Agriculture Story Archives - Page 9 of 14 - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Drowning In Milk: Dairy Farmers Look For Lifelines In Flooded Market

LaRue County, Kentucky, dairy farmer Gary Rock sits in his milking parlor, overlooking what is left of his 95 cow operation.

“Three hundred years of history is something that a lot of people in our country cannot even talk about,” Rock said.

That’s how long the farm has been in his family. While the land has turned out tobacco, soybeans and other crops over the years, since 1980 dairy has nourished the family in and out of tragedy.

“In 2013, we had an F2 tornado that totally destroyed all the facilities here except the one we are sitting in, which is the milk parlor itself,” Rock said. If that had been lost, he said, he would not have rebuilt.

Despite losing his legs, Rock manages the centuries-old family farm.

“I told myself, I’m not going to force this to happen. If a brick wall occurs, I’m going to end it.”

Instead, things moved forward with help from his community.

“Before the tornado, we had a freestyle barn. It was low, it was not well-ventilated. After the tornado, we put in a pack barn which eliminated 90 percent of the health problems I had with cattle.”

Rock said the changes ended up helping his operation significantly. But within weeks of the farm’s return to production another tragedy hit. Rock lost his legs in a tractor accident. Still, the dairy provided, and this time with more than an income.

“It enabled me to find life again in a profession that I already knew,” he said. “So, that was a driving force for me.”

Now, the farm looks to weather its greatest storm yet: a disastrous drop in revenue.

“To give you an illustration, the same farm on the same number of cows is selling a $170,000 less of product in value,” Rock explained. “So, try to comprehend having to cut your pay scale in half and see what you’ve got to do to survive.”

This isn’t a Rock family problem, this is a dairy industry problem. Prices have plummeted in a market flooded with supply from foreign producers and larger operations squeezing out small farmers. The crisis has dairy farmers rethinking the U.S. market system and looking to other countries as models for a solution.

In the Ohio Valley the effects have come swiftly. In February, more than a hundred producers across Kentucky, Ohio and five other states learned that Dean Foods, a major buyer, would cancel contracts. Another processor, Prairie Farms, will close its fluid milk processing plant in west Kentucky in June.

“It looks to me that this will be the last month-and-a-half of milking that I’ll do,” Rock said. “This is the brick wall I never faced.”

Facing Bankruptcy

The National Family Farm Coalition says the average price of milk is around 30 percent below the cost of production. Things are so bad that dairy producers that do have contracts report that co-ops are attaching suicide prevention information with their checks.

Farm Aid Communication Director Jennifer Fahy said the tough times remind her of the 1980 farm crisis, when as many as 2,100 farms would close in a week.

Rock’s herd is among the small farms squeezed by the dairy crisis.

“We are hearing from farmers who are being referred by organizations that are usually referrals for us,” she said. “Over the years since the farm crisis the network of support for farmers has been just chipped away.”

Fahy explained that they’ve seen net farm income take a 50 percent drop and dairy is getting hit the hardest.

“Sometimes the best-case scenario is helping a farmer to navigate declaring bankruptcy and getting out before it’s even worse, unfortunately,” Fahy said.

The U.S. open market system is pushing milk production to larger farms. In 1987 half of all dairy cows were on farms with 80 or fewer cows, similar in size to Gary Rock’s operation. By 2012, that midpoint herd size was 900 cows.

Blame Canada!

International trade issues are magnifying problems for the small farms left. International Dairy Foods Association President Michael Dykes blames Canada for violating trade laws.

Dykes claimed that some of Canada’s products are being “dumped” at unfair prices due to Canada’s system of price controls, known as “Class 7,” implemented last year.

Dykes said this all stems from an increased demand in butter. Instead of importing to meet their additional butter needs, Canada raised the milk quotas that Canadian farmers can produce.

“They increased it almost 6 percent, whereas the U.S. is increasing at about one-and-a-half percent per year,” he said.

As Canada upped its quota for domestically-produced milk to make more butter, it was left with an excess supply of other products, such as skim milk powders, for which there was lower demand.

“Now you have the Canadians coming in, they are selling skim milk powders on the ground in Mexico at three-cents-a-pound cheaper than we can from the U.S. to Mexico,” Dykes said.

Dykes said the Canadian policy lowers prices on milk ingredients like skim milk powders and encourages substitution of domestic Canadian dairy in place of products they might import from the U.S.

“So we are in a situation where we have more milk right now than we have demand and that also says trade becomes extremely important,” Dykes said.

He wants Canada to open its market to more U.S. dairy. He’d like to see NAFTA renegotiated or for the U.S. to rejoin the Trans Pacific Partnership. That agreement allowed a small percentage of U.S. imports into Canada before President Trump decided to end it.

In April, 68 members of Congress sent a letter to U.S. Trade Representative Ambassador Robert Lighthizer regarding NAFTA negotiations. The members of Congress urged an end to Canada’s pricing program and dairy tariffs, which impose a duty of nearly 300 percent.

Be Like Canada?

But the view from Canada is different. Dairy Farms of Ontario CEO Graham Lloyd said Canada’s pricing schemes are targeted at the domestic market.

“The fear or concerns that the U.S. seem to have with Class 7 is that we are going to be competitive in the world market,” Lloyd said. “But what needs to be understood is we actually don’t issue milk production for export purposes.”

Beyond just defending the Canadian system, Lloyd recommends that the U.S. should give it a try.

“From a Canadian perspective there is also a lot of sympathy for U.S. farmers,” he said. Lloyd said Canadian farmers once had the same struggles U.S. dairy farmers face now, before the country moved to its quota-based system.

“Farmers didn’t know where their markets were, they were having direct deals with processors,” he said. “Milk was getting dumped, there were no production controls and farmers were going bankrupt because they had no certainty of any market.”

Lloyd said that was all fixed by a supply management system based on three tiers: production control, pricing, and import control. Now, prices are constant and stable allowing processors greater predictability, albeit at lower margins.

“That allows for greater planning for them and that’s where you can maintain higher returns,” Lloyd said.

A tornado spared only this milking parlor on Rock’s farm.

The idea has appeal among some farm advocates in the U.S. who argue that emulating the Canadians holds more promise that blaming them.

“Dismantling a system that is working in Canada so that they are more available to soak up our excess product … would not fix what is wrong here,” said Patty Lovera, policy director for the left-leaning advocacy group Food & Water Watch, which has worked to protect smaller farms.

Food & Water Watch warns that the small to midsize operations are being “squeezed out by the consolidation of industrial mega-dairies that now dominate milk production.”

Lovera cautioned against a “race to the bottom” result if the U.S. simply insists that Canada eliminate its own price and production controls.

“It would take other farmers who are doing well down to where farmers are here,” she said. “Which is what we get a lot of in our trade negotiations.”

In April, the same month that some lawmakers were urging a “get tough” approach to trade talks with Canada, a group of small farm advocates sent a letter of their ownto Congressional leaders and Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue. In it, the National Family Farm Coalition, along with more than 50 family farm, labor and consumer organizations urged immediate action on the dairy crisis by adopting a system like Canada’s.

The groups said the best changes could come by implementing proposals suggested in the Federal Milk Marketing Improvement Act of 2011, introduced by Pennsylvania Democratic Senator Bob Casey.

Wisconsin organic dairy farmer Jim Goodman heads the National Family Farm Coalition. He said a supply management system has worked for Canada for more than 50 years and it will work in the U.S.

“Because the government doesn’t run it,” Goodman said. “They don’t have to be worried about providing subsidies for producers when prices get low because of all we’re supplied because that doesn’t happen.”

Size Matters

University of Wisconsin Director of Dairy Policy Analysis Mark Stephenson argues that there are lots of farmers who benefit from the current U.S. dairy system.

“We’ve had a number of people that, I think, would say the industry has done very well,” he said. “The evidence of that is that we’re producing more milk than ever before. We’re selling it at very reasonable prices to consumers both domestically and abroad.”

Those who tend to say the industry is doing well typically have much larger farms. At one time, Stephenson said, the U.S. had 6 million dairy farms. Today, there are fewer than 40,000.

“We’ve had a lot of discussion about how big should farms be, what right do they have to become a certain size,” Stephenson said.

“I’ve also heard a number of times that ‘bigger is better,’ and I don’t believe that at all,” he said. “What I think we see is that better is better. And if you are a better cow manager and a better people manager and a better financial manager, then you have better financial outcomes.”

According to the USDA cost is a driving force behind structural change. The largest farms earn substantially higher net returns and they have strong incentives to expand.

Slim Choices

National Family Farm Coalition advocates argue that Congress has a duty to protect family farms, and they point to law that states the “clear Congressional support for the continued existence of family farmers, including dairy operations.”

Back in LaRue County, Gary Rock said he likes Canada’s system but he doesn’t know if the rest of America would feel the same.

“You have to realize that our choices are very slim at this point,” he said, adding that the outcome would have effects far beyond farms like his. “What small dairymen are facing, it’s what we once knew as rural America,” Rock said, “trying to survive in an industry that is continually telling you, you have to become larger to survive.”

Iraq War Veteran Finds Peace Through Maple Farming

This story was produced by the West Virginia Department of Agriculture as part of a collaboration among the agency, West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Inside Appalachia.

Iraq War veteran Jeremy Ray was looking for a hobby to help fill his time. What he found was a way to heal his wounds. Ray is the proud owner of Gauley River Maple, and this year is his first season as a maple producer. He heard about maple syrup through the West Virginia Department of Agriculture’s Veterans and Warriors to Agriculture Program, aimed at retraining veterans for careers in agriculture.

He took one maple syrup producer’s class, taught in part by a seasoned maple producer, named Brandon Daniels, and was hooked.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve been this excited about anything,” Ray said.

You couldn’t find anyone more surprised about this venture than Ray himself. The 43-year-old grew up on this land but joined the Army National Guard right out of high school. He was looking for adventure, but then came the war in Iraq and he was deployed oversees.

“The day I was deployed was the day my oldest son was born,” he said. “I was with him for 24 hours, and then I wasn’t back until he was 17 months old.”

Ray doesn’t talk much about what happened in Iraq and the things he saw — only that the experience changed him.

He worked for 14 years as a Nicholas County sheriff’s deputy, all the while suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD. He managed the depression, flashbacks and anger. But in 2011, his boss called him in the office and told him to hand in his badge. When he went home to tell his wife, she too had had enough and walked out with their two sons.

“I lost everything I ever worked for on November 11, 2011 — Veterans Day of all days,” he said.

It took years of intense therapy and a lot of self-reflection, but he and his family reunited. Now on medical disability, Ray said he’s looking for a new normal. That’s where maple syrup comes in.

“I’m a disabled vet. I really needed something to take up my time. I needed to get my mind busy on something, and I also wanted to find something where my kids could help and enjoy so we could get some more time together,” he said.

W.Va. maple camp, where students learned the basics of maple in the field.

His new workplace is far from the office atmosphere that triggered his anxieties. Outside with his maple trees, there’s a sense of peace.

“I’m by myself in the woods. It’s very relaxing,” he said.

West Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture Kent Leonhardt, a veteran himself, said Ray’s story is not uncommon.

“When you think about what the unseen wounds of war do to our veterans, and what agriculture can do to help them heal, veterans with that affliction don’t want to be in an office,” Leonhardt said. “They don’t want to have windows and doors and be around a lot of people. They want to be outdoors. That’s why maple syrup is ideal therapy.”

Ray is a maple novice, but he said he sees growth potential in this industry. He said he hopes more people will consider becoming maple producers here in West Virginia. “Nobody around here knows about [maple farming] but everyone around here could do it if they wanted to,” Ray said.

“In West Virginia, there’s untapped potential. If a crazy, disabled vet can do it, anybody can.”

Including Ray’s six-year-old son Jackson, who tags along with his dad every chance he gets. Ray said one day, Gauley River Maple will belong to Jackson and his older brother, a legacy of love born from the wounds of war.

The West Virginia Maple Syrup Producers Association is expecting a better season this year than last. The goal is to top 10,000 gallons of syrup for sale. The average cost for a gallon of West Virginia maple is $60. But what you’re getting is pure, maple syrup, no additives or flavoring. Producers, like Ray, say it’s well worth the price.

This Saturday is “Mountain State Maple Day” in West Virginia. Sugar shacks and maple operations around the state will open their doors to the public. Fifteen locations across the state are included in an interactive map.

Tradition so Rich, so Fragile, so Sweet

A hand-painted sign at the mouth of Tenney’s driveway welcomes guests during sorghum season.

Gone from most kitchen pantries, sorghum keeps connections strong in some rural communities. Just a few miles down a narrow, winding road from Buckhannon, the seat of Upshur County, West Virginia, a carved wooden sign welcomes visitors to Tallmansville. At first glance, there’s not much to the rural village of around 400 residents, but I’ve spent enough time in these hills to know what little first glance says about a place.

The weathered, gray sign is curiously positioned, on an exposed hilltop just before the road slopes downward into a hardwood forest one might expect to see when leaving town, not upon arrival. Before long, the grade flattens and the tree cover clears, giving way to a brief straight stretch through a slightly open valley. I pass a white church tucked away on the left, a handful of homes and the volunteer fire department on the right. Then, I notice a small structure adorned by mounted steel type that reads “Tallmansville, West Virginia 26237.”

“You’ll see it when you get to the Tallmansville post office,” I recalled from directions relayed to me over the phone.

The plain brick postal building stands alone, under a towering flagpole, between Tallmansville Road and a meadow bisected by the trickling waters of Grassy Run. I immediately see part of what I’d come looking for: patches of tall leafy stalks whose tops have bronzed with autumn’s arrival.

To a passerby, the fields on Donnie Tenney’s farm look identical to the ubiquitous plots of late-season corn grown on roadside farms throughout West Virginia. But a closer look reveals a plant that’s strikingly similar, yet more slender, taller, and, most notably, free of ears containing kernels, silks or husks. This is sorghum cane, the raw matter responsible for one of Appalachia’s most storied pantry staples.

It’s a cool late-September afternoon when I first arrive in Tallmansville. Tenney and his wife, Lorelei, are in the field stripping long, narrow leaves off the towering sorghum stalks by hand. Neighbors, friends and relatives have stopped by to help. At one point, nearly a dozen people are on site, some hidden deep in the cane thicket, detectable only by a steady, audible cadence of leaves being snapped and pulled, then tossed to the ground.

A former Upshur County Commissioner, Tenney converses among guests with a sharp sense of humor and a friendly swagger one might expect from a small town politician. There’s plenty of jovial conversation, yet everyone is hard at work, each playing a vital role in a local pastime that’s always been a communal endeavor.

The sorghum stalks must be stripped completely of their leaves before harvesting. Tenney’s friend and neighbor, Gene Hornbeck, reaches to bundle fully stripped canes, making it easier to harvest several plants at once, by cutting the plants at the base.

Throughout the day, piles of dark green leaves accumulate between rows. The barren stalks are finally severed from their bases a few inches from the ground, then carried to a tow-behind utility trailer. There, Tenney’s sister, Bonnie Kelley, and his mother-in-law, Liz Villegas, stack them neatly in preparation for the last steps in making sorghum syrup, a viscous, dark amber substance with a strong history in Appalachian kitchens.

“I remember when I was a kid, this was the highlight of the fall,” said Tenney, invoking memories of sorghum gatherings decades ago. In addition to harvesting cane, responsibilities at the time might entail leading work horses around the mill, cutting firewood for boiling, or roasting chickens for dinner after a long day’s work. “Everybody got together. People came in just like they do here.”

Though sorghum isn’t new to me or my cupboard, this is my initiation to its harvest. As a cook, I’m drawn to ingredients with depth and complexity. Sorghum syrup—sometimes referred to as sorghum molasses or simply molasses, despite a clear distinction from the sugarcane-based common molasses—certainly has that going for it. Its taste can be described as mostly sweet, slightly sour, with bitter, sometimes even smoky, notes. Its versatile flavor profile makes it perfectly suited for use in sweet and savory dishes alike, but sorghum’s complexity extends far beyond an interplay of tastes.

At one time, long after the first seed varieties were imported on slave ships from Africa, West Virginia sorghum operations were a dime a dozen. Sorghum syrup was a product born of necessity, from a time when sugar was prohibitively expensive. First triggered when the Civil War crippled the deep south’s sugar industry, sorghum gained prominence as an easily accessible sweetener. A nationwide sorghum boom extended through the Great Depression, even longer in isolated rural areas. By the mid-20th century, as the cost of sugar fell, and homesteading tradition bearers passed on, sorghum production in the Mountain State largely fizzled out.

I’ve often lamented that, despite the historical significance of sorghum in West Virginia, my own use has generally been limited to products from Kentucky and Tennessee, where its use is more common, and production occurs on a far greater scale. I knew of a small sorghum festival in Calhoun County, and occasionally read about non-commercial hobby operations scattered about. But I’d yet to notice a single jar of West Virginia sorghum on the shelves of local food retailers. This all changed last spring, when I was tipped off about two farmers producing, and selling, sorghum syrup in Upshur County.

In late spring I finally met Charlie Radabaugh. A lifelong farmer whose rugged hands alone tell the story of his hardscrabble work ethic, Radabaugh never drifted from his agrarian roots. Decades ago, he found steady work making ceramic fire bricks in a Buckhannon factory, but remained tied to his family’s pastoral homeplace. He eventually retired there, where he follows in his parents’ and grandparents’ footsteps, producing vegetables, maple syrup and, of course, sorghum.

Our first encounter came at the farmers market in Bridgeport, where this year Radabaugh began making the hour-plus drive to sell his goods each Sunday from May through October. We met on the third market week of the season. Over the previous two weeks, he’d all but struck out seeking customers who knew what sorghum was, much less who wanted to buy it.

Radabaugh was baffled to have met someone familiar with the contents of the pint-sized tan jugs arranged neatly beside his modest display of early-season produce. It helped when he found out I was looking to buy more sorghum than it seemed he might sell all summer. The feeling was mutual, though. I was ecstatic to cross paths with the local sorghum producer who, until that moment, existed only as a figment of my wishful imagination.

We talked at length as he shared photos of the boiling process and told me of the mill on Tenney’s farm. He asked how I put sorghum to use, so I described some of my favorite recipes: a glaze for charred venison, a dressing for a wilted greens salad, desserts galore.

“You just put sorghum on everything,” Radabaugh joked. “But, you know, not many people here know what this stuff is.”

What Radabaugh said is generally true, but not just in Bridgeport. Perhaps in one of the state’s few enclaves of affluence—a place relatively unexposed to the insolvent, seclusive conditions that extended sorghum’s importance in a place like Tallmansville—unfamiliarity with sorghum shouldn’t come as a surprise. But, by and large, in West Virginia’s rural, urban, wealthy and distressed communities alike, sorghum’s glory days have come and gone.

Since I like to delve into the stories behind heritage-rich ingredients on my menus, I asked if I could visit in the fall, when processing season arrives. Without hesitation, Radabaugh urged me to do so. We’d keep in touch about it for months, all the way through mid-September, when he called to give me directions to Tenney’s farm.

Radabaugh and Tenney are longtime close friends. During sorghum season, they’re also business partners. Each grows several plots of cane, all of which is processed through an antique cast iron mill Tenney inherited from his father. Multiple growers, one central mill, all hands on deck. That’s how sorghum was typically produced in Appalachian farm communities, and it’s no different in Tallmansville today.

An iron sorghum mill, Donnie Tenney inherited from his father, crushes whole canes with drum-like vertical cylinders before depositing the plants’ fibrous remains.

“It seems like just about every community had somebody that had a mill,” Tenney says. “A lot of times different people would plant it and bring it into one place, and they’d all work together.”

Just before evening, Radabaugh, who’s been at Tenney’s farm since early morning, drives a bright red pickup truck, hauling the trailer of stripped canes, to the processing site. Beside a dark wooden shed, he unloads them onto a long, narrow table where Villegas sits, ready to lead the milling process traditionally known as “squeezing”.

Once everything is in place, Tenney starts the engine of his green John Deere tractor. A sturdy canvas belt connecting the tractor’s back wheel to the mill sets a series of gears and cogs into motion. Villegas picks up the canes from the pile, one-by-one. She moves them horizontally, from right to left, across her lap, feeding them through a boxed-off iron contraption that’s maybe two feet wide, just over a foot tall, elevated a couple feet off the ground. The mill’s robust vertical cylinders operate almost like those of an old wringer washing machine. They turn inward, crushing the cane before slowly spitting out the plants’ ribbon-like fibrous remains out the other side, onto a rapidly growing pile.

Charlie Radabaugh reaches for recently harvested sorghum canes, which will soon be milled in a process traditionally known as squeezing.

The fresh sap, a bright green liquid, trickles into a bucket under the mill before being transferred to a shallow, metal evaporator under the shed’s awning. Here, late-arriving company continues to gather. Among the guests is Delmuth Kelley, a neighbor, who, like several in attendance, comes from just up the road.

With an enthusiastic tone, Kelley describes frugal contraptions his father built long ago—a tractor system to mechanize the previously horse-powered milling process, a wood-fired evaporator so powerful it took six people just to skim the ash from the syrup as it rapidly cooked down.

“When he boiled it, he boiled it hard,” Kelley exclaims. “A real big rolling boil!”

Liz Villegas and Lorelei Tenney work to skim a light foam from the surface of the sorghum juice as it slowly boils, reducing into a thick, amber syrup.

Kelley talks about his parents’ use of sorghum during the Depression and both World Wars. He recalls farm families like his own raising meat, vegetables and grains, then collaborating with others to produce sorghum, since, as he says, “they’d need sugar every now and then.” As he recounts memories of hardship, thrift and ingenuity, the conversation returns to the way the sorghum syrup’s labor-intensive process has always been a symbol of cohesion among area residents.

“It was a family thing,” he says, pausing briefly as Tenney’s tractor growls behind him. “Well actually it was a little more than family, it was kind of a community thing, because, you know, years ago they didn’t have this thing where’d they’d just send messages by moving their thumbs.”

Put simply, before the age of iPhones and emails, more people talked to each other face to face. Spread out over hollows and ridgetops, they did so to get by. And while modern conveniences may have brought about greater ease to certain aspects of life, personal interaction, even in places like rural Upshur County, has diminished as a result.

“It was a big deal. When somebody was making molasses, the community came together,” Kelley says. “It was just like the Sunday school picnic.”

After the boiling process, Lorelei Tenney pours fresh sorghum syrup into pint-size jugs.

I know exactly what he means. I’m no man of God, but I’ve been to my fair share of Sunday school picnics. I’ve experienced a comfort derived not from prayer, fried chicken or half-runner casseroles, but rather an intermittent reprieve from everyday rural isolation. I appreciate what my ancestors gleaned weekly over rhubarb pie at a whitewashed chapel in the woods of Braxton County, an unspoken reminder that when, not if, neighbors must pull together for celebration, grieving or mere survival, they undoubtedly will.

“Today the Sunday school picnic doesn’t mean much, because just a few attend,” Kelley says, his voice tinged with subtle lament. “But years ago, that was a big day.”

I, too, long for a familiar sense of community, a trademark of the mountains that seems to have slightly eroded in recent years—a trend I attribute to several factors, including divisive election cycles and the rise of media-driven us vs. them narratives surrounding Coal Country or Trump Country, USA. It’s something I grew to appreciate as a youngster on a small farm, in a disaster-prone town on the banks of the Elk River. There, the need for apolitical coalescence never ends. (Last year, the town of Elkview, along with nearby Clendenin, was hit with widespread property loss, permanent destruction of my alma mater, Herbert Hoover High School, and deaths of several residents in the infamous flood of June 23, 2016.) When Kelley, Tenney and Radabaugh speak of maintaining, building and losing community, I understand. Though I sometimes feel my own sentiments teetering on the verge of cliché—“Appalachians may not have much, but at least they have community,” I can almost imagine hearing in the latest national newscast reporting the region’s peril—shrugging off a togetherness that shaped my affinity for place would be dishonest at best.

Of course, it’s merely idealistic to think rural locales are, or ever were, immune from internal strife. But at a time of polarizing discourse, I’m reminded of my reverence for foodways as means to preserve what sense of community remains. I hold close the idea that finding time to gather, especially in the field or around the dinner table, safeguards the unique bond between mountain neighbors who, despite stark differences, will in some way always rely on each other to subsist. In my years in the kitchen and a decade working in the public policy arena, I’ve witnessed communal acts of making and enjoying food transcend political demarcation. Food is, indeed, no social panacea—as a mark of culture and class, what we eat can be polarizing in its own regard—but I’ve rarely left a hog roast, cider pressing or ramp supper contemplating ideological division over common threads in a cloth from which we’ve all been cut.

As Kelley heads back to the field to strip more leaves and harvest more cane before nightfall, cookbooks with sorghum recipes are passed around. Early 20th century newspaper ads, shown on screens of modern smartphones, depict mills similar to the machine turning steadily just a few feet away. The conversation is one about sorghum’s value, but not in terms of culinary use or monetary considerations. To those at Tenney’s farm, the sweet sticky syrup reducing before them represents a century’s worth of history, heritage and fellowship.

“It all kind of weaves together. It’s interesting, at one time, you know 75 or 100 years ago, you had a community that was tight-knit,” Tenney says. “There’s a social aspect of it that’s missing today.”

A plot of mature sorghum cane, grown on land owned by Donnie Tenney’s family for over two centuries, is ready for autumn harvest.

As long as the cane grows behind the post office and the mill turns beside the shed, sorghum’s social value will live on, at least in Tallmansville. Tenney and Radabaugh have no plans to seize production anytime soon, but as they age, both know the future is not guaranteed. They’ve seen family sorghum boils and Sunday school picnics come and go. They understand the inescapable fragility of tradition.

“We want to carry the tradition on to our kids and our grandkids so they can understand what Appalachian heritage is all about,” Tenney says, Radabaugh nodding slowly in agreement.

As for the future of his own mill, Tenney says with a chuckle, “Well, my mother died when she was 100, so that means I have 32 years left to make sorghum.”

Radabaugh responds, looking towards Tenney with shrugged shoulders, raised eyebrows and a wide grin, “We’ll just keep on working until we’re too old to do it.”

Nearly two weeks later, when I return to Tallmansville, a hand-painted sign reading “Welcome, Cane Boiling TODAY” sits at the mouth of Tenney’s driveway for the final time this year. Only a small pile of canes sits on the table near the shed. Villegas makes quick work of them, and before long, the mill sees its last turn of the season.

After hours of heating by gas burners’ intense blue flames, the syrup in the evaporator maintains a slow, steady boil. Hanging fluorescent lamps illuminate the space under the shed’s awning as dusk turns to dark. A bubbly foam is scraped from the steaming liquid surface, and the syrup drips from handheld skimmers at a markedly slow pace. It’s a sign. 2017’s final batch of sorghum syrup is ready for bottling.

Donnie Tenney (far left) and his wife, Lorelei (far right), work with friends and neighbors to bottle sorghum syrup from a gas-heated steel evaporator at Tenney’s farm in Tallmansville, W.Va.

In assembly line fashion, several dozen pint and quart-size jugs are lined up and filled from a spout attached to the evaporator. They’re momentarily set aside, then capped with black plastic lids. When the bottling is finished, a thin layer of syrup covers the bottom of the evaporator. Lorelei brings out a plate of yeast rolls from the kitchen, passing them out to those gathered around — eight of us in total. I go after the prized scrapings with a spoon grasped firmly in my right hand, smearing the soft, light bread held gently in my left.

We continue to dredge the evaporator, like the giddiest of children, scraping cake batter from a mixing bowl in my grandmother’s kitchen. With processing finally done for the year, we drift back into a conversation initiated weeks earlier, one about sorghum’s future, the outlook for farming and for the region as a whole.

Radabaugh and Tenney express hope for a younger generation of chefs and farmers to pick up interest in sorghum, their optimism bolstered by a recent encounter with celebrity chef and television personality Anthony Bourdain, who, during a visit to West Virginia, told them Appalachian sorghum might soon be trending nationwide.

“I want it to expand. I hope it keeps on growing,” Radabaugh says. “Nobody knows what the jobs situation is going to be in this part of West Virginia. If there are some people that could continue this on and maybe make a living, you know, I think it’s wide open.”

With his pitchfork in hand, Charlie Radabaugh prepares the crushed sorghum fibers for transportation to a compost heap on Donnie Tenney’s farm.

I’m a firm believer in small-scale agriculture’s potential to help shape the region’s transition away from dwindling extractive industries, but I’m keenly aware of the harsh realities associated with farming. Will sorghum production be part of West Virginia’s economic future? I’m not certain, but I share Radabaugh and Tenney’s desires.

I hope sorghum takes off once more. I hope this time-honored ingredient again sees widespread use in both home and professional kitchens throughout the Mountain State. I hope young farmers step up so Radabaugh and Tenney can one day walk away on their own terms, knowing sorghum still keeps communities like Tallmansville stronger than first glance reveals.

Mostly, though, I hope future generations will tap into their shared food heritage as one way to rise above divisive times and maintain community, whether at sorghum boils, Sunday school picnics or any other occasion that allows neighbors to seek common ground while breaking bread. If such proverbial crumb ends up smeared with a spoonful of that sweet, slightly bitter syrup once so common in the mountains, a couple farmers I know surely won’t complain.

Contributing editor Mike Costello (@costellowv ‏ ) is a chef, farmer and storyteller at Lost Creek Farm in Harrison County, West Virginia. Through his cooking and writing, Mike strives to tell important stories about a misrepresented and misunderstood region he’s always called home.

Safety Advocates Push Back Against Proposed Poultry Processing Rules

On this West Virginia Morning, the poultry industry is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to allow faster work speeds at some facilities that slaughter and package chickens. The industry says a new inspection program allows them to process hundreds of birds per minute. But as Nicole Erwin reports, worker and food safety advocates worry about higher speed in an industry with an already spotty safety record.

Farmers Market Training Events Set in West Virginia

A series of training seminars will be held around West Virginia aimed at boosting farmers markets and farm production.

The first seminar will be held Tuesday at the Country Inn in Berkeley Springs. Additional seminars are scheduled for Nov. 9 at Jackson’s Mill near Jane Lew and for Dec. 14 at the State Fairgrounds in Fairlea.

They are being hosted by the West Virginia Farmers Market Association and the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition.

The Department of Agriculture said in a news release that among the topics for discussion will be branding and marketing, product pricing, regulatory compliance, access to capital and insurance, and social media.

The sessions are open to the public, but participants must register in advance. For more information, contact Erica Gallimore of the Farmers Market Association at (304) 412-6166.

West Virginia Sen. Ron Miller Joins Justice Administration

Ron Miller has resigned his seat in the West Virginia Senate to work on agriculture issues in the administration of Gov. Jim Justice.

Miller, a Democrat from Greenbrier County, resigned Thursday.

West Virginia Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt says in a news release that with Miller’s hiring, “we are moving full steam ahead to grow agriculture in our state.”

Miller was elected to the Senate in 2010 and re-elected in 2014.