This week on Inside Appalachia, can the internet rebuild Appalachia? We ask sci-fi novelist and tech writer Cory Doctorow. Also, fish fries have been a staple in Charleston, West Virginia’s Black community for generations. We learn more about them. And, hop on board the Cass Scenic Railroad for a visit with the people who keep the steam trains running.
Can the internet rebuild Appalachia? We ask sci-fi novelist and tech writer Cory Doctorow.
Also, fish fries have been a staple in Charleston, West Virginia’s Black community for generations. We learn more about them.
And, hop on board the Cass Scenic Railroad for a visit with the people who keep the steam trains running.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Cory Doctorow Champions Digital Rights In Appalachia
Writer Cory Doctorow is one of the world’s most prominent thinkers about the internet and how it’s changing our lives. Doctorow’s science fiction novels touch on social media culture and the ubiquity of surveillance. He’s also a digital human rights activist who sees technology as a net good if people are given better control of it.
Producer Bill Lynch spoke to Doctorow about what that could mean for Appalachia.
Fish Fry Traditions In Charleston, WV
A fryer full of fish.
Credit: Leeshia Lee/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Signs for fish fries are pretty common in Charleston, West Virginia, especially in the city’s Black community, where they’ve become a tradition for generations.
Folkways Fellow Leeshia Lee grew up in Charleston and says friends and neighbors frequently hosted fish fries, often as a way to raise money for community needs. She brings us this story.
Ann Pancake As Appalachian Heritage Writer-In-Residence
West Virginia author Ann Pancake is the 2023 Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence. Her 2007 novel “Strange As This Weather Has Been” has been named the 2023 One Book, One West Virginia Common Read.
Credit: Shepherd University
West Virginia author Ann Pancake is best known for her acclaimed 2007 novel Strange as This Weather Has Been. It follows a southern West Virginia family affected by mountaintop removal. Now, Pancake is the Appalachian Heritage Writer-in-Residence at Shepherd University.
WVPB’s Liz McCormick recently sat down with her to talk about what inspires her writing. First, we’ll hear Pancake read a passage from Strange as This Weather Has Been.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by The Company Stores, Sierra Ferrel, Gerry Milnes, the Carpenter Ants and Jerry Douglas.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Zander Aloi is our associate producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
At Lost Creek Farm in Harrison County, West Virginia, husband-and-wife duo Mike Costello and Amy Dawson hone in on the stories behind recipes served at their famed farm-to-table dinners. Including a curious appetizer that's a mashup of two unassuming food traditions from their childhoods.
At Lost Creek Farm in Harrison County, West Virginia, husband-and-wife duo Mike Costello and Amy Dawson hone in on the stories behind recipes served at their famed farm-to-table dinners. The foods served are rooted in Appalachian traditions.
Recently semi-finalists for the prestigious James Beard Award, Lost Creek Farm was an outlier in a category typically reserved for conventional restaurants.
Lost Creek Farm isn’t a restaurant. Costello and Dawson aren’t hosts and waiters as much as they are stewards and storytellers.
Folks come from all over for a taste of their cuisine and knowledge, including Yo-Yo Ma and the late Anthony Bourdain. But it doesn’t matter who you are or where you are from because dinners at Lost Creek Farm are about connecting with community.
In fact, two community experiences from Costello and Dawson’s childhood inspire their work at Lost Creek Farm. Costello and Dawson typically kick off dinner events with a curious appetizer that’s a mashup of two unassuming food traditions from their childhoods: communion wafers topped with apple butter. The combo is symbolic of the farm-to-table dinners themselves.
Lost Creek Farm Archive
James Beard Award semi-finalists chefs and storytellers Mike Costello and Amy Dawson welcome guests at a dinner event.
Memories Of Making Food As A Community
As I arrived at Lost Creek Farm the birds were chirping and the sun was shining over the rolling meadows. After being greeted by Costello and Dawson, they took me on a tour of the farm.
While visiting the chickens, Costello told me about some of the projects they’re working on.
“We’re building a fruit orchard,” Costello said. “There were some apple trees here on the farm when we moved in, some pear trees. A lot of wild fruit. A lot of wild blackberries, elderberries, raspberries, those kinds of things.”
Costello and Dawson have lived on this land for six years. But it has been in Dawson’s family for close to 150 years. Dawson learned a lot about working a farm when she visited her grandparents.
“Growing up, my family always had a big garden. And we always would can. And so most of my summers were spent essentially doing food prep,” Dawson said. “If you live on a farm, you just do food prep all the time, and food preservation.”
When Costello and Dawson inherited the farm, it had been neglected for years. They devoted themselves to getting the farm back in working order. The couple raise meat rabbits and laying hens. They forage for foods in the surrounding woods. They raise vegetables from heirloom seeds entrusted to them by community members. And they’ve got their fruit orchard.
Costello took me below the vegetable garden and chicken yard to the orchard. “A lot of these trees that we have down here are regional varieties,” Costello said. “Apples we grafted yesterday — we grafted 21 trees that will go into the orchard — we’ll plant them later this year.”
The couple will use these apples for a few different things, including apple butter. Dawson described the apple butter as caramelized and tastes sweet. Costello likes to play around with flavors and often adds bourbon and sage to hit some fiery and herby notes.
For Dawson, making apple butter takes her back to her childhood. “Apple butter is one of the first memories that I had, like, as a family — it being kind of a community, like it wasn’t just my family that did it,” Dawson said. “It was friends and, you know, extended family would come and make the apple butter in the fall.”
Courtesy Scott Goldman
Places are set and ready for dinner at Lost Creek Farm where heritage-inspired Appalachian cuisine will soon be served. As folks dig in, chef Mike Costello will talk to guests about the stories and cultural significance behind each recipe.
The seasonal ritual of making apple butter helped Dawson understand the connection between food and community. It’s a daunting task to peel, core, and chop bushels of apples, and then stir them for hours over heat before canning.
If ever an event called for community effort, it is one like this one. Time spent cooking with large groups of neighbors and friends is as social as it is productive.
Dawson isn’t the only one of the couple to grow up with memories of cooking in community.
Costello grew up in Elkview, West Virginia, and he often accompanied his grandmother to Emmanuel Baptist Church to make communion wafers. “I have a lot of fond memories of when I was a kid, my grandmother and the other elderly women in the church making communion wafers on Thursday and Friday mornings for Sunday service,” Costello said. “She would take my brother and I down there on those mornings, and we would sort of watch all these women rolling out these big sheets of dough and making these communion wafers.”
As an adult, Costello had put the wafers out of his mind, until he discovered his grandmother’s recipe. “When my grandma died, I got her recipe collection. And I found this recipe in there for those communion wafers,” Costello said.
For him, the significance of this recipe has little to do with religion. “We did not go to church with my grandma on Sundays,” Costello said. “I never had any sort of idea of the religious significance of them, I just thought they were this tasty kind of snack. I kind of had forgotten about them.”
Discovering the recipe brought back memories for Costello. “What came to mind for me was, you know, that image of all those women making those communion wafers, and how it sort of represented to me, the first memory that I have of people, here or anywhere else, making food as a community,” Costello said.
Lost Creek Farm Archive
Mike Costello and Amy Dawson top communion wafer crackers with homemade apple butter for a dinner event. The couple serves story-rich, heritage-inspired cuisine at their dinner events, including these two recipes.
Two Food Traditions Merge
In their work today, Costello and Dawson have merged these two traditions and are sharing them with others. Last year, they made an online video tutorial of how to make the wafers. In a playful exchange, they note how curious people think it is that the two snack on communion wafers.
But the wafers are more than a simple snack. In the video, Costello and Dawson explain the significance of the wafers.
“People who know us or are familiar with our work know we like to hone in on the stories behind the food that we make. That’s what makes these communion wafers so special to us,” Dawson said in the video.
In the recipes for both the apple butter and wafers, there is one ingredient that isn’t tangible but is just as important as the others.
It’s the group effort aspect of these recipes — the shared ritual of making food together. For Costello, this is especially true for the communion wafers. “I love to put those crackers on a plate, to open our events,” Costello said as we walked. He later explained more as we wrapped up the farm tour.
“When you can consume that at the dinner table and can consume the story that goes along with it, you know… you’re connecting with people,” he said. “And you’re connecting with thousands of years of history of that being in all the hands and all of the communities that it has passed through to get to that point.”
Courtesy Scott Goldman
String lights illuminate the communal table at Lost Creek Farm in preparation for hungry dinner guests.
Lost Creek Farm Inspires And Creates Community
The apple butter and communion wafers are symbolic of the dinner events themselves, a place where people come together around Appalachian foods and traditions.
Arriving at the farm, guests are greeted with music and a warm fire burning outside. Under string lights and bright stars, folks are seated around the communal table, some meeting for the first time. Some of the foods served are simple, like apple butter and communion wafers. But there is more to it than that.
“If you just look at the ingredients, you look at the recipes, apple butter and crackers, not that big of a deal, right? But, there’s so much meaning packed into it,” Costello said.
Part of that meaning is the communities of people who have shaped these two food traditions. And the new communities Costello and Dawson are creating at Lost Creek Farm.
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
A group of students from the University of Notre Dame just came to West Virginia for fall break. Instead of relaxing with friends, as many college students do, these guys got a taste of life in a food desert.
They report, it was surprisingly delicious, or it could be if there were a little more “food justice” in the world.
One in seven people in West Virginia has trouble putting food on the table at some point in the year (~15 percent), according to data from the US Census Bureau. Sometimes the problem is lack of money. Sometimes it’s access to good food. And many communities exist that are disproportionately affected.
A nonprofit called Grow Ohio Valley is working to help more people get access to healthy meals by growing food in abandoned lots in Wheeling. The organization is also trying to teach people about existing food disparities. One way organizers are getting ideas out is by inviting college students in for a “Food Justice Immersion Program.”
What is Food Justice?
The definition of food justice is often debated but for many people it means the right for everyone to have access to plenty good and healthful foods. This idea was central to the immersion program the non-profit Grow Ohio Valley hosted in Wheeling.
FOOD JUSTICE is the right of communities everywhere to produce, process, distribute, access, and eat good food regardless of race, class, gender, ethnicity, citizenship, ability, religion, or community. Includes: Freedom from exploitation Ensures the rights of workers to fair labor practices Values-based: respect, empathy, pluralism, valuing knowledge Racial Justice: dismantling of racism and white privilege Gender equity(See more at: http://www.iatp.org/documents/draft-principles-of-food-justice#sthash.iBMx87MH.dpuf)
Credit Gabrielle Marshall
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Students from the University of Notre Dame hang out on 14th street in Wheeling, waiting for the next immersive experience.
Students from Notre Dame
Caroline Skulski pulled her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail somewhere on the back of her head. She was relaxed and unassuming. She gave the sense that nothing in life could be that bad. But Caroline cares about food and she cares about people. She’s a junior at the University of Notre Dame, and she volunteered to be one of the two group leaders in an food justice immersion program in West Virginia.
“My dad’s a doctor so we had a lot of medical school loans, so for a while, not comfortable life,” she said. “But then after he was in practice, very comfortable. Definitely coming from a place of privilege. We were pretty lucky.”
The 16 students Skulski was leading had varying educational aspirations, and came from all across the United States. What tied them together, aside from being enrolled at Notre Dame, was that they each decided they would spend their fall break living out of a homeless shelter in Wheeling, West Virginia, with a goal of exploring the food issues there. Grow Ohio Valley, a young organization bent on improving the food culture in the area, partnered with Notre Dame to bring students to the area.
“We really want to give the students a hand-on learning experience looking at food economy, the food system, and the problems that there are and potential solutions,” said GrowOV’s director of educational programs, Kate Marshall.
Marshall lives in East Wheeling where the students stayed for the week. The nearest supermarket is two and a half miles away (a 40 minute walk along roads mostly designed for vehicles).
“This is a food desert meaning, there is no easily accessible health food and healthy produce within walking distance and there’s only convenient stores to shop at,” Marshall said.
Credit Gabrielle Marshall
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Students cross 16th street on their quest to buy lunch with $1.30.
Finding Food
Marshall started the immersion experience off by splitting students into two groups and sending them out onto the urban streets of East Wheeling. 100-year-old, faded Victorian row houses line the once-bustling roads. But today, entire neighborhoods have been torn down. The population has dwindled from 60,000 city residents in it’s heyday in the ‘30s and ‘40s, to about 27,000 according to the last census.
Credit Gabrielle Marshall
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Students quickly decided to pool their money. They bought a loaf of wheat bread, an off-brand jar of peanut butter, jelly, and with the remaining coins, they bought several green bell peppers and a cucumber. No one bought anything to drink.
Erin Callaghan, is a sophomore at Notre Dame. Her group headed south with a portion of money in their pockets that was determined by dividing a month’s worth of food stamps into a daily meal’s allowance. In West Virginia that amounts to $1.30.
“We have to be creative in what we can find and what we can eat for lunch,” said Callaghan.
In a different part of town, the other group hit another convenience store. They picked up minute rice, a can of chili, and a dozen eggs.
“I think probably what shocked us the most was that everything there was so expensive based on the nutritional value, the cost seemed so unreasonable,” said Sophomore Kathleen Rocks, the other student group leader.
***All photos by Gabrielle Marshall
Food for Thought
Lunch provided plenty of food for thought. Marshall pointed out to students that there could be legal barriers to pooling funds because federal dollars are meant for individual families, not groups of people. Marshall also pointed out how good-intending government-funded programs like the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can clash with economic realities:
“Now we have federal dollars that are going to convenience stores that don’t actually support a community but support companies far away that are bringing food into our area that isn’t nutritionally sound and causes health risks to the people eating the food. Then our medical dollars are spent at a higher rate because people are sick.”
Credit Gabrielle Marshall
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Farm 18, Grow Ohio Valley’s urban farm. Students pulled weeds, groomed vegetable beds, and harvested snacks as they learned about things like community gardens, urban farms, mobile food markets, and other ongoing efforts to combat food disparities.
Solutions
Exploring systemic issues related to the food economy led students beyond the trappings of convenience stores into abandoned lots that have been reclaimed by Grow Ohio Valley. NAT Students pulled weeds, groomed vegetable beds, and harvested snacks as they learned about possible solutions to the food problems here. Things like community gardens, urban farms, mobile food markets, and other efforts GrowOV and community members are engaged in trying to combat food disparities–disparities that often lead the most vulnerable in society to chronic health problems.
To that end, the group visited with health care providers like Dr. William Mercer to learn more about the kinds of health issues that ultimately crop up in food deserts.
“I came away more excited than they did just because of their enthusiasm. Here are some young kids who are interested in carrying the torch and hopefully make our society better.”
Credit Gabrielle Marshall
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Late in the week students and community members and Grow OV staff prepared a feast in the community greenhouse in East Wheeling.
Growing Justice
Grow Ohio Valley’s education program director, Kate Marshall, says students left with new ideas of what “justice” means (and much more interest in growing gardens), but she observed that there was also room to continue to grow their understanding.
She says post evaluations revealed that some students felt perhaps they ate too well during their stay. Marshall disagrees.
“True justice would be making it so that everybody could partake in that same table of plenty and healthful foods, not us eating less and joining the ranks of the unhealthy diet.”
She says the trip was meant to demonstrate the value and potential abundance to be found in local food economies.
“Out of 15 meals,” Marshall said, “we only served meat three times and utilized other protein sources in all our meals. We used over 16 local food sources to provide the bulk of food throughout the week.”
She had to pay a bit more upfront for local homemade breads and jams, but the ability to harvest from the garden provided a drastic reduction in the immersion program food budget (but not, Marshall noted, in the quality of the food).
Marshall says GrowOV plans to continue their immersion programs in spring, summer, and fall breaks. She says she might spend more time in the future talking about economic as well as ethical implications of eating locally. She wants kids, and everyone to realize the impacts of what we choose to eat everyday on a community’s health and well-being.
Parting Thoughts
Students stayed during the week in Wheeling at what’s referred to as a Winter Freeze shelter housed in the Youth Services System building in East Wheeling. The shelter is open during the coldest months of the year. It’s the only shelter that will let anyone stay regardless of legal or addiction problems. Marshall asked students to write a letter to the person who will be staying in the bed when the shelter opens later this year.
Matt Welsch, also known as the Vagabond Chef, has traveled all over the world experiencing culinary arts and food. You can find a taste of those travels at his restaurant, the Vagabond Kitchen, in Wheeling. Welsch recently took a 10-day motorcycle trip across the state of West Virginia. Over the course of 1500 miles, and throughout 39 counties, Welsch’s objective was to connect and find other West Virginians who are passionate about cuisine, spirits, and celebrating the Mountain State in general. The Vagabond Chef calls the trip “a true immersion experience.”
Q: What was the impetus for this tour?
A: Starting from a very young age I was really interested in exploring and finding more about the world, so as soon as I was able to I started traveling. Like ripples in a pond my travels got further and further away. What I realized when I came home after doing the Vagabond Chef travels in 2013, going all over the country, and throughout the world as an adult, I’d never really explored West Virginia.
Through what I’ve been doing as the Vagabond Chef here in Wheeling, I’ve seen the energy in West Virginia – specifically in Wheeling, but I see it throughout the whole state: Let’s find a way to pick ourselves up and stand on our own two feet; let’s find a viable economy that celebrates what makes West Virginia great instead of destroys it. I couldn’t be a bigger proponent for that. So I wanted to find those stories and draw those things together through the course of my own exploration of what makes our state great.
Credit Matt Welsch
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Seneca Rocks, West Virginia
Q: Tell me about some of the places you visited.
VagabondWay.mp3
Listen as Welsch describes his tour around the state in detail.
A: So I got to meet some really great people and it’s great to see how interconnected everyone is. When I talked with Joe Beter and Jewel City Seafood, he had actually gone to school in Wheeling, he worked at Ernie’s Esquire. After that he went to Florida and was high up in a whole sale big seafood company for several years. Now he’s taken all that experience and knowledge back to Huntington and he has probably the best seafood that I’ve ever had because he knows what to look for and he will not settle for anything less than the best.
I got to hear the story of places like Pies and Pints in Fayetteville. Started out as just kind of a place for raft guides to hang out and just exploded. How do you deal with that? How do you deal with getting so big? And having franchises in Morgantown, Charleston, and two or three in Columbus, I think they said?
Keeley Steele and Bluegrass Kitchen, Starlings, and Tricky Fish in Charleston. Her and her husband John have expanded their business to three different locations, three different concepts, on the same block. They have created the neighborhood they wanted to live in. That’s super-awesome.
There are all these different people finding all these different paths to achieve what’s really the same goal: How do I find a way to live my life and go to work and feel good about it? How do I wake up in the morning with a smile on my face and give back to my community?
Credit Steve Novotney
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Q: What are you taking away from your experience?
A: I hope to be able to build the Vagabond Kitchen and the Vagabond Chef. So I hope to be able to develop the Vagabond Chef into more of a respected and desired travel blogger, and Vagabond Kitchen into a destination and into a Vagabond empire of different concepts and different locations. And to continue to build and grow and give back. I believe that success is helping other people.
It’s peak season for morel mushrooms throughout Appalachia. One online site, “WV Wild Pickers” Facebook page is getting a lot of traffic of people sharing stories and photos from their adventures foraging.
Beverly says he started the WV Wild Pickers Facebook two or three years ago because of his own curiosity about wild-crafting. Last spring it gained quite a bit of popularity around this time, morel season. People love to share what they find, Beverly says. Especially in the Spring, after winter melts and folks finally get to go out and enjoy the outdoors.
Beverly says it’s currently the peak of the morel season. Black morels have come and gone, and the blonde morels should be in full swing.
“Most morels, I either dehydrate them and put them away for later in the season, or I clean them,” Beverly said, “I rinse them, I usually cut them in half, I put them in salt water for a couple of hours to get the bugs out of them, then I re-rinse them and slice them up smaller and put them on my pizza or I sauté them in butter with a little bit of salt and garlic and use them as a side dish.”
Beverly has learned quite a bit from people who contribute to the WV Wild Pickers Facebook page. Everything from how mushrooms grow, best harvesting practices, and discovering new things to harvest like wild olives. But one of the bigger discoveries is how much interest there is in wildcrafting throughout Appalachia and even throughout the world. Beverly says he’s seen interest from people in about 18 countries.
“It’s really surprising the interest was as big as it was. I never thought that the culture exists as well as it does today. People still enjoy these things,” Beverly said.
Food often provides a universal connection across cultures. Think: President Obama taking part in a meal at a famous sushi restaurant on his recent trip to Japan.
For about 30 years now Greenville, Tennessee, native Fred Sauceman has been documenting Appalachian food culture through a class he teaches at East Tennessee State University as well as journalistic endeavors on television, radio and in print.
Sauceman’s newest book is Buttermilk and Bible Burgers: more stories from the kitchens of Appalachia.
The book covers traditions surrounding a variety of Appalachian dishes such as barbeque, burgers, biscuits, sausage and gravy, peanut soup and that spring favorite, fresh wild ramps.
Sauceman is always surprised by how popular the pungent wild leeks and other mountain staples have become, and finds it interesting that some dishes which have traditionally been poor folks’ food are now prized by fine dining chefs.
“Ramps started out as an emblem of poverty and now they are an emblem of creativity and they are highly valued by chefs who are educated at places like the Culinary Institute of America who just pay these high prices for things that we would go out in the forest and forage for,” Sauceman said. “Same thing for morel mushrooms.”
“It’s almost humorous to watch that trajectory now and see how they are valued at white table cloth restaurants,” he said. “The chefs in New York City go wild for ramps this time of year.”
Sauceman’s newest book provides a vicarious tour of the region’s most traditional and unusual foods. The book includes an essay about a West Virginia produced salsa that includes ramps. It also features chapters on two West Virginia restaurants: Minnards Spaghetti Inn in Clarksburg and Mario’s Fishbowl in Morgantown.
