river round here in so long I disremembers when!

"We didn' have no gardens of our own round our cabins. My employer--I
means, my marster--had one big gyarden for our whole plantation and all
his niggers had to work in it whensomever he wanted 'em to, then he give
'em all plenty good gyarden sass for theyselfs. They was collards and
cabbage and turnips and beets and english peas and beans and onions, and
they was allus some garlic for ailments. Garlic was mostly to cure wums
(worms). They roasted the garlic in the hot ashes and squez the juice
outen it and made the chilluns take it. Sometimes they made poultices
outen garlic for the pneumony.

"We saved a heap of bark from wild cherry and poplar and black haw and
slippery ellum trees and we dried out mullein leaves. They was all mixed
and brewed to make bitters. Whensomever a nigger got sick, them bitters
was good for--well ma'am, they was good for what ailed 'em! We tuk 'em
for rheumatiz, for fever, and for the misery in the stummick and for
most all sorts of sickness. Red oak bark tea was good for sore throat.

"I never seed no store bought clothes twel long atter freedom done come!
One slave 'oman done all the weavin' in a separate room called the 'loom
house.' The cloth was dyed with home-made coloring. They used indigo for
blue, red oak bark for brown, green husks offen warnicks (walnuts) for
black, and sumacs for red and they'd mix these colors to make other
colors. Other slave 'omans larned to sew and they made all the clothes.
Endurin' the summertime we jus' wore shirts and pants made outen plain
cotton cloth. They wove wool in with the cotton to make the cloth for
our winter clothes. The wool was raised right thar on our plantation. We
had our own shoemaker man--he was a slave named Buck Bolton and he made
all the shoes the niggers on our plantation wore.