The Art of Feeding a Community

I grew up in the small rural community of Utica, Mississippi, closer to the village of Learned or Lebanon Pinegrove Road. If pressed by a local, for more detail, I would say the Paige Grove Community. For those that don’t know the area, Utica will suffice. For those that are in the area and want a more specific relational understanding of who I am, making reference to the road might be enough, but for those that really want to know who I am and where I come from, naming the Paige Grove Community puts a geographic and cultural pin in it.

Paige Grove is the name of a church that sits 30 miles from downtown Jackson in a quiet community of dense oak wood forests and overripe pine tree farms. I grew up in the backyard of the church. It was built by my ancestors in 1873 and doubled as my grandparent’s front yard. There were no houses in between. In fact, there were no other houses within a quarter of a mile, unless you cut through the woods on a walking or horse trail.

At Grandma’s house—and make no mistake, both my grandparents lived there—but the house belonged to Epsie Broadwater Roberts. Not in deed, but in management. At her house, I was guaranteed to witness culinary bliss with astounding consistency. Her small and intimate dwelling sat on roughly two acres and included a smoke house, a chicken coop, a tater house, a pig pen, a milking pen for the cows and a slew of dog pens to house Grandaddy’s prized bird, coon, and rabbit dogs. This is the Mississippi that raised me. The Mississippi I love.