Summer 2026 Customer Corner: Earnestine Hargrove

Earnestine Hargrove and her sister spent their early years growing up in rural Greene County, North Carolina, on their grandparent’s 29 acre farm. In the 1950s, her grandparents raised livestock, including pigs, chickens, guineas, turkeys and cows. The cows were milked for dairy products. They also grew tobacco, cotton and corn as cash crops.

 

Earnestine’s grandma maintained a large garden to provide for family members’ meals and for farm hands. At the time, 

most farmers had large gardens and exchanged seeds and produce. 

 

When Earnestine was growing up, kindergarten was not mandatory for children in Greene County. This meant she got to stay home and be her Grandma’s assistant until it was time for first grade. “I took that job seriously.” 

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Meanwhile her sister went to the school where their mother taught. Earnestine later went to the same school. “It was a small wooden building without central heat or a cafeteria.” Earnestine remembers having such good times at that school, especially participating in the school plays.  

 

Back on the farm, meals were a family affair, and started with breakfast at 5:30am during harvesting season. Her grandmother fixed sausage or ham along with eggs and potatoes, or grits and biscuits.  After cleaning up from breakfast, Earnestine would help Grandma Lillie start fixin’ ‘dinner’ around 10am. Her sister would help in the summer time when school was out. Her grandfather, affectionately known as “Pa”, and his workers came in right at 12pm for dinner, which always included a homemade dessert, such as chocolate cake or fresh fruit pie. The nighttime meal was light, “often just meat from our large afternoon meal, with a biscuit or piece of cornbread.”

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Earnestine tried to stay as close to her grandfather as possible, and recalls riding with him in his truck into town to pick up staples from the store including flour, corn meal, salt and sugar, which they’d buy in bulk. Once she asked him to dig her a garden of her own. He obliged, and when he asked her what seeds she wanted to plant, she replied “only beets, cucumbers and stringed beans”... her favorites. 

 

Not only did Earnestine have her own garden plot, but her grandpa also planted her a special pine tree, which still stands to this day. Earnestine and her sister own the farm now, after it was passed on by their mother. She recalls a time when the USDA began paying them, and other farmers across the country, not to plant tobacco. They eventually replaced the tobacco crop with soy beans, and later raised sweet potatoes.