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Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia
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Item Title
Ramps frozen by Vivian Jarrell. [Photo]
Author/Creator
Photographer: Eiler, Lyntha Scott
Created/Published
April 11, 1996
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. In April of 1996 we visited Bruce and Vivian Jarrell, Ivan Jarrell's parents, to document the garden Ivan was tending on their land on Dry Creek. While we were there, Vivian showed us some of the produce she had preserved that year from the woods as well, including ramps and paw-paws.
Event: Visit to Ivan Jarrell's garden at his parents' home on Dry Creek.
Subjects
Spring
April
Food preservation
Canning
Ramps (Allium tricoccum)
Photo
Ethnography
Photographs
Dry Creek
Object Type
Related Names
Depicted: Jarrell, Vivian
Medium
35 mm Color Slide
Language
English
Call Number
CRF-LE-C073-09
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 lec07309
http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.afc/afccmns.lec07309