I’m now a West Virginia transplant so its time to explore some Appalachian food traditions and to revive many favorites from my childhood in Tennessee. The beauty of mountain food is its simplicity – basic garden produce, fruit, poultry, fish, and game artfully combined with herbs and seasonings and slowly simmered to perfection. As soon as its cool enough to need a fire you can bet there will be an iron pot full of soup, Brunswick stew or a similar concoction, by some obscure name, will be simmering on the hearth.
The following is a look at the most common foods grown for home consumption. With such an array of fresh ingredients there is no wonder our ancestors left us such a rich legacy of recipes and traditions.
Old farmers noted harvests of up to 144 bushels per acre of Indian corn in a good year, although by the 1860s the yield was much less. It was the first and main crop on a woodland farm and one could not recall a total failure since the first settlement of the state. There wasn’t even a partial failure worth mentioning in the 25 years since the farmer had tended his land.
He also grew pumpkins, beans, potatoes, sorghum, and garden vegetables, noting an average pioneer family could subsist during their first year on the land besides keeping a cow and calf, and respectable porkers. The corn fodder was sufficient for feeding such stock.
In 1860 West Virginia produced some 2,302,567 bushels of wheat which came to over six bushels per inhabitant. The wheat was supplemented with corn, rye, and buckwheat bread, “especially in the more remote and recently settled counties”.
Oats produced well in the mountains and glades where conditions of climate, were favorable. Upon those higher levels, the grain is remarkable for its fullness and weight and not disposed to lodge as in alluvial soil.
Buckwheat “thrives with little or no care in every part of the State, and is cultivated most extensively in the upper Ohio river and mountain counties”. Preston county produced one fourth of the entire state crop.
“Indeed, in the skillful hands of the local matrons, it attains the rank of a culinary luxury second to none in the Alleghany regions. Buckwheat cakes are baked and eaten almost everywhere, and as soon forgotten, but buckwheat cakes with Glade butter, mountain honey or maple syrup are imperishably linked in the memory of the traveler with the savory venison steak, or the luscious trout, all of which are commonly found together on the hospitable board of every industrious mountaineer”.
They are grown in every part of the state, but Marshall, Preston, Hampshire, Wood and Jackson take the lead in potato production for market. Most others limit production to home consumption being impractical in traveling to market. Sweet potatoes are remarkably well suited to the soil and climate.
The turnip is well suited for planting on new ground not yet ready for growing corn. The flat English or sweet white is most generally raised and earns a profit. Rutabaga or Swedish turnips are not so much grown.
Sorghum was introduced in 1857 and in less than three years was domesticated on almost every farm. The majority of the syrup was made for home consumption but sweetening food and drink was not entirely dependent on it. Maple syrup made from the Black Maple (Acer nigrum) was common but perhaps eclipsed in production by the Sugar, Rock or Hard Maple (Acer Sacharinum). Bee keeping was less important.
Surprisingly, rice culture was found in the state, some 1163 pounds produced in the counties of Boone, Wood, and Wetzel in 1860.
Cultivated garden vegetables included artichoke, asparagus, beans, beets, borecole, broccoli, Brussels Sprouts, Cabbage, Carrots, Cauliflower, Celery, Cress, Cucumbers, Eggplant, Edive, Gourds, Horse Radish, Jerusalem Artichoke, Lettuce, Love Apple, or Tomato, Mangel Wurzel, Melons of every known variety, Mustard, Okra, Oyster Plant, Onion, Parsley, Parsnip, Peas, Pepper, (red), Potato, Sweet Potato, Pumpkin, Radish, Rhubarb, Spinage [sic], Squash, and every variety of the Turnip.
Source:
The West Virginia Hand-Book and Immigrant’s Guide. By J. H. Diss Debar
Let’s look at fruits and berries in the earliest history of West Virginia next time. Thank you for joining me. Victoria Brady, thehistoricfoodie, ©
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