Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living
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Another aspect of the Foxfire experience, one that really did not become clear to me until I began working on this book, was the insight gained from working with Foxfire students of other generations. Kaye Carver Collins, who has been my adviser, mentor, and friend over the past four years, was a Foxfire student of the 1970s. When we first began putting the book together, I ran across a place in a transcript where a lady had made a comment concerning what she thought about men wearing mustaches. I laughed and turned around to tell Kaye, who surprised me by quoting the lady word for word. She had been on the interview and described it for me, talking about how she had laughed when this tiny, eighty-year-old lady had talked about men with mustaches. Experiences like that helped me to see all the interviewees, even the ones whom I had never met, as people, and not merely names. Furthermore, they helped me relate to Kaye as a former student just like me.
Working with former students from three different decades was an experience in itself. Of course, the technical aspects of producing a book have changed greatly: Kaye remembers using typewriters, Robbie and Teresia remember getting the first computers, and Amy and I are computer-dependent. However, some aspects of the Foxfire books have not changed and hopefully never will. Each of us has at least one or two people who stand out in our minds as having changed our perspectives.
The people I have been able to meet and interview are a large part of what has made my Foxfire experience so special. When I think about Mr. and Mrs. Hoyt Tench, the first people I interviewed, I still feel gratitude that borders on hero worship for them. I went to their house, terrified I would not be a good interviewer and that they wouldn’t like me, and they took me in, patted my back, and talked to me as if they’d known me for years. Their kindness and warmth not only made me more comfortable as I was interviewing them but affected me later as I went on more interviews. I did not get nervous after that first experience—in fact, going on the interviews actually became my favorite part of the production of the magazine.
Mr. and Mrs. Tench are far from being my only memorable interviewees. As a seventeen-year-old high school student, I had the privilege of meeting and photographing the governor of Georgia, Zell Miller, when one of my friends interviewed him. What an inspiration to see a man who came from “just across the mountain” sitting in the governor’s chair.
Perhaps the most influential interview I had, though, was with Mrs. Annie Chastain, my last interview as a high school student. Mrs. Chastain, whom you will meet later, took me under her wing, prayed for me, and showed me the kind of neighborly love you will read about throughout this book. Recently, she, her husband, and I were sitting on their front porch talking. (He was laughing and threatening to make me help him rob the bees.) When one of her cousins dropped by, Mrs. Chastain introduced me as her friend. I have never had a greater honor than to be called the friend of this wonderful woman.
This book and the others in this series are full of people like Mr. and Mrs. Tench and Mrs. Chastain. They have wisdom and experience, always beneficial, but they give us so much more. Perhaps the greatest gift they impart to us is love—love for family, friends, neighbors, and strangers; love learned from good parents, strict rearings, years of hard work, and years of sharing with those in need; love that their faith in God tells them they would be wrong not to share. We can learn so much from them because they have lived through hard times; seen enormous changes, both technological and social; and they have survived and are happy. They will tell you, in spite of whatever circumstances they may have lived through or overcome, that they have had a good life. We have more to learn from them than a lifetime could teach.
—Lacy Hunter
I consider myself a very fortunate person for several reasons. Two of these are that I have had the privilege of living in Rabun County Georgia, all my life, and I have had the opportunity to be involved with Foxfire, in numerous capacities, for almost thirty years.
I’m proud of the fact that I am a lifelong resident of this community; I’m proud to come from a long line of Rabun Countians who survived adversities, cherished family, praised their Creator, and found contentment with their lives. Although I own a home here, home is much more than a house—it is this place and these people. I am not a landowner, for the land owns me. It is a part of who I am and what I hope to become. (All locations in Foxfire 11, unless noted otherwise, are in northeastern Georgia.)
I firmly believe that part of that strong sense of belonging comes from having been involved with Foxfire, in one way or another, since 1969. First, by being the kid who watched teenagers interview my parents, and later, as a Foxfire student; then as a Foxfire volunteer on their Community Board; and finally as a member of the Foxfire staff. One of the true pleasures of my job has been working with The Foxfire Magazine senior editors during the summer, and with them and their teachers, Angie Cheek and Joyce Green, during the school year. Together, the teachers and I see those students start to make connections with their community. As they explore and research their articles, they are also discovering more about themselves and how they fit in this community.
I hope that they, like I, get a tremendous sense of self-satisfaction knowing who they are and where they come from. I believe Foxfire plays a major role in that. Foxfire helped me see the elders of my community as friends and mentors—not as old people. The knowledge and friendship I acquired from them helped me develop my self-image and my appreciation of individualism.
The first interview I ever went on was with Aunt Arie Carpenter. She lived in a dilapidated log cabin, carried water from a well, walked wherever she needed to go, and had a heart full of love to share with everyone she met. She had no money, no car, no television, wasn’t famous—but she had the gift of making a sixteen-year-old feel special, cared about, and valued. And she wasn’t the only one. Minyard and Lessie Conner, Kenny Runion, Lawton Brooks, Clara Mae Ramey, Margaret and Max Woody, and many, many others, have all helped me, with their friendship, love, and patience, to develop my sense of belonging here. To me, there is no greater gift we can give ourselves and others.
My father died fourteen years ago, but I share him with my eight-year-old son, Alex, through Foxfire magazines, books, photos, and videos. As I show Alex the photos and read him the stories, I hope I will be able to give my son a sense of place and help him value his heritage. Eventually I hope he will come to recognize and love his connection to these people and this place.
When the opportunity arose to write this book, and the suggestion was made that I and another former student would coedit it, I immediately wanted Lacy Hunter as my coeditor. I knew that with her English, writing, and organizational skills, she would be a real asset to the production of Foxfire 11. Lacy and I have worked together for the last four years. She came to Foxfire as a senior editor of The Foxfire Magazine in the summer of 1994. She didn’t know the first thing about magazine production, but with the help of the more experienced senior editors, by the end of the summer, Lacy knew it all—how to operate the computer, use Pagemaker, take photographs, develop negatives, conduct an interview, and edit it. She worked with me for the next two summers, training new senior editors. This past year, she organized our archives for us. When she first came to work for us, she was extremely shy and wouldn’t dare share an opinion; and while she excelled at many things, she was still searching for her place in the world.
Lacy and I have both come a long way from our days as Foxfire students. I think in one way this book is representative of our search for who we are. As you read the stories in this book, you will become acquainted with many of the people we have met throughout the years. Our hope is that each of you will gain some sense of connection from their stories. In a way, these people personify Foxfire. They worked together to better their lives. They shared what they had with others. They tried to find beauty in the simple things. They took the knowledge that had been given to them and improved it to fit their circumstances.
I also believe the work we have done on this book dep
icts what Foxfire stands for. First, it is the only book in this series coedited and written entirely by former Foxfire Magazine students. I think that is profound—that the ones who have learned over the years are now the experts. It is part of what the Foxfire teaching approach is all about; the learners naturally progress until they are skilled enough to begin teaching others.
It represents collaboration, which is also part of the teaching approach. One of my major concerns as we began working was that when a problem came up, Lacy might defer to my opinion because I have been her supervisor for so many summers. But I soon learned that along with her magazine production skills, Lacy had acquired many other skills in the Foxfire classroom. She wasn’t afraid to speak her mind, wasn’t influenced by my point of view, and often had much more creative contributions than 1.1 think we make a good team. We collaborate well together. We each have our strengths and weaknesses when it comes to producing a good article, but we work together to make it the best it can be.
It represents our commonality. Even though I’m a Foxfire student of the 1970s, Teresia Thomason and Robbie Bailey are students of the 1980s, and Lacy and Amy York are of the 1990s, I believe we share many common bonds. We care passionately about the people we interview; we know more about ourselves from having been in Foxfire; and we feel that, in some way, Foxfire will always be a part of us and us a part of it.
It represents our shared wisdoms. Just like the people featured in this volume, we each had knowledge to share with the others. We each drew on our own experiences in Foxfire to make this the best book we could produce.
And, finally, it represents the knowledge, skills, and wisdom of the people here and their willingness to share all that with teenagers toting microphones, tape recorders, and cameras. Out of that sharing develops ideas that those teenagers will carry into adulthood, and parenthood, and the cycle goes on and on …
—Kaye Carver Collins
THE OLD HOMEPLACE
PLATE 1 A view of J. C. Stubblefield’s homeplace
When I started this chapter, it was called “Farm Buildings.” After reading the various articles, people kept referring to the “old homeplace.” With the help of Kaye Collins, I decided to change the name of the chapter because although the buildings themselves are important, the very essence of the “homeplace” is what ties this chapter together. When people talk about the homeplace, they’re not just referring to the house or the farm buildings. They’re referring to a piece of land—their land—that they’ve lived on and farmed, and hope to pass on to a new generation of the family to give it the same care that they and their ancestors have. It is a place where you spend numerous hours wondering if there is another place in the world that is as beautiful and majestic as it is. It is something you can call your own and be proud of. It is where you are from and where you always belong. In The American Farm, David Brown explains:
Home place. Sit a spell on the tailgate of a farmer’s pickup. Tailgates were made for conversation. Soon enough, every farmer mentions “the home place.” He’ll give the words a slightly reverent tone, emphasizing them with a gesture. Your eyes follow his hand to a small collection of buildings at the end of a country lane where a red gambrel barn sits near a house dressed in white. You’ll be forgiven for thinking the old-fashioned house is his home place. The farmer, however, means more than just a clutch of buildings. To him, the home place isn’t boards held together by nails. It’s the land, and not any land, mind you, but his family land. Only those particular acres—handed down through the generations—are the home place.
My grandmother grew up on the old Highlands Road at the Carver homeplace. The old house fell due to decay and eventually burned to the ground. Of course, the piece of land, covered in ivy and weeds, is still there, but there are no structures on the place. To an observer, it is simply an unkept piece of land, but to my grandmother, it is a place that will always be home to her, whether she lives there or not.
My grandfather was born in Carroll County, Georgia, on a farm. He left that area and moved to Rabun County when he and my grandmother married. He worked in various places, mostly in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and Aiken, South Carolina, but they returned to Rabun County and bought a place. He had an original homeplace, but when they bought their house, they attained a new homeplace. They will always have fond memories and stories of that little piece of land they called home. That’s what happens to many people today. My homeplace will always be in Mountain City, where my grandmother and grandfather lived, but I will start my homeplace for my family somewhere else. In the case of my grandfather, he would always tell you that he was from Carroll County but that Rabun County was his home.
Along with the appreciation of home comes a sense of responsibility, of hard work, dedication, and self-sufficiency. Self-sufficiency is the ability to support or maintain oneself without aid or cooperation from others. In the Appalachian Mountains, farming is, and has always been, a means of self-sufficiency. When one has a farm, it has to be carefully and diligently worked and harvested to ensure the proper growth and use of the crops. Farmers couldn’t sleep in or take the day off. They had to get up every day and milk the cows, clean out the barn, feed the animals, mend a fence, plant or harvest crops, and cut hay. This just didn’t happen every Tuesday or once a month; it happened every day of their lives, and if they didn’t do it, life was at stake—an animal’s, someone else’s, or their own. In the past, there wasn’t much money for people to go to the store and buy food. The only store available was a small country store, but many families were living in remote areas and sometimes couldn’t get to it. That is why farming was a way of life.
The farm buildings were just as important as the soil the crops came up from. Not all homesteads were alike, but almost all included a chicken house, barn, smokehouse, springhouse, root cellar, and in some cases, a hog scalder and sorghum mill. Try to imagine the beautiful, rustic buildings that dotted the land as Sallie Beaty talks about the farm she grew up on in the Warwoman community.
“The old house we used to live in is still standing down at [her brother] Nathan’s place. The wind blew it off its foundation. The smokehouse was just at the edge of the yard, and in it, we kept our meat and, I believe, our canned stuff. The crib was about seventy-five yards from the house, and in it was the corn that we used for meal and to feed [the cows and horses] with, and then it had a shed to it that we kept the wagon under. Back then, we didn’t have no tractors. The crib would be left opened at the top so we could throw our corn in it. Our chicken house was up to the left of the house, between the barn and the crib, and the chickens stayed there. Back then, we’d turn them out [during the day], but they laid [eggs and slept] in this chicken house. [About] twenty-five feet from it was the barn where the livestock stayed. It was the biggest building on the farm. Mostly, at night, we’d fasten the livestock all up. We milked in the [barn] stalls back then. It had a loft to it where we kept the hay and the fodder [leaves of the cornstalk] and tops [upper part of the stalk] and stuff like that. I believe all of them had tin roofs, except the old house, which had boards made out of oak. All of the buildings were made of rough-cut lumber. Most all of it was cut off the farm. Daddy had somebody to move in down there with a sawmill, and they sawed it there on the place. In fact, they sawed what Nathan’s house is built out of today.”
These buildings served as a living area for the family and their animals, and for food storage and food preparation. Barns were used to hold livestock and store hay and corn. Smokehouses were used for storing and preserving meat. Springhouses and root cellars were used for the refrigeration of food, with water from springs or creeks for the springhouse and the natural temperature of the ground for root cellars. On some farms, the hog scalder and the sorghum mill were used for food preparation.
Additional information can be found in previous Foxfire books. For example, barn raisings can be found in Foxfire 2, springhouses in Foxfire 4 and Foxfire 9, and smokehouses in Foxfire 1, Foxfire 2, and Foxfire 9.
—Robbie Bailey
CHICKEN HOUSE
The chicken house was not a specific size, and the location of it really didn’t matter in reference to the house. Most of the time, though, the chicken house was built close to the house so it was easy to gather the eggs. These houses were not the industrial-sized chicken houses that most people are familiar with today. Their size really depended on how many chickens you owned and the amount of material you had to build it. Usually, it wasn’t very fancy, just a building constructed out of rough lumber because in those days most of the lumber was cut rough. The chickens stayed in the chicken house at night and laid the eggs, and during the day they roamed around the pasture or yard.
PLATE 2 Nathan Bleckley’s chicken house
Sallie Beaty recalled, “Our chicken house was made out of rough lumber or slabs of wood. It was square-shaped, about twelve by twelve [feet], with a roof and a door. [We kept our chickens here] when we didn’t let them roam outside. We fed them corn outside.”
SPRINGHOUSE
The springhouse was used to keep foods cold and preserved and was usually built over or near a spring. Cold water ran through the spring-house and kept the food cold. Most were constructed of wood, but many used rock because it was believed that the rock absorbed the natural coolness of the water. Wooden ones were quicker to build, but didn’t last as long as the rock buildings did. The decision to use wood or rock was based on the ability to obtain the material and the amount of time available to construct it. (See Foxfire 4, pages 347–61, for more information on springhouses.)
PLATE 3 Rock springhouse at Hambidge Center for Creative Arts and Sciences, Inc.