Appalachian History

ED- Are there people you know in the Konnarock area with these Christmas tree plantations?

JG - Yes, we have a little Christmas tree plantation here, too. We planted them ourselves and sold them for several years. They are getting pretty big now, but we've got some small ones that are 5 to 6 feet tall and they are still there. Those are frazier firs. They are born and raised in the Whitetop area, and we bought them and planted them, just little sprigs.

ED - Do you think a fair amount of money is made in Konnarock?

JG - Oh, yes. Over there in the Helton area there are some rich people because of the land and the trees that they own. Of course they got froze out, but the government was able to pay them something for the freeze problem.

ED - How did they get the government to do that?

JG - Some of them are on government land. I don't know just how that come about that they got paid for their trees.

ED - There are some people growing Christmas trees on government land?

Christmas tree farm in adjoining Grayson County, 1987

JG - I think so. I think some of it is owned land or leased land from the government, either leased from the government or other people. There are several landowners. J. Baldwin is one who sells Christmas trees every year. You have to be at least 3,000 feet high before you can start a frazier fir farm so it's only in the mountains that you can raise these frazier firs.

ED - Can people buy them and grow them elsewhere?

JG - They seem to; some do. I think maybe it's because they give them special care. People would buy the Christmas trees from us and then planted them and they would grow. They dig them up by the roots. The reason they don't grow when they are young is because it gets too warm in the wintertime. They begin to bud out too soon and then the buds get killed by frost.

ED - That's a major change from the '30s. There was nothing like that in the '30s.

JG - Except that they lashorned firs.

ED - Back in the '30s, were there tree plantations at all?

JG - They were just naturally formed.

ED - So people who owned land back in the '30s wouldn't have had that option for making money?

JG - I don't think so. If they sold their land to the lumber
company . . .

ED - Even though you saw mostly stumps when you came in the '30s, were there still people selling off lumber from their land?

JG - There was new lumber beginning right away from trees that had been planted immediately. They had grown up to pretty good size, but nothing like it is today where there are trees everywhere. Some are of a size that can be turned into lumber but some are not. We have some trees on our place that can be sold for lumbering purposes.

ED - People would not have seen much value in their land back in the '30s?

JG- Probably not.

ED - Because you couldn't make much money off of only land, could you?

JG - Well, they would set up small sawmills out in the woods and saw wood and sell it for lumber, sell it for firewood. They would saw rough lumber and people would use that to build barns.

ED - There were some local people making money off their land back then. Were there major landowners back in the '30s, families that owned most of the land?

JG - I think most of the families had small plots of land.


---excerpt from oral history with John Gable, (b. 1910 Superior, WI, moved to Konnarock, VA 1936)

Interviewed in 1995 by Edward H. Davis, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and Public Policy, Charlottesville, VA, now in Appalachian Studies collection, Kelly Library, Emory & Henry College; online at http://library.ehc.edu/konnarock.html

Many thanks to Jacob Stump for his assistance on this article.

I've got a '40 John Deere, and I've got the biggest part of equipment for it, and it's . . . it's up there in the barn. It'll still run. And we . . . we worked around here and worked for other people and, you know, in a small community like this, you . . . you helped other people and they helped you. And there was no money exchanged. You was a helping somebody, and then when you got ready to house tobacco they would help you, and . . . and that's the way you worked it. It's not like it is now. You know, you got a transaction of money anytime that somebody helps you, where back then you didn't have.

Back in the late . . . I guess it would be in the late '40s, there was a . . . there was a log barn there, and my uncle built the other barn around it which you can see over there and it's got his initials cut in the . . . in the logs, and my grandfather's initials were cut in the logs.

They kept mules in there and they . . . they also had a "A" over the top of it that was kind a loft where they stored their . . . their corn that they took . . . they took corn . . . they didn't take money. When they ground the corn they took a toll from the corn, and they . . . they stored that up there, and then if you would want to come by and buy, if you had money to buy it, they would sell the . . . the meal to you or sell the corn to you or whatever.

Caption reads: Laurel County, Kentucky. A pair of jacks - there are tens of thousands of such teams. This pair owned by Erwin Hensley of E. Bernstedt, hauling coal. Pre-1954, no other date.

[My mom] grew everything. She grew potatoes and corn and beans and broccoli. Just anything that we could grow in this location, she'd grow it. And stick her own beans. Last year she canned probably fifty quarts of beans and gave 'em to the neighbors when she didn't eat 'em herself.

Back when the older generation, which is deceased now, they had a June meeting every year and they congregated at the graveyard and had big meals and everybody brought a dish and . . . and that's where that . . . I can relate back to that is . . . is a lot of the history that I'm telling you about because, you know, I had heard people talk about there.

But the . . . like I said, there's only one of my mother's people that is living, which is her sister, and my father's people never migrated into here. They . . . they were all over, out of state and everything, and they never came in. But the . . . the Wilsons, they . . . they had a reunion year every year.

But, like I say, after my mother has died and my aunts and uncles, they don't . . . they didn't have any last year.


1991 interview with Euell Sumner
(b. 1938 in Cane Creek, KY)
Family Farm Oral History Project
Louie B. Nunn Center for Oral History
University of Kentucky
Interview edited; orginal transcript here



Laurel+County+KY farm+chores appalachian+farming appalachia +history+of+appalachia appalachian+history

"My parents farmed. Well, it's a good life, but it's a hard life. They raised cattle, sheep, and hogs for a living. [Their farm] had a lot of...... It wasn't much level land, it was more rolling hills and pasture was in... It was sorta rough land. This farm had four springs on it and it run by gravity. We had it piped into the house. The creek run through the farm and these springs had water that came out to the creek.

"The house had fourteen rooms. It had up stairs and a front stairs, and a back stairs and it had eight fireplaces in it, and it was the old Dr. Bishop's house. We got electricity when I was about about fourteen, fifteen years old when we got electricity. We didn't have a phone. We had an old-time phone that you cranked it. Each one would have a different ring and you would ring maybe one ring would be one neighbor and you would ring two rings would be another neighbor. It was an old-time phone and it was on batteries.

Photo caption reads: Joe Compton's last horse.

"We had a dairy barn and a sheep barn. We used to raise lambs, and we had a big chicken house, and we had chickens. Rhode Island Reds. We raised baby chicks and we had baby pigs and all of that. Out from the house. You didn't want them too close.

"The dairy barn was across the road. The milking parlor was built out of stone, big rock and the dairy barn was built with weathered board planks. We had several cows. We'd milk cows and made our spending money. We had Jersey and Holsteins. We fed them corn and skim milk. We had a cream separator and we would take the cream off that milk and then you after you a five or ten gallon can you would take it to the freight station and ship it off to Fairmont Creamery Company and you would take the separated milk and feed your hogs. I always helped with the milking. Everybody had a milk stool and a bucket.

"We raised corn and wheat and hay. We had a corn planter and we always hooked up two horses to plant it. I didn't like hoeing corn. The buck flies would just eat you up. We cut that corn by hand if we wanted to make silage we cut it by hand and put it on a wagon and brought it in, and then they chopped it at the silo or if you wanted to shuck the corn, you would cut it and put it in shocks and then you would go back the last of October or the first of November when it got a little damp and shuck out that corn and haul it in.

[What was your favorite job on the farm?] "Go swimming.

"The government had to have everything government inspected before you could sell it. The eggs had to be candled and the meat had to be government inspected and you couldn't sell them. It's changed so much you have to be a big farmer to make a living because a little farmer can't hardly make a living."

Blanche Compton
b. Clearfork, VA 1921
interviewed by granddaughter
Jennifer Belcher on Feb 15, 1997
Bland County [VA] History Archives
http://www.bland.k12.va.us/bland/rocky/gap.html


appalachia, appalachian farming, history, mountains Blanche Compton, Bland County VA, Clearfork VA