Last Friday I had to bring the car over to take my garden havest back to the house. I hadn't been out to pick in 9 days. When I put it out on the counter for a picture, I thought of Mammaw's words, "a gracious plenty." My harvest was more than enough, and more work to be done.
Mammaw (Emily Farrar Westmoreland) used the phrase often. I remember her using it to mean abundance, as I was thinking, and also to mean enough, even in the face of scarcity. She would say it when it seemed that there might not be enough to go around as her affirmation of "make do."
Mammaw was born in 1902 to a respectable but not well-off family - John Andrew and Nellie Farrar and big-brother Travis. Four more siblings would follow. When she was still a young teen, the family left their hill-country farm in Montgomery County, Mississippi and moved to Sunflower County, no doubt seeking greater prosperity in the rich farmland of the Delta. Her father and older brother farmed and later were merchant/businessmen. There was always "enough" though the family never found the riches they hoped for.
By the time the Great Depression descended, Emily was married to Clark Westmoreland and a young mother of one daughter, my mother Clara Nelle (born Aug 2. 1929). Emily's concept of "a gracious plenty" carried her famiy through the depression and stayed with her throughout her life. It is but one of the many legacies she left to her daughter and grandchildren.
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| A Gracious Plenty |
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| A Garden Feast |
