Wagener Produce Farm Rises from a Carolina Bay
By Valerie Sliker, Courtesy Wagener Monthly. Pictured: Bennie and Sylvia Mixon.
Ride a couple miles west of the Wagener town limit on Highway 39 and you’ll find a farmer’s vegetable stand situated on a little piece of nutrient-dense land lovingly called “God’s Acre.” Master gardener and retired pastor Bennie Mixon and his wife of 54 years, Sylvia Bussey Mixon purchased this Carolina Bay over twenty years ago and have been gardening it ever since.
Most Carolina bays are currently boggy or dry, elliptical in shape in a northwest to southeast orientation, as is Mixon’s. Many legends of their origins exist, but most scientists attribute them to glacier activity. They run in a specific pattern along the Atlantic Coastal Plain from northern Florida to New York. Many are used for agriculture because they contain thousands of years of organic matter that settled in them.
Last year, the Mixons harvested 2600 pounds of tomatoes from 144 tomato plants. This year is looking to be about as good. Several of his tomato plants were well over five feet tall in early July. Mixon currently grows only two types of tomatoes: Amelia and Park’s Whopper. He finds the other types disease ridden.