Wrenching Tales by Cindy Ladage 

 

Antique tractor collectors, take note of this beautiful place to visit: A trip to P. Allen Smith’s Moss Mountain Farm in Roland, Ark., is a step into a gentler time – a time where details were important and sitting on the front porch was primary.

Set on 500 acres, a stroll through Smith’s American Greek Revival garden retreat home is a pleasure. The home was built in 1840s style, when the farm was originally established. Out his back view, visitors can see the gardens fall away to the banks of the Arkansas River. Directly behind the house is a croquet lawn framed by Smith’s summer kitchen and art studio.

The gardens that surround the house include a fountain garden and a mix of annuals, herbs, perennials, roses, shrubs and ornamental grasses. His property also has orchards with heritage apple trees, stone fruit and blueberries and the vegetable garden, from which he picks for his recipes.

It is easy to see why his television shows – “Garden Home,” “Garden to Table” and the syndicated 30-minute “Garden Style,” where he travels to gardens in the United States and Europe or films at this lovely home he calls his “cottage” – are so popular. In his show, he focuses on ways to create garden rooms for dining, entertainment and relaxing.

On his website Smith writes, “The Garden Home is about living life at its natural best. I believe we can create a stylish lifestyle in keeping with the tradition of the past, while taking full advantage of modern innovations and still be good stewards of the earth.”

A tour group from central Illinois visited Smith’s home and gardens in mid-September and were served an amazing dinner using his own recipes (which featured his Buttermilk Pecan Pie for a satisfying end to a roast pork dinner that came apart on the fork!). Smith promotes gardens to go with his recipes: “A vegetable garden is a four-step process: planning, planting, caring and preparing.”

In the lovely “shed” where lunch was served was a grouping of tools on the wall any farmer might love. Although the tools had not seen dirt for quite some time, the artistic arrangement along with Smith’s paintings of pumpkins and squash provided a glimpse into him. 

Born March 13, 1960, the television host, designer, gardening and lifestyle expert and author is a farmer at heart. Smith is a fourth-generation nursery operator raised in Morrison, Tenn. He went to Hendrix College and received a Rotary International Scholarship to study garden design and history at the University of Manchester in England, where he studied English gardens visited by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in the 18th century.

After coming back to Little Rock, Smith entered the garden-design nursery business with his brother, became a private tour guide and started teaching garden workshops. These popular workshops led to his appearances on TV shows and, ultimately, his own show.

Growing up on a farm where he raised and showed livestock and poultry, as an adult he has established the Heritage Poultry Conservancy, an organization dedicated to the preservation and support of all threatened breeds of domestic poultry.

Smith quipped because his chickens are “promiscuous,” he keeps them penned so the species don’t crossbreed. A walk through his chicken yard shows a variety of poultry of all shapes and sizes that have lots of room to move about. What makes his chicken “coop” so special is that when searching for a way to provide the chickens with fresh grass so they wouldn’t overgraze their penned areas, Smith created portable coops he moves around the pastures.

“The birds could enjoy fresh food and add some extra fertilizer along the way, and the areas around the buildings wouldn’t become muddy and worn. So I went to work and designed a variety of moveable buildings, adapting each one to the type of bird it would house.”

Smith raises both heritage and modern breeds of birds, including Jersey Giant and Barred Plymouth Rock chickens, as well as two Bantam varieties: Rumpless Araucana and White Cochins. He also has Sebastopol and Toulouse geese and a sizeable flock of Blue Slate turkeys.

These are just a few of the amazing things to see and do at Moss Mountain Farm. While this is not the usual stop for the antique tractor collector, anyone who loves farming and beautifully tended gardens will enjoy it. There is even a wagon on location, and a few pieces of equipment spread around here and there for comfort.

Those longing to travel south or west in the Farm World area, visit www.pallensmith.com/garden-home-retreat/visit