Virginia writer Emilee Hackney has a complicated relationship with her home. She loves the place where she’s from, in Tazewell County — her friends, family, the swimming holes and mountains and wild places — but she also felt stifled. Her new memoir "All That’s Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir" explores this tension and her experience when she did leave. Inside Appalachia Host Mason Adams spoke with Hackney about the book.
Want to Eat Local in Appalachia? Here's a Map That Can Help
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What does a Cornbread Festival in Tennessee, a Paw Paw festival in Ohio and the Hatfield McCoy Moonshine Distillery in West Virginia all have in common? They’re among hundreds of destinations featured on a map called Bon Appétit Appalachia. The map features Appalachian restaurants, wineries, and festivals serving locally sourced food has just been updated with more listings by The Appalachian Regional Commission. The map has 62 regional food destinations in West Virginia.
The Bon Appétit Appalachia Map was first published in 2014. Since then, hundreds of new listings have been included on the map, featuring restaurants like the Dish Café in Raleigh County. Manager Rosy Corley says customers come for the locally raised beef and fresh veggies. “They’re just so excited to be able to eat what we call real food that’s not processed and I think that trend is becoming more and more popular.”
And that increasing popularity for authentic local food is driving other restaurants across Appalachia to buy food locally when possible, even if doing so can get expensive.
Map from the Appalachian Regional Commission features hundreds of regional food destinations across Appalachia
Another location on the map is Fish Hawk Acres farm and catering in Upshur County, a business that recently expanded, opening a new market and cafe in downtown Buckhannon. Debbie Hubert is a caterer with Fish Hawk Acres. She says the biggest challenge they face trying to buy more local ingredients is the time it takes to find the high quality food items they need on a consistent basis. “We buy as much local food as possible, but if we have to get product out of season, we get it from a bigger food source,” Hubert says.
The Appalachian Regional Commission hopes their Bon Appétit Appalachia map will help encourage more customers to visit small businesses across the region.
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Roadside farmstands with homemade jams and bread are a common sight in Appalachia. Because they’re unmanned, many of them work on the honor system: Take a carton of berries, leave some cash. But the humble farm stand is changing to keep up with an increasingly cash-free society. Folkways Reporter Wendy Welch recently visited a stand in Wythe County, Virginia and has this.
Writer Emilee Hackney has a complicated relationship with where she grew up. She loved her friends, family, the swimming holes and wild places in Tazewell County, Virginia, but she felt stifled. Her new memoir, All That’s Unseen: An Appalachian Memoir, explores this tension and what happened when she did leave.
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