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Save The Forest, Get Paid: This Appalachian Farming Initiative Shows People How

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.

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.

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.

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 Receive More Than $100 Million So Far In COVID-19 Relief

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.

COVID-19 Takes A Toll On Our Food Supply

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.

With Coronavirus Roiling Food Supply, Local Agriculture Sees Resurgence

Debby Dulworth has a lot of conversations with her cattle each day. She swings open a gate, driving the herd with repeated calls and the Hereford cattle, respond in kind with groans and snorts.

“They talk to me,” Dulworth said with a laugh, as the cows come bounding out into a fresh field of Kentucky fescue and buttercups. She’s been corralling them from pasture to pasture on her farm for decades near Monkey’s Eyebrow, Kentucky, nestled in a bend of the Ohio River.

Most of the time, they move at her call. The more stubborn ones she herds with the threat of an electric wire she slowly drags through the field. The wire isn’t hot usually, but the cows don’t know that.

“They learn very quickly. They don’t like being shocked,” Dulworth said. “They’re pretty smart that way. They’re smarter than people that way.”

Dulworth and her husband sell their grass-fed beef throughout west Kentucky, much of it through word of mouth. They were worried about sales after demand last year had dropped off. Then pandemic hit.

“People started calling in, and actually it started in March and it really picked up throughout April, until now, we have way more customers than we can find processors to take,” she said.

A couple calls a month of inquiries turned into several a day — many new customers — of people wanting orders of their beef. And while they were taking new orders, they had trouble trying to meet that new demand.

Small meat processors in the region that would normally take their cattle were now telling Dulworth they didn’t have available appointments until December, or even April of next year. Other livestock farmers are also seeing a spike in demand and are trying to get their cattle processed to fulfill the new orders.

Across the Ohio Valley, farmers that sell locally are seeing skyrocketing interest in the food they offer as the pandemic brings fears of food shortages in grocery stores, slowed production in meatpacking plants caused by COVID-19 outbreaks, and a radically different grocery store experience.

Dulworth and other farmers see a moment of opportunity to show consumers a new way to get their food locally, a way that she believes can benefit both the buyers and the local suppliers.

New Opportunities

For weeks on end beginning in March, Fritz Boettner was getting little sleep.

Boettner runs the Turnrow Appalachian Farm Collective in West Virginia, a cooperative that brings together produce and livestock farmers throughout the state and region to supply local food to restaurants, schools, and individuals.

While orders from restaurants had halted due to coronavirus-related shutdowns, demand from individuals was booming, from about $5,000 per week during normal circumstances to nearly $30,000 a week.

To keep up, he was spending long days just to unload produce being shipped from multiple local farms, re-package it to customers, and then reload to be sent to consumers.

“I keep buying meat from producers. First it was 50 pounds, and 100 pounds, and 300 pounds, and then bought 300 pounds — all gone in two days,” Boettner said. “I’m like ‘alright, maybe I should be buying 1000 pounds.’”

Other outlets offering Appalachian produce report a similar surge. The Chesterhill Produce Auction in southeast Ohio has seen about 60 new customers in the past two weeks looking for the ramps, asparagus, green onions, and other offerings, said Jessica Dotson, who helps run operations at the auction. During normal times last year, the auction would see only about 10 new customers a week.

“A lot of people are coming out and buying the vegetable stocks to grow their own gardens because of the food scarcity,” Dotson said. “If they can provide for their self or get it just down the road … it’s definitely a lot better than having to rely on a big store.”

Boettner said his cooperative is a new discovery for many looking for food alternatives as shortages and higher prices affect grocery stores, largely connected to COVID-19 outbreaks in meatpacking plants. Instead of walking into a grocery store, people can pick up food packaged together in locations throughout the state.

“No one wants to go to the grocery store. And then you look at the food system in general, at a national level … and it’s scary. Meat plants shutting down because everybody has COVID,” Boettner said. “How does that affect the meat I’m eating? And then they go to the store, and it’s not there. So your traditional food systems are a little bit scary right now.”

Moving Forward

It’s not clear if this new interest in local agriculture will last, especially given the economic uncertainty that lies ahead. But Boettner said he thinks the pandemic could bring a significant shift.

“Now, things could change if we head into a deep depression, or where no one has jobs and money in order to pay for it,” he said. “We’re not all of a sudden gonna be able to pivot and feed the entire state of West Virginia within Turnrow, it’s impossible.”

While he doesn’t think substantial change will come in the next few years, this pandemic could be a turning point to build upon small changes over the course of future decades.

“It’s still a long game,” Boettner said. “Is it a pivot point to where we can start to head that direction into a more sustainable food system?”

Boettner and other local farmers hope by introducing new people to locally-sourced agriculture they can show consumers the benefits of knowing where their food comes from and the community benefits of keeping the profits local.

Debby Dulworth and her husband changed their business model in 2003 to sell their cattle directly to people in the region out of financial necessity, compared to sending cattle to feedlots. In the late 1990’s, they were more than $300,000 in debt after years of stagnant prices for their feedlot cattle and the purchase of a local feed mill that flopped.

Debby Dulworth on her cattle farm near Money’s Eyebrow, KY.

By selling cattle directly to others in west Kentucky, they could keep more of the revenue that otherwise could go to other stakeholders: those who owned the transportation taking cattle to feedlots, those who owned the feedlots, and those who owned meatpacking plants where many cattle eventually end up.

“We’re at the bottom of the food chain. And by keeping them here and doing all that work ourselves, we got to take all those profits and keep them which helped us get out of debt,” Dulworth said. “It’s not an exorbitant living, but it’s a good living.”

Another beef cattle farmer near Lewisburg, West Virginia, also sees this renewed interest as an opportunity to put more investment back in local agriculture, in a state where investment in fossil fuel industries has dominated the state.

Jennifer “Tootie” Jones said her family farm has also seen sales spike the past few months, to the point where they’ve had to hire a person to answer the phone and manage online orders.

With those in the state trying to make local agriculture a sustainable part of the regional economy, she believes the federal government and state could do more to invest in small-scale agriculture.

She said even as she’s hired new employees in the past month, she still struggles with banks and financing for her farm.

“Look what we have here, and look at how much more money we could probably bring into our banks, bring into our businesses, loan opportunities,” Jones said. “But it’s not coal, and it’s not timber, and not stone. And I just don’t get it, because it’s the thing we all need the most — food.”

Homemaking On The Homestead: Here's How A W.Va. Farming Family Is Handling The Pandemic

Just outside Fayetteville, West Virginia, there’s a 42-acre farm that has just about everything — chickens, lambs, sheep, produce and dogs. The latest addition is a litter of Great Pyrenees puppies, who will become guardian dogs for the sheep.

Christine Weirick owns and operates Deep Mountain Farm with her husband Chris Jackson and their two young daughters.

The couple has been operating Deep Mountain Farm for four years now. They live mostly off what they produce, putting them in a unique position during the pandemic, where leaving the house, even for necessities, is not encouraged.

And they are not alone – West Virginia has 23,000 farms, mostly family-owned, that survive off what they produce, according to Farm Flavor. In fact, a lot of West Virginians who are not even farmers, have started returning to practices like sewing, gardening and baking.

The Great Pyrenees puppies born on the farm in early April. They will grow up to be working farm dogs.

Activities like that are just a day in the life of Chris and Christine, although they have less help than usual because of the pandemic. Christine said they typically hire on a couple of helpers through the WorldWide Opportunities on Organic Farms network, or “WWOOFers,” which draws people from all across the world willing to exchange labor for food and housing and knowledge of Appalachian farming.

“A lot of people come here wanting to learn how to butcher a chicken. So I always make sure that we have a chance to learn that skill,” Christine said. “But I also do it so that I can expose people to Appalachia, and they can have a positive experience.”

So without volunteers this year, she said the farm work, which does not stop for a pandemic, is going to be much more extensive.

Deep Mountain Farm is a regenerative farming operation, meaning they work the land with an eye toward improving and enriching the soil. Practices include everything from using cover crops rather than tilling the land, not using pesticides and livestock grazing rotation.

Chris and Christine both grew up in Kanawha County, with limited knowledge on farming, so much of what they have learned has been in their adult life. In fact, Christine volunteered as a WWOOFer in the Eastern Panhandle.

“We’ve ended up crossing paths with really incredible people who are very enthusiastic about sharing everything they know. And that’s just the only way this stuff’s going to get preserved,” Christine said.

She said the rich traditions and knowledge of old farming practices, and the willingness to share it with a younger generation, is what makes farming in West Virginia unique.

One practice Christine learned was how to grow a full garden — one that a family can live off of and then some — and also, how to can vegetables and fruit to eat in the off-season, a common practice on early farms in Appalachia.

And this year, Christine said they are growing a garden larger than ever before.

“I had like 400 kale plants and was like, ‘This is way too much.’”

Their hope is to have leftover produce to sell to those trying to social distance and stay away from grocery stores — and to donate some to homeless shelters. Christine usually cans with her mother, her grandmother and her aunts.

“We fill the house with people and jars and pots of food boiling away, and now it’s just going to be me,” she said. “I won’t be able to put up as much food as we usually do. So, I feel obligated almost, to make sure that the food ends up in the hands of people who really need it.”

Christine home makes soap out of leftover lard. She is a big supporter of the benefits of lard.

Christine also makes 100 percent lard soap, sometimes with a splash of raw milk from the cow. She is a firm believer in using all parts of an animal.

“I have probably like 150 pounds of fat in my freezer right now because people don’t know what to do with it, which is a shame because it’s really easy to render lard and then you don’t need to buy any oils from the store,” she said. “It’s really good for you, like full of vitamin D, it’s really good for your skin — I could go on forever about lard.”

Another good use for lard is lots and lots of pies, Christine said.

When the the pandemic is less of a threat, she said she hopes to celebrate with a large cookout with fellow farmers and people who have been purchasing their goods, helping them keep afloat during these uncertain times.

This story is part of West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Southern Coalfields Reporting Project which is supported by a grant from the National Coal Heritage Area Authority.

This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.

Coronavirus Sprouts A Budding Interest In Gardening, Local Food In W.Va.

To help decrease the spread of COVID-19, residents across the country, and here in West Virginia, are being asked to stay home, except to get the essentials such as food and medicine. Although the National Grocers Association assures there’s not a food shortage in the U.S., some store shelves are sparse.

As spring unfolds across the Mountain State, the pandemic is driving an influx of West Virginians back to the garden and to some of the state’s local farmers.

WVU Extension Service has seen firsthand the growing interest in planting and tending a garden. The WVU Extension Family Nutrition program runs an online gardening program called Grow This. It’s supported by the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program from the USDA Food and Nutrition Service.

Interested participants fill out an online survey and get free seeds for four crops. This year the crops are microgreens, peas, tomatoes and butternut squash. The program is open to anyone in West Virginia and, in recent years, a few hundred people have participated.

“This year, within three days of posting the first post for the year, we had over 1,000 people sign up, and we now have over 5,000,” said Kristin McCartney, a public health specialist with the Extension Service.

In the month since the program went live, more than 25,000 people have requested seeds. McCartney said staff is working from home to fulfill the requests, targeting those most in need.

McCartney’s first post included an image of a victory garden — the war-time morale-booster that encouraged people to plant food at home. In this time of COVID-19, she said the idea of growing more food seems to have resonated with many West Virignians.

“This is the time to pull together as a community and do what we can for ourselves and other people around us,” she said. “Part of that right now is just staying home, and another part is ensuring that our food supplies are secure and people can be fed.”

A screenshot of the victory garden post made by Grow This.

That’s a role some of the state’s farmers are taking on, according to Fritz Boettner, who heads the Turnrow Appalachian Food Collective located in southern West Virginia. The organization serves as a food hub and helps get produce from dozens of small growers into the hands of schools, restaurants and people across central Appalachia.

Some of the biggest markets for Turnrow growers included restaurants and schools, both of which are largely closed due to the coronavirus. That sent some farmers scrambling to find buyers for truckloads of salad greens, for example.

But during this pandemic, Boettner said a new market is flourishing — regular West Virignians seeking fresh produce. Turnrow has seen record sales from individuals placing orders through their online marketplace.

He thinks it highlights the vital role small farmers play in West Virginia. West Virginia is home to about 20,000 farms, and almost all of them are considered small. Ninety-three percent are family-owned, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“We need to think about food security and our food system in West Virginia and central Appalachia will help get us through this.” he said “And I think people are wanting to invest in that.”