Margey Watson reflects on 80 years of growing

By AMY ROGNLIE | Photos by JANE GIBSON

Margey Watson has had her hands in the Texas dirt for more than 80 years. Born in 1940 in LaFeria in the lower Rio Grande Valley, Watson grew up on her family’s farm where she and her two siblings learned to grow everything from cotton to citrus trees. They grew all kinds of vegetables, some of which they sold to local canneries, or even the HEB stores in the area. They also enjoyed the harvest themselves.

“We froze, canned, and shared,” Watson recalled. “Every time Daddy went to town, he took something to share with someone.”

But cotton was their main crop. One year, Watson and her two siblings were given an acre of cotton to tend. The children were required to weed it, pick the cotton (twice) and sell it. The money they earned was to be spent on school clothes, and the rest was their spending money for the year. Watson fondly remembers that long, hot summer of picking cotton, but also the practical lessons she learned — particularly good money management.

During the cotton-picking season most years, Watson and her sister Elaine were in charge of going out to the fields to weigh the cotton and keep track of how many pounds of cotton each worker picked each day. Then on Saturday it was payday. The girls would figure out how much each laborer had earned and then give each worker an envelope with his cash in it. Some years were better than others. Watson recalls several times when they had a good cotton year and their father flew to Detroit, bought a new car, and drove it back home to Texas.

But even in the years when the cotton crop did not do well, the family thrived on fresh milk from their cows and an abundance of fresh veggies, hard work and just plain fun.

“We were allowed to play in the fields,” Watson said. “We loved to pick and eat the tomatoes right there in the field. We also had tomato fights and built playhouses out of the tomato crates. It was a great way to grow up.”

After Watson married her sweetheart, Jim, and moved away from the family farm, she began a career as a first grade teacher, while Jim was a pastor. After several years and the birth of their children, the family moved to Mexico as missionaries for several years; also serving in Costa Rica and Panama before coming back to live in Texas permanently. Jim loved to garden just as much as his wife did, though when the family moved to Belton from Pearsall in 2003, they did not realize that they would be gardening on top of Bell County’s limestone bedrock.

“We were all excited for our first potato crop at our new house,” Watson said. “But when we dug them up, they were all flat on the bottom because of the rock under our garden!”

After that, the couple decided that raised beds were the way to go, and they eventually built nine twelve-foot by four-foot beds. Squash, tomatoes, cucumbers, corn, and of course, potatoes, thrived under the couple’s care.

Watson’s granddaughter, Grae Watson, credits her grandparents for her own love of gardening.

“Most of my favorite family memories involve the garden. Being a city kid, I loved the vegetables, especially the okra pickles and the fried okra,” Grae said. “I still do.”

Okra is a must each year, and Margey’s fried okra is a staple in the summer. After experimenting over the years, she says she hit on the best method ever — soaking the okra in buttermilk and using self-rising flour for the batter. She also bakes prize-winning bread, and has produced countless jars of salsa, jams, jellies and chow chow with her fresh garden produce in her 40+ years of gardening her own little piece of Texas soil.

“I can’t get gardening out of my blood,” Watson said. “There is a peace about being outside, and I love seeing what the Lord produces out of the little bit of work we do. Then we just sit back and watch it grow. We have a beautiful world and I’m fortunate to still be able to be out there in it.”