A Farm in Appalachian Country

Reader Contribution by The Mother Earth News Editors
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This story is from Mark Oldham, submitted as part of our Wisdom From Our Elders collection of self-sufficient tales from yesteryear.

I presently live in the Blue Ridge area of Virginia at the foot of Catawba Mountain. The Appalachian Trail is about a vertical half-mile above our cabin. The trail travels from Georgia to Maine and Appalachia can be found wherever the Appalachian and Allegheny Mountains are located. I have spent most of my life in Appalachian country.

I was born in 1947 and grew up in a valley in Pennsylvania nestled next to the Alleghenies. This area had been settled in the early 1800s and the descendents of those settlers still lived there. Many of the farming practices of the settlers had been passed down from generation to generation. Although I did not realize it at the time, I had the good fortune to be practically raised on a farm owned by my great uncle Alfred. I actually lived in my grandfather’s house located in the middle of Uncle Alfred’s farm. “Appie,” as we cousins called him (but never to his face), worked the farm with his brother Charles. Another great uncle, Harold, owned the adjoining farm. Between these two farms I learned how farming was done at the turn-of-the-century. These three brothers did everything the old time way. The only concession to modern 1950s farming was three old gray-bottomed 1930 Ford tractors. Frugal was the best way to describe Uncle Appie. We would take a load of junk to the dump and come back with more stuff than we took (mostly wood to be reused). My job was to take out all the old nails and then straighten them to be re-used. Guess that is why I never throw anything away now that I think can be reused. I could share many stories about the old time farming but this story is about caring for cows in an old-time way.

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