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

Conclusion

Life on Alleghany County farms was based in the series of chores and field labor that repeated itself each year. Work was so much a part of the farm experience, it seemed unfathomable to the oral history participants that the interviewer did not have such connotations about life on a farm. In fact, it was sometimes challenging to elicit a response more detailed than "we worked hard." With the pattern of work so ingrained in the psyche of the farmer, answers received to questions about a typical day on the farm were often very simple. Take the words of Kyle Cox for example, "Well you get up, feed your horses, cows-did your work."

What such modest attitudes towards work on the farm belle is the importance of these patterns to an understanding of life on the farm. The influence of patterns of work on the organization of the farm is relevant to those attempting to understand and develop preservation strategies for these farms. The daily routine is at the heart of the arrangement of the farm buildings. For example, at four of the case study farms, the cellar or springhouse is directly adjacent or even attached to the residence. The cellars at both the Cheek-Truitt farm and the Woodruff farm are built into hillsides that are only a few steps from the kitchen door (Figure 13). At one of the study farms, the springhouse is attached to the house as part of the rear ell. The Tyre Crouse farm outbuilding complex exemplifies how the pattern of Lula Crouse's daily work, her movement between the kitchen, springhouse, meat house, and garden was a major factor in the design of the complex.

The clustered arrangement of the domestic outbuildings around the farm house is a clue to how important the rather humble-looking assortment of outbuildings is to the overall operation of a minimalcash farm. With the straightforward logic of a farmer, the springhouse and cellar were put within a convenient distance to the kitchen door. At the most basic level, this arrangement indicates the many steps made by the farm woman from her kitchen to the food-storage buildings. Carrying on the Southern tradition of multiple, small buildings, these farmers have left resources that enable us to understand a great deal about life on the farm. The assortment of domestic outbuildings illustrates in the built environment the perishable food that was the basic product of minimal-cash farms as well as the intangible element of work patterns that were so much a part of the farm woman's life.

Food is an important link to the past and is extremely relevant to the study of resources associated with minimal-cash agriculture. The work of the farm wife and her daughters is represented in the built environment of the farm and in the oral history of their descendants, if not in their perishable products. The ubiquitous cornbread, ham, potatoes, and pickled beans have long since been consumed, but the granaries, meat houses, cellars, and springhouses remain on the earlytwentieth century farms of Alleghany County. The study of the domestic outbuildings associated with food production provides insight not only into how the farm family was fed, but into their daily routine and the particular process employed for their livelihood.