more water than Nancy did. I don't know how many times this happened, but Grandma Mitchel McDonald, born in 1876, had a big garden as well. Mitchel was a lot older than Nancy, so I guess in a way she was kind of a mentor. But Mitchel would load up her cart with vegetables and things because she knew Nancy didn't have as good a garden that year, and she'd take some of her vegetables up to Nancy so she'd have some for her family. There had been no intermarriage between the McCauleys and the McDonalds at that point. Nancy's daughter, Granny Evelyn McCauley, and Mitchel's son, Grandpa Jonnie McDonald, would later be the first ones to marry in the community.
I was in Wal-Mart the other day and I saw an elderly lady and I began to talk to her and found out she was Alice Taylor Cain and that she knew Grandma Nancy McCauley. She took her cane and rapped it on the floor and said, "I've got to tell you this story about Nancy McCauley! I was up there visiting one time and we were out in her garden, and all of a sudden Nancy said, 'We've got to run fast. Here comes Fate, and I'm stealing water!'" That would be her husband, James LaFayette McCauley, Grandpa Fate. "'He's going to be mad at me because we won't have water for the cattle, and we've got to run!' And we started running out of that garden so he wouldn't see her taking water for her garden that should go to the cattle! And then I thought, why am I running? I'm not afraid of him!"
Nancy McCauley was taking water to water her garden and she knew she'd get in trouble if Grandpa Fate saw her stealing that water.
Mitchel Gordon McDonald was Jerry's grandmother, and when his Dad Jonnie McDonald was growing up and was just a young boy, they had living with them Grandma Jones. Grandma Jones was Mitchel's mother, Mary Jane Dillingham, born 1847 in South Carolina. The Gordons were the ones who had to leave there after they joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints because of the persecution from the Ku Klux Klan.
Grandma Jones' job was to work in the huge garden. So every day she'd go down and hoe in it. Grandpa Jonnie was just a little boy, and he'd get his hoe and he'd go down to the garden. She'd hoe three rows. She'd be standing in a row and hoeing the row on each side of her, and then he'd be hoeing in a row. He said she was the best person at workin' kids he ever saw. It was a race. She'd say, "You're going to beat Grandma." Because every so often she'd reach over with her hoe into his row, and catch him up to where she was with her three rows. That would get him all pumped up and he'd keep hoeing in that one row while she hoed the three rows. And you know it was hot. And she had, I'm sure, her big bonnet on, out there hoeing in that heat. You had to hoe because when you hoe dirt it absorbs the water a lot better, when the dirt's been turned under. It gets the weeds out, too. But we don't work that hard in our gardens nowadays.
So when I moved into the Cienega and was going to have a garden, Granny in her gentle way set the example for me. If she was going to grow tomatoes, I'd grow tomatoes, or chiles, or whatever it was. Granny would plant all the plants from seed and had them ready to plant in the spring. Then it was a big competition, when you'd go to the 4th of July rodeo, and you talked to people at the rodeo: "Well, I've already got a tomato off mine." So you wanted to get your garden in as early as you could so that you got tomatoes before anybody else.
Granny taught me about gardening. She also taught me about water. You didn't turn on a water faucet or water anything, unless the windmill was pumping. You couldn't take that water unless the windmill was pumping to bring more water into the tank that you were taking water out of. She got really nervous about that, if I had the sprinkler on and the wind wasn't blowing and pumping that water.
I had moved into the Cienega, which was the place where she'd lived for 40 years. When we moved in there, Granny had a beautiful rose garden in the back, and it was terraced. Granny had a green thumb and she could just grow anything. But she had all these roses at the Cienega that I was responsible for now, to take care of. Put manure on 'em and let 'em grow and become these beautiful roses that people had given to her. I don't think she bought very many of those roses. When our daughter got old enough, that was her job, to water the roses.
When they divided the ranch, I transplanted one of those rosebushes and brought it up to where we live now, and it's still growing. It's a beautiful pink rose, and the stems on it don't have any thorns on them. She also had a rose that she'd planted just for Jerry, because he liked yellow. So she planted a beautiful yellow rosebush for Jerry there, and I was sad to leave that rosebush down there. We just haven't grown roses up here like they grew down there.
Grandpa said a funny thing about Granny when they were living at the Cienega, because she was like her mother — when Grandpa was gone, out riding in the pasture or something, she'd turn the water on and water her garden. Grandpa said, "If Evelyn ever goes to hell, it'll be for stealing water." But Granny said, "You know, this garden has saved Jonnie many a chewin' out, because I get out in that garden and I just work, and I turn over that dirt and I plant things and it takes away any anger I might have if I'm mad at Jonnie." So her garden was very therapeutic for her, and I think it is for anybody, to get out and work in the soil and make things grow, and harvest from it.
You know, Granny, she was really conservative with water. But I remember that I had a bunch of strawberries planted out across the fence here. Granny didn't grow strawberries. I remember Granny looked over the fence at those and she said something about, "Well, we don't have enough water to grow strawberries," and so I took that as instruction that I'd better not have those strawberries. So I can remember letting those strawberries die, because I didn't think Granny thought I should spend that much water on just strawberries. That was kind of heart-wrenching for me. Which gave me a little bit of a feeling of what poor Grandma McCauley had gone through having garden after garden die because there wasn't enough water.
The cottonwood trees ruined my garden here. The roots and the shade got into it. After the garden spot up here by the house was no good for a garden, I had a friend named Marina Stailey that gave me a few herbs, and so I decided I'd plant some of those herbs out there. Then I got this idea that I would make my herb garden something special. So I started making piles of rocks. I decided I was going to make rock paths all over that herb garden and decorate it and arrange it with rocks. So I started hauling rocks in. I had already built some rock walls out here and out there in front, too, where my other garden is.
I got in a lot of trouble with Jerry because I was using our van to haul rocks. It had plush seats and everything, and I'd put these rocks on a rug in there and sometimes, if I had a lot of rocks to haul, I'd get this feed tub and I'd put all those rocks in that feed tub and I'd haul 'em in here and kind of be sneaky about it. I'd haul those rocks in and then I'd lay them all. I just laid them in the dirt, and then I arranged my herbs out there. Then I went out into the junk pile and found all this stuff to decorate it. I named my herb garden "Rusty and Rustic." I made a table out of this wood box Jerry made for his Grandpa McCauley, and the top of it is an old refrigerator back, and I made the chairs out of five-gallon cans I turned over.
I started catering dinners out there. At one time I had about 75 herbs in that herb garden and up here in the new garden. The best time to have those dinners would be in the evening when it's getting too cool for the flies, so the flies wouldn't bother you with your meal, but you go into the night, and you start to hear the night sounds. You start to hear the crickets. Maybe you'll hear a cow bellering out in the pasture. Or maybe you'll hear a coyote howling. You don't hear a motorcycle, you don't hear a car, you don't hear an airplane in the evening, usually. You're just out away from the world.
If you wanted to take a tour through my herb garden you'd walk out the front door and the first thing you'd see out there is a red sage. Then chocolate mint is growing there. There are roses; I've got a rosebush there. Roses are aromatic therapy. And then pansies and violas that are also good to put in salads. Of course my garlic chives are also there. We use garlic for so many things, and garlic is good for getting over colds. We're going to go out through the garden, and then you'll see I've got sage planted there, and I've got echinacea. Echinacea loves this country. My son-in-law took a picture of a butterfly on my echinacea. What could be better in life than that?
I've got some more oregano, and I've got a grape vine out there. Grape leaves you can use to keep your pickles crisp when you make pickles. I've planted outside aloe vera, given to me by Sylvia Sensanbaugher, there, too, and I put it on the south side of my house where it's protected. Of course, it is just the magic cure for burns and lots of other things, too. Then we have Jerusalem artichoke — but my ivy is kind of choking out that herb. Then as we step down into the actual herb garden, that's where I have catnip. I've had a lot of herbs out there — that's where the ditch comes out from my washing machine. I've got a few raspberries out there now, too, and that's where all the parsley is.
Then if you go around you'll see my two bushes of rosemary — rosemary is an evergreen, it lasts all winter long, and you can put rosemary in a vaporizer to help you when you have a cold or coughs. It's also one of the main herbs when you're doing Italian seasoning.
I have a mullein that's come up volunteer. That's a wild herb, so I can let that stay there and grow. Then we come around the peach trees and they have the nice leaves that are a good herb and a tea as well. And there I've planted thyme, now. This spring I've planted some radishes, and in another little ol' spot I planted some Australian spinach. Now Australian spinach will last all summer long. It doesn't die in the summer.
Then as we come up onto that next level I've got some Russian sage. Joann Young gave me that — it's a purple sage that grows all over Silver City. And there's where my lavender grows as well. I've also got another rosebush out there. Then I've let a wild herb grow there, some globe mallow. The only wild thing blooming right now are some very scant primroses that are starting to bloom now — the white primroses.
I want to tell a real tender story about Grandma Nancy McCauley that Aunt Connie told me. Nancy, who was born in 1893, would plant her fall garden on July 26, and so that July of 1961 she planted her fall garden. Spinach and radishes. She planted that up in her yard. Grandma McCauley and Olivette Prevost used to use leather gloves, good Hodgkins gloves, when they worked in the garden. So she planted her fall garden, and she came in and took off her glove and put it on the table.
And then she had a cerebral hemorrhage.
They took her into Dr. Watts. And she passed away of a cerebral hemorrhage.
When they came back after she died, Aunt Connie — and Granny's told me this, too — said, "There on the table was her glove. Still in the form of her hand." They said it kind of gave you a strange feeling to see that glove. Like she just barely took it off.
Then, in the next few days, the things she planted started coming up.
That's like the resurrection of our Savior Jesus Christ. He died and then he was resurrected, and because of his resurrection, we have a hope of life after death.
I wanted to say, too, that my Grandma Dee, her ancestors as I mentioned before came across the plains with the Mormon pioneers. As they were persecuted and driven out of the country back in the East, they started coming across the plains for a land where they could escape this persecution. Brigham Young saw in a vision where they were supposed to be. He didn't know where it was.
Anyway, many of the people at that time were coming across the Oregon Trail. They were looking for places to live, and so what the Mormons were doing wasn't anything real different except that they were coming to escape the persecution.
They had gone into Illinois, into a town called Commerce, which they later named Nauvoo, which means "City Beautiful." It was just a swamp. They built that city up, planted gardens and made it a beautiful city.
They had planned they would leave orderly from Nauvoo, but they weren't allowed that privilege. They had to leave in the middle of the winter and leave all their garden spots and their homes, and a lot of them were burned, because the persecutors came in and would set fire to their houses and their haystacks. They had to leave in the middle of the winter, and they crossed the Mississippi River. It worked out that it froze so bad that they were able to walk across. They did have wagons when they were getting ready to leave — and then later it went to hand carts. But they got their wagon trains together as best as they could and got across the river, and started their trek west.
But they had a plan. As they went along the trail, they would plant gardens that they knew they would never harvest. They'd plant them for the Saints who would be coming after them, so that the others could harvest what they had planted. I don't know if other people did this, but I know about the Mormon people doing this. There's one place along the Pioneer Trail called Garden Grove, and that's the reason it was named that, because they had planted the gardens for the next ones to harvest.
Then when they got to the Salt Lake Valley, Brigham Young didn't know exactly where he was coming, but he knew he would recognize it when he got there. When they came down, actually he was sick when they arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, he was in a buggy. But he raised up and looked out at the Salt Lake Valley — they named it that later — and he said, "This is the place." And it was just a desert.
They started right then, in July, which was late in the season to plant, but they started right then into planting fields and gardens, hoping they would have a harvest. There's stories that after that, the crickets came in and almost destroyed all their crops. But there was a miracle, the seagulls came — they've got a monument to the seagull there — and ate those crickets. So people have been dealing with pestilence and all kinds of problems with their gardens forever.
It tells us in the Scriptures that we are not even better than the dust of the earth, because the dust of the earth heeds the Lord, and does His will, because when the wind comes the dust goes wherever the wind pushes it. And it says: Are we not even better than the dust of the earth? The dust obeys Him, why shouldn't we obey Him, and do what our heavenly Father wants us to do?
I love this arid land with all my heart, because anything that grows in New Mexico, you know is tough. It has to weather the drought, and its roots have to go deep so that it can do that.
My dad passed away this last year, and one of the last things he said to me is, "Linda, I've just got one question to ask you. How come you've lived in that godforsaken place all these years?" My answer to him was, "Well, Dad, you and Mom just taught me to go where my husband goes." But what I should have said is, "Dad, I've had a garden for 43 years. That should count for something. I guess this was the place for me. This is the place."