There are several pressing issues facing the West Virginia farm community. One is finding alternative crops to make money.
On Agriculture Day at the Capitol, first generation farmer Tiffany Ward listed harvesting maple syrup and growing hops for local breweries. She said she and her husband switched to farming about five years ago when Raleigh County’s once thriving coal industry went fallow.
“My husband was a coal miner and we needed a back up plan and hops were not a thing,” Ward said. “Craft Breweries are growing now at a rapid pace so we decided to start growing hops.”
Another issue for West Virginia agriculture is the state of the state’s lab. State Agriculture Commissioner Kent Leonhardt says the state’s top scientists can’t safeguard food and more in a crumbling, 70-year-old lab facility. He says farmers small and big, along with the consumer, will suffer without the $55 million agriculture laboratory renovation his agency has requested.
“There’s water testing done, food safety, we help boost tourism by caring for the trees in our forests.” Leonhardt said. “And, if you have a pet, we make sure that the label on that food package gives your pet the nutrition that it needs.”
The commissioner says Gov. Jim Justice’s proposal that the state combine the labs for agriculture, the state police, the medical examiner and public health labs into one entity, simply won’t work.
“Nobody has shown me how combining them is going to save any money,” Leonhardt said.
Another issue for Ward is that the state needs to help small farmers like her with guidance so they don’t have to learn from scratch.
“We have different growing zones,” Ward said. “To find somebody in West Virginia who knows about that would have helped us in the beginning to grow a little faster.”
Leonhardt said the plans are in place to help small farmers, but they are limited by being underfunded.
“We have some field reps out there for small farmers to get started, but not enough to cover the state,” he said.
Leonhardt says the answer here is to fully fund the West Virginia Grown program, developed to best market West Virginia grown and made products to consumers. Leonhardt says the current funding does not take the program to its full potential.
West Virginia’s education and agriculture leaders have unveiled a new logo for the state’s Farm to School program. Officials say the new image is all about connection between local agriculture and schools.
The state’s Farm to School initiative worked with students from 199 schools across the state to create the newest image to represent the program. The program brings together schools and local farmers. According to its website, its goal is to “grow the next generation of farmers in West Virginia” and “increase the amount of local foods served in our schools.”
The new logo is in the shape of an apple. It features red, green and yellow colors. In the center, a farmhouse is on top of a hill, and there are clouds and sunshine circling the building with the program’s name underneath. The new logo is more colorful than the older one, which only featured the name of the program.
West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Clayton Burch said the logo puts a greater focus on the importance of farm-to-school education and resources. He said the program helps to ensure schools have nutritional options that come from local farmers, and in turn, it helps support those farmers.
“Child nutrition is one of the foundational supports for healthy learning. It is difficult for hungry children to learn, and the mission of this important program is to provide sustainable nutritional options to our schools while also supporting the important agricultural contributions to our economy,” Burch said. “We look forward to the next phase of farm-to-school in West Virginia, which allows us to use broad strokes to increase outreach so more people know of the work and are involved in its success.”
West Virginia Commissioner of Agriculture Kent Leonhardt said ensuring children eat well when they’re young will translate into good habits by the time they start working.
“In West Virginia, overall health continues to be a hinderance [sic] to entering the workforce. Instilling healthy eating habits into our school age children is one of the best investments we can make for our state’s future,” said Leonhardt. “Expanding farm to schools’ reach not only helps our economy now but better equips our workforce for decades to come.”
The voting process on the logo started on Oct. 14 and ended last week as National Farm to School month came to a close.
Students chose from three contestants, and the winning logo garnered 57 percent of the vote.
Farm to school education and outreach is a joint effort through the West Virginia Department of Agriculture (WVDA), the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE) and the Farm to School Alliance.
The three agencies say the new student-led logo represents a greater commitment from the WVDA, WVDE and the Farm to School Alliance to expand branding, educational and other outreach efforts in the state.
Spinning and weaving are traditions that have been handed down for generations — usually among women. But it doesn’t just begin with the wool. It starts with raising the sheep.
If you’ve ever tried to shear a sheep, you know it takes some practice. Margaret Bruning describes it philosophically.
“Somebody’s going to get cut, either me or the sheep or both of us and I’m gonna sweat my guts out. The sheep’s going to be upside down a lot, she’s not going to be that comfortable and I’m not really very proficient so it’s going to look kinda awkward…it’ll be okay.”
Bruning laughed as she shared that bit of tongue-in-cheek wisdom. It’s just one of the hard lessons she’s learned raising sheep.
Time For A Change
Five years ago, Bruning and her husband David were living in Los Angeles, California. But they were tired of the city. So, they sold most of their stuff, packed up what was left and traveled the country — working on organic farms along the way. They finally stopped in rural West Virginia which she compares to the Wild West without being west of the Mississippi.
Bruning isn’t a novice when it comes to farming. She actually grew up on a goat farm in mostly rural dairy country in upstate New York. But she didn’t know a lot about raising sheep. That’s something she’s learning from Kathy Evans… one of the owners of Evans Knob Farm in Preston County, West Virginia. “We’re living on my husband’s family farm,” said Evans. “It’s been in the family for…well, my grandchildren will be the sixth generation that’s been on this farm.”
And within a year of buying their own farm in Randolph County, West Virginia, Bruning and her husband suddenly became the owners of a small flock of grey and black Romanov sheep.
“And I’ve been stumbling through,” said Bruning. “A lot of it’s been very hard lessons — how to keep them healthy, the right decisions to make with tiny newborn lambs.”
Nearly 20 percent of newborns die before they’re weaned, usually in the first 10 days of life.
Margaret’s Mentor
So Bruning has turned to Evans for all kinds of advice — everything from tending her flock to managing budgets.
“That’s Kathy. She’s a seasoned market gardener/farmer, her head is full of a lot of stuff. Me, I have made my sheep almost into my friends and I probably shouldn’t do that. And whenever I need to toughen up, I think about Kathy. I think that she would just buck up, and that’s what she’s coached me on.”
Another thing Evan’s coached her on? Sheep shearing.
Heather Niday
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Kathy’s wool stockings made from left over wool scraps.
Normally, you’re bent over the animal, holding it with one hand while shearing the fleece with the other. It’s awkward. And it’s physically hard. But Kathy taught her a technique that requires less upper body strength.
“We take them from standing on all fours to sitting on their butt and we cradle them between our legs,” said Evans. So, she watched that step, she helped me get the sheep set up and then watched me do the shearing and she trimmed hooves.”
Those lessons are part of a master apprentice program that Evans and Bruning are working on together called Sheep to Shawl. Shearing is just one step.
The fleece has to be washed and dried, then combed and carded before it’s ready for the spinning wheel.
Evans describes the motion.
“Your hands are doing one thing, and your foot’s doing another thing. So, I’m controlling the diameter of the yarn and the number of times it twists with my right hand and my left hand is doing a process called drafting, so I’m pulling the fiber back so that there’s not like a great big clump that goes through at once.”
Once the spinning is done, Evans winds the yarn into one large loop until she has a full skein. Then she dips it in hot water to set the twist of the yarn and hangs it to dry. Then it’s ready for knitting, crocheting or weaving on a loom like the one in Evan’s studio.
These are the tools and techniques Evans is passing along to Bruning through their apprenticeship. But it goes beyond that.
“Margaret and I were already friends before we did this, but just to strengthen that through this process and she knows I am here anytime she needs me.”
A Friend In Times of Need
Evans demonstrated that on a night not long ago. One of Bruning’s ewes was struggling to give birth. She was afraid they would lose the mother and lamb. So, she called Evans.
“David and I are both like pulling as hard as we could pull…”
And Evans could tell they had to act quickly.
Heather Niday
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Dyed wool drying in Kathy Evans studio.
“I knew exactly what they were facing. I could picture in my mind what was happening and what they needed to do.”
“Kathy just put everything down and she spent an hour on the phone with us.”
Evans was deeply encouraging, coaching with just the right tone. “And it was like Margaret, you can do this, just encouraging her, you CAN do this. Take a deep breath, give David the phone, we can do this together. Cause I’m thinking I’m two and a half hours away from her, I can’t get to her in time to save this lamb and ewe. She has got to trust me and do what I tell her to do or we’re going to lose both of them. I walked her through the process, we had a beautiful ram lamb, she saved the ewe. She said ‘we did it’ and I said of course we did it!”
Bruning was grateful for the guidance Evans provided throughout the difficult birth.
“I felt this real true confidence having her by my side.”
Evans knew that losing either animal that night would have been devastating for Bruning.
The sheep had belonged to Bruning’s mother. She left the flock to Bruning when she passed away a few years ago. And it hadn’t been that long since her mother passed.
“It’s a grieving process that takes as long as it takes,” said Evans. As long as that original flock of sheep is with Margaret, she still has a piece of her mom.”
Bruning is grateful for Evans and her wisdom. She sees her partnership with Evans as a continuation of the traditions of so many women before her. And it’s also a tribute to her mother and the legacy she passed on to her.
“She possesses those qualities that my mom has and she utilizes those qualities and she’s been so kind towards me and very, very patient.”
For more information on the West Virginia Folklife Program, visit their website.
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.
Ginseng, Goldenseal, Cohosh, Bloodroot, Ramps – all plants native to Appalachia and all appreciated around the world for their medicinal and culinary properties. In West Virginia and other parts of Appalachia, these plants have been harvested in the wild for generations. But over harvesting of these slow growing plants could diminish wild populations. The West Virginia Forest Farming Initiative takes a different approach. The program teaches residents how to raise botanicals on their own forested land for a source of income and as a way to preserve the forests. And for the folks involved, it’s doing way more than preserving plants.
Learning From Family And Honoring The Past
At Sprouting Farms in Summers County, West Virginia, Ruby Daniels grows herbs like ginseng and cohosh, both as a source of income, and as a way to tap into her family’s history. In a special report as part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Project, Heather Niday explored how herbalists and farmers, like Daniels, are teaching others to grow native Appalachian plants, like ginseng, cohosh and ramps.
Daniels’ grandmother taught her how to prepare the herbs for use in teas and salves to treat all kinds of ailments. When she began working on a master’s degree in therapeutic herbalism, she started connecting her grandmother’s lessons with the science behind the folklore.
It’s also become a way to honor her ancestors. Daniels is a descendent of enslaved Africans brought to Virginia in the early 1600s. They brought with them a vast knowledge of herbal medicine but weren’t allowed to use it. In Virginia in the mid-1700s, enslaved people were forbidden to use herbs, a practice that was punishable by death, said Daniels. Now, when she makes teas or tinctures, she connects the science with the spirit.
“I listen to my inner healer. Commonly I might say, ‘Oh this person might need peppermint,’ but when I really work with them another herb is calling to me and I add that. When it all comes together, that formula makes sense for them.”
Daniels was born and raised in Maryland but spent her summers at her grandmother’s home in Beckley, West Virginia. It was there in her grandmother’s kitchen that she first started learning about native plants.
“I was always hanging around her and then I’d talk to her; she would always say ‘the moon gotta be dark when you plant potatoes and onions,’ so that’s a new moon, she was a moon planter, she planted by the moon. She just was so earthy.”
Her grandmother inspired her to experiment with her own concoctions, even as a young child.
“I was wild,” Daniels recalled. “I’d get apple blossoms and just make up recipes — so I was making herbal baths before I knew that’s what I was gonna be. She just let me. Once I got older and interested, I’d just talk to her. You know, there was always somebody in the Black community that knew some type of remedy for something.”
Sprouting Farms, where Daniels works, is part of the West Virginia Forest Farming Initiative, a program that teaches residents how to raise native plants on their own forested land as a source of income and as a way to preserve the forests.
Credit Heather Niday
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Ginseng bed at Ed Daniel’s Farm with tree limbs are laid across it to discourage deer from eating the plants.
Tapping Into The Forests To Earn Money
As part of her training in growing botanicals, Daniels is working with the Yew Mountain Center in Hillsboro, W.Va. She said this educational aspect of her work is a way to help her community and give back to the land. “By conserving endangered plants like ginseng, or blue cohosh, or black cohosh, false unicorn…that’s how I would like to work with the community and bring some type of way people could have an income.”
Ginseng, goldenseal, cohosh, ramps, bloodroot. These are valuable, well-known plants that grow wild in these mountains. While some state residents may be able to identify them, many of them face threats because of things like overharvesting, habitat loss and climate change.
The Yew Mountain Center offers seminars and hands-on training about how to cultivate wild plants to build a forest farming business. Mature goldenseal root, for example, sells for up to $40 per pound and demand is growing during the pandemic.
Larger herbal manufacturers are looking for a stable supply chain. Yew Mountain Center director Erica Marks said herbal companies want to assure their customers that the plants are from sustainable and verifiable sources. “It’s very pragmatic, because it’s their supply, their products depend on it.” Marks said part of the forest farming program is teaching people how to become certified growers to get a higher price for their crop.
Credit provided / Yew Mountain Center
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Yew Mountain Center
Erica Marks and Will Lewis
It starts with knowing the locations where the herbs will grow best, said Will Lewis, forest farming coordinator at the Yew Mountain Center. “The main thing you want to look for is a semi-mature mixed hardwood forest, where you’ve got some older trees,” Lewis said. Trees like sugar maple and other plants like trilliums and mayapples can also signal the forest is healthy, a place where wild plants will grow well.
Many of the native plants grow well with calcium, Lewis said. “Sugar Maples’ leaves have higher calcium, so every year fall when those leaves break down in the soil, it’s kind of like a calcium fertilizer,” said Lewis.
On a gentle slope just up the hill from the Yew’s lodge, three-inch-tall goldenseal plants grow about three feet apart. The plants start as seeds closely planted together in nursery beds. After a couple of years of growth, they’re transferred to the forest, usually in the fall when sufficient rain has fallen to create a moist, loamy soil.
Forest farming is an investment in time. Most of these plants take several years to flower and produce seeds. Erica Marks said finding a place to grow these plants can also be an issue in a state with a lot of privately-owned forest land.
“That is a nut we need to crack,” Marks said. “How do we increase access for people who want to do this?” Marks said one solution would be if growers could work out special forest farming leases with landowners.
Master Growers Teach The Next Generation Of Growers
Marks said the forest farming program at the Yew Mountain Center is still pretty new. So, they get a lot of help from veteran botanical growers, like Ed Daniels (no relation to Ruby Daniels). He and his wife Carole own a forest farm near Pickens, W.Va. and produce a variety of botanical oils, tinctures and salves that they sell online and in some local stores.
Credit Heather Niday
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Ed Daniels on the porch at his forest farm near Pickens, W.Va.
Daniels is also a master artist in the West Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, through the West Virginia Humanities Council. As part of that program, he’ll work with an apprentice over the next year to pass on the skills he’s acquired over a lifetime.
“As a young kid I grew up in a poor lifestyle,” Daniels said. “Ginseng was a way for me to earn money to get my school clothes and shoes and jeans.”
Daniels admitted that a desire for money pushed him to take more of the wild ginseng than he should have. As he got older he saw the effects overharvesting had on wild ginseng. Areas where he used to find wild ginseng were depleted. To atone for the mistakes of his youth, Daniels said he plants about 70,000 ginseng seeds every year.
Mature ginseng plants produce a tight cluster of bright red berries. After the berries ripen and fall off, the plant is left with a scar near the top of the root. Daniels said the scar on a fresh root is proof the plant was harvested in season. That’s important because ginseng can only be legally harvested in the fall; it’s the most highly controlled botanical in West Virginia.
And it’s by far the most lucrative. Daniels said in the current market, high quality dried ginseng root can fetch up to $800 a pound.
Daniels is also interested in what ginseng can do for those suffering from opioid abuse. “I’m treating three guys right now in the town that I live in who have suffered and are currently battling opioid addiction,” Daniels said. “The doctors took them off. They’re using our CBD oil and the ginseng tinctures.”
Daniels said the ginseng is helping the men to wean themselves off the opioid drugs. Ginseng has been used for thousands of years in traditional Chinese medicine to treat a variety of conditions, but there’s only a handful of Western studies looking at the impact of ginseng on easing opioid withdrawal. Daniels said he doesn’t claim to know how it works, only that he’s seen results.
“It gives [me] a warm feeling when someone uses it for the first time and two-three weeks later [says] what a change it’s made in their life in comfort and they’re now able to sleep at night.”
This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a collaboration with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the West Virginia Folklife Program at 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.
Ohio Valley farmers have received more than $100 million so far in federal relief payments to offset the economic damage caused by the coronavirus pandemic, with potentially more payments on the way.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Coronavirus Food Assistance program plans to distribute up to $16 billion in direct payments to farmers, with farmers able to apply for relief through August. USDA data released Monday show 220,280 farmers across the country have already received $2,895,127,039 in total.
Kentucky farmers have received $73,460,020, Ohio farmers have received $45,904,465, and West Virginia farmers have received $4,461,751. The Ohio Valley has generated 18,377 applications out of 274,678 applications nationwide so far.
These relief payments follow $616,287,779 in payments Ohio Valley farmers received through a separate federal program, the Market Facilitation Program, to offset economic losses caused by retaliatory tariffs on farm commodities by China and other countries. The Market Facilitation Program received criticism for some farmers receiving substantial payouts — 12 farms in Ohio and Kentucky received at least $500,000 — and for payments going to applicants who weren’t farmers at all.
Even with ongoing federal coronavirus relief payments,, a recent report published by the Food and Agricultural Policy Institute at the University of Missouri showed U.S. farm income could sharply drop by 12 percent next year, due to stagnant demand for commodities including soybeans and corn if more federal relief payments aren’t provided.
The coronavirus highlights many of our vulnerabilities, including the system we use to get food from the farm to the table. Lately, the pandemic has forced U.S. farmers to face the unthinkable. They plowed under perfectly good vegetables when schools and restaurants shut down and their market vanished. Livestock producers have euthanized hogs and chickens. They couldn’t get the meat to consumers when workers got sick and packing plants closed.
The growing season also brings migrant workers to U.S. farms. They come for jobs they need. But this year, some come wearing face masks, worried they may take the virus home to their families.
For this episode, Trey speaks with his colleague Loretta Williams about her conversations with American farmers about their challenges of producing food in the age of COVID-19.
This episode of Us & Them is presented with support from the West Virginia Humanities Council and the CRC Foundation.
Subscribe to Us & Them on Apple Podcasts, NPR One, RadioPublic, Spotify, Stitcher or wherever you download podcasts. You also can listen to Us & Them on WVPB Radio. Tune in on the fourth Thursday of every month at 8 p.m. with an encore presentation on the fourth Saturday at 3 p.m.
