following the sun

Fausett Sunflower Farm, just over the mountain from our house!

keeping it simple

Remember when the apple house was just a roadside stop on the way to somewhere else? 

With the goal of catering to tourists, some of the local apple houses have gotten on the bandwagon, they are now a Destination. The ads promise a whole day of family fun - pick your own apples, petting farm, bakery, zip lines, apple cannons, hay rides, pig races, cow milking, clogging, live band… the list goes on and on, similar to the line of traffic on our local highway.

In addition to things to do, there are lots of things to eat, you know you have to keep the folks fed so they will stay longer. Of course the usual apples and cider, but you can also get all sorts of things like BBQ, chicken-on-a stick, deep fried oreos, ice cream. The apple houses compete for business, one even boasts '11 flavors of fried pies'.

Those places are fun for the city folks and a good way for the local farmers to make a living, good for them! But we steer clear of the touristy areas, and keep going to our favorite apple house now for over 40 years, since we have lived here in Cartecay, Georgia.

Hudson's Apple House is an old time apple house, literally on the side of the road. White clapboard siding, tin roof, concrete floors, high rafters, cool in the summer when the breezes blow through all the open doors. They have apples. Bags and bags of apples. All kinds and colors and flavors. In baskets, bushel, peck, half peck.

Sometimes they will import some cider and fried pies to sell. Sometimes Ms. Ruth makes up a batch of dried apples.

They used to make their own cider, like all the local apple houses did, back in the day before the government got involved. Nowadays it is not safe to drink homemade apple cider, it has to be 'processed'. It never hurt us, kind of like all that raw cookie dough we used to eat and when we used to lick the beaters after making a cake… but back to the cider.

The old cider machine is no longer there. Our first neighbor, Robert Mealer, worked at the apple house during the season, or maybe he was just there selling his vegetables, I can't remember. One time he showed us the cider press, explained how it worked. Apples that were blemished and not good enough to sell (or those picked up off the ground) would make some mighty good cider.

There is an empty rocking chair where Mr. Reece sat for his last few years, after many years of working in the apple orchard and on the farm. Now he is watching over the family business and resting up in farmer heaven. Ms. Ruth is still behind the counter at the cash register, she always asks about the kids and where is Buddy working and tells us about all of her family.

Keeping it simple at Hudsons, if you are in the market for some locally grown apples without all the hype, stop in and visit. You'll be glad you did. It is still a roadside apple house and they sell apples and that is enough.

wedding planning

Twelve Stone Farm, the site of an upcoming family wedding, the view is awesome as usual.

The reception hall is full of hay... for now

The chapel is unique, a focal point atop the hill.

A new bath house is in the works and will be ready in time... hopefully!

The tasting at the caterers went great - look on Lisa's face = OMG this is awesome :) 

fried chicken, mac and cheese, veggies, and my new favorite - cornbread salad!

This was a fun outing, two grown ladies getting married, 

one excited about the big wedding, one not so...

Love the stories, first meeting with wedding coordinator: What are your colors? 

Blank look - we have to have colors?

What are you wearing? I don't know yet but definitely a bow-tie, 

here let me show you a picture on Pinterest. 

But I was going to wear a bow tie! Maybe one of us can wear a bow-tie and the other wear suspenders. 

Oooh maybe a vest, I like vests, like Ellen wears. 

Yes, I can see you as an Ellen, but you - let's see, maybe a Diane Keaton look?

What about bouquets? 

Do we have to have bouquets? 

Well would you rather have a boutonniere? 

Or how about some flowers in your hair? 

I think it was around this time Lisa picked up her butter knife and tried to stab herself in the throat - just kill me now...

and about the time that Heidi said, uh we will get back to you on this :)

the storyteller

After hearing all about her and reading her books, Sue and I finally got to meet author and fellow mountain-girl, Deany Brady!

Higher than Yonder Mountain: Book Review

Higher than Yonder Mountain by Deany Brady

The little Deany that we all fell in love with in An Appalachian Childhood is back! In this the second part of her memoir, she tells the rest of the story. Always a dreamer, Deany longed to see all the exciting places pictured on the newspapers that covered the walls of her family's two-room shack deep in the mountains of north Georgia, and after years of hard work on her family's farm she did just that.

She was such a brave and strong young woman to venture out into the world on her own. From the poor red clay of Georgia to the glistening sands of Miami Beach to the bright lights of New York City, all of Deany's dreams came true as she saw and experienced the rich life. Of course there were highs and lows but her spirit sustained her through all hardships, after all growing up poor in Appalachia had made her strong enough to handle almost anything.

Then, coming full circle, she returned to her home in the shadow of Yonder Mountain, to the place that gave her strength. Her wings took her to fancy places, but her roots brought her back home to family. That red dirt wasn't so bad after all, especially when washed off in the cold water of Turkey Creek after a long day on the farm. And where better to raise a child than in the same place that raised her.  

Deany Brady is a master storyteller. Warning - once you start reading, you won't want to stop until done!

This book read like a novel, I often had to remind myself that these stories really happened, to a real person. If you have not read the first book in this memoir, An Appalachian Childhood, you must do so now! Then enjoy the rest of the story, Higher than Yonder Mountain.

fall break

a quick getaway from work in OK to home in GA, a nice break from the dry dusty flat treeless prairie, to see things you used to take for granted like green pastures and blue mountains and colorful trees and waterfalls and family and neighbors and hometown food... then there are the apple house activities and leaf-lookers, all part of the fun :)

Grandma Gatewood's Walk: book review

It was 1973, sitting on the front porch of this old farmhouse, visiting our nearest neighbor a mile down the road, Mrs. Lola Mealer. I loved listening to her stories, my favorite was about the time Granny Gatewood walked down the road and set a spell, taking a break from her walk on the Appalachian Trail. Mrs. Mealer told us all about the little grandmother setting out to hike the trail, she described her tennis shoes and knapsack. I was delighted to read about my neighbor in the very first chapter of this book, Grandma Gatewood's Walk by Ben Montgomery.

She caught a ride to Charleston, West Virginia, then boarded a bus to the airport, then a plane to Atlanta, then a bus from there to a little picture-postcard spot called Jasper, Georgia, “the First Mountain Town.” Now here she was in Dixieland, five hundred miles from her Ohio home, listening to the rattle and ping in the back of a taxicab, finally making her ascent up the mountain called Oglethorpe, her ears popping, the cabbie grumbling about how he wasn’t going to make a penny driving her all this way. She sat quiet, still, watching through the window as miles of Georgia blurred past. 

They hit a steep incline, a narrow gravel road, and made it within a quarter mile of the top of the mountain before the driver killed the engine.

She collected her supplies and handed him five dollars, then one extra for his trouble. That cheered him up. And then he was gone, taillights and dust, and Emma Gatewood stood alone, an old woman on a mountain.

She pulled from the box a drawstring sack she’d made back home from a yard of denim, her wrinkled fingers doing the stitching, and opened it wide. She filled the sack with other items from the box: Vienna Sausage, raisins, peanuts, bouillon cubes, powdered milk. She tucked inside a tin of Band-Aids, a bottle of iodine, some bobby pins, and a jar of Vicks salve. She packed the slippers and a gingham dress that she could shake out if she ever needed to look nice. She stuffed in a warm coat, a shower curtain to keep the rain off, some drinking water, a Swiss Army knife, a flashlight, candy mints, and her pen and a little Royal Vernon Line memo book that she had bought for twenty-five cents at Murphy’s back home.

 She stood, finally, her canvas Keds tied tight, on May 3, 1955, atop the southern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, the longest continuous footpath in the world.

Grandma Gatewood's Walk by Ben Montgomery tells Grandma Gatewood's story, 40 years after her death and almost 60 years after her first AT through-hike in 1955. Research included her diaries and trail journals, newspaper clippings, interviews with family and friends and folks met along the way.

Learning of the trail by reading an article in National Geographic, Emma Gatewood couldn't stop thinking about it. She took to heart the part about only a handful of people having hiked the entire trail from one end to the other - all men - and she vowed to be the first woman.

She loved to walk and loved the woods, so one day she just left. She didn't tell anyone, not her children or grandchildren. She said they were all grown and gone, that she would send them a postcard.

The AT's southernmost point was not always on Springer Mountain like it is today. From the early 1930s until 1958 it began on Mount Oglethorpe, which is just 5 miles up the road from my house.

When Emma Gatewood got out of that taxicab on the top of Mount Oglethorpe, she read the inscription on the monument there and proceeded down the trail/road. The trail took a sharp turn but she missed the marker and stayed on the gravel road until she came to the farmhouse of Mr. and Mrs. Mealer who were nice enough to let her stay the night. This was her very first of many encounters of nice folks along the way, and some not so nice. That morning she started out on the walk of a lifetime. With her trademark Keds sneakers and denim knapsack she went where no woman had gone before, making history along the way.

Before her stood mountains, more than three hundred of them topping five thousand feet… and finally - five million steps away - Katahdin.

Another book about real people doing extraordinary things, right here in Georgia, right here on our road! Reminds me of An Appalachian Childhood by Deany Brady, good reading!

Twelve Stone Farm

 

Twelve Stone Farm, a sanctuary in the mountains.

picnic basket

Picnic Basket quilt - a free pattern from Martingale

The pictures on the pattern are nice soft colors, subtle… I apparently don't understand subtle, my version ended up very Bright… like put on your sunglasses bright…

This is the first time in a long time that I am making something that is not going to someone else. There is no deadline, no color matching. It is very liberating, to just do something for the fun of it with no pressure. Of course while sewing I kept thinking of who I could give it to eventually.

Sticking to my expertise of only squares and rectangles... this one was lots of fun and went together very fast. Picked out the fabrics at Wal-Mart which is an experience in itself. The prices are so much cheaper than the quilt store and they usually have fun novelty fabrics (like watermelons and ladybugs), but you have to take the bad with the good. Like service. Which is usually pretty good, but I apparently was there at shift change and waited 15 minutes when finally the little old lady from the dressing rooms came over and tried to figure it out. And while waiting, you get to see lots of folks, as the fabric is on the aisle to the bathrooms, saw Amanda and her girls!

Then a teenager came up with her prom dress in a long bag and said she needed some fabric to match her dress so her mom could take the fabric to the tux rental to match a cummerbund, she just stood there waiting for someone to fetch her a piece of fabric. The dressing room/fabric lady told her to help herself. The girl looked clueless, so I offered to help, and asked to see the dress. She showed me and said the color was called 'pink grapefruit'. I told her if the seams were big enough she could just snip some fabric from a seam and take that to match, she looked at me like I had lost my mind, cut her dress? So I started walking down the aisle to look for a similar color while she just stood at the cutting table to wait for me. I motioned for her to walk with me… and got more of the story - her mom was going out of town to get a good tux, not a local Ellijay tux :). I asked if it had to be fabric or did she need just a color, as there were other options like yarn or silk flowers (seeing these things as I was going down the aisle), when I noticed her nail polish, it was the exact color. I suggested she go look at the nail polish colors and pick out one of those to send. I told her my granddaughter was going to the prom, Madison, and she said, "I know her, she is in my grade. You are Madison's grandmother?" Sorry Madi hope I didn't embarrass you :).

Back to cutting my fabric at the table, the lady finally got all the pieces cut, more folks were waiting by now, and then she had to figure out the scanner. I miss the days when we had a real fabric store in town, but shopping at Wal-Mart is always an experience and often entertaining. 

free pattern HERE

tunnel vision

What is it about trains? Grown men's love affair with a passenger transport of the past. Maybe it is nostalgia, about back when things went slower, when you could sit and watch the view of the beautiful countryside pass by the window. But wait, the guys that have these train sets never traveled like that, it was before their time. 

Maybe it is about history, preserving a very important slice of our past, that has movement and sound and scale, and of course it is not just the trains, but the buildings and people and stores and tunnels and trestles and even smoke! Or maybe it is just boys and their toys?

We recently discovered that one of our neighbors has an elaborate model railroad setup in the area over his garage. Melissa was telling us about it, Buddy said he would love to see it too, so she made some calls and we went to see it on Sunday - an early birthday present for the OLD man (60 soon).

Neighbor and model train engineer Jim McIntosh has been collecting trains for a long time obviously. He and Buddy talked about their first train set, a Lionel, way back in the 50s or 60s(?).

Recently a film crew spent 3 days there filming and taking photographs for a train magazine spread and DVD.

Did you know these words and phrases have their origin in the railroad: backtrack, just the ticket, railroaded, derailed, sidetracked, one-track mind, blowing smoke, blowing your stack, streamlined, tunnel vision… thanks to Central Pacific Railroad Museum.

I took a few pictures, but they really don't do it justice, seen HERE, and online someone has posted a video HERE.

sacred ground

Cartecay Methodist Church c. 1859

Last weekend Sue and I were out and about looking for things we had read about in the book An Appalachian Childhood. We found the old home place on our road, and a grave site of one of the people in the book at nearby Cartecay Methodist cemetery. 

We also found this marker for a slave, one in a row of such markers in the middle of the cemetery - which makes one wonder about their placement there, was it a prominent family in the church whose slaves are buried here, was there a big controversy at the time about it?

A walk through the cemetery brought up some interesting conversation about personal burial wishes and the tradition of flowers on graves and visitation.

And how back in 1982 my father-in-law and husband used a transit to plot out the cemetery at Cartecay Methodist and made this map on plywood.

"The coordinate lines for this plot were made by Felton Tidwell and Buddy Tidwell then transferred on to this plyboard with adjustments in the width of the board and showing the approximate location of existing graves, buildings, drive ways, filled areas (in red), Old Cemetery sketch, and deed records. By U. S. Worley 1982"

Did you know that a lot of cemeteries have been listed online, you can look up specific names and find a picture of the grave at Find a Grave.com, great for genealogy and for just looking up folks. 

I took this opportunity to ask Sue if she had made any arrangements or had any wishes for her final resting place. She had quite a few wishes and I urged her to share them with her children now. She mentioned, "just bury me neath the old cherry tree" and for some reason that phrase stuck in my head, it sounded like a song lyric or a poem, and eventually it turned into one:

just bury me

neath the old cherry tree

that tree up on the hill

brings a smile to my face

'cause I can still see my dad there

at his favorite place

don't send my ashes into the wind

drop from a plane, sprinkle or spread

or wash down stream,

but plant me in the ground instead

I want to be bound to the earth

not displayed in a vase

I want to be one with the land

anchored to this, my home place

a fitting last home for me, I believe

is a wooden box with a blend

of my ashes and dust and

a little sawdust mixed in

just carve out a hole

in this Georgia red clay

place my box made of wood

and mark the spot where I lay

please just bury me

neath the old cherry tree

An Appalachian Childhood: Book Review

An Appalachian Childhood by Deany Brady.

This book was recommended by a friend: "A book that you must read, especially if you like real stories about real people." When I first heard this book was written about growing up in Ellijay, Georgia (my hometown 15 miles away), I was hoping to recognize some local landmarks. But I was completely surprised by what I found. Did she really say Burnt Mountain Road?  Yes, the road where I live, the once dirt road that I have traveled many times, apparently in the virtual footsteps of this author.

I followed Ms. Brady's story with delight, along the banks of Turkey Creek (it runs through our property), to Oakland Elementary School (my kids and grandkids went there), up the mountain to Tate Mountain Estates. I discovered the reason this is called Burnt Mountain (and no, it is not because Buddy accidentally set fire to the woods a while back).

The collected stories describe a life of hard work on the farm, a life of survival, a life filled with chores, real ones like hoeing the garden or milking the cows. A life filled with love and family, back when generations lived together, grandparents, parents, children, all under the same roof, in a 2 or 3 room house. They would help each other and learn from each other, each generation contributing, passing down life skills and traditions and of course stories.

I was immediately transported back in time, smelling Grandma's cornbread, seeing the March flowers blooming, feeling the red Georgia dirt beneath my bare feet and the cold mountain creek water, hearing the katydids and whippoorwills, picking wild Yates apples, breaking beans on the porch for a day of canning, tasting sweet homemade jelly on hot biscuits, walking down that dusty road to catch the school bus. I could read the writing on the wall, literally newspapers covered the walls of the house.

Remembering, telling, capturing, and preserving family stories is so important, once those folks are gone their stories go with them unless they are put down like they are here by Ms. Brady. She tells stories not only of her own experiences, but stories she remembers passed down from her grandparents, great grandparents, great-great grandparents, like the one about the Civil War and the roastneers. She has created a legacy that her family will cherish for many generations.

These stories will be enjoyed by anyone who reads this book, maybe it will spark a memory of their own childhood long ago. But for a handful of folks who know and live here, this book is a great gift, to see the Burnt Mountain area of the past through this storyteller's eyes.

I thoroughly enjoyed this memoir, and am eagerly awaiting the second half to be published.

Deany Brady, author

the great migration

TRAFFIC! as seen through Carrie's rear view mirror on our way home from Atlanta Saturday.

See the great annual migration north from Atlanta to the mountains… in search of ? apples, leaves, festivals, pretty much anything to get away from the city…

Or maybe they are coming to see the scarecrow invasion…

Check out the Scarecrow Invasion in Hometown Ellijay - The Chamber of Commerce sponsored a contest and local businesses and other folks filled the sidewalks with scarecrows!

CONTEST WINNER!  Bernhardt's Funeral Home - spooky!

our own Cross Country girls made one too!

So if you live in Ellijay or any of the little mountain towns, on October weekends you avoid the main roads, only traveling the back way to town, or better yet you do all your errands during the week, stock up on groceries, and stay the heck out of town altogether!