A special grain of rice grows in the box gardens in the center of Felton Homes, where pastel houses are crowned with solar panels and children play in the street.
The unassuming plant looks like a few thin blades of grass, but its grains hold the weight of centuries and connect the cultural history of West Africa with cuisine of the Deep South.
Trinidad Hill Rice – or Moruga Hill Rice – followed the slave trade. It was transported from West Africa to the American southeast by enslaved African people who grew it in provisioned gardens on plantations where swamp-loving Asian rice varieties reigned commercial production.
The garden at Felton Homes, a Macon Housing Authority development off Mercer University Drive, was planted by Rodney Mason, who created a nonprofit last year called Restored Ancestral Roots. The nonprofit aims to reintroduce culturally appropriate food, increase food literacy and improve access to fresh vegetables in neighborhoods and communities with limited resources.
The Hill Rice began disappearing in America but was being reintroduced to Trinidad by Merkins – a variation of “Americans” – people who were enslaved on Georgia’s barrier islands but freed and relocated by the British in exchange for volunteering to fight their plantation owners in the War of 1812, according to reporting by Jill Neimark, a science journalist and children’s book author who lives in Macon.
In addition to Hill Rice, other rare cultivars growing in the garden at Felton Homes include pigeon peas, sorrel hibiscus, Trinidad Aji Dulce pepper, Efo Gbure (water leaf), Lagos spinach, Callaloo, Caribbean okra and “tree okra.”
“There’s a whole movement to sort of restore the indigenous cultivars of the Deep South,” said Neimark, who has reported in recent years on a variety of different efforts to reincorporate classic cultivars into southeastern cuisine.
The small oval florets at Felton Homes began emerging in early August.
“A lot of times what we get on our plates is just an outcome, but the whole story behind it, where is it?” Mason said in a recent interview.
Carolina Gold rice started as an African wild rice that turned a golden color when planted in flood zones and marshlands of the Carolina low country. The same rice, when planted on a hill in Trinidad, turns a brilliant red color.
“These plants are like us. Our DNA has all kinds of possibilities. It could come out any kind of way,” Mason said. “Just like humans, largely, your outcome depends on your environment, right?”
Mason grew up in Louisiana foraging and picking okra by the bushel to buy school clothes. He recently quit a job in logistics for Tyson Chicken, the company that brought him to Macon.
“I got disillusioned with the whole industrialized food process and what we were doing,” Mason said of working for one of the largest producers of chicken in the country.
Mason wanted to get involved with the “social sector,” but said he was not sure where to start.
“I’m a drummer, so I went to the Tubman [Museum] and started to do drum tours and, from that, I started running into people that did social, community work, grassroots-type stuff,” Mason said. “I figured out that food insecurity really is probably the biggest – one of the biggest – issues in Macon.”’
Mason and Neimark are working on plans for a new community garden in East Macon’s Kings Park Subdivision. The two gardens are part of a repatriation of the sacred grain to Georgia.
Kings Park Subdivision, an East Macon neighborhood that once was an idyllic residential area for Black families, has been in decline for decades. Many of its 270 homes are boarded up. Most residents are renters. The few homeowners who remain are aging. Fresh and affordable food is miles away.
“This community needs help,” Mason said. “If you’re talking about starting where the need is, you have to start here.”
Gloria Aaron has lived in Kings Park for 51 years. Like many people, she has never before heard of the wicker collard green Mason and Neimark plan to grow in the garden.
“I’m curious what they look like, what they taste like,” Aaron said. “How would you cook them?”
Aaron said a gentleman in the neighborhood who usually grows a garden in his yard is in poor health so did not plant one this year.
Restored Ancestral Roots applied for a $20,000 “Lots of Compassion” grant from Mrs. Meyers soap company. The grant program aims to help people turn vacant lots into gardens for community growth. Grant winners are set to be announced Aug. 23.
The nonprofit obtained a vacant lot in the neighborhood from the Macon-Bibb County Land Bank Authority near Haynes Temple Holiness Church. Mason said the Kings Park Circle Heritage & Unity Garden will still be planted even if the nonprofit doesn’t get the grant money.
In addition to classic cultivars’ higher nutritional value, the ancestral gardens can help educate children and adults alike on their history “so they gain a sense of pride while they plant and eat,” Neimark said. A children’s book Neimark authored, called “The Hugging Tree,” also will be distributed to neighborhood children. The book teaches kids environmental stewardship and compassion for all living things.
Jubilee, Rice Beer
Mason shares the history of Trinidad Hill Rice with people he encounters in Macon. It has proven an interesting conversation topic, one that has even led to a prospective business partnership with Fall Line Brewing Co., which wants to use the rice to make beer.
“Fall Line had never heard of the story, but they do make rice lagers,” Mason said.
Kaitlynn Kressin, owner of the brewery, took interest in the story of Moruga Hill Rice.
“The history of the red rice was really interesting and that was something we wanted to kind of play on … and use our platform, which is beer, to talk about the history of red rice,” Kressin said.
Kressin said she expects to brew the beer sometime next year after it is formulated.
Rice farmers from Trinidad are planning a trip to Macon to share how the rice is cooked and work with the brewery to figure out how to translate it into the brewing process.
Restored Ancestral Roots is hosting a Jubilee, which is described as “Central Georgia’s annual food literacy event,”on Aug. 18 at 12:30 – 4 p.m. at the brewery on Plum Street.
The event costs $25 per person and will feature food education, a cultural marketplace and an art showcase featuring work by Kevin Scene Lewis and Char Lockett. Speakers Bill Green and Sarah Anderson will discuss food insecurity, food literacy and how to shape community’s relationship with food.
To contact Civic Journalism Fellow Laura Corley, call 478-301-5777 or email [email protected].
