The Faithful Farm Sled

My Daddy recently built a great little toy for my children – a sled.  When I mentioned Ruthie wanted to be pulled on the sled, a friend asked how you could play with a sled in the summer?  Well, if you didn’t already know it, sleds are not just for snow and fun.

In fact, the farm sled has been a mainstay of Appalachian farms from the beginning – and in fact it’s a tool they brought with them from the old country for examples can be found among Viking artifacts as wells as ancient Egypt where they are thought to have been used widely in construction of the pyramids.

For the fiercely self-sufficient Appalachian farmers, this was a conveyance they could build themselves.  Sure, iron runners are a nice addition but every piece of the sled could be sourced from the forest.  Runners could be sawn or formed from large trees but they often utilized naturally bent saplings.  One of my great uncles explained to me that when they were in the woods, they were always watching for trees that would make good runners.  When they found one they would cut it and hang it in the barn for the day a new sled would be needed, or an old sled would need repair.

These sleds could be quite large, as those used to pull logs from the woods by as large a team as could be assembled, or very small and pulled by hand.  The wonderful thing about a tool you can build yourself is that you can customize it to your particular needs.

The Farm Hands Companion website gives general directions for building a farm sled.

I’m sure there’s a lot of history to these humble vehicles and maybe someday I’ll get around to really researching them.  In the meantime, the Farm Hands Companion website wrote an article about sleds way back in 2012 and I found it very interesting.  He shows several examples of sleds as well as instructions for building one.  That author is from Arkansas and his people  called them “slides”.  Have any of you heard that term on the plateau?

In my novels, characters often use sleds in their daily lives.  I wonder how many readers will really understand how common that practice has been?

I loved this sled picture which looked like a sled Daddy built for us to break a pair of colts to harness work.  We didn't have the draft horses but it was intimidating enough to be that close to the ground behind a feisty young horse.

A Pound’s a Pound, Right?

Am I the only one that’s flabbergasted at the soaring costs of food?  I recently remarked that either we are eating a lot more or the prices have really gone up – could be a little of both and I need to work on one of those! 

I made a birthday cake this week – a chocolate robot and his arms and legs were Swiss Cake Rolls.  I decided to use the Swiss Cake Rolls after buying a box of strawberry filled Shortcake Rolls.  Then we had a little communication breakdown and two of us bought two different boxes of Swiss Cake Rolls.  They were both the same brand so imagine my surprise when the cakes in one box were considerably larger than those in the other box.  It’s the sort of thing where you think one store has a better price until you look really closely at the details. 

I’ve seen a similar trend in restaurants.  Of course, in America our portion size is so large that we could do with a little downsizing.  However, the price didn’t come down with it and that kind of makes you feel short changed, doesn’t it?  I used to frequent a little tea room where the Victorian Tea Service would more than feed two adults.  Imagine my surprise when I took my young teenage neice and we ordered that standard meal only to discover there was barely enough for one.  More food had to be ordered and the bill was significantly higher than on previous visits.  Smaller portions is an easy way for restaurants to raise their prices without reprinting their menus – or alerting patrons too quickly. 

A quick internet search shows me other folks have been noticing this since 2009 – about the time I started noticing that portions were smaller in restaurants.  But that was a tough time for business, they were doing whatever they could to stay afloat.  Anybody want to comment on whether the portions have increased with the growing economy?

Well you know I’m always comparing these realizations to history.  It occurred to me that our grandparents would not have had such a surprise because buying a boxed cake was nearly unheard of on our rural plateau.  Even in more metropolitan areas, purchased foods would have been made by a local baker to whom you could clearly voice your complaint if you suddenly thought you weren’t quite getting your money’s worth.

The packaged cakes we all take for granted now came about in the mid twentieth century.  Little Debbies started in the mid-1960’s and Twinkies were first created in the 1930’s but I wasn’t able to learn when they were first boxed.  More likely they were sold in a bakery.  Remember that grocery shopping as we know it, strolling along aisles and filling a cart, didn’t come about until the early 1930’s and their growth followed the popularity of the automobile.  Just think, have you ever seen a picture of a Kroger parking lot filled with horses and wagons?

Still, the question at hand is whether shrinking product size and rising prices is a modern invention.  I doubt it.  After all, King Solomon declared way back in 947 BC (according to the Reese Chronological Bible’s [Bethany House, 1977] estimation of the timeline) that there is nothing new under the sun. 

Businesses and businessmen have always had a reputation of fairness or the lack thereof.  Wiley housewives have long known that the cornmeal lasted a little longer if this mill ground it or that a pound of coffee made an extra few cups if you got it from that grocer.  Again, not a new problem.  Moses addressed fair weights and measures in Deuteronomy (Deuteronomy 25:13) as an absolute command – “Thou shalt not have in thine bag divers weights…” and verse fifteen gives a promise of long life for fair dealings.

I didn’t mean to get started on a sermon, but I wonder if the snack cake manufacturers ever read those verses?

Tent Graves

Two weeks ago I shared Highland Cemetery with you and some of the pictures prompted further research and comments from readers.  (You can’t imagine how happy that makes me!) The comments are always available for everyone to read but I thought today I’d share with you some of the research it led me to.

Shawna asked me what are the graves that are covered with large slabs of stone.  Believing I knew the answer, I confidently explained these tend to be among the oldest graves in the cemetery and were certainly placed before the availability of airtight coffins and vaults.  The stones would secure the burial site from digging animals.

She kept looking.

Sure enough, a simple Google search revealed a website www.TheGraveWalkers.com which asserts that these types of graves are predominately found along the Highland Rim and especially in Overton County, Tennessee.

I found a blog article here That shared lots of pictures of these graves and lots of information but no hard and fast conclusions.  The Tennessee Sate Library has a photo collection of these tent graves dating through the 19th century, with a few as late as the 1920’s. 

The Hutchison blog noted that these graves are more prevalent in family cemeteries and most often represent the first and second generation of immigrants to the area.

Irish Cemetery:  Don't those little houses look a lot like our Tent Graves?

My first thought on reading these articles was that I knew I’d seen pictures of similar graves in Europe.  We know that the area was predominately settled by Scots Irish so isn’t it logical that this is a tradition that simply immigrated with them?  However, I guess the absence of these graves in North Carolina and Virginia’s Appalachian Mountains precludes the immigration theory since that population was even more directly Scots Irish. 

Plaque Graves near Culross Scotland

Looking online, I found several pictures of old European cemeteries with covered graves, but one in particular whose coverings look so much like the tents we’re familiar with.  I didn’t actually find examples among Scottish cemeteries which surprised me because I would have thought the Scots Irish would have brought more Scottish traditions than Irish.  However, there are examples of unique approaches to graves in Scotland.  Near Culross are three graves of siblings who died on the same day in the seventeenth century.  They are known as the Plaque Graves and do seem to have a huge plaque atop each one. 

The greater European area has lots of examples of covered graves, although they all seem more ornate or finished than the slabs we have around here.  Could these Appalachian Tent Graves represent a crude, frontier representation of the tradition the people observed in the old country?

These graves always seem to represent a lot of work to me.  Often the cemeteries are far from established quarries and these are big, heavy slabs of stone.  However, in so many cases the names were either never clearly inscribed or never maintained so now we have these very visible grave sites with no idea just who they are memorializing. 

Finally, it occurs to me that the very tradition this blog seeks to celebrate and perpetuate fails in this area.  Our oral tradition has preserved family details carried for centuries.  We’ve learned and continue to use skills that our ancestors brought from their foreign homes.  Yet here is a tradition that no one seems to have explained as the years passed.

Old West Kirk of Culross, Scotland

This professional photo (used with permission)  is representative of work available at www.ghgraham.com

What do you think?  Does it seem like these are just a style of burial site?  Or do you think it’s some tradition that came with early immigrants but didn’t last very long on American soil? 

Fried Chicken

I’ve kind of been on a food-thing lately, haven’t I?  I mentioned to you that I’ve been trying to be more disciplined with my food – and that just makes you crave all the good stuff.  But today’s thoughts are more about feeding a large group of people.

You’ll remember from a few weeks ago that I have a full house right now.  It’s a blessing and a challenge.  I’m unaccustomed to regularly cooking for a group of eleven.  Therefore when Fried Chicken rotated up on my menu list, it was a new cooking opportunity.  Something was said about cooking special foods and I thought that fried chicken was just regular country-cooking, albeit maybe Sunday-dinner kind of cooking.

I’m no expert at frying chicken, although I did learn at the feet of my grandmothers.  My finished product doesn’t come close to theirs and whether that’s my skill-level or years of practice I can’t say.  But you can’t buy the stuff.  Sure, deep fried, heavily battered chicken is a fast food treat occasionally but it’s just not the same as the homeade version.

I don’t have any secrets to my recipe, although one grandma always used garlic salt instead of regular salt and that does add an extra layer of flavor.

I fry in a big iron skillet, just like my grandma did – in fact, she had a special skillet that she callled the chicken fryer.  Whether it was originally produced and named that, I don’t know but it was very deep – you could really have deep fried in it if you’d wanted.  That depth allowed a neater cooking experience because the stuff will pop everywhere. 

Iron seems always to be the cooking medium of choice in these old recipes.   I guess it has long been available and more modern non-stick surfaces are really quite new.  Plus, cooking on wood or coal prohibitted many of the plastic-handled pots we enjoy today.  It provides an even heat and holds the heat well while your cooking.

In feeding nearly a dozen mouths, I did notice the cooking time was pretty long.  I was able to stick the finished product in the oven so everyone got warm chicken.  How would I have done that on a wood stove?  Did you use the oven the same way?  I guess there’s no reason not to, in fact it might be easier because the oven box of a wood stove is always a little warm owing to the proximity to the fire box.

Of course I have chicken in the freezer and I can’t help but think that a whole other layer of complexity would be added if I’d had to ring the neck of the beast, pluck it and clean it before I began frying.

One question I’d like to answer is breading.  Do any of you remember your grandmas frying chicken without flouring it?  We’ve talked many times about the scarcity of flour on the mountain in years gone by.  Were cooks willing to use a little of that precious resource to coat their chicken?  It is certainly a different food if you don’t bread it.

All in all, a meal of homeade fried chicken, gravy, green beans, potato salad and hot biscuits is a pretty nice treat and a welcome reminder of meals at my grandma’s table.

Found: A New Cemetery

Highland Cemetery in Dry Hollow, Tennessee.  Can you see the steeple of the little church peeking up beyond the hill?
 

Well I had a grand time on Decoration Day last Sunday and I sure hope you can all report the same.  I’m sorry I didn’t get to visit with many of you.  When I arrived at Campground with rain threatening, there were only a handful of people.  I did get to see one neighbor, Lorene, who isn’t able to get out much these days due to an ailing husband, several Atkinson and Miller cousins and a couple of Stepps.

My Uncle Leon made a passing statement about locating some ancestral graves and mentioned a cemetery that I had visited once many years ago.  You know it doesn’t take much to send me on an adventure and he did it!  So, after the traditional visit to The Whittaker Cemetery (and no ice cream this time, I’m afraid), we headed North East off the mountain toward Livingston.

Highland Freewill Baptist Church

In 1928, my Great-great Granmdother, Sarah Jane Langford Stepp was staying with her son Wilburn on the mountain bench below Monterey in a community called Dry Hollow.  At seventy-nine years of age, she passed away in her son’s home.  Even on today’s roads and in cars that run the fifty-five mile per hour speed limit, that’s an hour’s drive from the Burrville community where she raised her family.  I can’t quite imagine what it would have been in that day.  We don’t actually know where her husband had been buried thirty-seven years earlier but we believe it to be near Jamestown, which would have been forty-five minutes in another direction – again that’s driving on modern roads – but all of the family had left that area anyway.  So, they did the only thing they could do and buried her in Highland Cemetery.

I don’t know if she saw the end coming and was able to have any input on her final resting place, but I cannot imagine a more beautiful spot to leave your mother.  The cemetery sits atop a low rise amid towering mountains on all sides.  At the foot of the hill is an absolutely picturesque little church, Highland Freewill Baptist Church.  Pastor Derek Parsons was good enough to supply a brief sketch of the church’s history.  While that adorable building only dates to the 1970’s, the congregation was established about 1907.  When their churchouse burned they continued meeting in homes or yards until a new building could be erected using volunteer labor and lumber harvested from the neighboring hillside.  The floor joists were hand hewn. 

The cemetery is even older, with at least two civil war veterans buried there.  The oldest grave I found was 1873, unfortunately the name was unreadable, however someone clearly knows its occupant for that was one of the graves adorned with a brand new Confederate flag.  The community has continued to utilize the land and new graves with modern granite stones share the space with the very old, covered graves.  A new section seems to have opened with two graves sitting on the opposite side of the driveway.

Not knowing this part of the country very well (if you’re reading this and can enlighten me, by all means please do so in the comments below), I can’t help but wonder where the large slabs of quarried stone came from.  There are several graves completely covered with them, and some are huge.  I couldn’t imagine the effort required to haul those stones to the top of that mountain.  Although it’s not too hard to believe loved ones were more than willing to put that effort into preparing and preserving their family plots. 

As I looked around this quiet little community, my creative brain began to spin with questions.  That same creativity will write the stories if it can’t find any facts – this valley will certainly appear in an upcoming book.

Rock Wall on Bear Hollow Road.  The original Highland Freewill Baptist Church building stood on Bear Hollow Road; it burned in the 1970's.