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

It appears that the span of development impacts the configuration of a farm. When there was an extensive period of development, a wide range of agricultural technologies were put into place as they became available through the years. This resulted in more outbuildings and a less geometric pattern of development. In contrast, the Tyre Crouse farm was basically constructed around 1900 with a few domestic buildings being added in the 1930s and 1940s. Unlike the Woodruffs, the Crouse family never experimented with raising chickens or Grade A dairy cattle. Thus, the development on the Tyre Crouse farm is more cohesive and condensed.

The Tyre Crouse farm is arranged along a straight drive that once led to the orchard, fields, and pastures. This arrangement is more formal than that found at many of the surveyed farms, but its loose geometric order makes the internal principals of the daily pattern of work more visible (Figures 9 and 10). All of the domestic outbuildings are located on the north side of the house near the kitchen, which is located in the northeast corner of the house. Thus, the kitchen door gave easy access to all of the food-related buildings on the farm as well as the large garden situated directly behind the house (Figures 11 and 12). Further east, beyond the garden is the large barn. The framing of the garden by the barn and house seem to give it a special significance in the loose, geometric order imposed on the farm. This important position was reiterated in the oral history of the Crouse children, especially Lillie Crouse Edwards.

Completing the arrangement of domestic buildings is the woodshed, a building that was vital for the fires that both warmed the house and cooked the food. The woodshed is located across the drive, near the southeast corner of the house. A gate is hung across the drive between the corner of the garden and the woodshed. Beyond the gate is the barn and granary. This creates a clear delineation between the domestic outbuildings that were necessary to everyday food production and the production of livestock, grain, and hay.

The domestic patterns described on the Tyre Crouse and Alex Woodruff farms were typical of those on all of the surveyed farms, which in turn, can be thought of as typical of the entire county. Jean Sizemore, author the architectural survey of Allegheny County writes:

Of great importance to the character of the historic landscape of Alleghany County are the many outbuildings that have served various functions... These include barns of various sizes and forms, granaries, cribs, dairies, smokehouses, springhouses, root cellars, poultry houses, equipment sheds, and other structures, usually grouped around or behind the farmhouse... 19

On a regional level, the survey of the New River Valley in the late-1970s produced evidence of similar buildings throughout the Ashe-Watauga-Alleghany County area. There is little discussion of the arrangement of the domestic complex, other than to say that each has "an individual character and situation and is unique in the disposition of the house, the barn, and the other farm outbuildings..."20 From this description, we can surmise that the common feature of the domestic complexes of the region is that they respond uniquely to their individual site, age, period of development, as well as the whim of the builder.