Participation Type
Panel
Session Title
Session 9.10 (Agriculture) Come Gather Around the Table: Documenting Appalachian Foodways
Session Abstract or Summary
This panel will discuss Appalachian Foodways and participatory research methods used to document the intersections of place, memory, and food. Through the presentation of four ethnographies, this panel will discuss how food binds us to place and can introduce the researcher to “a web of cultural meaning, symbols, values, and practices,” as foodways scholar Amy Trubek writes (The Taste of Place 2008, 1).
When we research and document place, we share meals, recipes, stories, and music, passing plates around a common table and growing food with our community’s farmers. It is an equitable and shared act. And one that informs our own sense of place and community. It is through this lense that we document Appalachian Foodways, actively participating in the traditions, new and old, that we describe. This panel will discuss our role in this conversation; where, we too are informants, community members, and critical researchers, working together to form a vibrant foodways quilt. We will speak about our own gardens, land, neighbors, and recipes and how we went about documenting this place. As we each hold connections to Appalachia, this panel will highlight those experiences; however, the methodology of our research transcends study areas. We believe that our research is accurate and good because we formed lasting/enduring relationships and opened ourselves up to our rich and layered communities. This panel will describe how four ethnographers used participatory research methods to better understand our communities by documenting the intersections of place, memory, and food.
Presentation #1 Title
Come Help on the Farm: Using Participant Observation to Better Understand First-generation Farmers in Blue Ridge Appalachia
Presentation #1 Abstract or Summary
My research concerns how first-generation Appalachian farmers become successful and find access to land. This paper will describe my research methodology how I used participant observation to better know Blue Ridge Appalachia and its sustainable agriculture community; which, I am a member. When I was younger my parents held a large summer garden, a place of running through corn stalks, towering sunflowers, and imaginative possibilities. It was a place very much connected to, yet divorced from the fields of staked tobacco that I would pass on my way to my grandmother’s home place in the North Carolina mountains. Both my childhood garden and the farm of my grandmother’s youth inform my current research about first-generation Blue Ridge Appalachian farmers. As I plant vegetables on my family’s reclaimed farmland or walk the aisles of the local feed store, I seek “to purchase rurality itself,” as Ann Kingslover writes. I seek to know and become a part of this place. In doing so, I also come to better know the sustainable agriculture community that I document through my research. This process, the gardening and the research, envelopes my desire to recapture my food memory, tasting something akin to what my grandmother did when she ate from that same soil. When I speak with first-generation Appalachian farmers about why they too want to return to the land, they speak of similar desires. They too wish to form a place that has meaning and connections to the earth.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #1
David Walker is currently pursuing an M.A. in Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University with a Sustainable Development concentration and a certificate in Geographic Information Science. His thesis and research concerns first-generation Blue Ridge Appalachian farmers and the development of regenerative food systems.
Presentation #2 Title
Bee Healthy and Garden
Presentation #2 Abstract or Summary
As Appalachian families were often poor in monetary resources, and subsistence farming was a way for Appalachian farmers to help support their families with food and monies. Industrialization, urban growth, and loss of rural farm land halted this practice for Appalachian families but subsistence farming is alive on the land I have access to in Ashe County, North Carolina.
There is a new definition for subsistence farming in Appalachia today and there are many families practicing it. Residents of the region want new sources for healthier agriculture products. Small gardens, community supported agricultural and heritage programs allow people to experience cultural and social activities of the past in Appalachia.
I am not an Appalachian by birth but I am an Appalachian by blood and belief. I live and garden on land that my ancestors labored to provide subsistence for their families. My legacy to the future will be my endeavors with past memories of my grandfather and his farm.
Five honeybee hives co-exist side by side, two hives originating from the mountains and three hives from the foothills of North Carolina. I keep records of activities to see if there are differences in the way the bees function around my farm. In the past, I have examined information from beekeepers living near me and I want to see if the origins of a honeybee determine environmental success or failure. This was a successful season for my growing endeavors and my bees are strong and settling down for seasonal changes.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #2
Teri Goodman is currently pursuing an M.A. in Appalachian Studies at Appalachian State University with a Culture concentration.
Presentation #3 Title
Articulating others, articulating self: A reflection on deeply participatory research in North Carolina’s High Country
Presentation #3 Abstract or Summary
New reflexive and critical approaches to research are increasingly calling on scholars to position themselves within the work they produce, acknowledging the ways their research was informed and impacted by embodied positions and to reflect on and disclose personal research motivations, experiences and impacts. In this paper I briefly discuss the need for reflexivity, positionality and multivocality in research before reflecting on my own experiences conducting ethnographic research in North Carolina’s High Country, having situated my work here because of my deep love for and connection to this place. A cultural geographer, I am constantly reflecting on ideas of place and sense of place, and my passion for local food systems has led me to their intersections. As I spent the summer of 2014 seeking to better understand farmer and visitor motivations, experiences and impacts related to participation in the High Country Farm Tour, I grew to better understand my own connection by listening to the articulations of others, being in beautiful places, participating in foodways and glimpsing experiences through observation and photographs while all the while forming my own. I conclude by juxtaposing insights gained through other articulations of the connections between food, agriculture and place with my own.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #3
Laura Johnson is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at Michigan State University where she studies issues of social and environmental justice, sustainable agro-food systems and relational geographies. Originally from North Carolina, her childhood in Charlotte was happily dotted with frequent trips to the High Country, a place loved deeply by her mother.
Presentation #4 Title
Boilin’ Sorghum Down: Using Photography to Document and Connect to Community and Tradition Found in Appalachian Agricultural Practices
Presentation #4 Abstract or Summary
For 36 years the community of Todd, NC has gathered at Cecil and Julie Gurganus’s to harvest and boil sorghum for molasses. By always having a camera with me, I am able to not just document an Appalachian agricultural practice, but also chronicle a community passing on its traditions, using agriculture as grounds from which to gather and share stories, recipes, and music.
This paper will discuss how when documenting the molasses boil, my status is not solely “the photographer” I am also a member of the community with a vested interest in the preservation of the culture. Photographer William Gedney writes in a diary entry from Kentucky in 1974, “One must always take photographs with the greatest respect for the subject and for oneself.” When photographing subjects in my community, it is my kinship with my subject that engenders my respect and begets my devotion to their accurate representation. I do not approach the molasses boil as just an event to photograph, but as a community endeavour in which I participate. I prefer to have my camera on me while I work alongside others to cut and strip the cane or sift the boiler, which facilitates a natural and honest documentation of the process. Associating the camera with the photographer and the photographer with the community allows the people I photograph to become accustomed to the camera and the intentions of the photographer. Intentions known, I am able to move more seamlessly between participating community member and observing documenter.
At-A-Glance Bio- Presenter #4
Louisa Murrey is a documentary photographer from western North Carolina and a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Asheville, where she received her Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Distinction in Studio Art: Photography.
Come Help on the Farm: Using Participant Observation to Better Understand First-generation Farmers in Blue Ridge Appalachia
My research concerns how first-generation Appalachian farmers become successful and find access to land. This paper will describe my research methodology how I used participant observation to better know Blue Ridge Appalachia and its sustainable agriculture community; which, I am a member. When I was younger my parents held a large summer garden, a place of running through corn stalks, towering sunflowers, and imaginative possibilities. It was a place very much connected to, yet divorced from the fields of staked tobacco that I would pass on my way to my grandmother’s home place in the North Carolina mountains. Both my childhood garden and the farm of my grandmother’s youth inform my current research about first-generation Blue Ridge Appalachian farmers. As I plant vegetables on my family’s reclaimed farmland or walk the aisles of the local feed store, I seek “to purchase rurality itself,” as Ann Kingslover writes. I seek to know and become a part of this place. In doing so, I also come to better know the sustainable agriculture community that I document through my research. This process, the gardening and the research, envelopes my desire to recapture my food memory, tasting something akin to what my grandmother did when she ate from that same soil. When I speak with first-generation Appalachian farmers about why they too want to return to the land, they speak of similar desires. They too wish to form a place that has meaning and connections to the earth.
