1 50 1 https://omeka-test.library.appstate.edu/files/original/3c1b626c26e6d7b306ed628acffdd75a.pdf bac52ae23851c1d9484cec07929c22ee PDF Text Text Yesterday's Harvest: Rural Life in Appalachia By David Isaacs Introduction As the Appalachian region continues to become less isolated from industry, urbanization, and development, long withstanding traditions seem to fade into the past. Farming in the region is diminishing at an alarming rate. With so many challenges facing farmers, many in the region cannot justify the sacrifice needed to simply exist on a farm. Real estate development, rising land prices, saturated markets, and government outsourcing are just a few of the devastating factors surrounding this dying tradition. The fact that farming still remains throughout the region is a testament to the unbending will of some who wish to hold on to a way of life passed on from generations that struggled to survive before them. The purpose of the following collection is to show how community, family, and tradition have stayed constant in a time when holding on is much more difficult than letting go. �66 MAY SEP 12 �• S EP • S EP 12 12 �S EP II II 12 ADM ADM �I I I I • S EP 11 �The Early days Farming once was more a means of family survival than supplemental income. Family size was generally much larger than it is today. My grandpa, Roy Hodges, was one of thirteen children. With that many mouths to feed, the workload was shared by everyone. When he was in the sixth grade, my grandpa dropped out of school to work with his father logging and sawmilling. At twelve years of age he was working a team of horses pulling logs. The family farmed on the side, raising five acres of cabbage, four acres of beans, four acres of corn, and an acre of tobacco. They also kept beef cattle, milk cows, hogs, chickens, and raised a garden. Extra butter, eggs, and milk could be swapped or sold at the Mast Store. Up until 1956, all work was done with horses, before the family purchased their first tractor. Still, horses were used for mowing steep pasture, cultivating crops, and various other chores. One of the more important crops was hay and wheat, which is baled and used for feeding livestock. Family friend George Baird grew tobacco and produce such as tomatoes which he sold at local markets. �SEP 72 ���• NO V • 66 �Roy and the Babe BILl. SHEFFIELD/Democrat Staff Roy Hodges of Vilas planted his tobacco with the help of a tractor. He prefers to cultivate the soil with old-fashioned horsepower. Hodges and his "horsepower," Babe, were spotted recently as they stopped for a short break between rows. �����u \,;l d t:l ua1atn.. etin J stur ed in Jim and Joe (brothers) and Mac, an unusual threeteam of work horses, at left, plow a field owned by Roy Hodges in Valle Crucis. Hodges also utilizes the services of Jess and Molly, below, to prepare the ground for tobacco and sowing back to grass. Photos by Miles Tager ar :J: ��The Next Generation As the cost of living increased, the reality set in that small farmers could not realistically make enough income on a farm to fully support their families. As farm sizes decreased with more children dividing up the home place, there was not enough space for farmers to produce enough to make it. Farming for my family became a source of secondary income, yet remained a primary passion. My dad, Perry Isaacs, also farmed with his family. Family sizes were becoming slightly smaller, and he along with his brother helped his parents on the farm. When his dad passed away in 1974, he became responsible for the farming operation. There were several offers from others to buy out their farm, but my grandpa Butler had taught my dad to take pride in the land he had worked for and to not be afraid to put the effort into keeping it. Horsepower had been mostly replaced by tractors by this time; however they kept a team of horses to drag logs or to cultivate with. My dad and uncles put their effort into raising tobacco, and the profit from that went back into purchasing equipment for the farm. Along with tobacco, they raised several beef cattle and put up hay as well. ��/' ������Rural Recreation When traditional horsepower was replaced by the more productive tractor, horses lost their place in the pecking order of critical farming necessities. The horse's main purpose became recreational riding. Work horses or draft horses were used in "wagon trains" that resembled the covered wagon convoys used in the 19th century. For my family this became a bridge for the younger generations to be a part of the same activity that our predecessors participated in. In one sense the horse was given a way to "earn" their worth on the farm in the post-horsepower years. For my grandpa, wagoning gives him a source of connection to his past and the life he loved growing up. He would trade productivity for the partnership between horse and master, as the two worked together to complete a task. Riding horses and wagoning for me is important because there are so few who will ever experience that. This is one tradition that I hope will continue to define my family. Another form of enjoyment for my family and other rural families is performing traditional mountain music. My grandmother, Laura Milton Hodges, was the greatest musical influence within my family. Her love and passion for traditional music was instilled within my mother, Gay Isaacs, and her brother and sister. My grandmother played the Mother Maybelle Carter style of upright autoharp as well as piano. Many rural families such as mine would gather together and have jam sessions where they played music, sang, and the younger ones learned to play the instruments. ���:-,~;,JJ p liolo " ·' KATIIY HUHIN SOJ'\ . Autoharp Music Laura Milton Hodges plays an autoharp with other musicians during the 1986 Appalachian Crafts and Music Festival held Friday and Saturday on the ASU campus. The festival featured a variety of craftsmen and entertainers., ������Tobacco: The Golden Years Perhaps no single event was more detrimental to the small farmer than the loss of the tobacco industry as a guaranteed cash crop. The process involved seeding plant beds, planting, fertilizing, hoeing, topping, cutting, loading, hanging, curing, grading, baling, and finally transporting to nearby markets where the product would be graded and priced in auction. For generations, burley tobacco had been grown in the region as the number one cash crop. Price was based upon poundage after the tobacco was cured, sorted, and baled. In the early 2000's, the U.S. government proposed a buyout of tobacco production that would essentially pay growers for a designated number of years based on their average quotas not to grow tobacco. Interestingly enough, many growers believed that this was wonderful news at the time as they thought it was a fair trade. The proposal changed the system of selling tobacco from an insured sale to an open auction that left no guarantees that the tobacco sold would bring a fair price. For years after the buyout, many farmers who continued to grow would not get paid at all for their poundage. The shift away from tobacco forced many out of farming altogether, and pushed others to find alternate sources of income. �������Farming Today: Trees, Corn, and Cattle With the fall of tobacco, many farmers decided to join the growing Christmas tree industry. At the time tobacco was bought out, trees were bringing incredible prices and some tree growers were getting rich. The bandwagon industry became an option for many, including my own family who planted several thousand trees in hopes that they would be successful. Our plan was to put the land back into pasture when the trees were harvested, so we decided that we would use no pesticides or spray and let the trees grow naturally with some fertilizer. As numerous small farmers put out modest amounts of trees, several large growers continued to lease more and more land and put out millions of trees. As any type of market will do, when the supply is greater than the demand, the market becomes saturated and fails. Therefore the tree industry came crashing down in congruence with the recent economic downturn. While large growers continued to become wealthy selling millions of trees at dirt cheap prices, small growers are presently unable to compete and are unable to make enough to even meet their investment. Or they do not have a market to sell their trees and they are forced to cut them down and dispose of them. And so the small farmer endures the second great cash crop collapse of the present decade. When we realized that the tree industry was bound for failure, my family looked back to the cattle industry as a means of earning revenue farming. The cattle industry, more so than any other form �Farming Today: Trees, Corn, and Cattle of farming income is a gamble. Market prices change weekly, therefore farmers must remain vigilant and wary of changing conditions. Whereas the preferred breed of beef cattle was Hereford and Charolais, currently Black Angus is the preferred breed for beef production. Keeping brood cows for calving purposes is very cost intensive, including feed, medicine and vaccines, fencing costs and building costs, and other accessorial costs. One of the limiting factors of beef production in the Appalachian region is that land for grazing is hard to come by unless inherited. Real estate development has inflated the value of land, eliminating buying land for farming purposes. Cattleman can only lease land, which cuts into profit. Also one must consider maximizing their existing herd in order to reach a level of income that can match or exceed cost. In order to maximize profit, my dad and I decided to expand our herd by purchasing six more brood cows, six more heifers, and culling out some of our older cattle. That brings the total around twentyfive head of cattle. This is an average number of beef cattle for small farmers in Appalachia. Also, growing several acres of corn and grinding it into cow feed has allowed us to cut the cost of feed. Many more farmers are attempting to become self-reliant in terms of producing corn for feeding livestock. The potential for selling the corn as deer corn is also available. ������.I ����I I I �The Future Some may think of rural Appalachia as lacking change or being stuck in the past. The truth is that even small farmers in the region are faced with changing trends at every turn. Ask any Appalachian farmer why they do it and they will likely say it is not for the money. They will probably say they do it because it is a way of life they love and do not want to lose. The challenge is not how they can make the most money, but how they can afford to keep their farm at all. What has stayed the same is the importance of family and community in rural Appalachia. Neighbors and kin can still be counted on to provide support in times of harvest or crisis because without others to lean on, most people would likely fail in their attempt to hang on to the past. The life chosen by my family is no doubt difficult, but it is rewarding and satisfying in a way that few others will ever even attempt to understand. I am proud to say that my family continues to value tradition. My hope is that others will see that value as well, before it is too late. �� Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource The David Isaacs, "Yesterday's Harvest" Digital Scrapbook Collection Description An account of the resource Digital copy of "Yesterday's Harvest: Rural Life in Appalachia" is a scrapbook by David Isaacs. The scrapbook primarily concerns farming and rural life in the Appalachian region. The purpose of the scrapbook is "to show how community, family, and tradition have stayed constant in a time when holding on is much more difficult then letting go." The collection contains newspapers and black and white and color photographs related to farming. Subjects include: harvesting crops, farm animals, recreational activities, and tobacco and corn crops. Also included are short narratives on the past, present, and future of farming, the Isaacs family farming endeavors, rural recreation and tobacco. Document A resource containing textual data. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre text. Number of pages 55 pages Format, digital PDF Format, original Document Scanned by Leah McManus Resolution 300 Scan date 2014-02-04 Collection David Isaacs, "Yesterday's Harvest" Digital Scrapbook Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Yesterday's Harvest: Rural Life in Appalachia, by David Isaacs Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Isaacs, David Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived AC.745 David Isaacs, "Yesterday's Harvest" Digital Scrapbook Language A language of the resource English English Type The nature or genre of the resource Document Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 745_YesterdaysHarvest_David_Isaacs