All things old are new again : Why Rural Appalachian people sometimes keep old cars in the yard

      It  is wood cutting time again and this year I decided to pull this little blue beast back out of retirement - He has been sitting in the backyard for about three years with a flat tire and has been a storage building, dumpster and all manner of other things since that time. This is- without a doubt -the good side with only a dented door and no handle, a messed up radio antenna and mismatched tires. The other side is rusted out beat up and pretty much ugly with a window that will barely roll up and down, One wheel that sticks out too far , and mismatched tires. He has 237K and a vortex v6, and has been on fire twice( once in the cab and once under the hood). It has towed about 8 other vehicles to the junkyard on tow dollies and had hauled mules, donkeys , horses, junk iron and torn down houses in the attached trailer -which is really too heavy for the truck cause this is the 4th bumper as the other 3 broke or got torn off with various too heavy loads attached. Its a 4x4 with a high and low range and a CD player that still works. It was a little low on oil and the power steering has a significant leak so it grinds a little when about out of  fluid.

     Many people drove by and saw the old truck sitting , a few stopped to try to buy it. It wasn't very pretty back there with a flat tire and covered with old lumber and trash. I bought a brand new battery today and  five gallons of gas and, after changing the flat tire, Heather and I had it running in no time. The other tires needed aired up a little and then we hooked up and cleaned out the (also heavily trash laden)  horse trailer - good thing it was trash day.

    I had to prime it up by pouring fuel down the breather but once it started the first time it fired up the first crank every time afterwards.  Plans are to load the truck and trailer and back them up a few feet from the back door and throw a tarp over them so there is plenty of firewood ready once the snow is flying 

  Now look up in the wood line straight behind the drivers seat - that's another dodge minivan - a 93 - the one I drive is a 98 - the tires, brakes, and a great many other parts are the same. That's another reason why people keep old cars around their places - yeah it is worth 3-4 hundred dollars as junk iron but that would just get spent. As it sits it is there when I have a blowout on the way home from work or my radiator gets a leak or my alternator goes out. It also stores the seats out of my current van so I don't have to waste gas hauling the extra seats around all the time. This vehicle will start up and pull itself around - it has a very rare transmission that would fit my current van- would cost $2000 used at a salvage yard.

Behind the van and blocked from view is my 1992 Subaru Station Wagon - Its got a bad transmission with no reverse- It also has a broken front axle. None of the parts off it will fit my other vehicles but its still here for a third reason people keep their old cars - I just like it. I Love to drive it around with just one rear wheel pushing it around -its fun for playing in the mud and spinning and fishtailing on a wet road. Its also good for storing stuff - I keep all my outdated computers and CRT monitors in it and some big old TVs. 

That's me and my three wrecks but I am representative of the culture in the area. People keep things for years - something to fall back on mentality. It comes down from the pioneers who first moved into the area after the Revolutionary war - there wasn't a person nearby who could sell them a new wagon wheel when the old one broke , so whenever someone in the neighborhood got a new wagon the old one was a good source for cannibalized parts. The mentality of holding onto and getting just-one-more- use out of things made the pioneers able to survive.

   

 Picture an old farmer with a crosscut saw.

He used it till the teeth were short and thin and recut them with files, sharpened it down over and over until it was too thin and weak width-wise and unserviceable as a saw.

The farmer was wise and frugal so he fired up his forge and used the metal to construct a mowing scythe (think grim reaper) which he used for years to mow; sharpening it with a stone until it was too thin and flimsy for even that purpose. 

 Then he then fired up the forge again and cut it down into a set of knives for butchering. as they wore out he strapped the remnants to a piece of strap leather and used it to shell corncobs.

That old farmer got  a lot of use out of that saw. He was living in a house with boards he had cut out with it , eating  with knives it had been made into,  a cow who had been fed with grass it had cut and corn it had shelled.

     



Next this same farmer buys himself a 1926  Ford --when the engine wears out and it is no longer good as a vehicle, do you honestly think that farmer is going to throw in the towel and call a tow truck to come get it?

  No. he will cut the sheet metal out and roof a hen house with it, use the windows in an outbuilding, use the high carbon steel in the leaf springs for some of the best cutting tools one can construct. He can use the truck bed as a coal bin, the frame can be covered with wood and make an expedient bridge over the creek. The tires make planters in the yard and the rear wheels, and axle makes a fine trailer for his new 1935 Ford. His son in law who is trained by the coal mining companies as an electrician uses the battery, generator, and coil are hooked up with a waterwheel down in the creek to create the county's first electric fence. 

        70 years later and parts of the old Ford are still bouncing around the holler where the old farmer lived. I know because I ran over one of them three years ago, got a flat tire, and had to park my truck-- but it made an excellent tool for shelling dried corn off the cob.

On being small and having much to learn...

      At a local livestock auction I watched 14-16 wethers (castrated) full grown, beautiful, healthy purebred Nubian goats being sold. Only the slaughterhouse buyers bid on them. One farmer said "Yeah they are pretty but what could I do with them? If I put them on the nicest pasture I have they wouldn't put on any more weight, they are not gonna grow anymore - they aren't any good to me."

       This pearl of wisdom can be applied to our products, our staff, our businesses, and ourselves. Why should we spend money on things that wont grow or improve and be worth more later on; Why would one hire a person who couldn't or wouldn't be trained in the way you want to do business; why would a business limit its growth by only catering to certain customers or pursuing certain goals (for instance a dog groomer who would only groom collies); finally- when we stop learning and growing , emotionally, spiritually, and functionally we quickly lose our sense of self worth and with it our marketability. The only constant in business or in education is change and there is always a new things to discover or old things to be relearned by a new generation.

    An old dog must learn new tricks.

       A small business can grow in any direction -think a man with a truck. He buys a mower and all at once he is a landscaper . Winter comes, he buys a snowblower.  Gets a client that needs a picnic shelter. He builds it for him. He hauls the lumber and tools on his truck. He  then tears down a old shed and hauls the used lumber and sells it,. He hauls aluminum cans to the recyclers.  The man with the truck is versatile and open-minded and successful.

Now examine the same man who has a truck but he doesn't want to get it dirty hauling a mower in it- it would mess up his truck. He doesn't want to get out in the cold and run a snowblower -his nice clothes would get all wet and ruined. He doesn't know how to build a picnic shelter - that's complicated all those boards and nails and stuff. He isn't hauling old naily boards in his nice truck (let someone else tear down that shed) and forget the sticky old cans. He misses payments on his truck and loses it.

It is in my blood....

CAUTION BORING GENEOLOGY INFO FOLLOWS then some deep thought about sustainability and a homesteader's ideal legacy.

1860 Raleigh Co., WV census farm on Broomstraw Ridge ~10 miles away
Henry Bennett, 27, m, farmer, va (Great Great Great Grandfather)

Lucinda, 25, f, matron, va (Great Great Great Grandmother)
Jacob, 3, m, va
Nancy, 1, f, va (Great Great Grandmother)
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1870 Blue Sulphur, Greenbrier Co., WV census page 341A & 341B household #199/190 -farm on Lick creek ~10 miles away
Ira Bragg 44 w m farmer VA - Confederate bushwacker and POW  (Great Great Great Grandfather)
Lucinda 42 w f keeping house VA (Great Great Great Grandmother)
Abby 16 w f at home VA
Nancy A. 14 w f at home VA
James A. 11 w m VA
Reuben 9 w m VA
Marion P. 5 w m WV
William H. 2 w m WV

Ira's father was Reuben Bragg who also was at the same farm in Blue Sulphur , His mother was Mary, Polly Richmond who's Father William C Richmond who farmed at Sandstone (at the time called New Richmond~10 miles away) Her mother was a Kaylor whose family had a huge farm Near Lick creek. Reuben's father Joseph Bragg was a farmer and in the war of 1812, Judith Adkins, his wife lived to be 108 years old and drew his pension but they also had a farm in Greenbrier County.
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1880 Green Sulphur, Summers Co., WV census page 180A (same farm still in family)
James A. BRAGG Self M Male W 21 WV Farmer WV WV (Great Great Grandfather)
Nancy BRAGG Wife M Female W 21 WV Keeping House WV WV
John Henry BRAGG Son S Male W 1 WV WV WV (Great Grandfather)

Paul Bragg, son of John Henry Bragg and Geneva Davis Bragg are my paternal grandparents whose farm I have spoken about extensively in previous blog posts. Geneva was raised in town and on her grandfather Horton Davis's farm on Madams Creek ~10 miles away.

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My maternal grandfather Austin Brown and grandmother Audrey Brown raised my mother and took care of his stepmother's farm (the Hicks place) which my property is a section of. They moved a lot but always had a farm. His father and mother Samuel Austin Brown and Virsie Jane Hatcher kept a farm less than a mile from the Bragg's farm listed above, her parents Elijah Hatcher and his wife Catherine Solesbury also farmed and Catherine's mother was Rebbecca Solesbury and her Husband Pleasant Lilly had a huge farm out Ellison Ridge(~20 miles away) where he kept Rebeca and her sister as wives in one home and another wife, his first, in another home. He fathered over 20 children between the three and was mentioned as a Confederate bushwhacker whose home was burned by the 23rd Ohio.

Audrey's ancestor's included  the Grahams whose farm was between the Hicks and Brown farms, there were also, further back, Foxes - who farmed in Brooks ~5 miles away , and Ballengees who owned and farmed all the land that is currently Hinton ~4 miles away.

        

     Most of the aforementioned families and their activities are not part of our oral tradition - I learned about them through my own research because to understand ones self is a big part of understanding ones world. I am proud now of who my ancestors are and what they have done. My roots in this area which were already deep were further cemented in.

 

     I hear people speaking all the time about "brain drain" from the mountain lands of southern WV - the idea that the best and brightest pack up and leave for more opportunities elsewhere. I subscribe to a different school of thought. To me it seem that the smartest , toughest, and most apt to survive are those who stay despite the difficult topography and limited occupational choices. I think that if you can make it here - not  New York City - you can make it anywhere.

Knowing we have been here for generations also makes me appreciate the land and plan how to do my part towards the  care and maintenance of it. I would love for my lasting contribution to be an extra 3 inches of topsoil on every square foot of my property - especially if it were on top of all the rocks that make part of my property unable to be used for anything but woodland.

I may leave nothing behind but a mess for someone else to come behind and clean up but hopefully through this blog, through the example I try to set for my friends and neighbors, and through the young people who see my place and learn something from it I could leave the world as a whole a better place.

The Morning Count

Every Morning I go around my homestead and see who lived through the night and who was born or hatched. This time I taped it for your enjoyment. hawks owls, skunks coons, stray dogs , stray cats, and disease can steal away small animal livestock at any moment, the constant danger of the highway is devastating to a few members of the farm yearly. The animal population here varries from 35-100 through the year.


The farm population changes daily and many of my farms residents are old friends and some are new friends, some are very tame and come right up to you and some are wild and run away.

This farm is far from sustainable without the constant inflow of money from my real job, but that is just because I am not a fulltime farmer. I am still learning and making mistakes and loving the journey.
I'll save worrying about profits and losses for when I am retired and supplementing my meager income with farm earnings.
The healthy food , the exercise, and the outdoors will add years to my life and life to my years if i am lucky.
I don,t smoke don't drink and haven't any illicit habits so the expense of feed and medicine for my animals is  lite compared to the expense of these aforementioned vices.

In a complete cost benefit analysis physiological benefits of the homestead are right up there with the ample fertilizer produced and the landscaping performed by the free range animals. I mowed my grass four times last year - the chickens and geese did the rest.

Key to my ideas of farming is substatial capital investment in buildings fences . I believe in the idea of buildng it once and building it right, Horse High,  Bull Strong, and Goat Tight. I dont want to have to rebuild something in my lifetime wether it be a henhouse or a hog pen. I do offer some exceptions to this in that I believe in temporary cheap but functional housing for pastured poultry and when building a better  replacement . Theodore Roosevelt said

Do what you can with  what you have and do it now.

No Farm No Food

        As you travel round the local produce markets, the livestock auctions, and flea markets , fairs and festivals where farming families hawk their wares one wonders why do they do it? To see so many children being toted around these places would give one a clue. The adults often are subsistance farmers because as children they learned how. They often inherit family land, equipment, and tools and more importantly they inherit a love of growing things. Their first memories are of walking barefoot in tilled earth and the smell of freshly baled hay. They learn to love the lowing of a cow to her new calf, or the low bawl of competing bulls calling each other names over the fence. They cherish the taste of a vine ripened tomato or the flavor of an orange round fresh fried egg that was still warm from the hen when it hit the pan.  These are the treasures of farm life that money cannot buy.

    The simple fact that for every bite that goes into your mouth has to at some point been a living growing thing, a product of millions of years of evolution is ingrained in the psyche of farming people more than any others. It is hard to relate your hamburger and french fries to the land if you have never picked up a potato or walked through a field of wheat or drug a bale a hay to feed a hungry cow in the winter.

Be unique, be different, be wonderful...

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again  And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are?
We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything.
If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
- Henry David Thoreau

In this light one can examine our homesteads. Just because every neighbor on the road you live on is raising cattle does not mean you are going to make money in cattle. Just because everyone in your county raises white Kenebec potatoes doesn't mean you can't raise Yukon golds or Pontiac reds or Indigo blues. Mono-culture and doing the same thing everyone else is is not sustainable because...

If everyone in 50 miles is raising one particular variety of corn then the bugs that eat that kind of corn experience a population explosion and put a major dent in the profits however... if you are brave enough to be different and put in a different kind of corn you risk not having a market for it or have less of a output but you also stand to have the only healthy crop in the county and to be able to demand top dollar for it.

Diversity 

     Sustainability has already been proven in nature - how often do you see one type of grain covering.an entire field that has not been planted by people?

Turn Turn Turn

As the leaves begin to change and temperatures begin to drop the farmstead is in the throes of harvest and the onsets of the preparation for winter. The days are growing shorter and every fiber of my being dreads the onset of the dark cold miserable days of winter. But, on a more positive note... bugs are getting froze out and snakes are burrowing in.