Why Prepping is Just Living an Appalachian Lifestyle

 

I am 60 years old and when I was a kid we didn’t know what prepping was. Everyone I knew ate a lot of beans and taters. They all had large pantries with canned vegetables and medium to large gardens. Most folks had a pig or two being raised in a pen. They often had chickens, ducks, rabbits, and turkeys. Most of my family had this type of thing. My grandparents were the homesteader type and had a small 5 acre Appalachian homestead.

Homesteading is nothing new. My grandparents did homesteading on the ground they had. Maw and Paw did their homestead on a 5 acre plot of bottom land. Granny did her homesteading on a plot of river bottom that was a little over ½ acre. They both had chickens, pigs, a cow, and many other livestock. They raised gardens on every inch of their ground. Back in the late 1930’s there were no stock laws and everyone ran their cow in the mountains and brought them home at night to milk. The pig was branded and spent all its time in the mountain until it came time to butcher.

Today we fence in the animal, back then they fenced them out. Everyone had fences around their gardens to keep the livestock out. The Louisville and Nashville Railroad had fences all along the train tracks to keep the cows out. Ever wonder why that scoop on the front of the train was called a cattle catcher. If the train hit your cow and killed it they had to pay you for it so those were installed to cut down on killed livestock.

This is all well before my memory. Info related to me by my grandparents and parents. The great American Chestnuts were still thriving in the forest. By the time I came along there were only the downed trees left, wiped out by the Chestnut Blight. But some of them were 8 feet in diameter. Their stumps still dotted the Appalachian forests as I hunted through them. Many a squirrel was taken sitting atop one of these magnificent reminders of times gone by. They were a super food source for the pigs along with the great variety of acorns and hickory nuts. They fattened those pigs right up as fall pushed into winter.

My grandparents also saved their own seed. They swapped seeds with other folks and maintained a healthy seed storage system. There were no plastic pots to run out and buy like we have at the local Wally World today. They bedded things like peppers, tobacco, tomatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and all those plants that we just take for granted today. All the varieties were heirloom, meaning you could save seed. They direct sowed corn, beans, okra, cucumbers, squash, pumpkins, acorn squash, gourds, and lettuce. But the garden was not their only means of sustenance.

They foraged the mountains for things like nettles, blackberries, bears lettuce, ramps, raspberries, dry land fish(morel mushrooms) aka hickory chickens, beech nuts, hickory nuts, and all sorts of other wild edibles. They hunted for small game – most of the large game was hunted to near extinction. They made pets out of wildlife. My father had a pet groundhog, and a pet lamb. Crystals dad had a pet pig named Jeep. It is just what they did. They mended stuff and made do. This is a skill that all homesteaders must acquire even today. There is almost never enough money to go around. I fear we are headed right back to those 1930 type times again. I will probably be gone by the time that rolls around but maybe not.

They learned to save stuff back for hard times. As a kid we were always searching through one of Paws old barns to see if we could find some part to fix something we were working on. He always had the spare hinge or roller or you name it, stored away in that barn somewhere. They looked like hoarders but there was method to their madness. Paw had a huge tractor barn that had every kind of steel thing you could imagine. I remember an old 1950’s refrigerator that was full of tools. He didn’t have some fancy rolling tool box he had an old refrigerator full of tools. I remember that old fridge like it was yesterday. It had a heavy metal handle and the front of the fridge said Coldspot. He stored tools in the freezer, the doors, and every shelf was covered in old tools. It was rusty heaven with a metal squirt oil can sitting on top of it. The old tractor sat in the middle of the stall and on either side were work tables. A corn cracker and grinder was on the left side and the cultivators for the old Farmall were on the other. There was always a number 4 washtub full of chicken feathers drying out underneath one of those tables and all sorts of other farm and homestead related stuff everywhere else. The next bent over was the mini table saw.

This is where he processed his kindling for their coal stoves. There was a big wooden block for chopping and using a hatchet as well as cracking walnuts. This was an 18 or 20 foot wide lean too on the tractor shed. He would accumulate wood from anywhere he could. Old pieces of flooring, chopped wood, fallen trees, and just about anything else he could turn into kindling. That part of the shed was 30 ft long and at least half full of kindling more than head high at the beginning of winter. Then at the back of the tractor shed was the corn crib.

They had 2 corn cribs, one behind the tractor shed close to the hog pen and one down by the chicken house. They were on sleds but I never saw them moved. They were about 12 by 16 and filled with hard corn still on the cob. They had metal around the bottom part and open wood lath around the upper part. Paw said the metal was to keep the mice out but it sure didn’t do a good job. I used to go into the cribs and sit with my daisy bb gun and wear the mice out. I could sit for hours and catch them moving through the corn piles. In the early winter their cribs would be too full to go in, but by February, or so, they were down enough to go right in and sit down. Paw always kept an old cane bottom chair in the cribs so he could sit while shelling corn. He used the left over cobs as fire starters, nothing goes to waste. This place was great practice for the would-be great white hunter.

There were fruit trees all along the margins of the property, old time apples called Benham, Summer Rambo, June Apple aka Early Transparent, Winesap, and others. Chinese Chestnut trees with those terrible burrs and black walnut trees also dotted the property. On another property across the way was the persimmons, possum grapes, and other huge grape vines. There were rabbit hutches and large chicken houses. They made their living by growing and selling from their homestead. There was a huge tobacco barn that yielded the Christmas money every year when the tobacco crop was harvested. Paw worked in the coal mines and maintained this homestead every day. He retired from the mines at 55 on a pension of $75 per month in 1965. Attached to the tractor barn was the mule barn, cow barn, and the turkey barn. Right beside that were the bee stands. There were always at least 4 bee stands harvested every year.

When they harvested their hogs, around Thanksgiving, they had over 100 pounds of lard in large metal lard buckets that sat on their back porch. They had a smoke house that they salted meat until refrigeration came to the homestead. Afterwards, they had 2 large freezers on the back porch. Then the smokehouse became a brooder house for chicks. They had a concrete block well house that was about 16 feet square with its own coal stove. This is where they stored their canned goods as well as their potato harvest for the year. The coal stove was fired any night that might get below freezing. So were they preppers?

If we look at the modern day definition of prepper they may have been even more than that. They had food stored up to last for years. They knew how to hunt, fish, garden, build, raise animals, and all the things modern homesteaders strive to do. They had a network of neighbors who had varying skills that they could depend on. They shared resources and did all kinds of work for others. Even as I was a young man I used that old tractor to plow for people. So they had a network of people. Paw supplied all kinds of things the folks around like eggs, plants, and produce. They traded for other things they needed. I remember when he sold his potatoes for $5 per bushel and 25 tomato plants for $1.50. 

So they lived off the land they had. They bought limited amount of non essential stuff. They saved everything they could get their hands on. They had at least 3 or 4 yrs of food at any one time and the ability to make more. So yes they were preppers. They planned for the worst of times and made themselves as self sufficient as anyone can be, the pure definition of a prepper. Not this hyped up doomsday prepper that they talk about on TV. But the honest to goodness real deal out of necessity.

I hope this finds you well and I hope you will send up a little prayer for us and we will for you. I love reminiscing about my grandparents and the troubles they went through. But it wasn’t all troubles. They were always thankful for what they had and mostly happy people. They lived close to the land and it was in their blood. They understood all too well that Life, Like Homesteading, is a Marathon Not a Sprint – Slow Down and Enjoy the Ride.  

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