Feeding the farm family: Domestic outbuildings and traditional food ways in the Blue Ridge

Chronicle of the Early American Industries Association, Inc., The, Sep 2002 by Wyatt, Sherry Joines

The new food preservation process was also evidenced in the built environment. Older domestic outbuilding forms were updated for their new use. Cellars like the one at the Alex Woodruff farm were outfitted with shelves for cans. Cellars made convenient can houses since the canned produce benefitted from the cool darkness, but the constant temperature was even more important since it prevented the cans from freezing and rupturing. One farm, the Tyre Crouse farm, had a special can house built after World War II. Interestingly, this building mimics the idea of the cool, dark cellar by being constructed on concrete block sheathed in stucco with a dirt floor (Figure 6). Springhouses were also converted into can houses with the addition of shelves.

Canning also significantly altered the pattern of work for Alleghany County women. As alluded to by Opal Cox, who was at her husband's side except for "canning time," the process of "putting up" food for the winter was monumental. While the cold-pack canner might hold several cans, it had to boil for three hours before another batch of cans could be processed. Additionally, the work involved in harvesting, washing, shelling, cutting, and peeling the variety of vegetables grown and canned on Alleghany County farms was very time consuming. Lillie Edwards puts it quite simply: "Mama, she canned and canned...16"

Many women shared work during the peak of summer. Just as neighboring men, especially relatives, often worked together in the fields during planting and harvesting, women undertook the chore of canning communally, sharing the finished product.

"Mama's sister, that lived in Roanoke," relates Evelyn Truitt,

could come by train to Galax and could come to visit us. And she had four sisters in Alleghany County. And she would come and stay for at least two months. She would can green beans, can blackberries. And put those cans in big old barrels, and wrap them. And her husband worked for the railroad company, she could get them shipped from Galax back to Roanoke fairly cheap.17

The Farm as Domestic Complex

The springhouse, cellar, and other domestic outbuildings surround the house. This unassuming group of buildings is extremely important in understanding the cultural traditions and patterns of work within the farm. In fact, the simple abundance of these buildings indicates a strong cultural tradition in the area for building small, single-use buildings rather than large, multi-purpose barns. Taking this concept to the extreme is the Alex Woodruff farm where nineteen separate buildings or structures were surveyed covering a period of development from the mid-nineteenth century through the 1960s. The Tyre Crouse farm illustrates a more typical number of buildings including: the circa 1900 residence, barn, granary, meat house, springhouse, hog house, woodshed, and can house (c. 1945). A washhouse, apple house (or cellar), and privy also existed on the farm historically.

The arrangement of the various farm buildings is usually organic or ad-hoc without the formal planning ideas found in the earlier plantations of the coastal plain.18 Again, the Woodruff farm is a good example (Figures 7 and 8). The buildings here are situated along a narrow, winding drive anchored by two significant clusters-the house and domestic outbuildings and the agricultural outbuildings including the barn and milking parlor. A third cluster consisting of a general store and livestock scale house are found further still from the house, near the county road.