The Seed and the Story: The Familiar is Fascinating.

Lillie Burdine with her knitting at the Boone County Fair, photo by her granddaughter, student Lacey Vanderpool.

The school semester is over and last week my students turned in their final projects and presentations for their community-based research. It was a short class, with little time to create an in depth research project. But even in this short period of time they were able to document some of the oral histories and folkways of which they were already aware—things like family traditions, community festivals, and oral histories. Some of them introduced me to things about this region I knew little or nothing about. Others addressed topics with which I was familiar, but opened my eyes to new layers, helping me understand more about these living traditions. So I thought I’d share a few of them here.

One student brought in a detailed photo album of his family’s four generations of quilting. His accompanying paper addressed how the craft allowed his family to bond, share family stories, and pass down precious heirlooms. Another student explored the folklife of Plainview, touching on the important, and often under-discussed, topic of school consolidation and the drastic changes it can bring to a community. Another student studied Culture Day at his home church in Mississippi, a tradition begun during the civil rights movement to honor African American culture in the community. Another student interviewed his family about the three generations of woodworking, noting that everyone in the family was “smart with their hands.”

And then there were the students who turned in papers about family foodways, documenting how to make generations-old banana pudding or chicken and dumplings. That might not sound like an important topic on the surface, but by documenting these tradition and making the recipes along side their family members, they began to learn more about their family’s history, stories of life during the Depression, and how recipes can help people connect with those that have long since passed from the earth.

Still others touched on college-based traditions like the culture of ATU football and basketball, highlighting the role these traditions can play in bringing teams together. And another student, who had recently begun knitting, spoke with her grandmother about how she learned to knit, discovering that when access to yarn was difficult, her grandmother would collect clumps of wool caught in the barbed wire, spinning it to make her own (see photo of her grandmother above).

The thing about folklife is that initially it can seem so obvious, so simple. What could anyone possibly learn from such everyday stuff, people often wonder. Or why do any of these old ways even matter, younger people sometimes ask. But scratch the surface of your family’s favorite recipe, or the history of, say, your grandmother’s chicken house and you’ll quickly find countless layers of stories and meaning, an intricate web that binds us together through family, community, landscape, and history. The stories we discover are sometimes heart-warming and sometimes unsettling. We learn about birth and death, success and terrible hardship, human kindness and human prejudice. Whatever we find, there is no doubt that exploring such everyday things sheds new light on who we are and can help us think about who we want to be. After all, as I rediscovered through reading these class projects, a study of one family history can illuminate everything from economics to ethnicity. A person’s garden can open up a door to discussing Native American ancestry. A study of a family farm can lead to information about the building of Arkansas Nuclear One.

In closing, since we’re still in the month of May I’d like to mention that for a few years now I’ve been documenting the tradition of Decoration Days in the area. If you or your family takes part in this tradition, I’d love to hear about it, see your photos, and learn more!

The Seed and the Story: Channeling the Tradition of Gleaning

Gleaned potatoes. Photo from the Society of Saint Andrew.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

As the days grow longer and the afternoons warmer, Arkansas’s agricultural fields are beginning to grow and produce food for our tables.  This week’s column focuses on the ages-old tradition of crop gleaning and the role it can play in today’s society.

First, some background information.  A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to visit with Representative Kathy Webb, the recently named director of Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance.  With a 27.6% poverty rate throughout the state, Arkansas ranks six points above the national average.  According to a recent USDA survey, Arkansas is third in the nation for instances of food insecurity, meaning that a significant number of Arkansans, especially vulnerable populations like children and the elderly, are unsure where their next meal will come from. Access to fresh fruits and vegetables are especially difficult, as these tend to be some of the most expensive items in the grocery store.  In some areas, it can be hard to find fresh food stocked in the stores whatsoever.  The Hunger Alliance addresses the multiple layers of poverty-based hunger through several channels, including the ancient tradition gleaning.

Gleaning refers to act of collecting any leftover crops from the fields after it has been commercially harvested or collecting crops from fields where it is no longer economically profitable to harvest, due to factors such as low market prices. In some studies it is estimated that around 40% of the crops are wasted after a commercial harvest, withering in the field.  Through the process of gleaning, these fresh foods are gathered and then transported via food banks and distributed to the hungry, providing people with nutrient-rich food and preventing the needless waste of crops rotting on the vine.

The concept dates back thousands of years, with mention of this practice documented extensively in both the Bible and the Quran.  Typically gleaning is referred to as leaving the edges of the field un-harvested for the needy, travelers, and widows. Here’s an oft-quoted verse from Leviticus 23: 22 regarding the practice in Jewish society: “When you reap the harvest of your land, do not reap to the very edges of your field or gather the gleanings of your harvest.  Leave them for the poor and the alien.”  Drawing from its Biblical roots, this practice was also common in Europe throughout the 18^th and 19^th century and provided countless peasants with food to sustain their families.

Here in Arkansas, since the summer of 2008, the Arkansas Hunger Alliance has worked in partnership with the Society of Saint Andrew, a national non profit whose mission is to provide hunger relief and save excesses fresh produce to donate to critical feeding agencies.  To make gleaning effective, the agency relies on volunteers—everyday people, church groups, and organizations who are willing to denote their time to gather the crops for distribution.  In recent years they’ve also partnered with the Department of Corrections, which has increased the gleaning yields exponentially.  The year before they began working with the Department of Correction they gleaned 289,000 pounds of food, says Michelle Shope of the Arkansas Hunger Alliance.  The following year, with the help of the Corrections Maintenance Crew, 800,000 pounds were gathered.   With the help of both volunteers and the Department of Corrections, they’ve gathered 1.9 million pounds of food in the past four years. Their goal is to reach six million pounds a year, helping to eradicate childhood hunger.

If you or your church or community group is interested in taking part in this ancient tradition of gleaning, you can contact Michelle Shope at 501-399-9999 or mshope@arhungeralliance.org.  If you’re a farmer and want to have your field gleaned, contact the Society of Saint Andrew at 1-800-333-4597 or visit them online at www.endhunger.org.

Do you take part in the tradition of gleaning?  What are some historic examples of this practice here in the river valley?  I’d love to hear about them.

The Seed and the Story: Visiting Decoration Days: A Pilgrimage to Arkansas from California

Photo from Karen Alexander-Stoeckel of her Grandma, Ocie Hance-Alexander (in blue dress) with her brothers and sisters at the gravesites of their parents, Greeny and Dora Hance. Needmore Cemetery, Arkansas.

Beginning this weekend people throughout the area will engage in the decades old tradition of Decoration Days, placing flowers on the graves of their loved ones and transforming the cemeteries into vibrant landscapes of color.  The very first column, which ran in May of last year, was about this tradition and how it can connect families and communities across generations, reminding us that, as long as we keep their stories alive, the dead are always with us.

I asked others to share their stories and a woman here in Arkansas mailed the column to her niece, Karen Alexander-Stoeckel in Cambira, California.  This past week Karen contacted me by email to share her beautiful story, and she said I could share it with you all.

Her father Virgil “Odell” Alexander was born in Casa in 1929 to Robert Alexander and Ocie Hance-Alexander, and as a child he “loved to hunt in the hills with his coonhounds and bring wildlife home to tame as pets.”  At the age of five, he picked cotton to supplement the family’s income, later working in a lumber mill near Petit Jean. In 1953 he moved to California where he began work in the dairy business. He and his wife had five sons and one daughter, Karen.   Here is how she describes her relationship to Decoration Days:

My brothers and I were born and raised in California and Arkansas seemed like a distant planet to us.  The stories my daddy shared with us were rich with lessons he had learned and the love of his Hance and Alexander family.  As children, we only made a few trips back east to visit our grandparents because Daddy’s work schedule was so demanding.  I remember the well on the back porch of Grandma’s house and how cold and sweet the water was.  The fireflies in her front yard were a sight I’ve never seen anywhere else. 

The letters from home were precious to my daddy.  He prized the photos that his mama would send every year that were taken on Decoration Day at the Needmore Cemetery.  Photos of relatives in their Sunday best and women wearing corsages , standing or sitting near grave sites that were splendid with flowers.  As a child I did not understand my daddy’s fondness for these pictures of grave sites and was too young to appreciate the culture they derived from.

Grandma and Grandpa are gone now and so are the letters and photos from home on Decoration Day.  The relatives who gathered in those old pictures are also gone or soon will be and the love of my life, my daddy, passed away last October.  My brothers and I are having a memorial service for him here in California and then I will be bringing his ashes home to Arkansas where he requested they be laid to rest.

When I come to Arkansas, I will be attending my very first Decoration Day at Needmore Cemetery and words cannot express how emotional I feel about being near so many of my family laid to rest there.  Because of the oral history my daddy passed down to his children, I will not merely be reading names on headstones but remembering that my great-great grandfather, John Henry Alexander was remembered as being able to “sit a good horse” and walked every day down to the general store with the aid of his cane to enjoy talking, whittling, chewing tobacco and in general passing the time of day.  I have gathered bouquets of Lavender from my back yard and I have them drying to take with me to Needmore Cemetery to be lain in honor and respect to all those who lived before and are now rejoicing with my daddy.

I’m bringing my camera too.  Like my dear grandmother of years past, I intend to share and cherish these photos with my family in California. My daddy’s legacy of home and family lives on through my nine year old granddaughter who recently stated that if given any place in the world to visit, she chose Arkansas where my Papa is buried.

She signed the email, “Looking forward to visiting your wonderful state and celebrating Decoration Day soon.” What’s your Decoration Day story?  What does the tradition mean to you?  I’d love to hear from you, see your photos, and share your stories with readers.  And I am so honored Karen allowed me share her beautiful story here.

The Seed and the Story: Paths of Tradition Bearing

Delegates from the Kentucky Remembers! camps. 2007. Photo by author.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

I recently mentioned the online folklife and oral history class I’ve been teaching and that I’m a big believer that learning should always be multi-directional. Teachers come to class with knowledge and years of study, but engaged students come with open minds, questions, and curiosity, a form of wisdom that is truly under-recognized in our society. This willingness to ask questions and to seek out a greater understanding not only helps students think more deeply about the world around them, but it also encourages the teacher to view their work in new ways. Everyone learns together.

I first noticed this when working with the Kentucky Commission on Human Rights back in 2007. I was the staff oral historian for the Kentucky Remembers! Camps where I helped students prepare to interview community members about the civil rights movement in Kentucky. Our goal was to document some of the lesser-known figures in the movement, the every day people who fought, and are still fighting, for equality. I was there to helps the student do research, conduct interviews, and formulate in-depth questions. I soon discovered, however, that the students were teaching me. Their willingness to be inquisitive, their desire to understand more about their communities, and their willingness to connect the stories of the past with the realities of today helped me to rethink my role as a teacher. And at the end of the camps when I sat down and listened to their interviews with community elders, I began to realize that there’s nothing quite as powerful as the young and the old speaking together.

This is all to say, I’m deeply appreciative of what my students bring to the table. So I want to share one example from my current class. The students have been reading texts and watching videos about various cultural traditions including Laotian weaving, African American gospel, and Ozark Balladry. I’ve asked them to think about the concept of tradition bearers, of being someone in their community who carries traditions from one generation to the next. In the film A Singing Stream, a film by Tom Davenport about African American gospel singing traditions in a North Carolina family, the matriarch of the family, Mrs. Landis, isn’t one of the main singers. But she sees to it that her sons learn to sing, providing them encouragement, surrounding them with singers, and giving them time and space to soak it all in. As one of my students, Jeffrey noted, “It’s her tradition to maintain the tradition.”

His phrase stuck with me. So often people tell me they have nothing to pass down. They can’t cook; they don’t garden; they can’t sew. They’re not tradition bearers, they conclude. Of course, that’s never true. We all have skills worth passing down. That aside, the important point here is that Mrs. Landis didn’t have to be a singer to be a tradition bearer. She opened up her home and assured her sons access to the tradition. We may not all be excellent quilters or know how to speak the language of our foremothers and fathers. But that doesn’t mean we can’t support those who do, partially by making sure the young people in our society gain exposure. The tradition bearers can only carry it on if we help them and the young people won’t know if we don’t tell them. That’s something we can all do.

Please don’t forget about the garden book we’re working on! More information here and here. 

The Seed and the Story: ARVAC and VISTA, Folk arts and the War on Poverty in Arkansas.

Click on the photo to connect to ordering info via Amazon.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

Alongside researching the history of Chickalah and Harkey’s Valley, I’ve been reading In Service to America: A History of Vista in Arkansas 1965-1985.  Written by Marvin Schwartz, this 1988 publication traces the VISTA organization throughout the state.   I’ve been particularly interested in the work of this organization in central Arkansas, including the creation of a craft co-op, which served both Yell and Pope Counties.

Created in 1965, VISTA was an outgrowth of President Johnson’s War on Poverty and Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.  This national legislation sought to provide lasting and locally based solutions to struggling communities.  Operating much like a domestic version of the Peace Corp, volunteers in the VISTA program received a subsistence wage and lived in economically poor areas where they worked in partnership with community members to generate economic initiatives and help residents gain access to health care and adequate food.  VISTA volunteers, many of them college age, worked to help create grassroots programs which focused on local needs, thus making each VISTA program unique to its region.

In 1960 approximately 40% of the population in the river valley was living below the poverty line.  Illiteracy, inadequate housing, and unemployment were rampant.  One of the first VISTA programs in the nation was the Yell County Economic Opportunity Program, a pilot recipient of an OEA grant.  The organization was soon absorbed into its larger sister organization, ARVAC (Arkansas River Valley Area Council), which hosted numerous national and local volunteers.   ARVAC formed programs such as the Housing Development Corporation, an organization utilizing the rural tradition of barn raising to help low income families secure homes, and ARVAC Rural Folkcrafts, a network which provided a market for rural quilters, white oak basket makers, seamstresses, and other artisans, allowing them to sell their traditional wares and earn a living for their families. Another organization, Counseling Associates (formerly known as ARVAC Community Mental Health Program), began under the ARVAC VISTA program and operates independently today.

In its early days VISTA brought in volunteers from around the nation, but in later years became more focused on long-term, locally based volunteers, which helped the programs thrive.   From the beginning, the goal of VISTA programs was to become self-sufficient. ARVAC stuck around and quickly became a model of successful VISTA organizing.   ARVAC’s craft co-op, which began in 1975, continued throughout the 1980s, as did housing initiative, which later became known as Universal, INC.

Schwartz’s book features interviews with a few river valley VISTA workers, including the late Myrtle Cress who worked in Ola and Betty Burnett who organized a housing co-op in Dardanelle.  It also highlights the work of Lou Vitale who was instrumental in founding the crafts co-op. I’d love to learn more about the creation of these initiatives, how people felt about the work, the craftspeople who sold at the co-op, and the use of the barn raising tradition in area housing initiatives.   Were you affiliated with VISTA?  Did you or someone in your family sell crafts at the co-op?  Perhaps your house was built utilizing the barn raising tradition?  I’d love to hear more.   An extra special thanks to Mike Luster of the Arkansas Folklife Program for introducing me to this book.

Also please don’t forget we’re still working on compiling stories of plants and seeds for our book on stories and gardening in the area.  We’d love to include your story!  To learn more visit us here.  To read a little bit about the backstory of the garden book read this column.

The Seed and the Story for April 4: Tatum, Wild Foods, and Medicine in Our Backyards

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

Last week Billy Joe Tatum of Melbourne, Arkansas, a master of Ozark wild foods, passed away at the age of eighty. She researched and wrote extensively about wild foods, appeared on national television programs like the Tonight Show, and cooked for famous artists and politicians at her home she referred to as “Wildflower.”  Tatum first began learning about wild foods from members of the Izard County community where her husband took a job as a country doctor. In the rural community surrounding Melbourne, the tradition of foraging for edible and medicinal plants was alive and well. Over the years she began to learn from her husband’s patients how to locate and use these healing resources and incorporate them into creative dishes she concocted such as “Dandelion Bud Omelets” “Watercress Soup,” or “Apple Spearmint Salad.”  Much of this information can be found in her book, Wild Foods Field Guide and Cookbook:  An Illustrated Guide to 70 Wild Plants and Over 350 Irresistible Ways to Eat Them.

A few weekends ago I attended the first in a series of events entitled “Wild Plant Walk and Edible Foraging Series.” Led by members of Elevate Arkansas, an urban wellness center located in Little Rock, the walk took place in Allsop Park where we foraged for abundant springtime plants such as dandelion, clover, plantain grass, henbit, and greenbrier.  Elevate director Jeff Dempsey carried Tatum’s book along with us throughout the walk, turning to it several times and mentioning it as the best source for identifying and eating wild plants in Arkansas.  Thanks to Tatum’s diligent research, and her time spent learning from elders of the rural community, these traditions are alive and applicable, even in the big city.

Tatum traveled the world in search of wild plants, and in interviews and articles she frequently mentioned that you don’t have to hike deep into the woods to find an abundance of edible options.  Dandelion, for example, may be considered a weed, but they’re loaded with nutrients, have healing properties that lend to their reputation as a cure-all, and, better yet, they’re surprisingly tasty.  You can use them to make tea, mix the greens into a salad, or throw a bunch of the stems into some batter and fry up a tasty fritter.  On our walk we also sampled blooms from a redbud tree, which are in bloom throughout the state.  The buds are tasty on their own, but some people like to make them into a sweet jelly, which solidifies into the most beautiful deep shade of red.  My favorite plant we sampled that day was wood sorrel, a wild version of the plant I mentioned in last week’s column. This wild version is wonderfully tart, tastes much like a raspberry, and is absolutely loaded with vitamin C.

Foraging for wild plants is a learned skill, and you must be sure you’re correctly identifying the plant before you eat it.  It’s a tradition well-worth learning, and I’m thankful the kind folks at Elevate Arkansas are bringing this skill to an urban area.  We owe much gratitude to the late Billy Joe Tatum for her pioneering work and for reminding us that sometimes the best medicine is growing in our own backyard.   Do you forage for wild foods either in the woods or in your neighborhood?  Have you ever heard your elders tell of healing plants or remember using them as a child?  I’d love to hear about it.  To see images from the Wild Plant Walk and to hear the radio piece go here.

The next walk will be taking place this coming Saturday, April 7.  Visit Elevate Arkansas for information.

More readings:

Here is a wonderful post about Tatum’s life by one of her friends, the blogger at Jim Long’s Garden.  

The Seed and the Story Column: Garden Stories Book and McElroy House.

Wood sorrel from my grandmother's house.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading.

As the days grow (unseasonably) warmer, the wood sorrel in my front yard is beginning to bloom.  Often called false shamrocks, wood sorrel comes in hundreds of varieties and is sometimes considered a weed.  Sometimes referred to as Oxalis, the little pink or yellow flowers shoot up from the three-leaf clover-like base of the plant.  In the variety I have, the plants grow in fat, round clumps.  My plant comes from a cutting of a plant that once grew along the walkway leading to my grandparent’s house on Second Street in downtown Dardanelle.  After they died my mother dug up some of the roots and planted them in her yard.  After she died I dug some up and planted them in mine.  When I moved to Little Rock last year, I dug some up again and took them with us to our new home where they now grow along our walkway leading up to the red front porch.  Come to find out, as one of my cousins informed me this week, the plant originally grew in my great grandmother’s yard, long before I was ever born. And who knows.  Maybe she dug it up from her own mother’s yard in Cardon Bottoms. We invest so much memory and meaning in our plants.

For a few years now I’ve become increasingly interested in the way plants carry our stories, and I’m especially interested in how gardens play a role in this part of Arkansas.  Seeds passed down through families often bare the name of family members or geographical locations.  Recent immigrants bring with them seeds from home, their gardens a marriage between a former home and a new one.  And if you take a walk though just about any flower garden in the area, the gardener will likely tell you stories of friends or relatives who once gave them a cutting of the lilac bush or the four o’clocks which now cover their yard.   Last year I wrote a piece about my grandmother’s love for irises and soon discovered just how many other people had similar connections to the plant, family members treasuring both the bulbs and stories passed down through the years.  You can learn a lot about people, I’ve discovered, by asking them about their plants.

Along with the help of a few other people, I’m working toward the creation of the McElroy House: Center for Folklife, Oral History and Community Action, an intergenerational and inter-cultural organization working to document and discuss folklife and oral history in our region. Gardening is a tradition that’s alive and well in our area and it transcends racial, geographic, even linguistic, boundaries.  Our first project for the Center is putting together a publication about the stories behind plants and gardens in the river valley and Yell County areas.  Gardening knowledge is instrumental as is seed saving, and thankfully other groups and publications are filling this need.  What we hope to do with this project is focus on the stories behind the plants and the relationship between the gardener and their gardens. So, do you have a plant or plants that carry special meaning, perhaps a link to past generations?  If you’re new to the area, have you brought seeds or cuttings with you from your home state or home country?  Why are these plants important to you and what meaning does the garden hold for you? After all, gardening can be hard and is a labor of love. We’d like to hear why you love it and what brings you back to it year after year. It doesn’t matter if you’re a seasoned gardener or someone’s whose just started.  It’s your stories we want to hear.   Please help us spread the word.  If you know of a gardener who you think should be included in this book, please let us know.

The Seed and the Story: Learning From Students and Folkstreams films

The Landis family. From the film, A Singing Stream. Image from Davenport Films.

The Seed and the Story is a weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!  The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  Follow us on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading!

I’ve had two exiting developments recently. I recently found out this column will be running every week rather than every other week! Thanks so much for your support.  I’m looking forward to more opportunities to learn from readers about this area’s history and its present day, and I’ll be working toward making this column more interactive, featuring more voices from our diverse and culturally rich community.

Secondly, this past week I began teaching an online class at Arkansas Tech entitled “Folklife and Oral History.”  I’m thoroughly impressed with my students and their level of engagement.  I’m a firm believer that the best part of teaching isn’t sharing your own knowledge but rather learning from the students themselves.  Their questions require me to think more deeply about the readings, and their observations are opening my eyes to new ways of conceptualizing the importance of traditions, music, and the role of tradition bearers (a phrase folklorists use for people who carry on traditions) in a community.  Plus, they’re teaching me about their own family and community traditions, which I find endlessly fascinating.

This past week I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to teach a subject like folklife and oral history—a subject that dwells heavily on the past and its role in the present day—in such a modern, online format. I’ll be the first to say that I deeply appreciate the lines of communication the Internet provides.  It can be a tool for greater democracy and a way to reestablish connections lost over the miles or years.  Yet I feel strongly that younger generations could use more exposure to a life a bit more unplugged.  Funny how online resources can actually introduce students to traditions that are decades, even centuries, old. So last week I had the students watch a few films via Folkstreams, an Internet site housing hundreds of folklife films.

To give them an introduction to traditional singing styles I chose two films: A Singing Stream: A Black Family Chronicle produced by Tom Davenport and Alemda Riddle:  Let’s Talk About Singing produced by George West. The first film explores traditional African American gospel music as it is passed down in the Landis family from rural North Carolina.  The film highlights how music plays a key role in the family’s fight for civil rights and provides an example of how a study of traditional music opens a window into family, political, and community histories.  This musical link to the past provides a source of strength to fight for a more just future.

The second film profiles Ozark ballad singer Alemda Riddle, a woman who lived her entire life near Greers Ferry, Arkansas.  The well-known ballad Hunter, John Quincy Wolfe, met her in 1952, and began recording her songs, some which dated back to the 16^th century.  Riddle became a hero of the folk revival and recorded and traveled extensively.  The songs she was singing may have been hundreds of years old, but her role as a widow traveling the country made her quite a radical figure in her day and age.

Many of the students noted how this traditional music, centuries old, can provide a source of strength for the present day and how the music was a tie linking family members across generations and miles. As I watched the two films together, I began to notice how each individual, in their own unique way, held on to the past with one hand while reaching out for the future with the other. And ultimately that’s what a healthy tradition is about: a link to the past that builds a bridge to a better future.  You can watch these, and countless other folklife films, at www.folkstreams.net.  I love hearing stories and traditions from readers.   Or send me a letter with your stories.  I especially love those.

The Seed and the Story for March 7: Sulphur Springs

Old hotel. Date unknown. From the Sulphur Springs Cemetery Association, Yell County, Arkansas.

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  

You can follow the Boiled Down Juice on Facebook and Twitter.  If you enjoy our posts, please tell a friend. And thanks for reading!

Most Arkansans are familiar with the historic healing waters of Hot Springs in Garland County and the former resorts of Eureka Springs in the Carroll County Ozarks.  In the mid to late 1800s Yell County, Arkansas was once home to its own resort community.  Located about ten miles southwest of Dardanelle near the rural communities of Chickalah and Harkey’s Valley, Sulphur Springs was the site of a two-story hotel and free flowing medicinal springs that attracted folks from as far away as Boston and California.

According to the 1997 book Yell County Heritage published by the Yell County Historical and Genealogical Association, the first hotel was burned by “bushwhackers” during the Civil War.  A new hotel was built in 1867 and completed in 1872. At one point the building was owned by a New York-based company, and in 1878 the thirty-six room structure was filled to capacity, populated by victims of the yellow fever epidemic from Memphis.  By that time the town had grown considerably and boasted multiple streets and several houses.  The hotel itself encompassed an entire block.  Photos of the large wood structure show several white women, and at least one young girl, sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch.

By 1901 the structure and the springs were owned by Judge John F. Choate, a Yell County Clerk who raised a family in the area. According to reports, he gave the springs over to the public, an effort to spread the wealth of the healing waters, which before were reserved only for visitors with great wealth.  By 1926 fire claimed the hotel once again and the structure was never rebuilt.  According to written reports, both members of the Harkey and Tucker families worked at the hotel in the early 1900s, but very few oral histories of the town have been recorded.  Chickalah native Bud Rector, born in 1914, remembers the hotel, but says that as a young boy he never had occasion to venture down into the town itself, which was a considerable distance from Harkey’s Valley when your only mode of transpiration was walking.  He does, however, remember the strong smell of sulphur, as do many others who were raised in the area long after the hotel burned.

As I learn more about the community, several questions come to mind that I suspect many of you could answer.  How and when were the springs discovered and how many locals were able to access their supposed healing powers? What information is out there to help flesh out our understanding of what drew people to the location?  Is there anyone still living who worked at, or visited, the hotel and the spring?  Perhaps you were a child when the hotel was around and remember growing up in the vicinity.

And what about those outside the community?  Surely in an attic somewhere in Boston, Chicago, or New Orleans there must be a dusty shoebox and inside a postcard from a deceased relative who attempted to find healing in a rural Arkansas community so far from home.  I’d love to hear your stories.  I look forward to learning more.

The Seed and the Story: CAAH and Arkansas Seed Swaps

2011 Russellville Seed Swap. Photo by author

The Seed and the Story is a bi-weekly column exploring folklife, sustainability, oral history, human rights,and community in Yell County, Arkansas.   The column is published in the Post Dispatch and is syndicated in the Courier.  Please remember to support your local paper and independent media!

The Seed and the Story column is just of many features you can find on the Boiled Down Juice.  

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Beginning earlier this month the organization CAAH (Conserving Arkansas’ Agricultural Heritage) began their yearly series of Seed Swaps across the state.  With the motto “One for the cutworm, one for the crow, one to share and one to grow,” the organization seeks to preserve both the agricultural folkways of Arkansas and the seeds themselves, many of which have been in families for generations.

They operate a Seed Bank on campus at the University of Central Arkansas, studying and preserving the genetic diversity of regional seeds and host twelve statewide swaps, providing a space where community members can trade heirloom seeds and gardening knowledge, sharing the wealth with both fellow community members and the CAAH organization.

I’ve had the pleasure of meeting project leader Dr. Brian Campbell and hear him speak about this project and his other work, and I attended the Russellville Swap last year.  Regardless if you’re a master gardener with decades of experience or a person who’s never put a thing in the ground but posses an interest in learning more about growing your own food, CAAH is an excellent resource.

They seek to raise awareness about the problems with crop monoculture, wherein regional heirloom seeds are replaced by hybrids, the seeds patented and owned by major corporations.  As growers shift to these seeds, the regional ones die out, taking with them genetic diversity, regional traditions and a hardiness to local conditions. Just take the example of tomatoes.  There are only few varieties sold in grocery stores but literally hundreds of different heirloom tomatoes you can grow at home, ranging from pink to green to yellow and each with their own unique taste.  Heirloom gardening opens up a whole new world of eating.

Last year when I attended the swap in Russellville there were several people who brought seeds to give away and an even larger group of folks who just wanted to meet other gardeners in the area, many of whom were starting their first plots.  I came home with some okra seed, daffodil bulbs, a hummingbird vine, and French melon seeds, all of which have done well. If you have seeds passed down in your community, donating some to CAAH is an excellent way to make sure they never die out.  But don’t feel like you have to have seeds to swap to attend the event. It’s for everyone, gardener or not.

The event in Russellville will take place on the 25^th of this month at All Saints Episcopal Church from 10:00-1:00.  If you miss the Russellville event, you can make it to the Conway swap on Sunday the 26th 1:30-3:00 at the Faulkner County Library.   You can check out the full list of swaps below.

You can read more about CAAH and learn what’s in their Seed Bank here: www.arkansasagro.wordpress.com.  If you want to read more about last year’s swap and see a few more photos, go here. If you have seeds that have been passed down to you, I’d really love to hear about them!  I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait for spring.  What are you going to be growing?