Foxfire Holler Journal:

I have been thinking, working on, using my brain before I purchase things.. I recently started growing sprouts again, I haven’t done that in 20 some years, and I don’t know why, I love them and they are so good for us.. just hadn’t been doing it! Well.. when I did it before I had lot of sheets of that plastic mesh craft stuff for the kids to thread yarn thru. Well I don’t have that anymore, and I couldn’t get my mind settle on what to do about lids for my sprout jars. I cut up an old tshirt to use… but I had to think about it !

Now that seems simple, but it’s really not for my generation! Have we lost our common sense ? I can remember as a child my mama would cut the buttons off everything and save the fabric for quilts, she had a paper sack full of old elastic she had cut out of our underwear or clothes to be reused in another project. Waste not want not ! But truly .. I have to think about things like that! Recently we stopped buying trash bags… why did we EVER buy trash bags when we have stacks and stacks of feed sacks everywhere ! ?

I would truly like to hear what you are doing to repurpose stuff instead of throwing it away ? And what can we use that we have instead of buying something? My friend Kyria has a wordpress blog called Faithful Stewards dealing with this very issue, check it out!

I thought maybe I could share a few of the things that we do here on the farm to save money and not waste so much.. We don’t buy paper products except toilet paper .. I have some ideas on that, but my family meets them with a resounding NO : ) We don’t buy paper towels, paper napkins , or paper plates. We don’t buy cleaners .. white vinegar is a wonderful disinfectant, so that’s what we use . We do make our own laundry soap, and it’s just very simple, cheap and quick , I would be happy to share the recipe with anyone who is interested! I reuse ziplock bags. They wash well in hot soapy water and can be used over and over again. Canning jars drive me nuts in the off season…But now I am using them for storing leftovers in, for sprouting in, anything to make the trips to put them under the house more infrequent. Old jar flats and rings… Now I turn them upside down and put them back on the clean jars .. I still have to wash and disinfect them when it’s time to can again.. but I don’t have to scrub dust and spider webs out of them.. and I like that. Cake mix … can yall believe that for years now we have been buying cake mix in the store ? Paying good money for flour and baking powder and sugar ? maybe a tablespoon of chocolate or a little vanilla in there ? and we buy it ? Don’t you just know that somebody at General Mills is just crackin up at the stupidity of an entire generation of women who paid money for 2 cups of flour in a box … so I started taking a rainy afternoon and mixing all the dry ingredients together and putting it in a mason jar … now I have a cake mix .. DUH! See what I mean about thinking before I spend ?

Those are just a few things off the top of my head, and there are probably plenty more if I took the time to think about them, but it’s milking time, and I’d really like to know what yall do !

Make the word Love a verb in your life this weekend, Nancy

I was reminded today ( reading a blog) of how I always wanted to get natural, whole food into the hands of real people .. Not just folks that had lots of disposable income and were buying gourmet foods anyway, but people like me, who don't have a lot of money to spend on groceries, and families to feed. I hope that I can accomplish some of that with this blog and I hope I can make it enjoyable at the same time.

I'd like to take this first post and tell you about my family's journey and how we got to this place in it. I hope I don't bore you too badly!

Once upon a time there were two little girls who lived with their mama and daddy on a farm in Ashe County North Carolina. Mama and Daddy were orchardists .. quite good ones actually, but times were hard in the Ashe County in the 70's and Daddy supplemented the farm income by working as a machinist/ tool and die maker in a factory, and Mama worked full time in a factory and took good care of the little girls. They also had a few head of beef cattle and some hogs , chickens, a big garden and such.. and in this way, they produced most everything that they consumed, and a little leftover to sell. One year, in November of '77, the flood came and they lost all the food that was put away. but Daddy hunted, and someone gave them a whole bunch of taters, and they got through the winter without going hungry.

The youngest little girl had Juvenile Diabetes, so she was kind of spoiled, mama's girl.. in the house a lot, barbies and hair and makeup, quite the girly girl was our Anna Ruth.. but the other one, Nancy Beth .. She was Daddy's girl, she loved the animals and would do anything in the world to get to hang out with Daddy in his world.. She didn't care much for hoeing the garden, but she did it, cause there was ALWAYS a switch nearby.. I hear people talkin bout hickory switches but Mama and Daddy never worried much with hickories , a water sprout off an apple tree will move a youngun and her hoe along right quick! They went along like this for a few years, til it was time for her to go to college, Appalachian State looked like a good pick, Grandma Dessie Hartzog graduated from there in '24 , and Uncle Wiley and Aunt Alta lived on Hardin Street right across from the dorm .. so off she went to get a degree in Criminal Justice.. Well! obviously she wasn't cut out for that .. what was she gonna do with a criminal? knit him handcuffs? And the culture shock was just tremendous .. so she flunked out .. met a city feller named Larry and got married, not a thought of moving back to Ashe County in her little blonde head.. who in their right mind would want to go back to all that work and being poor and carrying water and firewood? Well! that lasted about 3 months, and she was so homesick. That poor feller, he couldn't figure out what to do with her! She never was much of a cook or housekeeper anyways, but she couldn't figure out how to buy, much less cook food out of the grocery store, couldn't figure out how to live in an apartment, (where do you put the food scraps? ohhh that's what a Disposal is .. You can't put corn shucks in it! ) but by then Lori was on the way, and of course there were no jobs in Ashe County, and the farm had been leased to an Aunt and Uncle for Christmas trees anyhow..so she figured she would just suck it up and get over it! then came Josh and AJ and Christy! So they had 4 babies in under 5 years and life was BUSY ! Not much time for whining and complaining about how much she missed animals and gardens, but even the site of the dreaded hoes in WalMart brought tears and living on a 50 x 100 lot in downtown Asheville was suffocating, but still .. she put on her big girl undies and kept on going! Did the corporate wife thing (badly), but supported her husbands career the way a good wife does. Still .. she was "quare", weird, out of her time, someone at church (affectionately) called her a throwback, a fitting term, and that poor feller.. Oh law! he just didn't know what to do with her ! Why cant you just have babies the normal way with drugs? what's WRONG with a bottle of formula? why do you have to spin and weave and sew? what are you going to do with it anyhow ? It's cheaper to buy food than it is to can it, why do you waste all this time? She knew that the food with all it's preservatives and red dye #5 couldn't be good for her family, but that's what you ate when you lived in the city.. right? Still, they couldn't afford it .. 2 gallons of milk a day ! a box of cereal was one breakfast, 2 loaves of bread most days, the 3/$1 mac and cheese was a staple ! same with veggies in tin cans, you could load up at the scratch and dent store ! They had no taste... but still.. that's how normal people live , right? Couldn't afford to buy fresh greens or lean meat, they were barely scraping by anyway. Working 3 jobs between them , and still didn't have the money to pay the bills. Nancy, being a proud hillbilly wasn't about to get guvmint help! Daddys first cousin Mary lived nearby, she worked long and hard to mentor the young family and teach Nancy how to live in the normal world. And she encouraged Nancy to go down to the health department to get WIC once.. Well .. she filled out the papers and was told by a very snooty, patronizing woman, you all have to have physicals.. So she hung her head and asked if they could get the free ones at the health department, and was told they was a 6 month waiting list on those, she would have to go to the doctor .. If Nancy had 250 dollars to take everyone for a physical she wouldn't have been there begging for food ! So the papers hit the wastebasket on the way out the door, and she went home and cried, and couldn't understand why what was a given, a basic need, the nourishment of our bodies, in her childhood, was so hard and such a struggle in her adulthood .. We continued with herbal remedies for us all, because we couldn't afford insurance or doctor bills, and we learned a lot about natural ways, homeschooled our younguns ... just kept on living this slightly abnormal normal life. The little sister died from the disease she had fought for 20 years, and Nancy thought the world had ended, but she went on, with much sadness and more thought about her purpose in this world.

Then the feller got the big break he had been working for! A Vice Presidents position at a huge corporation in Philadelphia .. well . the girl's heart just broke! Philadelphia ?? after much agonizing it was decided that Nancy and the younguns would move back to Ashe County, to the farm, and Larry would live in an apartment in Pennsylvania and come home weekends.

Ohhh! poor Mama and Daddy .. here comes Nancy with her dream of a self sufficient lifestyle and 5 younguns !!! 4 of them teenagers ! But they let us come, bless their hearts, and thank God they did .. what an adjustment for them ! And it struck the family, how different food tasted, they attributed it to Grandma's cooking, didn't really realize that it was partly that the food we were eating had taste! Everything does not taste like chicken! and the grocery bill .. $200 for a family of 9 a MONTH! wow!! It was so nice to not have to worry about how to feed our children! And Nancy had gotten over her hatred of the hoe and recognized the blessing of connecting with the food we put in our bodies. And we started building a house.. and 6 years later we moved into it.

Then Daddy got sick, and Nancy took care of him until he died at home. About that same time, an opportunity to sell lamb meat came along, well that wasn't in the plan but what the heck? and then someone offered to rent her a building to put a store in . Wow.. that wasn't in the plan either.. but what the heck ? And the younguns were growing up, and as teenagers, 4 at once, they were hellions! And we had grandbabies ! and then Larry had an accident, and died. And Nancy thought life was over.. but , she put on her big girl panties once again, put one foot in front of the other, and here we are! Trying to farm.. to learn how to live as a single mom .. how to be a Mamaw .. how to be a good daughter and caretaker to Mama, and finally trying to learn to be a domestic goddess, which isn't really going very well !

But the best news? She's not quare anymore..well.. not so much anyway, because living the country life is in vogue now! People in cities have chickens in their backyards, people in cities raise gardens on rooftops, people want to eat steak that tastes like steak .. not like chicken! and they want chicken to taste like chicken ! dang.. who knew ?

Hey yall : ) I am sorry for bugging you two days in a row, but I wanted to inform you of our decision about poultry for this year. We will be raising pastured poultry on a good sized scale at Foxfire Holler! yay ! I do love my chickens !

We are now pre selling Foxfire Holler pastured poultry ... This will work a bit like a CSA .. same premise anyway ..

The regular price will be $6.50 a pound, processed, packaged and whole or cut up . But wait! there's more ! If you pre pay now .. the price will be $50 and you will receive 12 pounds of poultry beginning about the middle of May ( a savings of 28 dollars) $100 bucks gets you 24 pounds of meat. It don't get any cheaper than that folks! The only way I could make this any better is to loan out GiGi to fry it for you, but she might not like me much if I did that . We will be on a bi weekly schedule of production .. so you can choose to get your birds fresh or frozen at any time during the summer.

We were toying with the idea of doing a CSA with veggies and meat this summer.. But CSA's scare me, and yesterdays thunderstorm killed that idea for me, maybe next year I will take the plunge. Thunder in February means frost in May, you know!

Call or email me please, Your response will allow me to know how many, as well as what breed of chickens to plan on raising through the season .. Thank you all so much for your support of Foxfire Holler! Nancy & the critters : )

We are trying to make a decision about whether to do a CSA this year with veggies ... I would like your input , and also to know whether you would be willing to put in a few hours here and there to barter off some of the cost ?

We bought our milk cow back ! I had had her for years ..and I had to sell her about 3 years ago .. Well I got her back and she is due to freshen within the month ! we are so excited about fresh milk !

Our Tamworth sow, Blossom, her belly is nearly dragging the ground .. I would say we will have piglets within the week : )

We are lambing right now .. It started off slow with a bobcat problem .. we should still hit an 80% lambing rate this year tho .. Lord willing !

I miss you all .. think about you a LOT ... Nancy and the critters : )

We will be closing up this week, the Wednesday gathering will take place as usual at Mtn Home Utopia from 10-5 but I will be at Wilkes General hospital with Mama all week for her surgery.. she is to get a pick line? on Monday because her Portacath is no longer working... then hip replacement on Tuesday followed by a few days in the hospital, then back home or to a nursing home for rehab for a week or 2, depending on how strong she feels when it's time to leave the hospital. The reason for telling you all that is to explain why I won't be in town this week to tell you goodbye. Thank you for all your hugs and love through the last few years... thank you for the support you gave me when Larry died... thank you for everything... May God bless you... Nancy

PS..My home number is 336-384-9463, A health food store is going to move into my old shop on the backstreet (YAY!) And they want to take over the building the first of October, which means I need everything out this week.. If you have anything at all stored there I need you to pick it up.. I will be working there all day tomorrow and someone with a key will be around about all week long, but I will NOT be in town after tomorrow (Sunday) at all. Love you !