Page 38 - Spring 2022

s| AGRARIAN
Bogart woman spends a
lifetime playing in the dirt
Story by Morgan Phillips Photos by Becky Stonecipher
In the summer months, the heat settles over the land like a damp, heavy-laden veil, and sweat drips with persistence down the face of farmers and gardeners.
For Bogart native and avid gardener Becky Stonecipher, a burst of relief comes from the dark soil that entices her bare feet. Stonecipher was standing in the middle of her garden reminiscing about gardening with her father as a little girl: “I loved the feel of the soft plowed dirt on my feet.”
Stonecipher was only 8-years-old when she made her own garden.
“One day, Dad wasn’t there, and I just decided to get a hoe,” Stonecipher said. “The tomato plants were so good that my dad sold them to people around Bishop.”
In high school, Stonecipher’s room had assorted plants assembled like toy soldiers along her windowsills and a purple passion vine grew across her ceiling.
“I think everywhere I went, I tried to put things in pots or in the ground,” Stonecipher said.
There is hardly any
vegetable, fruit or flower
that Stonecipher hasn’t sunrise.
planted. She’s planted the
usual crops, such as tomatoes, squash, corn, carrots, marigolds, daisies and muscadines.
She also has a passion for exotic crops, such as Chinese green beans, jelly melons, Roselle plants, Rampicante zucchini, butterfly peas, sugar rush peach peppers, Sikkim cucumbers, Urizun Japanese winged beans, Chinese pink celery, Okinawan white bitter melons and fish peppers.
Her love of exotics came from walking in the grocery store and seeing rare plants in seed catalogues.
“I was amazed that they had so many foreign vegetables that could be grown here [in Georgia],” Stonecipher said.
Her favorite thing about gardening is sharing the fruits of her labor with others. She even prefers giving her produce away, rather than selling them.
Stonecipher’s love for playing in the dirt has never wavered over the years
Stonecipher spends a lot of early mornings in her garden, watching the
Becky Stonecipher converted an old trailer into a greenhouse during the pandemic, but now she uses her basement as a greenhouse.
sMorgan Phillips is a news reporter for The Oconee Enterprise newspaper in Watkinsville, Ga. PAGE 36 | OCONEE THE MAGAZINE | SPRING 2022