Rugged, self-sufficient, fiercely loyal – despite stereotypes to the contrary, the Appalachian mountaineers were, and are, an admirable people who developed a rich culture…
While the question of immigration is on the boil in America, and while the current season is one that should invoke charity, not disparity,…
People in my family have always been lovers of salt. That grainy white stuff in the shaker on the dinner table was the star…
“Animals make us Human.” ~ Temple Grandin I always felt different than my sisters. We were all born in a big city, yet I did…
I'd like to introduce you to an extraordinary life, that of the pleasant-looking young woman in the portrait above. On the one hand, I…
A girl about the age of twelve, sporting a French beret, stands to the side with her face tilted, looking over the fields as…
March is Women’s History Month, and it seemed fitting to me that a homesteading woman should be celebrated. The woman I chose was arguably…
It’s a story with a simple, but remarkable, beginning. In 1910 a black American entrepreneur joined forces with a legendary spokesman for black innovation…
Mead: in the western world, the very word conjures images of warriors in leathers drinking from horns or human skulls. Despite this barbarous image,…
A Trip to Lehman's Store Jay Lehman had a dream. It was a modest dream. But the dream that started in a tiny community among…
It was 1879, and the Civil War had been over just nine years, a war that had devastated the Commonwealth of Virginia as perhaps no…
"Two days after Thanksgiving, hospitable Anna Eleanor Roosevelt…motored in a White House car from Washington to visit the Tygart Valley homestead project near Elkins, W.…
When I was a child, way back when, in the good old days, once upon a time… we did not get to eat a…
I was born just before the end of World War II. As a child I often heard the term "victory garden" but by the time…
"There was nothing but land; not a country at all, but the material out of which countries are made… I had the feeling that the…
If you’ve ever traveled through the southern Appalachian Mountains, you will immediately understand, even from the window of your car, that it would have been…
It was a simpler time, before railroads were built or the coal industry and tourism began to change the landscape. Back then, existence was all…
“The days of wilderness adventure are not past! The pioneer spirit is not dead!” These stirring words were written by one of America’s best known…
Civilization began with farming. Artisans, traders, philosophers, and scientists and the historians to document them all did not, could not, exist until the emergence of…
There has always been a female face to agriculture: the tough homesteader pioneering the frontier; the milkmaid; the tender of the flocks; the manager of…
