Berries nearly ripe for pickin’
Retirement never tasted so good
On land where her grandfather’s corn fields once grew, Cindy and Paul Rawlins have established Sassafras Pass farm with a multitude of garden plants, an orchard, laying hens and bee hives.
Just northwest of Pea Ridge, Sassafras Pass is small portion of the 160-acre homestead of Frank and Ollie Crabtree. Cindy loves that heritage and believes their use of the land would please her grandparents.
“It’s my grandparents’ farm,” Cindy said, “If they were here, it would make them so happy to know that it’s being used for what it was intended to be and that it’s still in the family.”
“When you retire, you just can’t sit still,” quipped Paul Rawlins, justifying his constant work on Sassafras Pass.
The couple have been married six years and both are now retired, but work long and hard on the farm.
Cindy, daughter of Bill and Barbara Crabtree Cooper and granddaughter of Frank and Ollie Crabtree has deep roots in Benton County. She said the log cabin at the Bella Vista Historical Museum was the home of her paternal grandfather, Christopher Columbus Cooper.
“I love staying home and seeing all the stuff that Paul does,” she said, enjoying her retirement.
Paul said, “She works the garden a lot.”
“Well, yes. He goes to bed at 6. And I go to the garden and pick blackberries, raspberries — whatever needs to be picked,” Cindy said. “We have a tiller. So, he tills.”
“This reminds me of being at my grandparents,” she said. “Growing up at my grandparents’, you always grabbed a hoe and went to the garden. It’s much better than working everyday.”
Paul and Cindy went to school together years ago and a “common classmate got us together” again, he said.
Rawlins was a lineman for 40 years in Bentonville. He served 25 years in the Arkansas National Guard and is a combat veteran who served in the Persian Gulf.
Together, they plant, tend and harvest the 8,000-square foot garden on the farm. Sassafras Pass was named for the dog kennel
Cindy had for years as she raised and trained Brittanies and competed in field trials.
Even though the didn’t originally plant the garden and orchards intending to sell, they’ve realized that they produce more than they can use. Cindy often gives away fruit to people in hospice.
“Everyone wants organic, local,” Paul said.
“We sell blackberries and raspberries. We’ve sold and gave away green beans and tomatoes.
If we can’t find a home for it, goes to chicken feed,” Paul said. “Our blackberries are thorn less and chigger-free.”
“We don’t have a lot of variety this year,” Paul said. “We have a small orchard — peaches, apples, pears and plums. We have grapes, tame blackberries and red raspberries. This year, we’re playing around with growing mushrooms — oyster shell. We’ll see how that goes.”
As for the mushrooms, “what got me started,” Paul said, “was finding the wild ones.
“Cindy won’t eat them the first time. If I’m alive after eating them, then she’ll eat them,” he said, laughing.
“My family were all wheat farmers and cattle ranchers. Cattle was a big ‘no’ for me, because that’s work,” Paul said, explaining that he grew up, as a child, in Oklahoma. He was excited to find “real trees and clear running water” in Arkansas.
Both said their biggest battle is with the wildlife. They’re currently competing with raccoons for the crops.
“Our biggest problem is raccoons,” he said. “They cleaned us out of grapes! Those little suckers, if it’s not ripe, they’ll cut it off and drop it.”
“I tell you, me and the raccoons are gonna fight this year,” he said.
Saying he could control the the deer better than raccoons, Paul said one time the raccoons ate almost all the apples off a tree.
“I was brush-hoggin’ and looked over there and, they literally, them little suckers left one perfect gold delicious apple. It was most perfect apple I’ve ever seen. I picked it to take a bite and the whole center was rotten,” he said. “They left it just to aggravate me!”
“That’s when war was declared!” he said.
Cindy said squirrels also like their produce, but the raccoons are worse.
There’s more work in an orchard than realized at first glance.
“You don’t just plant a tree,” he said. “There’s a lot of work — battling blights, pruning, deer.”
“Everything I’ve learned, I’ve learned right here,” he said holding up his phone. “It’s right here at my fingertips.”
On the 18 acres, he said he’s found wild plum and persimmon but no pawpaws.
“I look at cookbooks and make cookies,” Cindy said. “I feed the farmer when he comes in.
“It was my idea to do the bees. I just thought, you get a hive, set it out and everything just worked magically. We did the University of Arkansas class, and, after the class, I realized it was work.” she said.
“There’s a lot to them,” Paul said about bees. “They’re as complicated as you want them to be. I keep it simple.”
With 13 beehives, Paul said he prefers to go into winter with 12 or 13 hives. “That’s a lot,” he said. He still has two jars of honey from last year.
The garden plot includes fresh dill for dill pickles, beets, potatoes, okra, five kinds of tomatoes, two kinds of squash, four kinds of kale, green beans, jalapenos, bell peppers, asparagus.
He makes jams, jellies and syrup.
“I put up 200 some pints assorted jams,” he said. “We take the berries and freeze them because we’re too busy in the summer.”
“I do can hot dill pickles. This year, we’re going to try sweet pickles, jalapeno relish and make some hot jalapeno jelly,” he said. “I’m also going to try to make chow chow.”
“Keeping up with the garden and bees keeps us busy from early spring, until late summer,” Paul said. He said he inspects the bee hives at least every seventh or eighth day.
“The more hives you have, the more time you have to dedicate to them.
“The daily chores, with the chickens, brush hogging’ and all that it takes to manage a piece of property is time-consuming,” he said.
“Anymore, anybody wants to go natural, but you can’t go back natural anymore because of the invasive plant life that’s come here,” he said, enumerating “five invasive plant types — boxwood, white roses, honeylocust, honeysuckle and red cedar.”
He said the cedar not only emits acidity into the soil, but also causes a blight from pollen that gets on fruit and fruit trees.
“It causes curl leaf, rust and different problems you get with fruit trees. I’ve learned about from looking it up. You spray a lot, but when you have bees, you have to learn how to be organic,” he said.
“There are certain times you don’t have to be as careful with insecticides like when blackberries are blooming,” he said.
“Bees love blackberry nectar. After the flowers are gone, you can go to a stronger spray,” he said.
“Here we have bad problem with Japanese beetles. They’ll eat the skin off the fruit. You can spray, but they’ll just go to another, or eat leaves off the raspberry plants. After everything blooms out, you can use a stronger poison. You about have to with Japanese beetles. It doesn’t kill them, it just chases them away,” he said.
“I pretreat my fruit trees before the earlier rain spells. Rain spreads the diseases and rust spreads through cedar pollen,” he said.
Certain fruit trees like Bella Georgia peach, have more tolerance to cedar. The Rawlinses have several different types of peach trees.
Paul said he also learns tips from neighbors like Danny Looney and experienced beekeepers like Shannon Ivy.
“The best asset you have is the old-timers.”
“Cindy does flowers and the house. I retired first,” he said. “Cindy grows flowers — iris and marigold.”
When they’re both working diligently in the garden during the height of the season, he said he’ll grab a tomato and a cucumber and eat them while he’s working in the garden, adding a couple of berries for his lunch.
“It’s good when you retire. It keeps you active. It keeps your mind functioning,” he said. “That’s what I like about it.”
He said they make a little money on the bees, but mostly it’s just keeping busy and keeping your mind active.
“When you retire, you can’t just sit still. If you’re an active laborer, you have to have something to keep you going,” he said. “There’s getting to be a lot of ’em — hobby farms.”
“My favorite thing about the farm is when Cindy and I are out doing this together,” Paul said. “That’s the fun, it doesn’t matter what we’re doing. We have fun doing it together.”