Above are PDF files of our collective heritage skills.
A great resource to me is LaMar Alexander of http://www.simplesolarhomesteading.com/ His words and books are new foxfires for a new century. He is a hero and mentor. LaMar has energized the way I look at future.
I will quote his words here regarding the fox fire books.
“The books started as a school magazine project for the students to record and preserve the stories and oral history of the Appalachia area. It became so popular they turned the magazine articles into a series of books.
It helped to stimulate interest in these people and old-time skills but also drew attention to the low education, poor social programs and poverty that was prevalent and is still is a problem in some areas of Appalachia.
Most of these people moved to that area when mining and farming was done by hand and these people were mostly labor workers and education was not a high priority. When the mining and farming became mechanized they couldn’t find work and those that stayed turned to a subsistence farming and hunting lifestyle to survive.
For 2-3 generations they lived with any social programs and schools in that area and unfortunately many of the children were not able to escape that poverty and it created a vicious cycle of generational poverty.
They were hard-working people and developed many crafts and survival skills and kept the old ways so to and outsider they seem odd and the magazine brought more attention than many of them wanted. Some started small craft businesses and were finally able to support themselves from their skills and there are many craft stores in the area now selling homemade crafts.
Those that owned land and wanted to stay were pressured to sell to the mining companies and the mining tailings polluted the local rivers that they relied on for farming and survival. Many finally gave up and sold out.
Because of the magazine it put pressure on the state government to help these people so they built schools and services which made the area more popular and has now become a tourist area because of the beautiful mountains and once the land became valuable the locals were preyed on by unscrupulous real estate agents,
There is a lot to be learned from those books and I think it is also important to know the history of that area especially about the corporations that almost destroyed that simple life.”
LaMar
Suburbhomestead 