Marco had never seen a pine plantation.
He and our friend, and co travel host, Marina were visiting from Tuscany—her fourth trip to Mississippi, his first. We were driving west on Highway 98, my wife riding shotgun, rows of planted pines blurring past like fence posts. Marco asked how old the trees were. Eight years, I told him. Maybe ten. He looked surprised. In Tuscany, eight years is the blink of an eye. Here, it’s already a third of a pine tree’s working life.
We measure time differently in Mississippi.
My family has been in this part of the state for seven generations. It’s in my blood and my bones. And when I look out at a stand of loblolly pines—whether it’s pole timber ready for harvest or fresh plantings barely knee-high—I see something most visitors miss.
I see home.
The pine industry built this region. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, timber barons moved into South Mississippi and began harvesting the virgin longleaf pines that had stood here for centuries. I’ve only seen those trees in photographs—a few hang on the walls of my breakfast restaurant—and they were massive. Eight feet in diameter. Maybe more. Trunks that took six men to wrap their arms around. They cut them all. For decades, the attitude was— take what you can and move on. No replanting. No stewardship. Just stumps and mud and a long ride to the next job.
It wasn’t until the late 1920s that things started to change. The state created the Forestry Commission, offered tax breaks for replanting, and started treating timber like what it was—a crop. Same logic as the cotton subsidies in the Delta. At the time, all of the political power in the state was in the Delta. If you want people to put down roots, make it pay. By the 1950s, more than half the state was covered in what local foresters call the third forest.
Now pine plantations cover the landscape in this part of the world, trees planted in rows, thinned on schedule, harvested in cycles of twenty-five to thirty years. It’s farming, really. Just slower. And with more pine needles. In your gutters. In your truck bed. In large piles on the side of the street in the fall. In places pine needles have no business being.
Speaking of roots.
The southern yellow pine—the loblolly, especially—sends down a taproot before it does much of anything else. That taproot anchors it, feeds it, gives it purchase in sandy soil that wouldn’t hold much else (you’re welcome Raising Arizona and Coen Brothers fans). I think about that sometimes. Seven generations in one place. The taproot goes deep.
I named our bakery after the loblolly pine. Partly because I wanted something local, something that said this place without hitting you over the head with it. Also, “Longleaf” was taken and “Slash Pine Bakery” sounded like a horror film. But if you’ve ever seen a cross-section of a pine trunk—those rings radiating out from the center—it looks like a well-laminated pastry. Layers built over time.
Not a bad metaphor for what we do.
I’ll say this about pines—they’re not much to look at. They don’t blaze with color in the fall. They don’t spread wide and give you a place to sit in the shade. They’re scraggly, thin-crowned, and they drop needles on your truck twelve months a year. And in the spring, the pollen comes. Covers everything—cars, porches, patio furniture, the dog, your will to live. You don’t fight it. You just wait it out and buy Claritin in bulk. And when the wind really blows, they don’t hold. They snap like matchsticks.
Hurricane Katrina made that clear.
People across the country still don’t fully understand what happened in August 2005. The levees broke in New Orleans. But the hurricane hit Mississippi. We took the eastern eye wall here in the Pine Belt—sustained winds of 110, 120 miles per hour. The taproot of a southern yellow pine is strong, but it’s not built for that. From Hattiesburg to the Gulf Coast, we lost forty percent of our pine timber in a single day.
For years afterward, driving south to the Gulf Coast felt like traveling through a graveyard. Snapped trunks. Bare hills. The landscape looked empty.
But here’s the thing about pines. They come back.
Twenty years later—hard to believe it’s been that long—the land looks like it always did. New plantations have grown up. The rows are filling in. The green has returned. Standing and waiting, I suppose, until the next one comes through.
There’s a lesson in that, if you’re looking for one. I usually am.
These pines didn’t choose this soil. They sent down taproots and held on. When the storm came, they stood or they didn’t. But the forest survived. New pines came up where the old ones fell.
I think about that when I think about home.
Marco and Marina spent two weeks with us. We hosted an art show for Marco at a gallery downtown—he’s an artist from Florence, has shown work in Italy, New York, a dozen places in between. Afterward, he told me the patrons here were different. A woman stood in front of one painting for ten minutes, then asked him about the light. They talked for half an hour. “In New York,” he said, “they look. Here, they stay.”
That didn’t surprise me. It’s one of the things I love most about this place—the people. We’re hospitable because we don’t know any other way to be. Pull up a chair. Fix you a plate. Tell me your story. Leave four pounds heavier and with a Tupperware container you’ll forget to return.
Europeans who visit here often see Mississippi as exotic, in the best sense. The food, the music, the landscape, the pace. Marco kept shaking his head as we drove. “You don’t understand,” he said. “In Italy, we would manufacture this. Here, you just live it.”
We just can’t see it because we’re standing in the middle of it.
Sometimes we’re too hard on this place. We know the flaws. We’ve lived with them. But we can’t see the forest for the pine trees, as they say.
I can. I see it every time I drive south through a plantation, past fresh plantings and pole timber and stands ready for harvest. I see it in the smell of sticky pine sap on a hot afternoon—a smell that takes me straight back to pinecone wars in my childhood neighbor’s yard. Don’t throw the green ones. They hurt. I can still feel the sap on my palms, the way it turned black with dirt and wouldn’t wash off for days.
I still walk through the pines sometimes. Same stands I threw pinecones in as a kid. Different trees, same ground. They define the area. Maybe they define the people too. Useful. Stubborn. Not going anywhere. The timber barons cut and ran. The people who stayed were different. They replanted. They rebuilt. They’re still here.
Seven generations.
The pines keep growing back, no matter what the wind brings.
Onward.
My Mom’s Pot Roast
Serves 8 to 10
Preheat oven to 275° F
1 each 3 1/2- to 4-pound chuck roast
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons kosher salt
1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons fresh ground black pepper
1 tablespoon steak seasoning (see recipe page**)
1/4 cup bacon fat or canola oil
8 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 cup yellow onion, small dice
1 cup celery, small dice
2 teaspoons fresh garlic, minced
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons tomato paste
3/4 cup red wine, heated
4 cups beef broth, heated
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
2 bay leaves
1 large onion, peeled and cut into eight wedges
1 1/2 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes, quartered
4 medium-sized carrots, peeled and cut into quarters
1 tablespoon fresh thyme, chopped
1 1/2 teaspoons fresh rosemary, chopped
Combine one tablespoon each of kosher salt, pepper, and steak seasoning. Rub all sides of the roast with seasoning mixture.
In a large heavy-duty skillet, heat the bacon fat over high heat. Once the pan is very hot, sear each side of the roast for five to seven minutes.
Place the roast in a Dutch oven or a roasting pan with a lid (if you don’t have a lid, foil will work just fine).
Drain the fat from the skillet and melt the butter over medium heat. Stir in the onions and celery and cook for five minutes, until the onions are translucent. Stir in the garlic, and remaining salt and pepper. Cook for one more minute.
Sprinkle in the flour to make a roux and cook until it reaches the color of peanut butter. Add the tomato paste and continue cooking for two to three minutes.
While cooking the roux, heat the red wine and beef broth. Using a wire whisk, stir the broth and wine mixture into the roux and bring to a simmer. Stir in the Worcestershire sauce and bay leaves and pour over the roast. Cover and bake for one and a half hours.
Remove the roast from the oven and add the onion wedges, potatoes, carrots, thyme, and rosemary. Push the vegetables down into the gravy. Put the cover back on and bake for one and a half to two hours more, until fork tender.
When done, let the roast rest for 30 minutes before serving.
(Robert St. John is a chef, restauranteur and published cookbook author who lives in Hattiesburg, Miss.)
