Healthy soil and sustainable growing

[Liz <liz@allslash.org>]

At 11:35 AM 12/12/2007, you wrote:

> I lived in your area when I was little in the late '40s. One would think
> that the rural poor in the Appalachians would still carry on the self
> sufficient traditions of their forebears. Many would still be living on the
> same land. Perhaps it's the food stamps etc. that have weaned so many away
> from growing what they can. How did they get by a hundred years ago, and
> why not now?

Many of them were desperately poor a hundred years ago too. They got 
by, but they certainly weren't well-nourished. And they didn't have 
some of the pressures on their income that people have now. If you 
couldn't afford the things that weren't absolutely necessary, you 
just did without. Now if you don't have electricity and running water 
and inside plumbing, your house can be declared unfit for habitation 
and your kids can be taken away from you. And if you don't have a car 
in rural areas, you can forget about getting a job. There is no 
public transportation, period, and unless you live close to town, it 
can be impossible to get to work. The weather is another problem for 
people getting to work even if they have cars. The one big industry 
in my country wouldn't hire anyone who lived "on the mountain" 
because they knew those people wouldn't be able to get to work if the 
roads were icy. We have some of the best snow removal in the state, 
but you don't go down a 9% grade covered with ice unless you're crazy.

As far as living on the same land is concerned, yes, in some cases, 
but a couple of generations of kids have grown up and left the land 
their parents and grandparents lived on, and never came back. Many of 
the remaining elderly were indeed farmers, or at least had sizable 
gardens, but are now too old to maintain a garden any more, and 
because the younger people left, they don't have extended families in 
the vicinity to help them. If not for food stamps and a local store, 
many of them would be in nursing homes (on the taxpayer's nickel) 
because they could not afford to buy grocery store food, or even to 
get to a supermarket. You hear about the elderly eating dog food 
because it's cheaper, or having to decide between buying food and 
buying medications. Those stories aren't made up--it happens all the 
time in poverty stricken places.

The topography is another element. Where I live, just on the eastern 
slope of the Blue Ridge, the land is reasonably fertile, and though 
there are rolling hills, it's not so mountainous that you can't grow 
crops or graze cattle on it. When you get out into the coalfields, 
most of the communities are located along river channels. There is 
often just barely enough room on one side of the river for the 
highway and on the other side for a single line of houses or mobile 
homes. In fact, in many cases, people have to park on the highway 
side of the river and walk across a pedestrian bridge to get to their 
houses. Steep hillsides rise up on both sides of the river, leaving 
almost no level place to grow anything, and the land is very rocky 
anyway. There is also much less sunshine, because of the high hills. 
There was never a tradition of subsistence farming here--the men 
worked in the mines, and the women--if they worked outside the home 
at all--did domestic work or other kinds of unskilled labor. Their 
food came from company-owned grocery stores. Probably many families 
had small gardens (and some still do), but those wouldn't have been 
sufficient to provide all or even most of their food. The coal towns 
were artificial environments created by the coal companies, not 
places where people settled to farm.

So to answer your question finally--yes, no doubt in some places 
people have been brought up to be dependent on the government. But 
that doesn't account for all of the poor, many of whom grew up 
fiercely independent and self-sufficient. Other factors have 
contributed to make many of them dependent now on someone or 
something. Food stamps at least let some of them stay in their homes 
and take care of themselves without having to eat dog food.

Liz in SW VA
http://life-as-a-spectator-sport.com