V
under the sun
THE BRUNSWIOCfetEACON
THURSDAY FEBRUARY 27. 1992
D
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Leading The Simple Life
Mintzes Enjoy Self-Sufficiency, Livinq Close To Nature
BY SUSAN USHER
Nestled in the woods oft Big Ncck Road in Ash,
Henry Mint/ lives quietly with Frances, his wife,
and David, the younger of their two sons.
Other than the calls of wild birds, few sounds pene
trate the woodland canopy. Formosa-type azaleas grow
freely, their low-flung branches taking root and spread
ing wherever they touch the soil.
"It's quiet here," said Mint/. "The only thing I can't
do anything about is the planes flying overhead."
The Mintzes arc homesteaders, taking pleasure and
pride in a level of self-sufficiency rarely seen tixlay
even in rural arc-as of Brunswick County.
"If we can't do it, it doesn't get done," said Mint/. "I
can get by. I'm not afraid to tackle most anything."
As best they can, the three live in harmony with na
ture and strive for a healthy balance in their own lives.
Not one of them is afraid of a good day's work; they
find joy in a task well done.
Mint/ gardens using the basic approaches espoused
in Rodale's Organic Gardening magazine, trying to
avoid the use of pesticides, herbicides or other chemi
cals while building the soils naturally.
"You get better quality and the insects aren't as bad,"
said Mint/, crumbling a Fistful of loamy soil, enriched
with compost and organic fertilizers. The land holds
moisture more easily and is slow to erode.
Crop rotation increases natural resistance to disease
and insects.
"I don't repeat the same crop in the same place," said
Mint/.. "1 wail Five years. 1 plant things that don't take
the same nutrients from the soil. "If you had to cat
bains every day you'd get tired of it too," he said by
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way of analogy.
What garden produce ihc Mini/cs don't eat or put up
in their four freezers and two refrigerators, they give
away.
Henry chooses indeterminate type tomatoes, with the
Park Whopper and Better Boy among his favorites.
Stripping all leaves off the stem except at the lip, he
buries each plant in an "L" in a trench four to six inches
deep, up to the leaves.
"The stem will extend roots and draw nourishment
from a wider area," said Mint/..
He prunes and suckcrs as needed to keep the vines
thinned and the fruits large, yielding slices so big they
cover a piece of loaf bread.
"You've got to come back this summer and sec," he
says with confidence.
Other garden standards include butter beans, squash,
green beans, okra, carrots, spinach, mustard and sweet
potatoes. He trains his pole beans on a six-foot-high row
of utility fencing, which allows more light to reach the
plants and makes it easier to harvest the beans.
Mint/, has his own simple and inexpensive, if labor
intensive, approach to irrigation. A row of barrels and
30-gallon rubber containers stand along the rear of a
shed. Here he collects rainwater. In dry weather, he
hauls the water to the field with the tractor.
Wild creatures abound at the Mint/, farm, from worms
that draw moles and birds, to hungry deer that are some
times a "problem" in the garden.
Mint/, sees only a few rabbits these days, possibly be
cause the local fox population is increasing. The family
puts out wild bird seed and shelled com twice a day.
BETWEEN THE THREE of them, there are few jobs that
tackle. They live quiet lives of relative self-sufficiency.
Henry, Frances and David Mintz won't
drawing even more birds as well as squirrels.
Their small house sits unobtrusively on a irau of 92
acres, jusl a few hundred yards from where Mint/ was
reared by his parents, the late Mamie and L.B. (Burden)
Mint/.. His and her baby blue Suburbans are sheltered
side by side in a garage that also holds garden equip
ment, a chippcr/mulchcr, boat and other equipment nec
essary to maintaining a self-sufficient household.
The Mintzes haven't always lived here
One year, when he was a single man "about 24" and
the crops were laid by. Mint/, went to town looking for
work building the bridge that now crosses the Shallotte
River. The foreman told him, "Come back tomorrow"
one time loo many; Mint/, enlisted in the U.S. Army.
In Washington State the young serviceman met and
married his wife, who had moved to the West Coast
from the North Dakota plains.
His military career was interrupted briefly at one
point, but Mint/, eventually retired from the Army with
just over 21 years in.
Today that small monthly check is his only income.
Mint/, says. And, like the hearing loss brought on by ex
posure to sustained heavy artillery fire in Korea, a con
stant reminder of those years.
Returning to Brunswick County around 1962, Mint/
settled in Supply, but within a few years the family
moved to the homcplacc in Ash. There they took on the
task of building a home.
"We had the house framed in. Me and my wife put up
the floors and ceilings. They delivered the windows and
it went to raining," he recalled. "We put them in our
selves. It was that or something worse."
Looking around the room with its paneled walls and
knotty pine ceiling. Mint/, added, "It's not that great a
carpcntry job, but it's livable."
There's little around the place that he or his wife can't
do. When his wife was not well. Mint/ learned to cook,
clean, hang out clothes and "most anything a woman
can do," he said, causing a few eyebrows to lift in earli
er days.
The two arc a team, however, and simply do whatever
work there is to be done around the place, inside and
out.
Henry maintains and repairs all the gardening and
household maintenance equipment, from the tractor to
the air compressor he relies upon to pump up tires and
whatever else needs a burst of air.
Slacks of firewood, shielded by sheets of tin roofing,
await use: pine and miscellaneous logs for the heater but
maple only for the wood cookstove the Mintzes import
ed from Austria
Bees fly in and out of hives near the outbuildings.
As time allows. Mint/, takes his boat out on local
rivers and creeks and into the Atlantic Ocean, mainly
for the pleasure of it
But the family buys 300 to 400 pounds of fish each
year to stock the freezers ? mullet, spot, "whatever I can
gel hold of," says Mint/..
Slender and strong of build, Mint/'s appearance be
lies his age. But, at 76, his pace has slowed a little, w ith
a touch of arthritis in the shoulders. He no longer keeps
chickens or hogs, or even dogs.
He's made other concessions to age as well.
"I used lo buy rabbil manure, and cow manure and
horse manure by the iruckload," he said. "But I've had
STAFF PHOTOS BY SUSAN USHER
ItEMRY MINTZ uses organic fertilizers and
compost to build the soil of his homeplace at
Ash, with hefty tomatoes part of the abundant
yield each summer.
lo give thai up."
Instead he rakes pine straw from the forest beds on
the tract and spreads it thickly across the garden, allow -
ing it to compost for at least two years. Tilling it in any
sooner dries the soil. When he does turn the composted
needles under, he applies lime to offset the extra acidity.
In January he tilled the beds to be planted this spring,
turning under a volunteer cover crop of "winterweed"
and drying the soil shaded by a tall stand of nearby
pines. He'll turn the soil again before planting.
"You have to stay at it, winter and summer," says
Mint/, not at all complaining.
"1 like being self-sufficient," he concludes. "I don't
depend on nobody for nothing."
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