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Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia
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Item Title
Sadie Miller with produce from gardens and woods preserved in her basement pantry. [Photo]
Author/Creator
Photographer: Eiler, Lyntha Scott
Created/Published
September 28, 1995
Notes
Big vegetable gardens are a distinctive feature of the landscape on Coal River and throughout the southern West Virginia coalfields. Gardens, together with produce from the woods, have been linked historically with the ability to survive the boom and bust cycles of coal mining, and actually made this part of the coalfields difficult to unionize. "There does not exist the hunger and suffering here that is found in [other coal fields]," wrote P. M. McBride in 1896. "Every available spot of ground seems to have received attention from the plow or spade, the houses resemble the homes of the market gardener. . . .This explains their comparatively comfortable position. They raise all the vegetables they require and this assures them that the wolf shall be kept from the door." (Corbin, 34) Beginning with lettuce, onions, and peas in spring and continuing through to the fall squashes, gardens on Coal River burgeon with produce for family, neighbors, and kin. Sadie Miller is canning beets raised by her neighbor down the road, Roy Webb. She also puts up strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, tomatoes, apple butter, green beans, peaches, cantaloupe, sweet potatoes and a variety of jellies.
Subjects
Fall
September
Gardens
Food preservation
Canning
Photo
Ethnography
Photographs
Drews Creek
Object Type
Related Names
Depicted: Miller, Sadie
Medium
35 mm Color Slide
Language
English
Call Number
CRF-LE-C017-11
Part of
The Coal River Folklife Collection (AFC 1999/008)
Repository
Library of Congress, Archive of Folk Culture, American Folklife Center, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA
Digital ID
afccmns lec01711
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afccmns.lec01711