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.
Mixon also grows and sells a variety of peppers, cucumbers, squash, eggplant and later in the year, okra and peas. All of the vegetables are washed and dried before being sold and are sold in $3 and $5 trays.
Bennie and Sylvia attended Wagener-Salley High School together in the early ‘60’s and met again later while working at Wagener Manufacturing, she, in the sewing room, he, in the shipping department. It was love at first sight in that old sewing factory. They later worked at the Salley factory for a few years, had two sons and then Mixon began building houses and preaching.
“I preached for a long time,” Mixon said. “The Lord blesses me and now I stay here in the yard. I don’t have any problems that way.” Mixon putters around the garden most days while Sylvia works the vegetable stand, washing and selling the produce.
To purchase your produce from the Mixons, watch for the “God’s Acre” sign posted along Highway 39.