the crown

Yesterday I was with some friends in Indianola, which is about 2 hours west of Starkville. We ate lunch at The Crown, a local institution famous for catfish. Photos below are of broiled catfish with green beans, catfish po boy, homemade cornbread, and their help-yourself desert table with a million choices of pie. It was all incredible.

north farm greenhouses

We live down the street from MSU's big agriculture experiment station, called North Farm by locals. A couple of the greenhouses have been left running at night for the past few weeks, so I wandered over there yesterday as the sun was going down. I was hoping to see some grape experiments going on, since the oenology lab is somewhere around there, but it looked mostly like grain plants and grasses growing inside.

 

fog and heat

It's been foggy and rainy here for the past couple of weeks, so not many opportunities for picture-taking. But it's also hit the 70s a couple of times, which means people are going around in tee shirts and shorts. In mid-December.

kudzu man

visit to black creek farm (and some chicken portraits)

Since the Columbus farmers' market is now done for the season, Black Creek Farm offers pick days at their farm each Saturday. I got some wonderful lettuces, kale, turnips, spinach and mustard greens. I loved seeing the farm, which has a gigantic chicken enclosure and lots of very happy looking hens. Though apparently they're a little scared to come out of their coops because hawks keep swooping down and picking them up.

 

 

 

southern cemeteries: starkville's boyd and odd fellows cemeteries

Oktibbeha County has a number of African American cemeteries, including the Good Fellows and Boyd cemeteries, which came into being in part because of segregated burial policies. There are also some actual segregated cemeteries around here, with a fence or wall dividing black and white graves, but I haven't seen one of those yet.

The Boyd cemetery is on the side of a road that runs behind our house, on a large, wooded lot that's squished in between a number of new housing subdivisions. There's no sign marking it -- just some old gates that are always open. A number of the them are falling apart, and some were almost entirely covered with long grasses, but there were still lots of plastic flowers and other signs that people were visiting. I saw grave stones dating to the mid-1800s, and there were a few recent burials, too. 

The Odd Fellows cemetery is next to a busy road in the center of town, and is on the national register of historic places. It's on a big hill overlooking some houses and the playground of an elementary school, which is kind of nice. The names and dates on a number of the gravestones were hand-carved.

My favorite part of these cemeteries were all of the gravestones with photo engravings, which is something I had never seen before.

it's (still) cotton time

The Mississippi State experimental agriculture fields are just across the road from our house. Right now they're filled to the brim with cotton.

possum town yard sale

Columbus was called Possum Town for a while in the early 1800s, and the name has stuck. Yesterday a friend and I went to the annual Possum Town Yard Sale, whose proceeds go to support the Hitching Lot Farmers' Market. The weather was gorgeous (somewhere in the 60s), and there was a great turn-out.

There were some real gems for sale.

And some of my favorite farmers showed up as well. Aren't those persimmons beautiful?