Gourds: Agriculture's Canvas; Most Common, Practical Use Is Still Birdhouses | National News

A clear sky. Low 44F. Winds light and variable..

A clear sky. Low 44F. Winds light and variable.

"All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful: The Lord God made them all." — Psalm 104: 24-25

Dickie Martin and wife Linda have been growing gourds at their farm in Laurens for more than a decade.

Gourds are a member of the Cucurbitacene family; however, unlike squash or cucumbers, these gourds bloom at night.

"All things bright and beautiful, All creatures great and small, All things wise and wonderful: The Lord God made them all." — Psalm 104: 24-25

Dickie Martin and wife Linda have been growing gourds at their farm in Laurens for more than a decade.

Gourds are a member of the Cucurbitacene family; however, unlike squash or cucumbers, these gourds bloom at night.

Unassuming and unattractive when left alone, gourds have potential limited only by the imagination of the artist.

Dickie Martin was raised at the end of Ghost Creek Road in Laurens. Some 70 years later, he and his wife Linda still live there with their children around them. The original homeplace stands across the street from a freshly plowed field with deep red clumps of heavy clay that will soon be planted in gourds.

Spending time with Dickie is like reading a good book. The story is ripe with unlikely characters that, with a little help, turn into beautiful works of art. And Dickie is a master at creating the canvas.

His story begins much like that of many other farmers – diversifying crops to supplement income. “I was working for Ceramtec at the time and I thought I’d probably get laid off because of their financial troubles,” Dickie remembered. “We were raising some cattle and hay then.

“First, I thought about growing pumpkins, but the turnaround on them was very short. Then I thought about cantaloupes, but they are very labor intensive to harvest.”

After some internet research, Dickie decided he would grow gourds.

“That was my speed. I could get them out (of the field) at my own pace.”

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Once Dickie settled on gourds as his next agricultural endeavor, Dickie and Linda started their research with a visit to the Florida Gourd Show. As a follow-up, Dickie also attended a “gourd gathering” as he called it in Savannah, Georgia. From these trips, he met Lena Braswell of Georgia. At one time, Lena’s farm in Wrens was known as the “Gourd Capital of the World.”

Lena gave Dickie some seeds and some advice, and he sowed his first crop. Ghost Creek Gourds was born. “We took off and grew some gourds, and then we went to the Florida Gourd Show that very year to sell our harvest.”

Since then, Dickie has become one of the top gourd growers in the industry, planting anywhere from 4-12 acres of gourds each year.

The Martins plant around 15 different varieties of gourds and Dickie lists them in a rhythmic cadence: “These are long-handled dippers – they’re grown in an arbor behind the house. You’ve got cannonballs, curly dippers, monkey gourds and dinosaurs. These are bottle gourds, but I call them people gourds – the craftsmen paint people or rabbits on them. Apple gourds look like apples. Pumpkin gourds – people paint them orange to look like a pumpkin and they’re very popular in the fall. The warty ones – people make sheep out of them. Then there’s the African warty. These Indonesian bottle gourds are used to make turkeys. It’s really whatever the imagination will carry.”

While the gourds are very untraditional in their purpose, they hold true to a typical crop-growing regimen.

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Dickie plows the fields after harvest each year turning under weeds and old plants to reveal rust-red clay. He then distributes fertilizer across the field and draws rows every 10 feet. Each row will have a strip of drip tape run down its center to transport both water and pest control to the plants. Then the rows are covered in a biodegradable plastic to help reduce pressure from weeds.

Once the field has been prepared, planting begins. The field is sectioned off by variety to make harvest and sorting easier.

“I have planted in mid-April, but the gourds won’t take a frost. So I usually wait until a little later to plant,” Dickie explained.

Gourds grow from a bush, then begin to vine in a pattern similar to cucumbers. Each vine will produce five to fifteen gourds. Once the plant starts to vine, funguses – particularly anthracnose – become a problem.

“Pretty early on [growing gourds], I had a total loss because of anthracnose,” Dickie said. “The gourds just melted into the ground.” After that, working with Clemson Extension plant pathologist Tony Keinath, Dickie implemented a spray regimen to help control the fungus.

Rodents also enjoy their share of the bounty and squirrels and mice drag the gourds to the edge of the field to enjoy their spoils. “Squirrels will eat a gourd a day,” Dickie said.

The gourds are full grown by mid-summer and will remain in the field until the next March to dry out. It can take them several months to completely dry, or cure. During the curing process, the gourds are very soft and spongy, so care is taken not to disturb them at this stage. Think “sleeping beauties…”

Dickie hires a worker to harvest the gourds. They are cut off the vines and then separated into large white plastic bags by variety. Once the gourds are harvested, they remain in the field until later in the summer. Then with some family help, Dickie moves the gourds from the field to his storage area. “We move 8-10 bags at a time, then stack them across the road. We cover them with tarps that I get from billboard signs. The tarps keep the squirrels out and protect them from sun and rain.”

Here the gourds wait until it’s time for them to begin their transformation.

Before they can be made into beautiful works of art, the splotchy skin needs to be washed off. When Dickie was first starting out, he did things a little differently.

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“The first year, I was ‘unclean gourds,’ which meant we didn’t wash the skins off. This guy from Mississippi I met at a show told me that we were going to have to start washing,” Dickie remembered.

“When I saw him at the show the next year, he asked if I had started washing yet and I hadn’t. He said, ‘I’m going to send you something to help you out.’ Well he sent me the whole boom used to pressure wash the gourds and he would never take any money for it. He was a good guy.”

The gourds are washed in a large livestock watering tank. The boom which was gifted to Dickie fits over the top with six nozzles fitted along the length of the pipe. It’s hooked to a converted pressure washer pump. Water builds up to about 1200 psi, and when running, the highly pressurized water shooting from the nozzles creates a whirlpool effect in the tub. The gourds swim around with each other like rocks in a river rapid and after a few hours come out smooth and skinless.

Washing gourds is not without entertainment. Dickie laughed at once such instance: “I was washing a batch of gourds, and I came out one night and I had to scrub the gourds a little. I kept hearing a frog, and it kept changing sound and changing sound. Finally, I saw that he was riding a gourd round and round the tub. He was little, but he sure was making a lot of noise!”

After the gourds are cleaned, they’re moved onto a trailer to dry before finally making their way into the barn, which is their last stop before being sold. The barn is floor is covered with the large bags, each filled with a different type of gourd.

Gourds are sold using direct marketing, and much of their sales are generated by attending gourd shows. Dickie estimates they sell between 400 and 500 gourds at some of the larger shows.

“It used to be Florida, Indiana in April – which that’s just the time you’re trying to plant – then Cherokee [North Carolina], Georgia, Alabama and Ohio in the fall. Now we only go to Florida, Cherokee and Ohio,” Dickie said.

“Indiana was at one time the premiere gourd show with 15-20 gourd vendors and about five to six commercial gourd growers like us.

“The show moved from Kokomo, Indiana, to South Bend. I told people the only thing I remembered about South Bend was Notre Dame and pot holes,” Dickie joked.

Ghost Creek Gourds’ sales divide pretty evenly between sales at shows, online sales and craftsmen buying directly from the farm. They have built a reputation among their customers thanks to the extra steps taken in washing each gourd.

Dickie still marvels at the potential each gourd has.

“You can take a $3 gourd and turn it into a $30 gourd and all you have in it is time.”

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He described one artist who can visualize 3-D images using the gourd and she carves them into lifelike sculptures using wood-burning tools.

“It is just unbelievable,” he said.

The most common, and practical, use for the gourds are the ones made into bird houses. The Martin gourd variety makes an ideal nesting spot for Purple Martins, providing them just the right amount of space to build their nests. Though this particular variety is named for its feathered inhabitants, Dickie wastes no opportunity to embellish a bit, “I tell people ours are the only ‘Martin’ Martin gourds around. They look at me a little funny until they realize that my last name is Martin,” he chuckled.

Last year, Dickie put up a line with 50 gourds on it for Purple Martin habitat. There were about three or four pairs of original dwellers; now there are about 18 or 20. And they return every year.

In a field of freshly plowed clay, a stark contrast against the bright blue sky, the line hangs across the horizon. Strung between two poles probably 15 feet or more above the ground, the line is dotted with gourds, their openings facing different directions; some painted black, some painted white. Though Dickie says the birds don’t seem to have a preference.

The birds zip in and out of the gourds – flying with extreme precision straight into the opening without so much as a rub. They poke their heads out and chirp at each other like neighbors sharing gossip. Then, all at once, take off the line in unison.

“The birds like people, and they like to be in groups.”

Dickie calls the structure an achievement.

This achievement is just one of many. Another worth nothing is the South Carolina Gourd Festival to be hosted by Dickie and Linda. The show previously moved around the state, but it has found a home at Ghost Creek. This year, the South Carolina Gourd Society of which Dickie and Linda are leaders, received a grant to help with marketing the show.

“Have you seen our billboard?” Dickie asked. (You can’t miss it – it’s right on the side of Interstate 385.) “We hope we’ll have a 1.000 or more people come through this year.”

Six or seven craftsman will be on hand to sell their art, and visitors will also have the chance to participate in various classes to learn different kinds of gourd-art techniques.

Dickie and Linda Martin have taken the South Carolina gourd industry to another level. Their superior product is certainly one reason, but their warm, welcoming spirit probably deserves more credit. They have committed themselves to cultivating relationships and growing one-of-a-kind canvases out of their clay soil.

Agriculture is truly an amazing craft. The plants that farmers grow nourish and enrich our lives in many ways. Sometimes, it just takes a little imagination.

SC Farmer magazine is a publication of the South Carolina Farm Bureau.

Originally published on thetandd.com, part of the TownNews Content Exchange.

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