Website owner: James Miller
Subsistence living in Appalachia
I own a 100 acre farm in the Appalachians. For many years a fellow named Williams owned a 75 or 80 acre farm on one of my borders. (I never met him as he was on the other side of a mountain.) Several years ago another of my neighbors bought him out. The house Williams lived in was very isolated, accessed via a trail that ran through the woods alongside a creek with a number of foot bridges crossing the creek. I walked that trail a few days ago. It took 15 or 20 minutes to get from the main road to where his house used to be (there is only a huge stone chimney there now — the fellow that bought the place tore the house down). Williams lived there, at one time along with his family, and had no electricity or telephone. Presumably he had no car. (The trail would not have accommodated a vehicle.) How did he do that? The nearest town is 10 or 15 miles away. How can a person or family live in such an isolated way, so far from stores or shopping? I have been pondering these questions ever since I walked that path. Today I met a neighbor in one of my daily walks and asked him these questions. He said, “Everyone around here used to live that way. That is how I grew up. I was one of 12 children. We had a big garden, chickens, and a cow. We did a lot of canning for wintertime. Williams had a convenient source of water with that creek. We had to walk a considerable distance to get our water. It was a hard life. We did a lot of walking.” He told me they raised corn and said they would gather walnuts and hickory nuts, crack them, and take the nut meats to town and sell them for money for food. The nearest town was a few miles away and they walked to it. Also, he commented that most people made whiskey and sold it.
6 Nov 2021
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