A Fruitful Year.

It was the final day of the season for the Fallins' roadside produce stand and Mae Fallin was ready to close up.

For three months Mae and her husband, Vern, had stood behind their tables of melons and corn and apples and squash. Thousands of their homegrown tomatoes and watermelon and peppers passed through their hands this long, hot summer.

Continued at... A Fruitful Year

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1994. All rights reserved.
Rural Delivery
Artwork: Mae Fallin

Travels with Foxfire

The Foxfire oral history project delivers another compendium of the collected wisdom of artists, craftsmen, musicians, and moonshiners in Southern Appalachia. In this volume we learn the secret origins of stock car racing, the story behind the formation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and how to gather wild ginseng.

More than thirty essays include the recipes of an award-winning cookbook writer along with profiles of bootleggers and bear hunters, game wardens and medicine women, water dowsers, sculptors, folk singers, novelists, record collectors, and even the world’s foremost “priviologist.”

Travels with Foxfire

Stories of People, Passions, and Practices from Southern Appalachia

by Phil Hudgins and Jessica Phillips

University Press of Kentucky, 2018

Rural Delivery

Book List

Outrider Reading Group

View from the Trees

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2005. All rights reserved.

We're only about ten feet up off the ground, but the distance feels tenfold greater as I gaze out over rooftops and across the brush to fields and houses beyond. Here we are uplifted, held aloft by strong limbs, and separated from standard time.

Here we are eye-to-eye with the birds, as far removed from ground-level reality as an eagle in its aerie. Shrouded in leafage, we can peer out at passersby who never seem lift their heads above the horizontal plane; to them we are invisible.

Almost every kid who grows up in the country knows what it's like to climb trees. And nearly everyone who has ever climbed a tree has built a treehouse... or dreamed of one.

Continued at... View from the Trees

Rural Delivery
Treehouses of the World
Here's How To... Build a Treehouse
Artwork: Treehouse

Rural Economics

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1996. All rights reserved.

Here it goes again, that compulsion to count and figure and cut and scrimp. Like some actuary, I'm compelled to calculate the costs and consequences of every action and exchange.
   
Air-drying laundry on a clothesline saves nearly 50 cents a load.
   
Add two weeks between those monthly haircuts and save at least $60 a year.

Buy heating oil in midsummer and save another $50 or more.

April is a month for adding up; the government makes it so. After laboring over investment tax credits and itemized deductions and capital loss carryforwards a person's perceptions change. I'm consumed with frugality, obsessed with prudence.

Continued at... Rural Economics

Holidays and Notable Events
How To Do It Books
Artwork: Laundry on a Clothesline

Winter Visitors

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1994. All rights reserved.

Among the most common sounds of winter in the country, along with rustling leaves and crackling fires, is the scratching and scurrying that can be heard inside walls and rafters of almost every rural dwelling.

These are the sounds of the house mouse, mus musculus, one of the least welcome of guests and most difficult to dissuade. This uninvited visitor will eat, or chew on, almost anything and defecate everywhere. He contaminates food, causes damage to structures and property, and  carries dangerous diseases.

Introduced by 16th century pilgrims in the holds of their Atlantic-crossing ships, house mice followed the progress of Europeans in the New World, traveling in wagons and rucksacks and saddlebags and trains and trucks and planes across the continent and back, occupying pantries from Maine to Malibu.

Grayish brown with a naked scaly tail, the pointy-snouted house mouse puts down 50 droppings a day, on average, and gives off 300 squirts of urine in between. Messy, ugly, and presumptuous, this uninvited guest inspires desperate measures.

Continued at... Winter Visitors.

The Nature Pages
Pest Control
Artwork: House Mouse - Mus Musculus

Dark of Winter

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2006. All rights reserved.

In the dark days that follow the winter solstice, the last of December through the middle of January, I anxiously track the growth of daylight for reassurance that the tide has indeed turned and that winter will eventually give way to the brightening of early spring.

At this latitude of approximately 45 degrees, daylight grows ever so slowly at first, just a minute more each day until the middle of January, when it starts to grow by twos and then by threes at the month's end.

What I always find curious, and faintly disturbing, is that the day does not grow evenly. The sun sets a minute later each day for the week following the solstice, but it rises the same time day after day.

How could this be?

Continued at... Dark of Winter.

Rural Delivery
Out There
Outrider Books and Travel
Artwork: Dark of Winter.

If It's Thursday Night, It's Bullseyes.

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1996. All rights reserved.

On Thursday nights in late winter the three taverns facing the railroad tracks in Shoshone, Idaho, are comfortably warm and inviting. Inside any of the establishments customers will be lined up at the bar and scattered among dimly lit tables. Reba will be wailing from the juke box and a crowd will have gathered around the electronic dart machine at one end of the room. 
"Pock!" goes a soft-tipped dart into the board and instantly the machine tallies its score. Then another player toes the foul line.

This sparsely populated niche of southern Idaho is a long way from England, where throwing darts at a circular, numbered board is a passionate pasttime. But out of every eighty-five residents in the all-rural Lincoln County at least one is a competitive dart-thrower.

Continued at... If It's Thursday Night, It's Bullseyes.

Rural Delivery
Games and Puzzles
Sports and Fitness
Artwork: James Cagney On Martha'S Vinyard Playing Darts.

A Carol's Tale

Most songs don't keep. People sing them for a few years, then lose interest. New tunes replace the old in a continuous cycle and yesterday's lyrics are soon forgotten.
 
Even Christmas carols, the most traditional sounds in American music, have fairly shallow roots. The most popular Christmas song to date, "White Christmas," was composed by Irving Berlin in 1942. "Do You Hear What I Hear?" only dates back to 1962 and "Away in a Manger" is just over a century old.
 
Hardly anyone sings old Christmas classics like "La Bonna Novella" and "Nowell" any more. Both were big European hits in the 16th and 17th centuries. So was the German carol "Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen" ("Lo, How a Rose E'er Blooming.")
 
Like a well-worn pair of boots left on the back porch, old songs lie forgotten until they lose their usefulness. Then they don't seem to fit any occasion.

Continued at... A Carol's Tale

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved.
Out of the Past
Holidays and Notable Events
Artwork: Church Choir Singing by Mary Evans

Rare Breeds.

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1997. All rights reserved.

Farm animals are in decline worldwide. Out of approximately 4,000 breeds of domesticated animals, 1,000 breeds are seriously threatened with extinction. Every week another breed of workhorse, cattle, pig or variety of sheep or poultry follows the passenger pigeon, the blue pike and the wooly mammoth into oblivion.

In hard numbers, there's no shortage of livestock. More domesticated animals are being farmed in less space and with greater returns of meat, milk, eggs and wool than at any time in history. But the number of breeds of domesticated animals is much smaller than it was a century ago. The genetic diversity of farm animals is shrinking, and with it the ability to adapt to new climates, new diseases and new markets.

Continued at... Rare Breeds

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Animal Husbandry
Husbandry
Farm Supply
Artwork: Dexter Cow.

December Exposure.

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1998. All rights reserved.

Fencelines once lost to syringa and gooseberry have reappeared and the rocky outcrop along the riverbank is visible once more.  Brown ribbons of road wind their way along the edges of the corn field, now reduced to stubble.

There comes a time late in the autumn when all is exposed. After the foliage has fallen from the trees and before the first layer of snow, there's usually a week or two of nakedness.

The spikes of goldenrod and stands of wild geraniums are grayed and flattened by black frosts and pelting rains. In the pasture, the tall fescues and perennial ryegrasses are matted and bending low.

Continued at... December Exposure

Rural Delivery
The Nature Pages
Out of the Past: Thoreau
Artwork: Barren Tree.

Hitched to History

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved.

It hasn't been all that many years since horses were the primary mode of transportation all across the West. They not only pulled buggies and wagons, and sleighs in the winter, but they also powered the plows and cultivators that tamed an arid land.
 
Les Broadie remembered well those horse-drawn days. They were as near to him as his well-weathered hands, and as much a part of his life when I met him in 1995 as they were when he was youngster in the 1920s.

After his retirement from raising draft horses and cattle, Les operated Blizzard Mountain Carriages -- a one-man outfit specializing in buying and selling horse-drawn wagons, carriages, carts and sleighs. At the time, we was one of but a handful of American horse-drawn carriage dealers still in business.

Continued at... Hitched to History

Rural Delivery
Out of the Past
Out of the Past blog
Artwork: Horse-Drawn Sleigh Ride at Twilight in a Snowy Landscape by Ira Block

Cold Hardening

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1995. All rights reserved.

The crisp night is giving way to a warm morning glow. It will be an "Indian Summer" sort of day, the kind we missed out on last year when winter dropped in early. Some of our coldest weather came in November rather than January, where it belongs.

Most of nature depends on a steady progression of seasons.

These cool nights encourage the growth of fat and fur on dogs, cats, horses and most other warm-blooded critters.

My beard and waistline, too, seem to grow more readily this time of year. By winter solstice, or late December, we'll be well acclimated to the cold.

Continued at... Cold Hardening

Rural Delivery
The Nature Pages
Second Nature
Artwork: Winter Tree Line I by Ilona Wellman

A Bite Most Deadly

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1995. All rights reserved.

Some folks are afraid of spiders, others snakes. Lightning puts the fear of God in many of us, and so do earthquakes, tornadoes and dark moonless nights. Living in the country presents many special worries, like the threat of wildfire or the potential for flash floods. More cars collide with wild animals on rural roads than city lanes and the chances of eating a poisonous mushroom or contracting the deadly hantavirus are much greater off the beaten path. But there is no threat so terrifying in rural places, or as fatally serious as rabies.

Growing up, I learned to keep a wary eye on grape arbors and tall, dark hedges of lilacs lest some crazed bat should emerge, grab hold of my hair, bite my scalp and infect me with rabies. Older cousins planted a terror of rabies in my pre-school mind with accounts of the terrible vaccination shots in the belly that bat bite victims had to endure and how, more often than not, the bitten person went crazy and was committed to an asylum, ranting and raving and foaming at the mouth.

Continued at... A Bite Most Deadly

Rural Delivery
Animal Husbandry
Out There
Artwork: Mad Dog

Privy to Privies

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1995. All rights reserved.

Live long enough and many of the everyday skills and experiences you take for granted become virtually obsolete, like operating a manual transmission or dialing a rotary phone.
   
Outhouses are like that. You don't see many privies any more, even on the most remote farmsteads, and few folks can claim to have sat in one.

I'm not talking about those industrial "Johnny-on-the-Jobsite" rental toilets or even the Forest Service's government-issue campground restrooms. True outhouses are homebuilt wood-plank structures with personalized features like crescent moons cut into the door or a shelf for the Sears and Roebuck catalog.

Continued at... Privy to Privies

Rural Delivery
Out of the Past
Farm Supply
Artwork: Billy Jacobs Morning Commute

Yellow and Ripe with Autumn

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1996. All rights reserved.

The urgency of spring sprouting and the rush of summer growth has given way to a time of laid-back fulfillment. Eggs have hatched and fledglings are now on the wing. Seeds and fruits and nuts and pods are well on their way to completion. Summer is ripe and ready for harvest.

"Live in each season as it passes, breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influences of each... Grow green with spring, yellow and ripe with autumn."

Such was the sage advice of Henry David Thoreau. One hundred sixty years later I find common ground in the truth he tilled. It is not just the crops in the field we gather this time of year, but those in our souls as well.

Continued at... Yellow and Ripe with Autumn

The Nature Pages
Outgoing
Artwork: Yellow Autumn Grass and Sunset

Boundary Art

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2002. All rights reserved.

Some people make a personal statement through their clothes or in the choice of car or truck they drive; some wear a particular style of hat or cut their hair in some unique fashion.

Other folks, particularly in rural America, express themselves by decorating their mailboxes.

Travel almost any rural two-lane still frequented by farm machinery and you're likely to come across mailboxes painted with flowers and flags and animals and astrological symbols. Some mailboxes simply have the owner's name scrawled across one side, while others are ornately decorated with bright colors or sculpted in the shape of houses, barns and old railroad engines.

Continued at... Boundary Art

Rural Delivery
Out of the Past
Collectibles
Artwork: Tractor Mailbox

Equinox

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1994. All rights reserved.

We lie on the brink of change. Great storms are brewing. This is the week of equinox, when the Earth stands up straight to the sun before it begins to tilt again, northern hemisphere tipping outward.   

At this moment everything hangs in balance. The hours of day and night are nearly even. There's some powerful physics at play.

Equinoxes are times of special powers. Calendars are created around them; crops are planted by them.

Continued at... Equinox

Rural Delivery
Out of the Past
Holidays and Notable Events
Artwork: Precession of the Equinoxes

New Neighbors

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2007. All rights reserved.

All across the country, in rural places from Maine to Mendocino, there are terrible conflicts raging between folks who have lived in these places all their lives and newcomers who want to change them to better meet their expectations.

Some novice ruralites want to look at cows grazing in a pasture without having to smell them. Others expect farms to operate without machinery and harvesting to occur on bankers' hours. And a few even want to recreate our small town business districts with boutiques and tourist attractions.

Continued at... New Neighbors

Rural Delivery
Out of the Past
Where Oliver Found His Place
Artwork: New Neighbors

Where Did Dogs Come From?

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 2002. All rights reserved.

Dogs haven't always been around. Part of the Canidae family that includes wolves and coyotes and jackals, domesticated dogs are rather new to this planet and what they've accomplished since teaming up with humans is miraculous.

In the space of just a few thousand years, dogs have changed their shape and behaviors to fit into almost every known human environment and endeavor, from Huskies pulling sleds in the Arctic to Border Collies herding sheep in Scotland and Pekinese warming laps in midtown Manhattan.

And yet, at the molecular level not much has changed since dogs branched off from the family of wolves. The DNA makeup of wolves and dogs is almost identical.

Continued at... Where Did Dogs Come From?

Rural Delivery
Out of the Past
Animal Husbandry
Artwork: Wolf Pups

Some Summer Days

by Michael Hofferber. Copyright © 1997. All rights reserved.

There are days in summer that are dry as a bone and blistering hot. There are days when the sun burns and the wind peels and lightning starts wildfires that race out of control. Summer skies can be brown with soot and thick with allergens, or they can be broiling with a violence that strips and drowns and washes away.

But there are other summer days, such as today, that open like the bloom of a colorful flower. Scented with the sweet fragrance of fresh-cut alfalfa, they arrive with a kiss of dew and the enveloping warmth of dawn.

There are summer days sweet as a crisp apple that beckon bite after bite down to a core of contentment. Their still mornings lie across the countryside like a Maxfield Parrish painting, lustrous and idyllic.

Continued at... Some Summer Days

Rural Delivery
Outgoing
The Nature Pages
Artwork: A Summer's Day by Alfred Sisley