Oza Kilby shared, “We didn’t have refrigerators or freezers. We had a spring and what we called a springhouse. We had water that would run into a trough. We built the little springhouse over that trough. That is where my mama stored her milk and butter. It was convenient, and the milk would stay cold. She would put her butter in containers, in a bucket or something, where the water wouldn’t get in it.”
PLATE 4 Wooden springhouse from Aunt Arie Carpenter’s homeplace
Others like J. C. Stubblefield and Bernice Taylor didn’t have the actual structure—the spring was their springhouse. J. C. told us, “We didn’t have a springhouse. There was just a branch. The temperature of that water was cold.”
His sister Bernice added, “We had a concrete trough made in that little branch. There was a hole in each end for the water to run in and out of. It stayed going all the time.”
THE ROOT CELLAR
The root cellar, or food storage cellar, was constructed of logs. It was called a root cellar because people stored crops such as potatoes and turnips in it. (The word “cellar” is derived from the Latin word cella, which means storeroom.)
The building shown in the photo is aboveground, but other root cellars were underground. The roof of most root cellars is aboveground, but covered with sod and dirt, and the rest of the structure is below the ground. This kept foods cool in the summer and above freezing in the winter. The underground cellars usually maintained a temperature of fifty degrees in the summer and about thirty-eight degrees in the winter.
PLATE 5 The root cellar located at the Foxfire Center
J. C. Stubblefield described the root cellar that he still uses today. “[We had a root cellar] down in the basement of the house. Well, it’s just a hole. Dirt floor and all. It’s been dug out from under the house. [We put] canned stuff, sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes, onions, pumpkins, and acorn squash [in it]—whatever we had that had to be took care of during the wintertime—to keep it from freezing. I don’t know [what the temperature was;] it was cool, though. [The fairly constant temperature] was created because of where it was, in the ground, and the house over the top of it and all, and not opening the door [to the outside] much.”
SMOKEHOUSE
A smokehouse was used for preserving meat and usually, like the other buildings, was constructed of rough lumber. The floors were dirt and served to keep the air inside the smokehouse cool. Usually, there was a roof on the building and it was kept tightly enclosed to keep out insects and animals. (See Foxfire 3, pages 354–60, on the construction of a smokehouse.)
Sallie Beaty told us, “Our smokehouse had a dirt floor—no ceiling, [just a roof]. It was made of rough-cut lumber and was about fourteen-by-six-teen feet. We hung the meat up in that smokehouse. Back then it was cold. On one side, [we had shelves]. We had a space and a rod across it [on the other side] that they hung the beef on and the same way with pork. [We’d hang it on this rod] until it drained some.”
PLATE 6 The Foxfire Center smokehouse
The animal was slaughtered and then carried to the smokehouse as soon as possible. Meat was always taken in the twenty-four hours after the animal was killed, to avoid spoilage. The best time to take the meat was while it was still warm. The most common meats cured were hams, shoulders, and middlin’ meat (the side, between the shoulder and back, down the spine).
Meat was cured by mountain families in several ways. It might be thoroughly salted and then set up on waist-high shelves or down in boxes or barrels to “take the salt.” Most people preferred the shelf system, as it allowed the meat to get the necessary ventilation easily. Meanwhile, the winter weather provided natural refrigeration while the meat was going through the curing process. When the weather began to get warm, the second phase of the operation began. The meat was taken out of the salt mix, washed, and then treated. (Cover the meat with a mixture of pepper and borax.)
Many people, however, preferred smoking the meat. Holes were poked in the middlin’ meat, hams, and shoulders, white oak splits were run through the holes, and the meat was hung from the joists of the smokehouse. Then a fire was built inside the smokehouse. If it had a dirt floor, the fire could be built right on the ground. Otherwise, a washpot was set in the middle of the room and a fire built in that. The fuel for the fire was small green chips of hickory or oak, pieces of hickory bark, or even corncobs. Smoke from the fire was kept billowing for two to six days or until the meat took on the brown crust that was desired both for its flavor and for its ability to keep flies and other insects out of the meat.
There was no specific size for smokehouses. They were tailor-made to a family’s needs. Sometimes they stood alone among a complex of outbuildings, but more often they were part of another building that had several uses.
Some smokehouses were relatively open, while others were sealed and tightly closed, to keep insects out. To keep flies out, aluminum screen wire was tacked to the inside of the logs and to the underside of the ceiling between the rafters. The salt would eventually eat holes in the wire, but it was easy enough to replace when that happened. To keep out rats, a trench could be dug six inches into the ground under the bottom logs, and cement poured in it to make a solid barrier that rats couldn’t get through and wouldn’t tunnel under. The door and walls would keep out dogs and other animals.
“We had a smokehouse out in the [backyard],” Amanda Turpin said. “The floor was the ground, just dirt. It would be so cool. We had a big wooden tub, and we would draw water to pour in that tub and set our milk and butter in it. It kept it so cool we didn’t have to draw fresh water but about twice a day—in the morning and in the afternoon. [That well water] was just like ice water.”
J. C. Stubblefield recalled, “We built that for a smokehouse way back then. When we was killing hogs, we put our meat up there in the wintertime. It’s made out of oak lumber. It’s got a tin roof. I believe it was a seven by eight [feet]. It’s setting on big rocks. Back then you didn’t know what a block was. It’s just a junk house now. It’s at least forty years old, and it may be older. I built it myself.”
PLATE 7 J. C. Stubblefield’s smokehouse, which was built in the 1950s
BARN
The barn stored corn and hay, usually in the loft, and housed animals, such as cows, horses, and mules. Built only a short distance from the house, the barn was usually the biggest building on the homestead, sometimes even bigger than the house itself. The loft was accessible by a ladder through a hole in the middle of the loft. The barn was covered with board shingles, and it was planked on the inside to close it in.
J. C. Stubblefield explained his barn in the Wolf Creek community. “The barn is a log building, the bottom is. The top is lumber covered with metal roofing. I helped build it—me, my daddy, and somebody else built it in 1939. It is thirty by fifty [feet], I believe.
PLATE 8 The barn at J. C. Stubblefield’s
The bottom part is where we kept the cattle, and the top part is where we kept the hay. You call it two stories. Go right straight up there through the hole to the loft. It’s got a ladder. The outside door is where you haul your hay and throw it in the barn. You can throw it right from [the ground] because I built the ground up above the barn where you could back up level to it [in a truck or wagon].”
BARN RAISINGS
When people in a community were building a barn, all the families would gather at that homestead and have a barn raising. It was a time of fellowship and a time for others to pitch in and help out. It also showed the common bond that these people had with each other. One of Foxfire’s most memorable times was when Millard Buchanan raised a barn at the Foxfire land. It was the first and only barn on the property. The following account of the actual barn raising and the historical background of the Ingram mule barn is given by Steve Smith, a former student.
Under the leadership of Millard Buchanan, the first barn was added to the reconstruction project on the Foxfire land. The barn was found abandoned in an adjacent county, bought from its owner, dismantled, and moved in on Millar
d’s logging truck, “Big Red.”
Putting the barn back up took approximately two weeks. It looked like one of the old-style barn raisings to people who dropped by to watch the Foxfire kids, Millard, and his crew of community men working hard to fit it back together on its new site. It was amazing to watch Millard cut and notch new replacement logs for ones that were rotted and sort through the piles of original logs for the good ones that could be used again.
And because he worked in the woods and with logs all his life, he knew hundreds of shortcuts and ways to make the job go faster and easier. When the gnats got too bad in the hot sun, for example, he built a small fire with green wood and leaves. The smoke almost choked everyone sometimes, but at least the gnats left them alone.
Now that the barn is finished, it (along with the other buildings that are being moved in and reconstructed) will be filled with all of the tools and materials that have been collected by Foxfire.
THE INGRAM MULE BARN
The Ingram mule barn was originally built by Nathaniel Ingram between the late 1800s and early 1900s, near Warne, North Carolina. The barn was used for housing animals and animal feed. Holes were drilled in some of the walls The original barn had pegs stuck in these holes to form a hay catch. This kept the hay off the ground so it wouldn’t be trampled and spoiled. The barn now serves as storage space at the Foxfire Center.
PLATE 9 Foxfire’s mule barn
OTHER BUILDINGS
On some farms in Rabun County, there were less commonly found buildings. These were a symbol of the ingenuity and practicality of these people. They made do with what they had, but if they had to develop new or different ways or structures that would help them tend the farm, they’d do it.
HOG SCALDER
Hog scalders were a rarity on Appalachian farms, unless the farm was big. They were usually made of rock, and in the center, a big pot held the water in which a hog’s hair was singed off. A fire was built underneath the pot to heat the water.
The hog scalder at the Foxfire Center in Mountain City is a traditional design using an iron pot set in cemented rocks. This particular hog scalder would have been extravagant for the 1800s. A typical Appalachian family would not have been able to afford such a hog scalder unless they had a large farm, because the iron for such a large pot and the rock work would have been very expensive.
PLATE 10 The hog scalder at the Foxfire Center
The hog was rarely put in the pot itself but was laid close to it and the water dipped out of the pot and poured onto the hog. The hot water loosens the hair follicles so they can be easily removed. The hog scalding pot could also be used for washing clothes, making lye soap, rendering lard, and making cracklin’s, or it could cook large amounts of soup. In the more southern regions of Georgia, a scalding pot might also be used for sorghum syrup production.
Other families used a more conventional way of cleaning the meat, as J. C. Stubblefield described. “We usually had a sled that we would drag the hog out on, and pour the boiling water on the hog and clean it off.”
PLATE 11 A closer view of the hog scalder
CORNHOUSE
J. C. Stubblefield told us about a building he has on his farm called a cornhouse. “We built it to put soybeans in it because we used to grow soybeans to feed the milk cows in the wintertime. When we quit having milk cows, we used it to put corn in because we used to grow a lot of corn here. It’s about fourteen or sixteen by twenty [feet]. We had it for a house for three months. We carried water to the old place way off over the hill, and it didn’t have no kitchen or dining room. They built a small place just for the kitchen and dining room. Bernice, my daddy and mother lived in it for three months before they moved down here. It’s [made of] logs. The rafters on it is poles about three to four inches [around]. Now, you know they use two-by-fours or two-by-sixes for rafters, and [the cornhouse has] poles. That’s the little old building they lived in, and we moved down here and put soybeans inside of it. I took it apart and had to put it back together when I moved down here. [Bernice] was the only [child] then [in] 1912.”
PLATE 12 The cornhouse at J. C. Stubblefield’s homeplace
SORGHUM FURNACE
Another rarity on an Appalachian farm was the sorghum mill or furnace. In order to get sorghum, one had to grow sugarcane. Many people in the mountains didn’t grow it, but there were some that did. The structure was made of stone and cement with some type of metal as the frame. It sits beneath the ground, and the dirt is used as the floor of the furnace.
Former student Preston McCracken said, “In Foxfire 3 [pages 424—36], we published an article about making sorghum molasses. Shortly after the book came out, one of our readers contacted us saying that she was interested in making some sorghum herself, but she needed the dimensions so that she could build the furnace.
“Therefore, Margie Bennett, John Bowen, and I went up to Sylva, North Carolina, to Mrs. Varn Brooks’s and Mrs. Myrtle McMahan’s to get the requested measurements and take a series of photographs. At that time, the furnace was still covered over because the sorghum would not be cooked for another month or two, but the pictures will give you an idea of how the furnace looks when in use.”
PLATE 13 The furnace is a simple stone and cement structure with pieces of angle iron used as a supporting frame
Jim Turpin reminisced, “Daddy always greased [the boiler pan] with burnt motor oil to keep it from rusting before he put it away each year. [The next fall,] it would take about two days to get it cleaned up before they could make the syrup. [To clean the pan,] they’d have to fill it full of water and take five or six boxes of soda and pour in it. Then they’d take the steel wool [and scrub it] ’til that boiler was perfectly shiny.
PLATE 14 Diagram of front view of the furnace
PLATE 15 Diagram of side view of the furnace
PLATE 16 This is a side view of the furnace. A fourteen-foot length of culvert is used as a smokestack.
PLATE 17 The top view of the furnace. The pan sits over the oblong hole. The circle on the right indicates the placement of the smokestack.
PLATE 18 The sorghum pan is made by nailing together four two-by-eights covered with a sheet of tin to form the bottom and sides.
“The boiler sat right [over the furnace]. To keep from burning the woodwork on the boiler, they would paint it with mud and pack red clay [under the edge]. Finally they’d pile the furnace full of wood slabs, ready to set it afire.
“There was a one-inch metal pipe that was screwed into the barrel [into which juice from the squeezed cane was caught]. It ran all the way down [to the boiler pan]. Daddy would whittle out a wooden peg to plug that pipe when he got his boiler full. That boiler would hold about twenty gallons of syrup. It was made of solid copper, because copper trays get the syrup the hottest. He had a plug in the lower end of the pan, also, and when the syrup was cooked, he’d pull that plug and sorghum would run out [into his barrels or syrup cans]. Nothing was added to the juice. Just the cane juice was cooked. When it came out, it looked like honey, clear and pretty.
PLATE 19 Diagram of sorghum pan
“He’d make twenty-five or thirty gallons [of sorghum] a year and sometimes even fifty It depended on the cane crop. We’d store it in gallon Mason jars. If we had enough, we’d sell it for seventy-five cents a gallon. A gallon of syrup wouldn’t last long. Syrup and honey were the only sweeteners we had back then. We didn’t have enough money to buy [sugar]. We had to either make our own stuff or do without.
“Boy, that was good stuff! It was good with hot biscuits. I wish I had some now.”
THE OLD HOMEPLACE
When someone mentions homeplace, there is usually a name associated with it. If you buy a piece of land, that will be your homeplace, but to the many older people in the community, it is referred to as the “old Bleckley homeplace,” or whoever owned that piece of land before you bought it.
Today a growing number of people are leaving Rabun County for better jobs, and the family homeplaces are being so
ld to outsiders, thus breaking the bond that was established in these families. In a sense, when the next generation in a family leaves the land, it’s as if someone has torn away a piece of family history.
Land was once essential for a family’s survival. It is now a commodity. Richard Norton recalled, “There is too much land growing up [being developed] and the population is gettin’ bigger all the time. I don’t know just how long it’s gonna last. It is just a shame that the old people is a-lettin’ the people talk ’em out of their land, sellin’ it and all. We ain’t going to on Betty’s Creek. We are goin’ to set down on it. I could have sold this place for a thousand dollars an acre [back in 1975], but I figure that such fellows as that right there [points to his grandson Tony] has got to have a place to live. And if we sell it, you can’t get it back. It is gone.”
Margaret Norton told us, “I’ve lived here on Betty’s Creek all my life. I’ve seen all the changes as they come along up here. Course it just seemed like it didn’t change all at once. Gradually came on.
“Before the pavin’ of the road, this was just a small settlement and all the families and the farmers owned their land. Now lots of the land has been sold out, and now they have new families moved in here, or they are in the process of movin’. If people sell their land, the mountains might get overcrowded. They don’t sell it for the money. They sell it because the tax is so high that they are not able to pay it. So many people are wanting land, I don’t know why now.
“[Other] people are selling out their land even to where their children wouldn’t have anywhere to live, but now not so up on Betty’s Creek. People on Betty’s Creek won’t sell their land. Somebody comes [to my house] nearly every day to buy land, but we got four children and seven grandchildren. They all got to have a place to live. Richard won’t sell an acre of land for two thousand dollars. What would he do with his money and his land gone? Well, it would soon be gone, and you wouldn’t have nothin’.”
Foxfire 11: Wild Plant Uses, Gardening, Wit, Wisdom, Recipes, Beekeeping, Toolmaking, Fishing, and More Affairs of Plain Living Page 3