An area of Martha Reed’s yard is a place she has always considered her sanctuary where she carefully tends to a variety of vegetables. That garden helps keep her mindful of a family tradition she has maintained since her childhood, and for Reed that has been quite a while — she turned 90 this year.
“I feel that I am very blessed by God to be able to keep working in my garden at my age and I plan to continue for as long as possible,” Reed said in a 2017 interview with this newspaper. Last week she dropped by the office as she does several times a year with fresh cabbage, collard greens, peppers, ripe cherry tomatoes, and plump green ones ready for frying.
“I have a lot of things in that garden and sometimes I never know what I may find when I go out there,” Reed said previously. One year it was a three-and-a-half-pound turnip, another a four-pound sweet potato.
Reed’s passion for gardening started when she was a child watching her father maintain a garden and she has followed his work ethic though the years.
Reed was one of nine children with two brothers and six sisters born to Green and Ossie Flowers. She attended Scott County Training School until her ninth-grade year.
Reed said her father instilled in her an appreciation for the work ethic that he displayed and that she loved helping him.
After leaving school, Reed worked as a short order cook before leaving Mississippi in 1954 to live in Chicago. She moved back to Forest in 1970 and went to work in janitorial services for the Forest Municipal School District until retirement.
After her career, she spent her time caring for family members who were ill.
She married and remained with Robert Reed for 28 years until his death in 2002, bringing four children into the marriage.
Reed said she loves all the vegetables she grows, but her favorites include lima beans, okra, tomatoes, corn, and turnips.
“I think more people need to get back to the old ways of sitting on their porch, shelling peas and raising our own food,” was some of the advice Reed offered in 2017 and it rings even more true today. “We need to take care of ourselves, live by God’s word and stop all this killing mess. People need to find something productive to do.”
