Welcome

My earliest memories involve gardening, canning, foraging, hunting, and fishing. In every season this land we call home provides for the people living here. These mountains provide medicine both for the soul and the body. The culture here is rich in tradition, steeped in faith, and tempered with a bit of mountaineer rowdiness and pride. These ancient mountains surround us, the voice of generations long past still echoing through its peaks and valleys. They contain both hardship and provision, scratching out a living from this soil is not for the weak-minded nor faint of heart. This, is Central Appalachia.

My daddy was a coal miner, and his daddy and at least one granddad before him. They know these mountains from the inside out, having gone miles deep inside them to bring out glittering black coal, scoured them from above for game, fish, wild edibles, and medicinal roots, and having farmed the soil of my home place for generations. My mother was born into a family of farming, greenhouses, seamstresses, quilters, and bakers. I reaped the best of all these things learning from an early age to do all of them. It was never a matter of “if” we would learn the skills, only a question of whether we would “make use“ of them- and we both still do.

Across this blog journey, I will share with you lifetimes of homestead stories, homesteading skills, homeschooling advice, and lots of Appalachian history. I’m glad you’re here, have a seat and stay a while, we’ve got lots to talk over.