Accessories to the Tobacco Garden
Fence
When I was a little girl every tobacco garden had a willow fence around it.
I remember very well seeing such fences built. Post holes were made by driving a sharp stake into the ground with an ax; the stake was withdrawn, and into the hole left by it, a diamond willow was thrust for a post; on this willow were left all the upper branches with the leaves. A rail was run from the post to its next neighbor, at the height of a woman’s shoulder, and stayed in place by bending over the leafy top of the willow post, and drawing it around the rail, then twisting it down and around the body at the post in a spiral manner. If the leafy top of the post was long enough, and slender enough, it might, after being wrapped spirally about the post, be even drawn out and woven into the fence.
Below the top rail at a convenient distance, there ran a second rail, bound to the post with bark. Besides these rails, branches and twigs, and as I have said, the tops of the posts themselves, were interwoven into the fence to make it as dense as possible.
The posts of the fence stood about two and a half feet apart, making, with the rails and the interwoven twigs, a barrier so dense that even a dog could not push through it.
There was an opening left to enter the garden, closed by a kind of stile—bars of small poles thrust right and left between the posts; against these bars were leaned one or two bull berry bushes, which were removed when the owner wanted to enter.
If a weak place was found in the fence, it was strengthened with a bull berry bush thrust into the ground and leaned against the fence or woven into it.