Recently I was invited up to Boone for the High Country Food Summit. Alan Dickens was kind enough to video me singing my silly song about greasy beans. Do check out his website, and facebook page, which has a video about the Food Summit.
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I think history is like homegrown, never sprayed, ugly apples. Some folks will turn up their nose at the wormy, misshapen fruit, and say, "give me something that's pretty, the perfect shape, and make absolutely sure it has no worms." After all, we don't want to upset anyone. Have someone else package it for me, so I don't have to bother to go out in the freezing winter air and do the difficult work of climbing up myself, precarious on a rickety ladder or perhaps-to-small branch, carefully trimming out the crossed limbs so that the tree can breathe.
I love that knotty, wormy fruit though. I'm comforted by the honesty of it. I know where it came from, I know if it was good enough for the worms, or the yellow jackets, or a nibbles-worth of a squirrel's lunch, that it's good enough for me. I know I can just cut out the bad spots, but a lot of the time, the bruises have their own unique taste. I remember Carl Buchanan picking up a windblown apple, cutting it in half and, upon seeing the brown interior remarking, "Mmm, that'uns got cider in it!" Most folks today probably only know about seven different types of apples, because apples come from the produce isle, via the Northwest (even when apples are in season here). Those seven disease resistant, brightly colored apples with no "ugly" russet, are all we need now. Forget the thousands of types that got us here. The ones that were powerfully tart and small, but would last until spring in the canning house. Forget the early apples, we don't need to worry about what's in season anymore. Someone else, "who's corn's for sale," will bring you beautiful, perfect apples cheap, until you forget what a real apple tastes like--looks like. My favorite apple tree is a seedling. Which means, it wasn't grafted, so it has no history. It is not "a type." It grows at the top of the meadow above the old barn at Mom and Dad's, reaching out from the side of the woods to catch the sun. It came up beside a 100-year-old locust fencepost, and who knows how the seed got there. It is an unusually flavored little red apple. My friend, Andrew Payseur said once, astonishment etched across his face, that it "tastes just like a SunDrop!" (He drinks those things like water, so I guess I'll take it as a compliment.) I've grafted it a few times, hoping someone might care for it in years to come. And maybe hoping that one day, when somebody else owns that beautiful patch of land, that I can take a little bit of Young Cove with me. Unlike tomatoes, or beans, Apple trees take a good long time to bring fruit. They are a long-term, placed-based commitment. And once they really get going, they don't take care of themselves. They need to be nurtured, trimmed, and looked after. It is not an easy thing, but it is an important and rewarding thing. I know that it's hard. I know that we are busy. And I know that it's tempting to sit inside on a cold day, and "tenderly tap on small screens." But there are old apple trees out there that have a lot to teach us. So take a bite of that ugly, imperfect fruit, don't be afraid of its honesty. Do dig in, let's swallow our egos and fears, and have conversations about where that little apple came from. The same day I wrote that last blog post about missing the mountains, Sarah sat down and wrote this poem. I love it. She didn't know I'd written the post, and I didn't know that she'd written a poem, but I reckon we had the same kind of feelings about home. Some say that Home is in a person, soulmate, or Spouse... They say, I knew I loved you, when Home became wherever, you are... But I can never, will never, say that. You know I love you. But I will never love you or anyone, the way I love The Tuckaseegee ghost-fog at dawn, the pinks and greens of mountain laurel in July, river-rock smoothness, or Jack in the Pulpit. The curves of your shoulders could never compare with the rolling hills and valleys that have held me all my life. You could never be a waterfall. And you cannot be my Home. We didn't leave Mitchell County much when I was growing up. When we wanted to see a movie, or go to the orthodontist (well, I never wanted to go there but needed to), we went down to Johnson City, or maybe Asheville. We were still in the mountains though, when we got there. Rarely, we actually loaded up and headed off, say to the beach, or Michigan to see family, or Pennsylvania to see family, or some other place family had ended up. I always looked forward to getting back to the hills, snug in a holler someplace. I've talked to plenty of people that know the exact exit on 40 westbound when you can really get a good glimpse of the mountains rising up there (Dysartsville), that's when I feel the "pull" especially hard, and that's when I used to be able to say, "ahh, home again," even if I was still 2 hours from my bed. It was always a comfort, and it still is. I don't live up there, but I swear my heart does. I've found a lovely community down here, with great folks. It helps. I've found places to plant my hand-me-down tomato seeds, and wander in the woods. Shoot, behind my apartment I found a ravine full of big oak trees, a near-dead stream, and trash, but I love it down there. Sarah says people must think I'm crazy walking out of the woods like that. Maybe I am. Crazy homesick for a place where you could just take a notion to go piddle around out in the woods, where there's more four-wheeler trails, and old logging roads, and less hikers. This weekend Sarah and I were invited to stay up at Lake Logan in Haywood County. I'd been up that road many times, but never had the chance to look at the actual place. We spent the evening playing music for a little gathering of friends, and they put us up in this little old transplanted Tennessee cabin, right by a little chirping creek. It was called "Honeymoon," which tickled me, because Sarah and I never actually got around to going on one of those. Anyways, something about driving up through Bethel, staying in that cabin, and that crisp, leafy mountain air made it really hard for me to come back down the mountain. I've heard it "is what it is," but I've also heard "I is what I is and I couldn't get no izzer." I've heard folks say "I'm bound for such-and-such." I'm bound to a place though, and I mean to get back there. -Wm. Hey folks, if you are in the Winston Salem area on Monday nights, come on down to the Fiddlin' Fish Brewery. We are starting up a weekly old-time jam there, starting around 6:30. Come if you can.
Marie Wilson, one of our favorite people, passed away recently. We are so grateful to have had the chance to know her and her wonderful family.
Sarah took an intro to Appalachian Music course her last year at Appalachian State. On the downside, I had to give up my job as a graduate teaching assistant for that class. (Turns out they frown on amorous relationships between students and teachers at universities.) On the upside, Sarah and I got the pleasure of meeting the one-and-only, hilarious Marie Wilson at her home in Ledger. The App. Music class required a final project. Students were pretty free to learn to play an instrument, or a new tune, or write a research paper, or do something that related somehow to Appalachian Music. Sarah elected to learn a new waltz and write about its history, etc. When she mentioned this to me I instantly thought of Red Wilson's "Marie's Waltz." I said, "Sarah, I can show you that waltz, and then we could go visit Marie! It would be so cool!" I wish I could say that I had learned it directly from Red, but he had passed on before I was bitten particularly hard by the fiddle bug. I do remember the first time I heard the lovely little waltz though. I was at Ray Dellinger's old shop, and (as it often did) Red came up in conversation and Ray asked if I had ever heard "Marie's Waltz." Ray suspected that Red had been trying to learn that "Civil War" tune--"Ashokan Farewell," and then got off on a tangent and came up with a whole new tune. I don't know about that, but I do know that Ray took out a little Walkman CD player and stuck headphones on my head and over those little tiny speakers I heard the most beautiful tune. And right there I started following along with my fiddle, trying to work it out. Fast forward a little, and I showed Sarah the tune. Teaching her goes like this: I play a bit of the tune and she plays it back. If I play more than she is ready to hear, then she whacks me with her bow. It is effective but harsh. She plays it beautifully--it was worth every wince and whack. When we went to visit Marie, I was thrilled. We pulled up in the driveway, and Sarah had this notebook full of questions for the namesake of her new-learned waltz. Marie's daughter Anne met us at the door and Marie shuffled over to meet us with a big grin. We went into the living room and sat on the couch, and Sarah hardly needed a single question. Marie told us about growing up in Ledger in the little house near the barn that leaned for years and years. About how her family had donated land for the high school to be built and a particularly sweet story about Red hopping out of their car to change a tire, forgetting his crutches and walking around the car. The doctor had told him he'd probably never walk again after sustaining terrible injuries in WWII. He ran to the window beaming and surprised. "Marie! I just walked!" She told us tales about Red making corn liquor, and even let us sniff, but not taste, his last jar of homemade peach brandy. Then, Sarah played her "Marie's Waltz" and she teared up and said, "Beautiful. It's just like he was here with me." She went on to explain that, one day, she scolded Red; "You write all these songs, but you've never once made one for me!" Red, seemed a little taken aback, and headed off to his little studio garage. Later on, Red's new CD came in the mail and there it was, "Marie's Waltz." Marie was sharp, funny, and totally original. I'm really grateful that Sarah and I got to visit with her. She's always on our minds when we go out and play places. We dedicated our first CD to her, and we'll continue to play Red's sweet original waltz in honor of the one-and-only Marie Wilson. Sarah and I have signed with a brand new independent record label (currently) aimed at digital distribution started by Mitchell County native Chase Slagle. He's offering a great deal right now, especially for little guys like us. He wants to help people get their music heard on digital outlets, and is even offering free mastering if you sign up with him. He has some really impressive experience in that field, so I am pretty excited to be working with him. Now, thanks to Chase, you can actually purchase Sarah and I's first CD via iTunes or Google Play. We're also on Spotify and Pandora. This summer I've laid plans to record an E.P., sans Sarah (she is busy doing very good work with Mountain True/Creation Care Alliance this summer in Asheville). I don't want to talk too much about it, because I don't believe in counting your chickens before they hatch--and I REALLY want these chickens to hop out of those eggs. I will say that there will be original songs and lots of fiddling. Below is a hint about the overarching theme for the E.P. (It's not trains, and it's also not chickens, even though that is always a good guess with me.) I Came across a picture on my computer today. A few years ago I got to jam with Laurie Lewis, Tom Rozum and Chad Manning. They were really kind and generous to let me sit in with them, and also invited me up to play a tune with them when they performed at Cataloochee Ranch. I also have to admit...that I really had no idea how big of a deal Laurie Lewis is at the time. I just new that she was really, really good. And I distinctly remember her upbraiding Chad and I for not playing "Midnight on the Water" the "right way." Then she showed us where to wiggle your fingers like Bennie Thomasson did. Anyways, while we were playing Tom sat there and sketched Chad and I in Cataloochee's guestbook: I wish that I had a clearer copy of it, but my phone didn't have the best camera in the world. Todd Phillips was also there, I don't recall if he sat and jammed with us or not, seems like I remember him sitting back and enjoying a glass of red wine. (I do know that he took the most tasteful bass break I have ever seen when they were playing the show.) Later that year he packed his small car with a Bass and recording equipment and drove all the way out from Nashville and recorded Andrew Payseur and I for our first little CD. Richard, rest his soul, and Peter Rowan I think had something to do with setting it up. Todd didn't charge us a cent. It was just one example of many instances where I have found people and pickers in the bluegrass world to just be incredibly kind, and in a genuine way. Sure, some folks have had some bad experiences with their idols, but I also want to come out and say that you really shouldn't judge someone from one or two interactions. I would hope people wouldn't do that to me--everyone has bad days. Yesterday I was reading an old obituary for the great banjo player E.C. Miller on Bluegrass Today, and I was shocked and crushed to see that Steve Sutton had passed away. He certainly was a shining example of a kind and generous spirit--and he could pick the fire, and everything else, out of a five. Here's a clip of Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum (the sketcher), doing a Si Khan number. And, if you get a chance, I highly recommend Todd's In the Pines recording, which is one of my all-time favorite albums. It has everybody on it. I tried pretty hard to learn Laurie's version of this classic, but I just can't get it! In college, I was lucky enough to room with Josh Suggs, who is an avid hiker, good picker, and all-a-round fun person to be around. One day he was raving about a waterfall and hike that he really wanted us to see, and somehow I escaped out of the dark confines of theater rehearsals and went with him out to what would become one of my favorite outside places. The hike is really pretty easy, (at least from the side we came in, there are a few quicker but steeper routes) and it somehow manages to remain mostly level on the way to the collection of falls--first Rough Run with that beautiful quote "The woods are lovely, dark and deep," and then on up to High Falls, Cullowhee Falls, or Tuckaseigee Falls, and probably other names. We took to calling it Beaver Death Falls because we encountered a dead beaver halfway down the falls. Josh claimed that he actually heard the beaver cry out as it fell to its death when he was hiking earlier in the week. I like that story so I'll believe him. I'll never forget seeing it for the first time. There was a massive, crumbling cliff with huge spurs of water-worn rock and fountains of shimmering, tumbling water. It was gorgeous. I'll also never forget that it felt somehow...wrong? I just had an itch that there was something not quite right about the place. It "made the hair stand up on the back of my neck." Years later I found out that a river used to come surging over that cliff, but when they built lake Glenville, they diverted the flow of the Tuck away from that stretch of river where it had run for millions of years. Now, I know that drowning the community of Glenville and diverting the flow of a river did a lot of good in Jackson County in terms of generating local fossil fuel-free electricity but I also know that water is a holy thing. I mean, we don't cover ourselves with dirt, or sunbathe, when we get baptized. We go to water. And living, rolling and moving water has a kind of power that a still water just doesn't. I can hop in the Toe or the New or the Tuck for just a quick swim, and I don't come out feeling clean, I come out feeling cleansed, joyful, and energized, like I hooked up to some sort of holy human charger. I'm not saying we should go up there and tear down that dam, Lord knows what we'd find at the bottom of that thing now. But I do think we should at least be mindful about how holy water is. It is literally the lifeblood of our world. Here is a picture of the waterfall before the dam. You might find photos of when they do a controlled release, but that's probably not indicative of how the river ran. This photo is from Occoneechee: Maid of the Mystic Lake by Robert Frank Jarrett in 1916 (I borrowed it from this blog that has some images of what the falls look like now too) When I came back from Mt. Airy's Fiddler's Convention this year I sat down and composed a little breakdown. Honestly I struggle a lot more with trying to name a fiddle tune than actually making up the tune itself. I decided though, to dedicate it to the waterfalls all over the Tuck (there's a LOT), past and present. It is a tumbling, descending kind of tune, so I think it fits. (Fingers crossed it'll be on an E.P. later this year.)
I planned on posting this article in the Fall, when October Beans are in, but I thought maybe I could post it now and encourage people to give a tasty and beautiful kind of bean a try in their garden.
Harold’s Grocery has been a fixture of Sylva, North Carolina, for a long time. My wife’s parents used to frequent the place when she was a child, and Sarah has often spoke lovingly of the little metal horse machine out front that only cost a nickel a ride. I lived in Sylva/Cullowhee for a long time before I ever checked the place out, and it has that rarer and rarer small local grocery charm. What really won me over though, was the local produce. They know mountain people at Harold’s. When in season, you can expect to see real mountain cuisine: in spring there’s ramps, in summer preacher beans, and half-runners, huge ugly-but-delicious heirloom tomatoes, and in the fall: October Beans. With their beautiful red and yellow streaked hulls, october beans are decidedly eye-catching, and often their plump, not yet dry seeds are equally dappled with various reds, pinks, and other shades. The seeds can be so beautiful in fact, that I have seen where folks have drilled holes in them to make jewelry. (I don’t guess you’d want to get them wet.)
Now, in Western North Carolina, Greasy beans (pronounced “Greezy”) get all the press and high prices--and deservedly so! But, they aren’t the only delicious bean on the block. There’s a huge amount of bean diversity in the Appalachian range, and that is especially true in Western North Carolina. A veritable army of various types of “bunch” beans, cornfield beans, cut-shorts, pink tips, turkey craws, preacher beans, stick beans, case knife beans, butter beans, (to name only a few) can be found in gardens across the western part of the state. Many have been in the same families for generations.
October beans, like many of the beans I just listed, can come in a range of shapes, colors, and textures. It is more like a bean “genre” than a variety. The main unifying characteristic amongst October beans, or as some people call them, Fall Beans, is the fact that they set their beans late in the season. The first time I planted October beans, I was just about to give up on the flowerless giant sprawling vines, but then late in the season it started setting beans like crazy--I was inundated with them. Turns out, many types of October beans only set pods in the fall of the year, after days have begun to shorten. It’s not that they take a long time to put out pods, as much as they need to be “triggered’ by the days getting shorter. I planted October beans at different dates, but they all came in about the same time.
I break down the October bean genre into two sub-genres: “tenderhull” and “toughhull.” Many varieties of october beans are stringless, and have a tough outer hull. Some tough-hulled types of october beans are commercially available as “French Horticulture Beans,” or “Cranberry Beans.” They are almost exclusively eaten as a dry bean, or in the desirable “shelly” phase when the bean seed is swollen and fully mature, but not yet dried out for dormancy. In Some Memories of Life on the Farm Before Tractors (2014), Roy L McKinney recalled the following story about local character Julius Twiggs and his shelly beans and bean dumplings:
Tenderhull beans on the other hand, tend to have more rounded seeds, and can be eaten at any stage: (1) Early and thin--some folks don’t give beans a chance to grow, (2) fat and bulging with seeds, flavor, and protein, (3) as shellies for soup beans and the like, (4) as dry beans, and (5) “unzipped,” strung together still in the hull, and dehydrated as “Leatherbritches,” a.k.a. “Shuckie Beans” or “Shuck Beans.*”
In other parts I’ve seen them referred to as “Millers” or “Moths.” It’s not hard to see where the name leather britches comes from, because the beans dry and fade to a shrivelled tan color that very much resembles leather pants. The dried beans are later soaked and then slow cooked with some fatback for a unique taste. In an article for the Sylva Herald, my friend and noted storyteller Gary Carden wrote a few lines in praise of the old-time treat:
Shuck beans and October beans, Like so many other fixtures of mountain people’s gardens and supper tables, were adopted or inherited from the Cherokee and other Native groups. Before the widespread use of canning, and especially when grocery stores offered beans all-year-round, leather britches were an excellent way to store your beans through the winter. Overtime, whether they were threaded with a wire and hung on an old rusty nail, or spread out on an old window screen on a hot tin roof to dry, the shrunken tan hulls went from being a food staple to being a rare treat at holiday suppers (it does take, after all, a while to cook).
I remember seeing Leather britches hanging off porches, or occasionally inside an old car when I was growing up. At a roadside stand in Crossnore I actually saw some for sale a few years ago (which nearly caused me to wreck). On the whole though, I almost never see shuck beans or leather britches anymore. Now, that could be because people are drying them in electric dehydrators and keeping them sealed up in a freezer or somewhere out of sight and away from the amazing tight-rope gymnastic abilities of mice, but I think it has more to do with the fading memory of a way of life that didn't just find leather britches delicious--they needed a good way to keep food over the winter. My hope is that taste and novelty will, as it has with heirloom seeds, save the cultural practice of leather britches. There's a restaurant in Asheville called Buxton Hall BBQ, that has started offering leather britches on rare occasions. They even string them and dry them in house, in the smoke from the roasting hog meat. That sounds pretty 'daggum good to me.
If you are planning on planting out beans for Leather Britches, then not just any old kind of bean will do. I would only recommend “tender hull” type october beans for that and not the more common “tough hulled” type. Greasy beans, often cut-short (beans seeds are square-ish), are popular for shuck beans, as are “little white bunch beans.” Modern beans are too tough, so I’d stay away from those. Shoot, keep those blue lake beans and fortex things out of your garden anyway. What is the point of having a home garden if you just grow the same thing you can get at the store? Especially when there are thousands of bean varieties out there, and some of them becoming extinct because families no longer grow them in their own backyard. At the bottom of the page I will list some great sources for old timey mountain seeds, but first I want to say that if you live in a rural mountain part of NC, GA, VA, KY, WV, TN, etc. then don’t just go to a seed catalogue somewhere. Ask around your community: family, neighbors, teachers, preachers, extension agents, the guys down at the Feed and Seed, see if anybody knows where you can get a “double-handful” of some old timey local seed. It often helps if you have some good seed to trade (see links below) I’m not saying it will be easy, but I am saying it will be worth it!
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