alafarmnews

Crenshaw Co. Farmer Grows “Pinders” the Old-Time Way
By Ben Norman

Daniel Joe White grew up on a small farm in Crenshaw County during the late 1940s and early 1950s growing peanuts and cotton. White said he quickly found out two things about growing peanuts during this era and those were: it was mighty hard work and boiled peanuts are mighty good to eat.

White, like many farm boys, left the farm when he graduated from high school and went to work with the State of Alabama in the Department of Education.

Daniel Joe White stacks peanuts in his garden in Highland Home.

"I never got farming completely out of my blood, I’m not sure anybody raised on a farm ever does," said White. "I just kept thinking back to how good those peanuts used to be when we picked them off the vines in the field and boiled them in a big pot. The more I thought about that pot of salty, green boiled peanuts the more my mouth started watering. I decided right then I was going to have some green peanuts to put in the freezer and some dried peanuts to roast," said White.

Daniel Joe White displays a peanut stack pole. In the background are a 1951 Ford truck and a 1955 Ford tractor used in growing peanuts in the 1950s.

Since gardening is one of White’s favorite hobbies, he already had a tractor, planter and cultivator necessary for growing peanuts.

"I started off plowing peanuts with a mule, but I use a tractor today. I purchased my fertilizer and peanut seed at Luverne Cooperative Services where I buy all my gardening supplies. Raymond Trotter and the other personnel at the Luverne store are a pleasure to do business with," said White.

"I got my peanuts planted, plowed and nurtured them through the summer until it was time to plow them up in September. I then cut an eight-foot sweet gum pole about five-inches thick, and two smaller cross pieces about two-inches thick. I dug a hole with posthole diggers, put the pole in and nailed the cross pieces on about knee high. Then the peanuts were stacked around the pole until you get to the top. It’s

"I’ve had a lot of the ‘old timers’ tell me they didn’t think they would ever see a stack of peanuts again," said White.

White added that when farmers started plowing up peanuts with the new type plows, the practice of stacking peanuts to dry was rendered obsolete with the introduction of the modern drying wagon that forces heated air up through a grate in the bottom of the wagon to remove the moisture from the peanuts before they are shelled, packaged and marketed.

Listening to White and his neighbor, Earl Davis, reminisce about peanut farming with mules and straight stock plows in the early 1950s painted a mental picture of a slower-paced time in American agriculture, where a good mule was treated like a member of the family and neighbors depended on neighbors to help each other harvest the crops.

When asked to describe the steps farmers went through to grow peanuts in the 1940s and 1950s, White and Davis began talking at the same time. Their smiles and laughter indicated their thoughts were regressing to their teenage farming years.

(From left) Unknown, T.R. Sims, Marion West, Julian Maddox, Joe West, back ground standing, unknown. Farmers and Luverne Peanut personnel inspect peanuts on the West Brothers farm circa 1950.