Extension Agent for 30 years
By Ed Simmons, Jr.
cpreporter@lcs.net
After serving nearly 30 hardworking years as Extension Agent, 21 of them in Caroline and recently retiring June 30, you might say that Mac Saphir now deserves to live the life of Riley. No doubt he agrees.
Mac first rode into Caroline back in 1989, driving an F-150 hauling his BMW motorcycle in a trailer with his furniture piled around and on top. Previously he'd been an extension agent for six years in Ocala, Florida, living an idyllic life as a horse specialist; that is, until a Virginia siren lured him north. He then became an extension agent in Franklin County, Virginia and was transfered to Caroline in 1989. He loved it here from the start, the beauty of the land and the friendliness of the people.
Fifty or 60 pounds heavier back then, he was quickly drafted to be Santa Claus in the 1990 Bowling Green Christmas Parade. "I'm a very jolly fellow," he says by way of qualification, apart from girth. He wore a fake beard for the occasion, but now at 61, with his hair and beard grown white, Anna at Snip and Trim is encouraging him to let his beard grow and "do Santa Claus au naturale." He's looking these days like the Real McCoy, with a little padding. On any given Saturday morning you're apt to find Mac, in his customarily merry mood, at the Bowling Green Farmers Market selling Mount Olympus produce. "The Farmers Market and Mount Olympus were my pet projects, and it's really nice now to help them in my spare time," he says.
An accomplished fiddler and Blues guitarist and singer, he'll perform a tune for you while you poke through his tomatoes. You can also find Mac at a county pond tending his catfish. He builds 4-foot-by-4-foot cages for them, which he submerges and stocks with hundreds of fingerlings in the early spring. Six to eight months later, and fed two 40-pound bags of Big Striker weekly from G&G Hardware, they're ready to harvest. If you're lucky he'll invite you to one of his cookouts where he barbecues them butterfly style on oak coals, dusted with cornmeal and his "Secret Seasoning." "I'm a bachelor," he says. "I love to cook." Too bad for that siren that let him get away. We have to thank her though for getting Mac to Caroline, where he's now a star at the Farmers Market, a star in the Christmas Parade, a guitar hero and a big help to Ken and Mary West at the wonderful farm they manage in Carmel Church, the remarkable Mount Olympus.