David Hampton, left, and Chris Sims, inmates at the Bledsoe County Detention Facility, picks up rocks from a plowed field next to the facility Tuesday. Inmates are planting a garden to grow some of their own food and have productive activities while they finish their sentences.PIKEVILLE, Tenn. — A cloudless sky overhead, freshly turned soil beneath their orange flip-flops and Crocs, a dozen inmates at the Bledsoe County Detention Center pick clumps of grass and rocks from the dirt to ready the jail’s first garden for planting.
The prisoners, all nonviolent offenders who have good behavior reports, talk excitedly about having a garden to tend and the vegetables they hope to plant.
Cody Leach, 18, from Franklin County, said the garden will give prisoners productive work and help lighten the local tax burden by producing food for the jail’s 90 to 100 inmates.
“It’s good to get out of the jail and get a little bit of freedom and help Bledsoe County out,” Leach said.
Bledsoe County Sheriff Jimmy Morris, a lifelong farmer who was elected sheriff almost six years ago, took his tractor to the jail last week to plow a couple of acres of good Sequatchie Valley bottom land next to the jail. Morris said the garden will give inmates something to look forward to and they’ll learn a little about producing food from the soil in the process.