Tag Archives: Ayrshires

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Cows

Pine Mountain Settlement School
DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH
COWS

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Cows

 

Ayrshire herd at Grapevine Knoll, Pine Mountain Settlement. [nace_1_052a.jpg]

THE COW

In the collection of the archive at Pine Mountain there is a curious and fanciful scrapbook of everything “cow”. Collected by Elizabeth Hench a member of the Pine Mountain Board of Trustees, the body of material celebrates the ruminating bovine. It is rich in images and quotables, as well as cartoons and paintings that capture moments all too familiar to those who share or have shared their lives with cows. Hench calls her scrapbook, “Joy Made History” and it features the Ayrshires that made up the large herd that became the pride of Pine Mountain Settlement School’s farm. But, that’s a later story. However, one particular fragment in the scrapbook collection caught my eye. It was a chapter removed from a little book of rural reminiscences called Bucolic Beatitudes by the author “Rusticus”. Published in 1925 by the Atlantic Monthly Press of Boston, the little book’s cow chapter was pasted inside the scrapbook. It was titled “Blessed Be the Cow.”

RUSTICUS

This one bucolic fragment by Rusticus calls up memories of the many cows I have known. The chapter charmed my imagination. It describes a chance communion of Rusticus with his milk cow, “Dolly” which changes his day of discontent to one of joy. Because I grew up with cows, it is not surprising to me that the mood change occurred when Rusticus made an unexpected bond with his “contented cow.”

Rusticus, as the author calls himself, had escaped a family gathering and small irritations on his farm by taking a walk. In the hot summer sun, he found a tree in his pasture and languished under its shade. Soon he was joined by the family milk cow, “Dolly” who also relished the shade of the tree. Dolly had ambled to the tree, and begun to chew her cud while curiously eyeing her owner. Both man and cow were soon prone on the grass not far from each other. Dolly chewed slowly on her cud and Rusticus ruminated on the relationship of man to animal as he stared at the contented cow. The following is Rusticus’ short description of their subtle communion

There being nothing else to look at, I looked at Dolly. She was chewing her cud. The slow rhythmic precision of her technique fascinated me. I particularly admired the sideways movement of the lower jaw. She stopped; a gentle genuflection of the neck was noticeable; and she resumed. I had never had a chance to observe a cow before and I made the most of it. I felt that I was seeing for the first time the noble dignity of her head, her broad fine brow, and above all the eyes, serene and beautiful.

Rusticus. Bucolic Beatitudes, Boston: the Atlantic Monthly Press, 1925, pp 58-9

Rusticus continues his observations until the cow stirred, got to her feet and started the path to the barn. It was milk time and a cow feels milk-time calling her. Man and cow ambled slowly to the barn where Dolly is the be milked by a farm hand whom Rusticus calls, “The Incomparable One”. The process of milking that Rusticus so carefully described in this little book is also documented in photographs taken at Pine Mountain in the early years of the School before the Ayrshire herd was begun. Though, I doubt that “The Incomparable One” would have ever shown up barefoot. ‘

Milking the cow in the barnyard at Pine Mountain Settlement School, c. 1918. mccullough_IV_135b

Dolly now in place … With hands and arms glistening from recent soapy ablutions, he [The Incomparable One] takes the pail and holds it to the sun. He examines every inch of it critically and with deliberate care … His examination complete, we go where Dolly waits. He takes his place on gently tilted stool; we stand to one side. He pulls his rolled-back sleeves an inch higher, his great firm hands are rubbed together and then the fingers flex in smooth preparatory exercises. He leans forward and gently touches each teat in turn. From each he pulls a tiny lactic stream and lets it fall upon the clean rye straw beneath his feet. This is not done because — as held by some — the first milk contains more impurities than the rest; it is a libation, a propitiatory offering to whatever god there be who presides over the destines of cattle and impecunious rural sentimentalists.

And now the upward glance. A little figure, each in daily turn, takes its place and Dolly’s swinging tail is gently held at rest. The pail is raised to its position between extended knees, and all is ready. I notice that the milker adheres to the proper school. I do not hold, myself, for a position with the forehead of the milker pressed against the bovine flank; rather I like to see the left knee gently touching the off hind leg. It is a satisfaction to see things done with a nice attention to detail.

An now we hear the first streams strike the bottom of the empty pail. The shrill staccato of their impact is the overture, soon muffled by the increasing flood. The cadence slows; we are in the full orchestral swing by now. The milker’s bowed head is slowly raised, and, as the white foam nears the top he looks aloft. He sways a bit on his tilted stool; his head moves gently back and forth like some inspired conductor carrying his musician through the difficult passages of a mighty symphony. And now the beat quickens, the little streams leap into the rising tide of foam with soft lisping sounds. A final volley; then a few soft notes, long-drawn, and it is done.

… ‘Half quart off to-night — the grass is getting dry,” he says.’


Rusticus. Bucolic Beatitudes. Boston:The Atlantic Monthly Press, 1925, p.64-66

The ritual described in this short passage from Bucolic Beatitudes, was repeated over and again on early small Appalachian farms of those lucky enough to own such a gentle bovine ruminator. But the chore of milking was most often accomplished by the woman of the household, not a man.

A humorous mountain ballad captures the load the Appalachian woman often endures in house and on farm. It also calls out the relationships that cows often make with the milker. Cows, like people come with attitude and some cows are not quite so cooperative or bucolic as Dolly. The following brief stanza from “The Old Man in the Wood,” that I sang as a child, describes what happens when the man of the household brags that he can “… do more work in a day, than his wife can do in three…”

THE OLD MAN IN THE WOOD

There was an old man who lived in the woods
As you can plainly see
Who said he could do more work in a day
Than his wife could do in three

“If that be true,” the old woman said,
“Why this you must allow:
You must do my work for one day
While I go drive the plow.”

“Now you must milk the tiny cow
For fear she shall go dry
And you must feed the three little pigs
That are within the stye
And you must watch the speckled hen
For fear she’ll go astray
And you must wind the reel of yarn
That I spun yesterday.

The woman she took the staff in her hand
And went to drive the plow
The old man took the pail in his hand
And went to milk the cow.
Tiny hitched, and Tiny switched
And Tiny cocked her nose
Tiny gave the old man such a kick
That the blood ran down to his toes….etc

After failing to complete all the other tasks he said of his wife

Yes, he swore by all the leaves on the trees
And all the stars in heaven
That his wife could do more work in one day
Than he could do in seven.


Jean Ritchie. The Swapping Song Book, Lexington: Univ. Press of KY, and collected by Pine Mountain Settlement School in the PMSS Song Ballads and Other Songs printed and published by Pine Mountain Settlement School.

Many of the nine Ritchie Family children attended Pine Mountain Settlement School and also nearby Hindman Settlement. Jean attended public school and the University of Kentucky later becoming a well known folk singer. See PMSS records for May Ritchie, Truman Ritchie, Patty Ritchie, Una Ritchie, Kitty Ritchie.

A happy ‘Dolly” cow being milked and fed. Where is the bucket? mccullough_III_096b

Cow tales abound in the Pine Mountain literature. And cow tails figure in many of the tales. When Tiny “twitched and Tiny switched” that was in reference to the switching tail used to dispense the many flies that often troubled the summer milk cow as well as troubling the milker. When Rusticus described the “little figure” coming to help the “Incomparable one,” he was, no doubt referring to some child assigned to this task. The photograph below, demonstrates the firm grasp of the tail which keeps it under control for the milker to progress.

Child tending cow to keep tail from switching on the woman milking. c. 1930s [nace_II_album_017.jpg]

FIRST, YOU HAVE TO FIND THE COW

Not only is milking a challenge, first, in the early years, one had to find the cow. Before range laws were in place, cows roamed freely in Appalachia and in other places in the Country. The cows were generally fitted with cow bells to more easily locate them. The bells were not just auditory ornaments, they were a GPS system that children could use to correlate cow and sound. Before the cow could be milked it had to be found and brought in for milking and be secured for the night. The following story by a Pine Mountain School student (unnamed) describes the task of finding the cow — a chore often assigned —- like tail holding — to children.

AS I LOOK BACK

Oh, how I dreaded to see the time come just at sun set to hunt the cows, call up the dog and start up the hollow! How far it took, for the old belled cow was way up in the weeds and briars as far as she could get. I can still pant from climbing that steep hill knowing I would have to hunt for two hours maybe before I found them all. When I started from the house to get them, old Pide’s bell could be heard very distinctly but when she heard me coming not a tap of the bell would she make. Finally the dogs would find them all and down the hillside they would come with clouds of dust behind them, for they feared the sharp incisors that would clinch their legs. There was a reason why he never bit their tails; they were always too high in the air. Oh! how I dreaded to get ton the gate with those cows for there were those pigs making their way like a terrific storm and we knew if they got out it would be another trip to the pasture field.

But sometimes we climbed up the cow pasture on our way to the Pine Knobb cliffs. There in the valley the house stands where the creek forks like a turkey’s foot. My mother and father are still living in it. Although on the cliffs we were a mile away, all that stirred around our house could be seen. Far, far away in other directions we looked into yet other valleys. At our feet were lovely tree tops where birds hopped from limb ton limb and from one tree to another. When the sun hid behind the hills we started homeward. When we reached the big rock we would have to stop to satisfy our hunger from the store of walnuts we had gathered there. I’m sure our cracking stones are still in place. It was those times of fun we had cracking walnuts that made the thought of getting the cows, that never came by themselves, a little softer in my mind.

Anonymous. The Pine Cone 1937 Pine Mountain Settlement School newsletter.

And, that brings us back to Elizabeth C. Hench and her Joy Stock Company Limited Letters 1927-33. The following is the last letter in her series of letters to those who so loyally supported the Ayrshire herd at Pine Mountain for many years. It is a fitting letter as it returns to the emotional contributions of the cow to the world. Written near the end of the Great Depression, the letter is edgy with humor and anxiety.

The grand Ayrshire herd at Pine Mountain Settlement would last only a few years after the closure of the boarding school. When the expense and the labor to support the program and the new regulations regarding milk production came into play, the dairy herd was no longer viable. When the last of the herd was sold the cow bells had been silent for many years and the gentle communions with our ruminating neighbors were infrequent. Cows in Appalachia have now been replaced by the deer and by the elk that roam freely. But, none of those will summer nap with you under the same tree or will share their milk, or mellow your mood …

LETTER TO THE MEMBERS OF THE JOY STOCK COMPANY LIMITED 1933

Dear Stock-Holder:
Ordinarily I am as restless as a short-tailed bull in fly-time until I get the autumn cow letter off. But during the summer just past, to those of us in this section of the world, autumn, with its many days or rain, brought no terrors. As we oozed and mopped, we looked in vain to cows for relief. For, do you know, cows are weatherwise? Here are some of the signs:

1 — If a bull goes first to pasture, it will rain.
2 — If cattle lie down at once when they reach pasture, they want a dry bed before rain starts.
3 — If a cow licks a brick wall, rain will fall.
4 — If a cow lies down on her right side, rain will come soon.

But cows went placidly and contentedly on their way. What matter to them if springs went dry and creeks fell? The cow with the iron tail would supply them!

Contentment is so often spoken of as a characteristic of cows, that a quatrain I found does not ring true:

“The Worry Cow would have lived till now
If she had only saved her breath,
But she feared the hay wouldn’t last all day,
So she choked herself to death.”

Nevertheless, if the Joy Stock Company, Limited, and REJOICE, our cow, don’t have checks, we’ll be ready to sing The Tune The Old Cow Died On —

“There was an old man, and he had an old cow,
And he had no fodder to give her,
So he took up his fiddle and played her this tune:
‘Consider, good cow, consider,
This isn’t the time for grass to grow,
Consider, good cow, consider.'”

Those of us who have ridden along the main highways have been enjoined by huge posters to roll our own, but how can REJOICE roll her cud without food?

If there be (notice the conditional tense) any of us whose incomes have not been slashed, and if there are any of us who can squeeze out a little money, let us send our checks soon.

From one who tries to keep the Milky Way
always visible at Pine Mountain,

[Signed] Elizabeth Hench

P.S. Did you realize that Amelia Earhart Putnam’s landing in Ireland was witnessed only by a herd of frightened cows?

https://pinemountainsettlement.net/?page_id=17147

SEE ALSO:

ELIZABETH C. HENCH Joy Stock Company Limited Letters 1927-33

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH The Dairy

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Farm and Dairy Early Years

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Farm and Dairy II Morris Years

ALICE COBB STORIES Howard Burdine Tail of Old Red

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH Farm and Dairy II Morris Years 1931-1941

Pine Mountain Settlement School
Blog: DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH V
FARM AND DAIRY II – THE MORRIS YEARS 1931-1941

ARRIVAL – LESSONS

108 Young boy and young Ayrshire calf.

When Glyn Morris came to Pine Mountain as Director in 1931 he was just twenty-six years old and a recent graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York City. The combination of theology and farming, while not new, took on a distinct character under Morris’ direction. When he arrived at Pine Mountain the environmental contrasts of urban and rural were stark, but Morris had been prepared.  Born in the village of Glyn Ceiriog, North Wales, Glyn Morris was no stranger to rural life, nor to farming, as his family farmed and quarried the stones of the region.  Morris was only four years old when he departed Wales with his parents for America. He was eight years old in 1913, the year Pine Mountain Settlement School was founded. When he arrived at Pine Mountain in 1931 he was 27 years old. His early years growing up on a farm were merged with his theological and educational training. He joined these skills with the pragmatic work of both farm and dairy already instituted at the School but not fully integrated into the curriculum.

In his autobiography Less Traveled Roads (1977) Morris describes his early years and the time he spent with his family first in Milford, Connecticut, then in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania where the  Morris family joined a Welch community. In his book he describes the milk route he ran for a local dairy, his time at  Albright College as a student counselor and a variety of other formative experiences, most notably as a camp counselor,  paper boy,  a steel mill jobber, and a master chorister. These many diverse experiences were brought into the mix of Pine Mountain and produced, through Morris, a remarkable experiment in education and in farming from 1931 until Morris’ departure from the school in 1942.

When Morris arrived to take on the Director role at Pine Mountains his youthful enthusiasm and his progressive educational views were not without their critics from the community as well as from the Board of Trustees. Over the years and following his departure to serve the war effort as an Army Chaplain in 1942,  the tide of public opinion washed over him. When he returned to the School he was not fully endorsed by the Board of Trustees to continue his role at the School.  

Criticism from the school’s Board of Trustees had been growing and several direct confrontations with members of the Board and with leaders in the community who had become increasingly conservative as the country’s involvement in the war grew, had caused him to re-think many of his fundamental values. Continuing with the School became increasingly difficult.  Part of the growing local conservatism was in response to a growing resistance in the community to anyone who might stand in the way of the coal economy or who might have Socialist tendencies that would lend support to striking coal miners and advocate a Union.  It Morris’ liberal political views that seemed to grate heavily against the increasingly conservative Board of Trustees of Pine Mountain. In fact, Morris had campaigned for Presidential candidate Norman Thomas, while Morris was a student at Union Theological Seminary.  Thomas, a Socialist, was a settlement house worker and a pacifist. He ran six consecutive campaigns for President from 1928 forwardNorman Thomas 1937.jpg, the year Morris supported him.

In 1928 Thomas lost the election to Herbert Hoover and the Great Depression followed but Morris continued to pay homage to Thomas’ early path of pacifism and socialism and his early connection to the Social Gospel movement.  As an articulate speaker, and as a Presbyterian minister, Thomas knew how to move his audience.He was a part of Morris’ early political and moral education and the residuals of this early education may be found in Morris’ first major conflict at the School as Director as described in his autobiography.

As Morris described the events in his autobiography, A Road Less Traveled, he tells us that the first year at the School he ran headlong into considerable local controversy in November of 1931 the year following the “Battle of Evarts,” a particularly deadly conflict between striking miners and local lawmen in the service of the local Coal Operator’s Association. New to the area, Morris did not yet have a grasp of the local politics and when he encountered a friend and classmate from Union Theological on the streets of Harlan he  invited him to Pine Mountain. Arnold Johnson, a member of the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP) and after 1928 a member of the Communist Party, had been a classmate of Morris’ at Union Theological school and had joined the socialist movement that supported the growing unrest in the miner’s labor movement.  In 1931 he was arrested in Harlan County for his union efforts and his “Socialist-Communist” views.

Later the IWW Committee led by Theodore Dreiser and including John dos Passos, Edmund Wilson, and others, came to the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky, where they observed and took testimony from coal miners striking in the Harlan County Coal Wars. Johnson’s trip pre-dates this famous group of reporters but he was seen as an enemy of the coal industry and was known to be a union organizer in a cou ty that was increasingly inclined to Union organization. The coal strikes of the early 1930s had left Harlan county fractured politically and the deep and growing fear of Union organizers promoted by the coal operators and the deep conservative antipathy toward any form of Socialism or Communism placed Morris in an awkward position with regard to his classmate, Johnson.  Morris’  association with his theology classmate  Johnson, soon brought him into conflict with the infamous J.H. Blair, sheriff of Harlan County, who supported the Coal Operators Association.

Morris was summoned by Sheriff Blair to come to his office and account for his activities and for his friendship with Johnson and his associates and to show proof that he was not a Socialist or a Communist. Given the dangerous and complicated events surrounding the mine-workers, it was remarkable that Morris made his case with Blair, but he did so with the assistance of workers at the School and the community of Pine Mountain. His community helped him to understand the gravity of his friendship with Johnson and any actions shown in support of the miners. Morris used this early experience as a reminder over the course of the next ten years when navigating the complex cultural climate in Harlan County as a Director and as a citizen of of the progressive School and the fast moving political climate.

FARMING AND MORRIS

By 1931, the year Glyn Morris arrived at the school as Director, the farm was a central part of the education program. But, nationally,  farming was in trouble.  

Nationally, farming, particularly tenant farming in the South was under siege, but it demonstrated a strength born of the land. Unionization was on the rise and it was integrated — a signal of the bonding aspects of working with the land and. Farm tenancy and sharecropping was not common in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, but sharecroppers had long shared the other bond — poverty. The Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933 was put forward to try to address the unbalanced privilege of large landholders. The Act soon prompted the formation of the Federal Farm Security Administration. While the FFSA was short-lived (abolished in 1946) it sent the right signals to small farms in its support of the small farmer and sharecroppers. Morris’s mentor, Norman Thomas, the Socialist organizer and graduate of Union Theological was instrumental in moving farmers toward a Union, but his greatest interest was with the unionization of miners associated with bituminous mining, the dominant industry in Harlan County in the early 1930s. The interests of the two men came together.

The Social Gospel had deep roots at Pine Mountain in the figure of Edward O. Guerrant, the influential minister and friend of the Pettit family. Norman Thomas’s foundation of rural settlement work, Social Gospel and Socialist leanings were shaped by the same mileu in which Morris was educated.  

 

The political ties of Morris came with a deep appreciation for farming and a strong sense for land stewardship as well as social justice. These persuasions had their roots in his early childhood and youth experiences in Pennsylvania and his training at Union Theological. He understood what farming could mean for the educational and spiritual life of the school and the health of the community. He acknowledged and embraced the agrarianism of Katherine Pettit and William Creech. He began to build on their vision by adding his own knowledge of contemporary farming practice, community organization and  scaled to the needs of the School to both political and social trends. Morris was a farmer, but he was first an educator, and obviously a increasing skilled politician.

STEWARDSHIP

melv_II_album_176_mod

Caring for the poultry in the first decade of the School. melv_II_album_176_mod

Morris paid attention to the past and included the idea of stewardship in his educational package. In the earlier years the care of the school’s animals was everyone’s responsibility– a community endeavor.  The health of these collaborative and critical food producers helped the school to maintain its costs and to support the educational programs of the school.  Instruction in farm management was an early program at the School under Pettit and it was continued under Morris, albeit with refreshed agenda in the ten years of Morris’ tenure.

In the early days of the school the girls from Practice House [Country Cottage]  were charged with caring for a school cow and for processing the milk for the other students and staff. It was this idea that caught the collaborative imagination of Morris and dairying quickly became a major part in his educational reform.

In his autobiography, Less Traveled Roads (1977), written at the end of his rich life, Morris recalls his first week at the school :

“My immediate focus of interest was the garden and dairy, particularly the garden, with its 5000 cabbage plants, rows of Kentucky Wonder beans, and large patches of Swiss chard, potatoes, turnips, onions lettuce radishes, corn, and other seasonal vegetables for the summer table — all of which, when stored or canned, would provide a substantial part of our menu during the ensuing  school year.  …”  [Morris, Less Traveled …p. 49  ]

FARM AND THEOLOGY

At Union Theological Seminary Morris had concentrated his studies in a relatively new area of  theology and education called “Church and Community.”  It was a course of study more closely aligned with sociology than any other field of study offered at the institution and it included attention to rural farming practice.  Steeped in the theology of Paul Tillich (1886-1965) , Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), and the philosophy of Systematic Theology as expounded by William Adams Brown (1865–1943), the courses at Union prepared Morris well for the challenges of rural settlement life at Pine Mountain.  The three influential professors at Union left their mark on Morris and subsequently on the school and agriculture at Pine Mountain.  As described in his autobiography,Morris was enmeshed in the Seminary’s circles of influence and as a recent graduate he brought many of Union’s ideas to Pine Mountain. Soon he constructed a very progressive model for program management and for experiential education at the school. It would later prove to be a significant part of his legacy.

William Adams Brown, was an important idea generator for Morris.  Brown, the son of a prominent banking family in New York City and was one of the founders of Union Settlement, an urban settlement house in East Harlem that worked with inner-city immigrants. Union Settlement  was a progressive and well-run urban settlement house in the country’s largest city.   But New York was not Eastern Kentucky.  Testimony to Morris’ capacity to flex and a credit to his already rich lifetime experience, he crafted his rural knowledge with that of his urban mentors and with the other interns at Union Settlement and later Union Theological Seminary.

Brown’s influence was bolstered by the neo-orthodoxy of Reinhold Niebuhr and the existential theology of  Paul Tillich, two other influencers.  A  remarkably effective blend of  Union theology and philosophical education came together in the Morris vision for Pine Mountain Settlement School and its educational programs and is reflected throughout his direction of programs, including farming.

As a student at Union Morris chose the New York City Settlement House as his field-work experience. He was most likely instrumental along with his professors in getting an assignment as ‘Boy’s Worker’.  In this position he was charged with the management of the day to day work assignments of the boys in the settlement.  He wove into that daily experience the fundamental theology of Brown, who taught a course of study called Systematic Theology, focused on the core truths of Christian theology and the practical skills of work and not on the sectarian beliefs of any one religion or Biblical exegesis.  Morris added to that pragmatism his own experiences growing up on a farm and in an industrial laborer family.  Philosophically he took much from Brown’s much quoted book, Beliefs That Matter:  A Theology for Laymen (1928) which was a foundational work for liberal theologians, particularly those who had attended Union Theological Seminary.  Many of the Union Theological school graduates carried Brown’s ideas to core areas of social and theological practice in the United States. Morris’ classmate Myles Horton, founder of the Highlander Folk School, now in Newmarket, Tennessee was one of those who also pulled strongly from Brown and Niebuhr but the administration focus of the two was quite distinct.  Horton was more closely aligned to social justice and civil rights issues while Morris administered more from the center and more integrated with current social and economic norms.  In addition to Morris and his classmates, many later progressive leaders, such as Martin Luther King and others kept Brown’s systematic theology in the foreground of their life-practice and many helped shape critical civil rights reform in the country. While his community at Pine Mountain did not include individuals of color, Morris, was equally committed to raising up the people of the Central Appalachians. 

BARNYARDS

So, what do theology and philosophy have to do with cows?  As seen in the writing of both Elizabeth Hench and Glyn Morris — considerable. Morris believed that theology and philosophy were companions in the barn and on the farm and his progressive approach found many sympathizers and advocates in the staff, students, and for many years, the community at large. Today this agrarian theology and philosophy, so much a part of the Jeffersonian administration, still enters our farm language and lurks in our politics,  as in the recent farm metaphor by a former Majority Leader of the House

 I don’t want to leave my successor a dirty barn, … I want to clean the barn up a little bit before the next person gets there.” [Boehner, John  CBS’s Face the Nation, Sept. 27, 2015]

Those delegated to cleaning of the barn, monitoring the yard, minding the gates and styles, and keeping a watchful eye on all those animals whose home was the barn and the yard, gave many students the discipline to monitor and master other corners of their lives and interactions. The farm hardened the delicate and softened the braggard.

Barn. Early construction.

Barn. Early construction. Yard before stone collection and removal.

FARM AND THE PINE MOUNTAIN GUIDANCE INSTITUTE

The innovative ideas generated by Morris and his staff during the Boarding High School years soon received national attention. It is not overreaching to say that Pine Mountain had a lasting influence on farming and on education in the region. Lessons learned from Pine Mountain continue to inspire educators and school counselors in the region and even today as schools struggle to educate in a rough sea of social issues the hands-on model of Pine Mountain still rings true. Farm training, the co-op and classes in civics played significant roles in the educational models used at the School. The Rural Youth Guidance Institute,  instituted by Morris at Pine Mountain in his last three years at the settlement school was a model of institutional cooperation. Inspired by John Brewer’s Education as Guidance: An Examination Of The Possibilities of a Curriculum In Terms Of Life Activities, (1932) and O. Latham Hatcher’s work with The Southern Women’s Educational Alliance,  later called Alliance for Rural Youth, Morris established the Pine Mountain Institute.  The stated purpose as outlined in the institute handbook was “to increase our efficiency in helping Harlan County youth to find themselves; by surveying their needs and all possible resources for meeting those needs; by coordinating these resources in a concerted effort to accomplish the above objectives.” This cooperative guidance for regional schools lasted for three years and spawned a series of Rural Youth Guidance Institutes. In just three short years, it garnered national attention and several publications by Morris and by the noted Columbia University educator, Ruth Strang, who often served as a mentor and speaker for Morris’ Institute. The Morris initiated Pine Mountain Guidance Institute was continued after his departure from the School to join the ranks of men serving in WWII by the Harlan County School system.

After Morris left Pine Mountain to join the war effort in 1942 as a U.S. Army Chaplain, a modified Institute was continued under the guidance of Harlan County School System Superintendent James Cawood in Harlan.  The collaborative training conference was very pro-active in the reform of the local county schools. It is not surprising to find that the Pine Mountain Institute’s youth round table, a central part of the conference, was one of the earliest instances of racial integration in rural school initiatives. Black and white students sat around the same table trying to address local social issues long before those discussions finally brought integration to rural Southern classrooms. Jobs training, or industrial training and farming was always a part of the discussion.

John Brewer (1877-1950),  one of Morris’ mentors,  was a pioneer in the vocational guidance and counseling field but it was O. Latham Hatcher who gave Morris the connections he needed to move forward with the Pine Mountain Institute and who made the important connections between rural sociology and a pragmatic education such as farming.  The well-known educator and former head of the Southern Woman’s Educational Alliance was seventy years old when Morris first met her. O. Latham Hatcher was feisty. She carried a dynamic personality that comes across in her correspondence with Morris. 

O. LATHAM HATCHER, MORRIS, LITERACY, COOPERATIVES, ARTS AND FARMING 

Literacy, international education, the arts, theater, cooperative economics and mathematics, home economics, and farming and stewardship of the land were all a part of Hatcher’s interests and her interests paired well with Morris’.  The two merged their visions and their interests found their way into the integrated curriculum at Pine Mountain. It was a Progressive curriculum in the model of John Dewey but one that was well suited to the needs of the Settlement School and its service region.

For example, a program which combined the expertise of teacher Angela Melville and her interest in cooperatives, the entire tenth grade in the late 1930’s was built around the theme of cooperation.  This cooperation found a solid model in the idea of a “co-op” and the management by students of a Co-op store.  The idea spread and later became a model for local farmers in the valley who were looking for a means to market their produce.

The eleventh grade curriculum focused on field-work in the community and the students participated in formal study of Folkways  as well as engaging in pragmatic tasks such as home-repair and Pack-Horse libraries. While no grades were given for any of their courses, students were accepted at both Berea and the University of Kentucky. Their acceptance was based on the recommendations of Pine Mountain staff and the extensive portfolio of work, progress reports and recommendations maintained by the school for each student. Often these portfolios ran from 50 -100 pages of close observation by classroom and industrial instructors as well as housemothers and advisers.

Gladys Hill (right) with co-op students. (Source: Harmon Fdn stills)

Gladys Hill (right) with co-op students. (Source: Harmon Fdn stills)

The twelfth grade students were given college preparatory coursework if that was their desire and their aptitude and their courses in their final year were singularly academic in nature. It was an innovative curriculum that paved the way for able students to continue their work  in college if they chose to do so or chart a course for industrial work. For those students who were not inclined to college work, there were skills training classes and trade preparation such as mechanics, printmaking, dairying, and other farm skills.

College work was not the required outcome for students at Pine Mountain but it was rigorous enough to garner approval by the state of Kentucky.  During the Morris years the school was accredited by the State Department of Education based on an elaborate system of accountability for all areas of learning.

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Classroom instruction. Butchering meat.[harm_088]

While Morris prepared extensive reports for the Board of Trustees on the intellectual life of the students and the productivity of the staff, he never failed to integrate the educational value of the farm and the importance of this program to the institution. The farmer was included in classroom instruction and integration of current trades related to the farm were explored such as butchering, farmer’s cooperatives, poultry farming, dairying, etc..

APPRAISAL – COMING AND GOING

Morris’ farm-focus is found in his first bulletin addressed to the Board in December of 1931.  It reflects his close attention to detail and his hands-on approach to all activities of farm-life at the School.

“Since the meeting of the Board here, we have acquired four shoats from Mr. Kenneth Nolan, as payment for the children’s tuition here at school.  This addition gives us a total of six hogs, two large and four small.  We have about completed the construction of a modern hog house, design as recommended by the Extension Department Department of Agriculture, University of Kentucky.  This house is so constructed as to give the maximum of air and sunshine.  It has a concrete floor which can be washed  as often as desired.  This will mean that we will keep our hogs and their living quarters as clean as possible.  This project serves a two-fold purpose: that of raising some of our own meat, and as a demonstration of how hogs should be kept.

Another project which we are about to enter upon is that of remodeling our manure pit, which is at present very impracticable.  We are going to cut down some of the wall and add a liquid manure cistern, also construct a roof over the manure pit.  At current prices, our manure as fertilizer is worth over one thousand dollars a year, but if it is not kept in a manure pit, 50-5% of its value is wasted by being exposed to the elements.  Manure is a an almost perfect fertilizer, with the exception that in this section of the country we need more phosphorus.  With proper care, our solid and liquid manure should prove a more valuable asset than it has in the past.

 We are pleased to announce that yesterday one of our cows, Lucy, gave fifty -two pounds of milk (twenty-six)quarts).  At the present time the cows are giving more milk than we can consume in liquid form, and we are making the surplus into butter. ”  

Over the course of his tenure at the School farm-life in the country underwent a major shift as industrialization began to dominate farming throughout the country and as the realities of weather, drought, floods and other adversarial events eroded the farm program. In his 1937-1938 Annual Report to the Board of Trustees , just before leaving the school to join the war effort as a Chaplain in the Army, Morris described a recent assessment of the farm activity:

“A critical appraisal of crops for the past year is not encouraging.  The dairy continues to profit from the farm, but in the main the quantity of produce raised on the farm for school consumption during the winter was not sufficient to warrant the expenditure and effort involved.  Sufficient beans were canned to last all year — and sufficient potatoes grown, but other crops were not successful.  Approximately twenty acres are under cultivation.  The school possesses at the present time fourteen cows, two heifers, three calves, one bull, one hundred twenty-eight hens, and seven pigs.”     

In the 1936-37 years the financial statement of the school aggregated the farm under “Living” which included the subheadings of Salaries, Provisions, Dairy, Farm and Garden, Poultry, Kitchen, and Dining Room. The total expense of this aggregate for the year was $15,683.68.  The expenses associated with the educational programs were $8,324.05. These comparative figures suggest that “Living” was starting to pull substantial revenue from the educational programs side.  Educational costs were listed as:  Academic salaries and supplies; Domestic Science [Country Cottage] ; woodworking ; weaving ; printing ; automotive.  Administrative expenses were totaled at $5,708.58 and included the Director’s salary and travel expenses ; Office ; Endowment Fund [management] expenses ; and Publicity. Morris was a farmer, but he was first an educator.

William Hayes on new Farmall Tractor at PMSS, c. 1943.

Also, somewhere in the later reports was the purchase of a new Farmall tractor in 1946.  The old Ford tractor had been patched up for the last time and the many tasks of cultivating the land could not revert to horse and plow.  The new tractor was expensive but vital to the continuation of farming at the school.  It unfortunately came too late to save the future of farming at the school and in the region, though it was intended to off-set the intense human labor needed to maintain a growing farm.  While new developments in technology aided the farmer significantly, much of the new equipment and technology was beyond the finances of the small farmer. Small farms were slowly being eliminated as market forces, began to argue for farm conglomerates and mechanization of many farm tasks. Pine Mountain had no immunity to this national shift.

Though efforts were made to introduce new technologies into farming practice, all signs pointed to the closure of small-scale farming across the country. The farm and the Ayrshire dairy programs continued for a brief time but the farming model was changing to the larger agri-farm model. Educational models were also rapidly changing and the closure of the boarding school program in 1949 ended the student labor program and consequently the dairy labor force. This reduction in available labor was a strong indication that the program could not survive.  Further, the consolidation of the school with Harlan County Schools precluded the need for production of milk for the resident student population and signaled a new standardized educational curriculum. The herd of cows was finally sold in 1952. All these change agents forced the closure of the dairy farm as central program at the School in that year.

New regulations and increasing costs added to the woes of not just PIne Mountain, but to all small farms and farmers throughout the region during this period.  The dairy operation had no choice but to shut down as it was no longer economical to continue production of milk for sale as the new regulations, increased competition, and other regulatory restraints,  made production of milk for sale very difficult and expensive for farms the size of Pine Mountain. In 1920 there were no dairies in Harlan County. In 1924 there were 24, but by the 1940’s the number of dairies was radically cut and milk supplied to local facilities such as Chappell’s Dairy, was largely supplied by farms outside the county. The eras of agri-business were just emerging throughout the country and the shift in the family farm was rapidly changing how farming would persist over the next many eras.

By 1955 not only the dairy, but small farming, generally, at Pine Mountain was perceived to have run its course. The farmer, William Hayes, had left for other employment, the silo was sold, the need for silage no longer existed, and the farm machinery was idled for lack of able labor to run and to repair it. Pieces of equipment were slowly sold or discarded as the tools for farming and for the dairy fell into disrepair.  By 1955, the barn was largely empty except for storage of school lumber and some machinery. Some of the more remote fields had started to fill with the early saplings of a forest as many fields always in production and long tilled, had not seen a plough for years.  The so-called Deschamps field, above Old Log and the field below the old CCC cabin, behind Burkham School House II, were the first to be consumed by forest. Later, the field beside Practice House (Country Cottage) was let go and it quickly filled with saplings as the forest reclaimed its hillsides.

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Early view of hillside with Practice House field to top left on mountain.

Today there are only a few signs of the early and robust farm and many of the fields that supported those efforts.  The farming that won accolades for conservation and productivity can  not easily be discerned in the surroundings.  Today, only the stone walls of the milk-shed , its roof long ago fallen-in, may be found next to the barn, as an architectural reminder of the milk production years and the tool shed equipment rooms changed from farm equipment to lawn mowers and weed-eaters, and sporadic gardening.

DOCUMENTATION

The documentation of the history of the dairy farm is a rich collection at Pine Mountain. The documents give a graphic picture of the decisions made regarding the farm but the photographic history, also a form of documentation, is more difficult to read.  For example the “Master Pastureman” awards and long lists of milk production and quaint names of cows and the even more quaint and delightful letters and diaries of Elizabeth Hench, tell the dairy story in pictures, but to get the full story they must combine with the later documents. The archives tell the story of  the early era of dairy management at the school and the bounty of the fields in production.  Each year the annual reports and the bi-annual board reports followed the farming practices of the School. Maps, photographs and other media also capture the visual changes that accompanied the evolving story of farming at Pine Mountain School. Snippets of stories from students and staff who worked in the dairy and on the farm appear in the school newsletters and in personal recollections and letters and can be mapped to photographic material forming a richly documented history of small-scale farming.

For those interested in the evolution of subsistence farming, the Pine Mountain collections provide a rich body of research material. This blog is but one perspective gleaned from the records.

Overall, the closure of the Pine Mountain School dairy and the farm presents as a financially pragmatic action.  It was consistent with the rapid changes occurring throughout small farms in Appalachia following WWII.  As farmers struggled to re-position themselves in the new economy and the rapid development of  mega-food supply chains, many farmers reverted to subsistence farming and became miners to supplement their income. Transport and distribution became a topic of great concern across the country and though roads now penetrated the valley of Pine Mountain, the distance and time to market was considerable. Further, the closure Pine Mountain’s functional farm was directly tied to the closure of the boarding school, its training programs.The collapse of the ready supply of labor was a significant loss and played a major role in the demise of concentrated farming at the settlement school.

Even robust programs such as the McClure’s popular Farmer’s Federation cooperative in western North Carolina near Asheville, encountered increasing  pressures from transport to distribution. Most other settlement schools and mission schools that had supported farms had already either closed or had found new directions that did not include farming practice.  There were remarkable exceptions to these farm closures such as the Farm School, now Warren Wilson College in North Carolina, which persisted and continues in an amended educational form, today.  And, to a limited extent,  the farm at John C. Campbell Folk School, also in western North Carolina continued its farm program. The Berry School in Georgia has maintained a farming presence through to the present day, in part due to the large land-holdings of the institution. 

Many of the settlement institutions with functioning farms found ways to fiscally incorporate their farms into the educational process, such as work-study programs, or community programming, or agricultural courses but most had a continuous and ready  supply of labor. These examples speak to the sustainable and current remarkable resurgence of the farm in many educational milieus.  This is particularly seen in the developing “Farm to Table” programs and the “Grow Appalachia” programs at Berea College, which now partners with Pine Mountain Settlement School. Finding new pathways to incorporate farming into the new programs at Pine Mountain is ongoing and the future looks promising for a strong resurgence. But, that is another long and promising story.


GO TO:   

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH – ABOUT

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH  I – GUIDE

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH II – INTRODUCTION

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH III – Place

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH IV  Farming the Land 1913-1930

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH V  Farm & Dairy I Early Years

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH V  Farm & Dairy II  Morris Years

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH VI  Poultry

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH VII In the Garden

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH VIII  In the Kitchen Pots and Pans

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH IX Dieticians

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH X  In the Dining Room, Manners & Etiquette 

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH I About

Pine Mountain Settlement School
DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH
ABOUT I

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH About
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Dancing in the Cabbage Patch is a personal reflection on the history of one of the oldest continuing rural settlement schools in America.

BEGINNING

Founded in 1913, Pine Mountain Settlement School is located in the mountains of eastern Kentucky in Harlan County.  It is one of several rural settlement schools influenced by the urban settlement movement but distinct from that movement by its agrarian emphasis. Rural settlement schools were born in the latter part of the nineteenth century and the early years of the twentieth. The push into the mountains of “Community work,” following the Reconstruction era, brought many ideas and workers from the urban settlement houses and centers to the largely decentralized agrarian communities of the Southern Appalachians where the Settlement Movement was melded into a new framework.  In remote communities in the mountains of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and Georgia a robust rural settlement school movement took hold at the beginning of the twentieth-century.

A region of ridges and hollows, the long chain of mountains that comprise the Southern Appalachians are rich in natural resources but during the early twentieth-century the people who had settled the area were believed to be outside the capacity to join the accelerating industrial development of the country’s major cities.  The reasons were many and were not, necessarily unique to Eastern Kentucky.  In particular, the people lagged in their development in many areas; social, economic, educational, and industrial skills, compounded by their isolation. One of the objectives of the rural settlement movement in the Appalachians was to provide industrial training for people tucked away in the most remote corners of the region and to prepare them for the looming impact of industrialization on their lives.

Modeled on the urban settlement movement models but modified for their rural setting, the early rural settlements movement programs were initiated to ease the rural communities into the mainstream of America’s burgeoning industrialization by integrating the familiar into the growing changes.  But,  paradoxically, the rural movement also sought to retain and promote some cultural artifacts of their isolation. By adopting elements of the Arts and Crafts Movement and the so-called Country Life Movement, the rural settlement work focused on nurturing pride in local folk arts, music and dance unique to the isolated region. While honoring the unique regional arts, crafts, music and dance, that built strength into the unique community, the rural settlement sought to educate and prepare the community the growing industrial tsunami that was overtaking the region. The people knew how to build strength of community through their heritage, but they were less able to adjust to the rapid and rapacious cultures that accompanied lumbering and mining.

The workers who came to Central Kentucky to found the early settlement institutions fervently believed that an amalgam of local cultural wealth and improved education and medical assistance could insulate the people and the region and enable their navigation of the perceived social ills of rapacious and rapid mechanization.

Workers in the early settlement schools danced an uneven course between their familiar cultural patterns and those they perceived to need “discovery” again within their remote communities.  Many of the settlement workers imposed their own adaptation of a perceived culture that only needed to be “awakened.” The community danced around the unfamiliar adaptations while gleaning from the mixed educational support and the reinvigoration of old skill sets and in the process, a new sense of self began to evolve for both natives and settlement workers.

For example, the communities around the rural settlements of eastern Kentucky danced the “Running Set”, a fast-paced, energetic dance that generally had only the human voice to call out the moves.  It was a dance that echoed their lives.  Recreation had to be experienced quickly, guided by visual and auditory direction, for the patterns that shaped the lives of the mountain people were the demanding and changing seasonal life of subsistence farming. The “folk dance” of the new workers looked back to the more elegant English Country Dance style. It was a unique blend and not as disparate as it might appear.  When the English Country Dance authority, Cecil Sharp, came to Pine Mountain Settlement in the 1930s he helped to cement the two cultural styles.

Further, many of the settlement workers who came to the isolated valleys and hollows of Eastern Kentucky promoted the region’s  isolation as a salvation from the evils of the industrial world by adopting a modified Arts and Craft Movement ethos. Others found a better balance through the introduction of many of the tenants of Progressive education, particularly through programs of civic-minded industrial training combined with a standard educational framework.  Pine Mountain Settlement School in its early years, chartered a course somewhere between the two educational directions.

In the region, many social service agencies, as well as church and charitable organizations developed institutions modeled on the early urban settlement movement instituted in Chicago by Jane Addams and in other major urban areas by idealistic leaders. The leaders in the urban centers proposed to guide the people out of poverty and illiteracy by modeling a progressive presence in the community. Of the rural settlement institutions Pine Mountain Settlement School, a uniquely non-sectarian institution introduced a powerful Settlement Movement model that adapted to the rural environment. What evolved in the formative years was a rich educational model that married traditional education to local culture and added a strong industrial training component. Further, they added health and social services for the community, reaching out to more than just students but also to their families.  Today, that model still has its proponents and it is still a model that changes lives and is remarkably fresh. In the urban centers the settlement house movement was slowly diluted when the workers began to remove themselves from the communities of interest and established “centers” of service staffed by professionals who were no longer integrated, or living within the community of service. When compared to contemporary trends in education and social services whether urban or rural, the de-centralized model may be argued to be an isolating move for mutual education and a step backward in direct service.

The following topical essays contained in “Dancing in the Cabbage Patch,” reflect a personal reflection and a journey centered on the experience of being born and raised in the rural settlement school environment of Pine Mountain. It has not been written to reflect the views of the current institution but to trace through a personal reflection —  a lived experience of some of the highlights of Pine Mountain Settlement School during its 100-year history.

It has been said that when one has had such a profound maturation and is wrenched from that life, that it allows for a second sight. To be able to return to a place and to see it for the first time is a rare gift but a tenuous one filled with some doubt in any a perceived clarity of vision. This essay explores that personal ambiguity.

FORWARD

Perhaps overly romantic and nostalgic, the words “pastoral” and “bucolic” have often been used to describe Pine Mountain Settlement School. These words are most frequently used in the description of farmlands. Yet, in eastern Kentucky, generally, the farmland has often been described in disparaging terms, particularly by visitors to the region. “Subsistence farming,” poverty, “hillbilly hollars,” outliers, “outsiders,” etc..  Why these disparaging remarks? Why this eagerness to draw a difference, especially between rural and urban? The answers are complex.

The general perception of the land’s importance to what comprises Pine Mountain Settlement School, in fact, stands in direct contrast to the observations of many of those who have written about Eastern Kentucky. The descriptive adjectives used for many Appalachian farms and the surrounding mountains — and,  sometimes its people, often reads  “ravaged,” “uncultivated,” “disorganized,” “unkempt,” “scraggly,” “impoverished,” dirty, and other pejoratives that disparage any perception of beauty. Why is Pine Mountain “bucolic”, “lovely”, “peaceful”, “Shangri-La”, “natures majestic garden” and on and on? Again, the perceptions and the reflections are complex.

Farming practice has always been central to the life of the Pine Mountain Settlement School and its surrounding communities.  Planning for the school was built upon the desire of William Creech to teach good farming practice as well as to educate students in an educational curriculum consistent with that offered to youth in other parts of the country. He saw these two objectives as joined in a reverence for the land and its people and progressive in its experimentation.

Farming at the School has a very long history and one that has been integrated into almost every program of the institution for over one-hundred years. While Pine Mountain Settlement has never been strictly a “farm school” it has had a long association with the production of food that nurtures body and mind.  It also draws from “farm schools” developed around the same time as Pine Mountain. Nature and nurture have always found a partnership in these schools and were and are regularly celebrated in a variety of ways.

COMMUNITY CELEBRATION

Like farming, the celebratory events at the School play an integral role in the history of the institution. Like the cycles of agricultural life, community celebrations help to establish the ebb and flow of life at the School and map it to the rhythm of the community. Many annual events such as Community Fair Day, celebrated in the Fall and harvest time; the Nativity Play at Christmas marked the reflection afforded by winters seclusion;  May Day in the Spring and the school’s former annual Spring Dogwood Breakfast celebrated the rebirth of living things and the nurture they promise. All have their origins in a celebration of the seasons and are generally accompanied by food or by displays of the produce from local farming.

The celebrations, pageants, and plays are remembered fondly by many students who attended the school and many of these memories were or are associated with agrarian practice or with a foodway, or agricultural rhythm. These events were also linked to long traditions that the workers romanticized and tied to Anglo-Saxon heritage, pioneer life, the Pilgrims, self-sufficiency, and a myriad of other partial truths.

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May Day c 1920 – young children dressed in greenery for the celebration.

Whether performed for entertainment, for educating, or for the celebration of special people, event, time or place, the festivities at the School provided an opportunity for a connection with both the past and the future of the institution.

In the surrounding community past and present are equally revered but future rarely intruded into daily community conversation. Like dreams, the future was held close like some shining city on the hill or in the hereafter. Today, the community of promise seems even further away in conversation and practice as celebrations have steadily declined and as economic despair has increased.  The tightly woven fabric of the community began to tatter in the tangled ideals of the War on Poverty and in the reality of an economy that failed to diversify.

Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, Robin Hood’s adventures, the Mikado, HMS Pinafore, the Cooperative Store skits, the Kanagawa play, Halloween, the carrying in of the Yule Log, the simple dialog of the Nativity Play — all gave early students the opportunity to don costumes and assume other personalities and to imagine themselves in other lives, other countries and other times. “How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace …” was found written on the wall of a humble mountain cabin.  It is a quote from the Bible, but it is also a well-known quote from the annual Nativity Play at Pine Mountain.

The early institutional celebrations allowed the staff workers to gather and renew their friendships on the campus and were celebrations that brought the school and the community together in cooperative celebration. What was carried away would be or could be life-changing.

PHOTOGRAPHS AND PUBLICATIONS

The PHOTOGRAPHS from Pine Mountain document and celebrate many of the events at the School and the community while also capturing some of the most compelling images of institutional and community life in early rural Appalachia.  There are intimate portraits of Appalachian families at work and at play. There are scrapbooks by settlement school workers who gathered their visual memories and left them for the school to ponder their aggregation.  There are official collections of promotional photographs that sought to convey a particular image of the institution for calendars and brochures.  There are many overlaps and duplicates in the images across the many collections.  Sharing was always part of Pine Mountain’s culture. And, there are many months and years of lives in the photographs and mementos gathered in the scrapbooks, travelogues, and albums. The photographic images also capture the essence of the School as it grew and changed.

Music and dance, folk craft, mountain vernacular architecture, clothing, farm techniques and implements, food and food preparation, and many more themes may be found in the photographs and publications that were created over the life of the School and shared within the institution and with the communities of interest  Some of the most compelling images are those of the workers and students as they danced … and danced … and danced some more.pmss001_bas098

As the educational programs changed and grew and as the current Environmental Education programs evolved, the photographs and publications about the School capture the shift in the scale of farming, the use of the land and the growing awareness of the preciousness of the natural environment.  In today’s technological world this preciousness is even more compelling. The photographs and publications are celebrations of the people as well as of the land.  Together, the land and the people provide what many call a “sense of place.”

FOODWAYS

Perhaps nowhere is the sense of place captured better, or traced more intimately than in the transition of food-ways at the institution.  Change may be observed in the narratives and the photographs when annual events were either down-sized or were, in some cases eliminated. The relationship between the land and the foodways of the people who shared the land may be clearly seen as food, events, and farming intermingle and wax and wane.

For example, May Day and Dogwood Breakfast, two spring-time events were eliminated from the annual calendar shortly after the closure of the boarding school in 1949.  After the closure of the boarding school the intimate community of the School began to fragment, as workers lived off-site, the tasks of the school became overwhelming with no students to crew the many jobs. The focus on agriculture declined. The many changes at the School reflected a shift in the general sense of community in both the central institution and also in the community at large. The numbers of staff at the school declined over the years and many workers came for short stays or had little knowledge or connection to the historical campus. Foodways changed as the more processed food was easily attainable and preparation of locally harvested food diminished.

In the community, the events in nearby urban centers such as Harlan, or other urban centers such as Hazard or Cumberland, or even distant Lexington, began to pull families away from the immediate community life of the Pine Mountain Valley. kingman_092b The isolation of the region was slowly but dramatically altered by roads, particularly THE ROAD, Laden Trail, across Pine Mountain, which the Settlement School sponsored with Harlan County and the State of Kentucky. Though the road was slow in its construction, it radically changed live in the isolated valley. New roads opened the region for an ebb and flow of new cultural ideas and life-styles.

Soldiers returning from WWI  and especially WWII, shifted the cultural climate even more. Film, television, and today multimedia and digital media and other entertainment and communication tools continue to contribute to the fracture of community cohesion. The reliance on immediate communication can now be acutely felt at the school as visitors roam the campus for “hot-spots” to keep in cell-phone contact with family, friends or business. Visitors often feel both in place and out-of-place … caught between past and future in the remote location.

ENVIRONMENTAL PROGRAMMING

With the full implementation of the Environmental Education program in the 1970s, older programs at the school shifted from a focus on hands-on agricultural management of the campus land resources to an educational understanding of the broader concepts of the total natural environment and its cooperative management.  The farm became garden and the devolution to subsistence farming could not be missed on those who remembered the farming years. Quickly, the new environmental consciousness of the 1960s and 1970s aligned with K-12 educational science standards found in the public school curricula and environmental education programs began to evolve. Pine Mountain School quickly realized the importance of its history and geography to the new environmental movement and began to give formal shape to its educational program..  Pine Mountain saw its opportunity to be a leader in the field of environmental education and was, in fact,  one of the first such programs in the state of Kentucky.  Today, the environmental programs at the School remain a model of environmental education while keeping pace with the growing national educational environmentalism and awareness. Global warming and other man-made environmental crises are giving special urgency to environmental education and not just to K-12. Throughout the world there is a growing struggle to find ways to address the complexity of environmental education for everyone.

Yet, Pine Mountain will always carry an environmental lesson. Whether “jitterbugging” in the local streams, or waltzing across a ridge-top, or learning to tango with a rapid thunderstorm, the dances with nature at the School have proven to be endless and sustainable and educational.

HEAD, HANDS, HEART AND EYES OF THE PHOTOGRAPH

PHOTOGRAPHS have always been important to the School. What the photographers at Pine Mountain selected to photograph documents the change in the community as well as larger cultural shifts. While the photographs capture the essence of the lifestyle of the age, they also suggest the personal interest of the photographers as they experienced their cultural context. The visual record, the photograph and certainly the individuals in the photograph, capture what the local culture saw as it looked back at the many cameras and photographers. The tensions are almost palpable in the distance between camera, subject, and photographer.  Both palpable and frozen, the many images taken at the school and in the community graphically capture  photographer, image and subject as they instantly interact —  their gazes joined, the landscape stilled and quiet, a thousand questions unanswered — just as it is in one blink of life.

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Visitors from Viet Nam in the classroom at PMSS, 1950s. [pmss_0037]

Photographs are remarkable vehicles for primary source information and their visual content opens for the teacher, researcher, and the viewer a variety of windows into other times and other lives. The potential contributions of Pine Mountain Settlement School’s photographs to Appalachian cultural research are extraordinary. One has to wonder if the young boy in the photograph above might have ended up in Viet Nam in the 1970s and what would he remember of this early encounter?

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Community family near PMSS. [Friends & Neighbors – VI-51 ]

Mary Rogers, wife of Burton Rogers, one of the Directors of the School, wrote in the “Preface” of the Pine Mountain Album – 1913-1963, prepared for the 50th anniversary of the School:

“Most of us are so busy trying to do what must be done today, and planning ahead to what needs to be done tomorrow that we have little time to look back to the things which happened yesterday. But we are celebrating an anniversary, the 50th anniversary of Pine Mountain Settlement School, and so we will turn to the past — get out the old album and look at the pictures.

It’s a funny thing, looking at old pictures. They don’t show the things that matter most: Uncle William’s craving that his people might grow better; Miss Pettit’s dedication to bringing help to the mountains; Mrs. Zande’s high standards and loving understanding of people; Mr. Morris’ dynamic energy; the different gifts brought by hundreds of workers over the years.

Nor do they show the important things in a student’s life: the moments of courage; the hours of service; the growth in understanding; the vivid enjoyment of life; the deepening love for a place and its people; and sometimes the realization that the source of all things is the Love of God. All the same, let’s look at the pictures, some faded and old-fashioned, but taken because someone wanted to “keep” something from the past, and let us try and read into them the things for which they stand.”
                                                                                            Mary Rogers, 1963

Another fifty years and more have now been added to the visual history of the School. Together, the photographs, the documents, the scrapbooks, the books and the vast natural and built environment of the school form a rich educational environment and classroom that is unexcelled in the Central Appalachians.  In 2013 Pine Mountain celebrated its 100th Anniversary. One-hundred years of “Dancing in the Cabbage Patch.”

GO TO:   

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH – ABOUT

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH  I – GUIDE

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH II – INTRODUCTION

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH III – PLACE

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH IV – FARMING THE LAND 1913-1930

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH V – FARM & DAIRY I – EARLY YEARS

DANCING IN THE CABBAGE PATCH V – FARM & DAIRY II – MORRIS YEARS