Rural Heritage

I had some interesting experiences yesterday. I went to a Rural Heritage Festival in the next town over here in SC, and later went to a meeting with co-members of an environmental group concerning "mountain top removal" in WVA and SC responsibility for it. One of he major commonalities of them for me, was that the majority of folks that I talked to at both were farmers. We'd expect that at a Rural Heritage Festival, but at a meeting about coal mining?

Most of us here living in the United States do have rural heritage, although further back than this festival was celebrating. Up to the 1910s, most people in the US lived in rural areas. Currently 21% of the United States is still rural, with 4 states mostly rural (Mississippi, West Virginia, and Maine and Vermont). My father's family were farmers from at least the time they moved to North Carolina (around 1795 from Virginia), up to my grandfather. My father used to say that it's good that my grandfather was a "hobby farmer", because the farm never made any money. I grew up in a rural area (and still am in a rural county), the neighbors farmed - we didn't. I read my grandfather's copies of "Progressive Farmer" and "Organic Gardening and Farming" and later my own copies of "Organic Gardening" (they had spun New Farm into its own magazine) and "Mother Earth News" - but I never really developed my own green thumb. I do remember the neighbors plowing with mules, and the smell of spring: organic fertilizer on the fields. In my 20s, I spent five years leading month-long wilderness trips, such things as being able to build fires during a snowfall - while rural, its not what we think of as "rural heritage". Because, RH is nostalgia talk for farm life.

We bought some things at the RHF, wine from a "local" winery (is 76 miles local?), rice from the local rice farm (22 miles, less if we could go as the crow flies). The rice farm uses renewal energy, and is organic. The local organic sheep farm (15 miles) will be in town next week at the marketplace (bringing more items), so will buy our cheese then (no, its not sheep cheese). Other exhibits including "marsh tacky horses", fishing rods casting, medicinal plants, birds of prey, bluegrass, "water watch" , tips for gardening, recycled water barrels, boiled peanuts, and BBQ sauce (vinegar based for Eastern Carolina folks). The big tech thing was growing switchgrass for bioenergy and the hopes for farmers for that. the local papermill is building biofuel (corn however) mills.

the environmental meeting was held on Saturday night, at a home not that far distant so that I was able to go. There was someone down (literally) from the Appalachians to talk about Mountain Top removal - strip mining removal of mountains. and the removal of said coal here to SC (and various other places, SC is not in the top 5 - just the top 10), and what we can do about it. Informative, but i want to continue to talk about farmers - because i spoke with a couple of farmers there. Yes, farmers there to hear about non-farming environmental news. I listen to their concerns - and yes,as farmers they have big concerns : their lives and livelihoods depend on it. I find fascinating the farmers who have web pages and those who ship their products direct to consumers. Carbon footprints? Depends - at least from farm (to processor) to you makes it at least somewhat more direct, without the wondering the food goes through otherwise.