LETTUCE TALK
How to grow better produce with horse pee and other rural lore. | A fresh installment in the Life and Times of Bill Hart | From TheHartofTheMatter.substack.com | october24.2023
THE SCENE: Deep in the Appalachian Outback, in a dale between This Mountain and That Mountain and somewhere betwixt East and West Virginia, two men and a black dog ponder baby lettuce one cool day in Fall 2023. Below is a lightly edited transcript of the conversation in this video, along with additional photos from a recent visit to Billville ~ Douglas John Imbrogno.
CLICK TO VIEW VIDEO | See edited transcript below
VIDEO BY: TheStoryIsTheThing.com Visualizations
Douglas: So, here we are at Lettuce Central. What kind of lettuces do we have here?
Bill: Ruby head. And, um, Back Seeded Simpson. And something-'crunch,' with the corrugated leaves ...
Douglas: [Breaking off a leaf and eating it.]: Oh my god, is that good!
Bill: It is good. Fresh baby lettuce. The way I've done that those are some later stuff. I got a couple generations going here, so, I can just go around and clip it and not get any dirt.
Douglas: Lettuce isn't an annual, is it?
Bill: No. I’ve had four different crops in this bed this year. Adding more dirt ...
Douglas: How late into the season will lettuce grow?
Bill: I’ve had it at Thanksgiving. It'll do a light snow. And you could put a tarp over this and go to Thanksgiving, I'm sure. I had this in glass — I had a piece of glass. It blew off. I have one more piece of glass and I might could put on it, but ...
A MAN AND HIS LETTUCE
Bill tends to growing things as Appalachia and West Virginia sprout up around him. | thestoryisthething.com Produce Bureau Photography
Douglas: So, as an unseasoned gardener that I am how many growing seasons should you use dirt before you replace it? Or do you just augment it?
Bill: Yeah. The real hillbillies that got it together, you know, they'd raise a garden for sometimes a generation in the same spot. Over on Cowskin [a k a Cowskin Fork, a regional road down which Bill used to live], I had a garden right outside for 20 years. The ground was infinitely more fertile when I left than when I started …
Douglas: But did you augment it through the years?
Bill: Absolutely. There’s horse manure, straw, leaves, brush, small growth. So, you let it rot and use it as mulch ... And you could sink a shovel in that ground, all the way, anywhere, in that ground. All the way. So much manure had rotted up. And barn cleaning …
A DOG’S LIFE
Doug: And what?
Bill: Barn cleaning. Sometimes there's not quality grasses in with the hay. So, they'll just leave it. So, what I do is throw it on the floor and soak up urine …
Doug: Huh ...
Bill: Nitrogen.
Doug: Huh ...
Bill: You put it on the ground and ...
Douglas: It’s soaking up the horse pee?
Bill: Yeah. Which is your nitrogen — a lot of ammonia, you know? The hay they wouldn't eat you take out of the manger and throw it on the ground. They stand there and piss in their stall. And the old funky hay is now just a way to get the ...
Douglas: So, you're fixing the soil with nitrogen ...
Bill: Yes. Put nitrogen in the soil. I use fertilizer, as well. To be honest, since I don't have horses here. I bought a couple hundred pounds of …
Bill [Tosses a small, dirty leaf of lettuce to ground]: Huh, dirt on that one ...
Bill: I bought a couple hundred pounds of manure. And I go see Major from time to time …
A MAN and HIS HORSE
Bill eyes Major in this August 2019 photo from the porch of his old house. | thestoryisthething.com Porch Bureau Photography
TRANSITION TO AUGUST 2019 FOOTAGE FROM BILL’S COWSKIN FORK HOME as MAJOR the HORSE TRIES TO STRIDE ONTO THE WOOD-SLAT PORCH, A RATHER DEADLY PLACE FOR A BIG OL’ HORSE TO BE …
Bill: Get down. No! Get down! No. Major, get down! [Major retreats to crop grass nearby.] Good boy. Thank you! Stay down …
TRANSITION BACK TO LETTUCE CENTRAL
Douglas: How’s Major doing?
Bill: Major’s fast and sassy ...
Douglas: [LAUGHTER]
Bill: He’s getting not much contact with humans as far as riding …
Douglas: Oh, really?
Bill: So, he's gonna be a little bit rank the next person that rides him ...
Bill: Come out for a weekend …
Douglas: I will.
Bill: And we'll …
Douglas: I still have the feather you gave me for the time I rode the … the successful first riding of Major!
Bill: Remember, I was still entitled to wear one. I was the president of the Loyal Order of Macaroni ....
Douglas: You were?
Bill: Yeah!
Douglas: Oh! ‘Maca ... feather in his …’ Yeah …
Bill: Yeah.
TWO OLD GUYS FUMBLE FOR A LYRIC FROM THEIR CHILDHOODS …
Douglas: What’s the line? 'Here comes ..’. No. What is it? ‘Macaroni ... did-did-did-da …' Gosh ...
Bill: ‘Went riding into town ...’
Douglas: ‘Yankee Doodle went to town ...’
Bill: ‘Riding on his pony …!’
Bill and Doug [TOGETHER]: "... stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni!’
LAUGHTER.
STILL LIFE WITH BILL
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Bill: And you loom large in the Loyal Order of Macaroni! And people would look up and see a feather in their hat. Just so. Or I'd placed it …
Douglas: You placed it here?
Bill: You know, I'd stick a hole in their hat ...
Douglas: So, the Loyal Order of Macaroni ...
Bill [IN ANOTHER PERSON’S VOICE]: ‘I know where you've been! You’ve been on a ride at Bill's house …'
Douglas: Oh, so you give the feather …
Bill: The feather …
Douglas: … to anybody who was ridden Major or …
Bill: A horse. We went on a trail ride and we'd start with the simple, gentler horses, first. Now, if you live to tell about it. Some people would: ‘I don’t really want to do this …’
Bill: You earned your feather …
RIDERS OF A FEATHER
The actual feather Douglas earned from Bill upon riding Major for the first time some years ago, gaining entry into the Loyal Order of Macaroni. | thestoryisthething.com Equine Bureau Photography
PS: MAKING IT
Invariably, at some point during my visits brings Bill out for inspection the state of construction of a new hand-wrought, hand-wired musical instrument. Below is a five-string tenor ukulele he has lately been concocting. (Probably Instrument No. 321 — I am wildly guesstimating here — in his decades of these remarkable instrumental manifestations.)
Those are actual shark’s teeth set into the fetboard of this tenor ukulele Bill was building at the time of my visit. | thestoryisthething.com photography
Upon my return home, in emails Bill described the ukulele’s construction and progress, seen in the photos (BELOW):
‘The top of the uke is book-matched, having been re-sawn from a 1" thick piece of ‘crotch’ curly maple — the fingerboard and peghead overlay were cut from the same board, as well. The neck is good quality regular curly maple ... about AAAA grade. Methinks itza different variety of maple. (WV has many different maples...)
‘It has a neck stiffener of hornbeam and carbon fiber in lieu of a truss rod. Stumbling along, as usual … One string to be paired with its octave cohort. Kinda like a mandolin. Got the two body halves glued together after smearing the insides with five coats of electrically conductive paint since you were here. Today, I rough fitted the neck to the body. Forward progress.’
