Real Appalachia Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Crocheters Weave Together Past And Present Through Temperature Blankets

When Cierra Pike crochets, she feels peaceful. It’s rather ironic, because she crochets on the couch at night as her husband and sons race around the house, shouting and playing.

“I crochet to help me relax and everything during the evening because I’m a working mom,” Pike said. “I love to be able to sit with them, enjoy their sounds, while I also regress into my own little world.”

A resident of Rural Retreat, Virginia, Pike is creating — or more accurately, commemorating — a world within her crocheting by making a temperature blanket. Each row represents a day in the year she has chosen to capture in yarn. Different colors represent a temperature range.

Pike explains the concept as a way to track important moments in life.

“That’s how that went, how the weather was that day. I never would have thought about that. But that was really special,” she said. “You can kind of look back and they’re all different colors. They’re all the same colors in each row. But it all tells a story.”

*Cierra Pike sits in Folkways reporter Wendy Welch’s yarn room, explaining the color scheme to her temperature blanket.*

*Photo by Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Some crafters stick to colored stripes rendered in a single crochet, the simplest of stitches. Others choose more complicated patterns like granny squares or rippled rows. What the blanket records can be as casual or deeply layered as its creator chooses.

Pike has chosen to dive deep with her current blanket, which uses a color scheme inspired by Van Gogh’s “The Starry Night.” She uses a raised puff stitch that looks like a little pillow to commemorate other special events.

“Date nights, games that my boys have played, things that I know I’ll be able to look back on and just be like, ‘Oh, that was a really special day,’” Pike said.

She does regret missing one day, which she had already crocheted past before realizing she wanted to commemorate it.

“The one that I really wish I would have put on there, we saw an otter in a local pond. We didn’t even know otters lived here, and it was the cutest thing ever,” she said. “So he’s probably getting a charm.”

Charms or buttons can mark special events. During the COVID years, people wove black ribbons along a row to commemorate a loss. Many still do this, plus use white, blue, or pink to note family additions.

Part Of An Ancient Tradition

Textile storytelling is common to most cultures, but Pike got inspired after watching a documentary about Aztecs and Incas weaving and knotting symbols into clothing and calendars.

Dr. Veronica Rodriguez is a Spanish professor at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise. Her studies include how ancient Mesoamerican cultures used symbols in clothing. She sees temperature blankets as just another example of a long-standing, cross-cultural tradition of people using textiles to tell stories.

“Textiles were used to record history. The colors meant something, the design meant something,” Rodriguez said. “I think it’s great that people are using those fabrics to tell a story, because it’s handmade and it’s art and they learn from their grandma and mom. It’s an ancestral sort of thing. And I think that’s something that we don’t appreciate.”

The oldest preserved example of a story on cloth is arguably Europe’s Bayeux Tapestry, completed in 1077 to commemorate the Battle of Hastings. In Appalachia, telling stories using quilts appeared with the first settlers, while Indigenous weaving and embroidery depicting community events were here long before they arrived.

Lost In The Zone

Chris McKnight is a retired pharmacist from Wise, Virginia. McKnight sees making temperature blankets as a combination of family documentation and affection. She has made temperature blankets for her husband and brother, chronicling significant years in their lives.

*Chris McKnight has made three temperature blankets so far. She relished the challenge of creating a design that tracked data specific to a special year.*

Courtesy Chris McKnight

“It increases the thoughtfulness of the gift when you can say I made this for you and I chose this year because it meant something in your life,” McKnight says. “So it’s not just a blanket to put over you but it has a little bit of meaning behind it and I hope that you realize I was thinking of you with every row I put in the blanket.”

*McKnight made this afghan for her husband in his favorite team’s colors. It commemorates temperatures the year they met.*

Courtesy Chris McKnight

Her husband’s afghan documents the year they met. McKnight used his favorite sports team’s colors, which necessitated hunting down six shades of purple and three of gold. But it isn’t just the recipient McKnight thinks of as she crochets. She also thinks of the person who taught her more than 55 years ago, her grandmother.

“I like keeping it alive. It keeps me close to her, even though she’s gone,” McKnight said.

And sometimes, McKnight can’t identify what she was thinking about as she moved her hook through the yarn in a repetitive, fluid motion. Even when concentrating on a complex pattern, she finds herself lost not in the memories she was capturing, but in a zone of Zen.

“In that zone where I’m thinking about something else, but my hands are working, and I’ll get to the next row and think, ‘What was I thinking about five minutes ago?’,” McKnight said with a laugh. “Because I can’t get my hook in this stitch!”

Karen Long, an armed forces widow living in Hillsville, Virginia, also likes zoning out while crocheting. Long learned from an important elder figure in her life as well.

“My husband’s grandmother came to visit one weekend, I told her, I said, ‘Grandma, I want to learn how to crochet,’” Long recalled. “And I went and got some yarn and a crochet hook and she sat down with me. And by the time she left, I had made a pair of slippers and a triangular type poncho thing for my daughter.”

*Karen Long is making a blanket of 2024’s high temperatures for herself.*

*Photo by Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Long followed those up over the next thirty years by making an afghan for each of her 12 grandchildren. This includes a posthumous one for a granddaughter murdered by her partner. That blanket was donated to a domestic violence fundraiser. Long is glad her granddaughter’s blanket served such a good cause.

*This is the afghan Long donated in honor of her granddaughter who died by domestic violence.*

*Photo by Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Long is currently making two temperature blankets for herself. One records high temperatures for the year, the other lows. They give her space to think about whatever she wants, like the highs and lows of her life. Or not to think at all.

“I enjoy keeping up with it because it gives me a sense of hey, I’m sticking with this,” Long said. “I can sit and do it and watch television at the same time. Or just kind of space out while I’m doing it.”

Long, McKnight, and Pike share that sense of “groundedness”-meets-zoned-outness when making these afghans. And, as Pike points out, they are also knitting the past and the future together through crocheting.

“Memories are what make the world go around. They keep us grounded. They make us strive for more, and if you can have a visual representation of that in front of you, every day, it’s something that’s going to go for generations,” Pike said.

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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 Ukrainian Church In Wheeling Is Preserving Heritage Through The Making Of Pierogies

Just about every culture has some version of the dumpling. China has the wonton. They make ravioli in Italy. Different forms of dumplings have made their way into Appalachia and that includes pierogies from eastern Europe, which arrived more than a century ago. Folkways Reporter Will Warren went to Wheeling, West Virginia for a story about neighborhood pierogi makers.

This story originally aired in the July 21, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

On a Tuesday morning in the kitchen of Our Lady of Perpetual Help — a Ukrainian Catholic Church in Wheeling, West Virginia — there’s a group making pierogies the way churchgoers have for more than 100 years.

“Vareniki. It means to boil,” says Mary Ann Mysliwiec, one of the crew. “It’s the Ukrainian word for pierogi.”

Mary Ann Mysliwiec displays a small plate of pierogies made at Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Wheeling, West Virginia.

*Photo Credit: Will Warren/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Pierogies are stuffed pockets of dough that are boiled and then drenched in butter. They have roots in Poland, but variations can be found throughout Eastern Europe, including Ukraine.

Over the years, pierogies have evolved, with some modern twists.

“Pierogies have become Americanized,” Mysliwiec says. “People have now started putting jalapeño potatoes in it. Some people have started to do dessert ones.”

At Our Lady of Perpetual Help, however, immigrant heritage and tradition remain the cornerstone of pierogi making.

“They’re always the same way; they haven’t changed,” says Olga Skvarka, who is 98. “We make three kinds each week — potato and cheese, and then potato, cheese and onion, and then we have a third one, sauerkraut.”

Olga Skvarka, 98, comes in early to put the pots and pans out for the group, and to start the water for boiling.

*Photo Credit: Will Warren/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Like Mysliwiec, Skvarka is part of the dedicated team that comes together weekly to make over 1,000 pierogies through an assembly line process.

“We have a nice working group,” says Skvarka. “I come down earlier and I put the pots and pans and the water on, and then I set the table for the pinchers when they come in. We all have different jobs we do; it’s like a process.”

While the fundamental process remains unchanged, the pierogi makers at the church have introduced some innovations. John Paluch, who is responsible for rolling and cutting the dough, says his grandmother and the other women who made pierogies had marble rolling pins. And they cut out the dough using water glasses. Now, he uses a dough-rolling machine as well as a specialized dough-cutting tool acquired from a monastery in Canada.

The pierogi makers acquired a specialized dough-cutting tool from a monastery in Canada to help speed the process.

*Photo Credit: Will Warren/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Once the dough has been cut into circles, a team of women with nimble fingers fills them and pinches them closed. Paluch says even with the help of the machines, “I still have to work very hard to keep up with the ladies and their pinching.”

John Paluch uses a machine to roll out the dough to pass on to the pinchers. But he says he still struggles to keep up.

*Photo Credit: Will Warren/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The Historical Influence Of Immigrant Communities In Wheeling

The tradition of pierogi making in Wheeling traces back to the late 1800s, when immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe settled in the region to work in the mines and mills.

“Because Wheeling’s immigrant communities were so intertwined with each other, they couldn’t really be entirely separate. Everybody, in a way, kind of partook in that culture to one extent or another,” says William Gorby, author of the book Wheeling’s Polonia: Reconstructing Polish Community in a West Virginia Steel Town.

Part of that intermingling included sharing traditions like pierogi making. Those traditions continue to live on at cultural festivals throughout the region, such as Wheeling’s annual Polish Heritage Day. Gorby says it’s a way for the descendents of those immigrants to celebrate their roots.

“It’s like the younger generation grows up distinctly Americanized and maybe doesn’t see themselves as attached to that sort of culture,” he says. “So we see a lot of these festivals come back in like the ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s when the third generation was like ‘I really would like to know more about … my grandparents who literally came from Poland or Italy.’”

An hour northeast of Wheeling, pierogies even make an appearance at the Pittsburgh Pirates’ home games, with a pierogi mascot race between innings.

A tray of pierogi filling alongside a tray of perfectly pinched pierogies.

*Photo Credit: Will Warren/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

From Boiling To Butter Bathing: The Final Touches, With Love

After the pierogies are pinched closed, they’re boiled and bathed in melted butter. Then they are drained and dried under fans before being packaged for sale on Thursdays.

George James is hard at work boiling the pierogies, soaking them in melted butter and then draining them before passing them on to be dried.

*Photo Credit: Will Warren/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

When I was young, I was raised on another kind of pocket of dough — chicken and dumplings. I didn’t have my first pierogi until I was in my 20s, from a store-bought box of frozen Ms. T’s. After sampling the pierogies made by the team at the church, however, I quickly discovered store-bought could never compare.

When I asked Mary Ann Mysliwiec what makes the homemade pierogies at Our Lady so special, she says, “We always say you cook with love.”

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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.

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.

Wild About Weeds

Dede Styles in North Carolina uses common roadside plants to make natural dyes for fabrics. She teaches the craft, but it’s also part of a bigger mission for Styles. Folkways Reporter Rebecca Williams brings us this story.

This story originally aired in the July 14, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

Once in a golden hour
I cast to earth a seed.
Up there came a flower,
The people said, a weed.
— Alfred Tennyson, "The Flower"

On a rainy Sunday morning in Swannanoa, North Carolina, Dede Styles and I are getting ready to run across two lanes of highway traffic, trucks and cars whizzing by at 65 miles an hour. We’re here to harvest sumac berries that grow on the hilly highway median.

Styles is passionate about what most people would call weeds. She’s a 77-year-old traditional artist who makes natural fabric dyes, and she loves working with the roots, leaves and berries of common roadside plants.

I first met Styles years ago, when volunteering at a local nonprofit. But this is the first time I have been with her to collect dye weeds.

Eying a break between approaching cars, Styles yells, “Okay, go!”

We run across the wet asphalt and reach an embankment dotted with bushes and stubby trees. “I might climb on my hands and knees,” Styles says, scrambling up the hill. She leads me to a cluster of sumac trees.

Sumac trees can easily be found along forest edges or roadside and clearings. Their cones of bright red berries grow near the top of the small trees.

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

I drive by this spot a lot, sometimes two or more times a day, but I think this is the first time I’ve actually noticed what is growing here. The trees are heavy with cones of dark red sumac berries, which we clip and drop into plastic bags. “These are real pretty ones,” says Styles. “They don’t have any black. Look at that. Hot dog.”

Soon, the traffic starts to pick up, so we slide down the hill, wait for a gap between passing cars and run across the highway to Styles’ truck, parked on the shoulder.

Dede Styles after gathering sumac berries from a highway median last fall.

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

She Started Off Spinning

Making natural dyes wasn’t her first love. When Styles was a little girl, growing up here in the Swannanoa Valley, she used to tag along when her grandmother gave weaving demonstrations. But it was not the weaving that fascinated her. She liked to watch the women at their spinning wheels, turning wool into yarn.

“I would be watching the lady spin,” says Styles, “And then I’d come home and … I’d try to do that on my spinning wheel.”

Then one day she saw someone demonstrating how to make natural dyes out of plants that grew locally — weeds, basically. And for Styles, that was it. “I said, so what for spinning. This is too much fun. This going out and just getting stuff that people think is weeds, stew it up in the pot, put your yarn in there and make the colors.”

She’s been doing it ever since.

Styles’ natural front yard hosts dozens of native dye plants, including broomsedge, white fall asters, goldenrod, pokeweed, mullein and black walnut trees.

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Let The Squirrels Have Them

The unmowed yard in front of Styles’ home is filled with drifts of wildflowers, tall grasses and weeds — the perfect spot to grow plant materials for natural dyes.

Styles collects and prepares the black walnuts that grow in her yard to make brown dye. Most parts of the black walnut can be used for dyeing, including nuts, leaves, bark and the heartwood.

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Today, she’s invited me over to watch her prep black walnut hulls she picked up under the tree in her yard.

The walnuts are green and leathery, kind of like hard tennis balls. Styles puts one on a plank, smashes it with a hammer and separates the hull from the nut.

“See, this one has a lot of those little white worms. But they don’t hurt your dye,” she says. “So I just throw ‘em in there.” She drops the hull into a bucket. Then she throws the rest of the walnut over her shoulder into the yard. “Let the squirrels have ‘em,” she says.

The rich black walnut hulls are found inside the leathery outer layer. Styles recommends wearing old clothes and rubber gloves while removing the hulls.

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Later, Styles will lay the hulls on cardboard to dry out in the sun and then boil them to make a deep reddish-brown dye.

It doesn’t always come out the way she expects, though. She shows me some dull grayish yarn hanging inside the house.

“These are experiments,” Styles says, “that aren’t quite working the way we wished they would.”

What color was she going for?

“Purple,” she replies, laughing.

And this just serves as a reminder that natural dyeing is not an exact science, even if you’re an expert like Styles. All sorts of things can change the way your dye colors come out — from the type of pot you use, to where you get your water. A lot of the plants Styles uses for her dyes grow on her land. But sometimes she has to look elsewhere for the plants she needs — like the highway median.

“If I’m gonna go on some land that doesn’t belong to me to pick dye weeds, I try to get permission from the people that own it,” Styles says.

She tells me about a time she decided to pick some broomsedge, which makes a nice yellow dye. The broomsedge was growing on a vacant lot near Black Mountain.

“The lot was covered,” Styles remembers. “It was a pretty good sized lot and it was covered. I didn’t think he’d miss it.”

But he, the owner, came by and asked her what she was doing. “I explained to him that I was getting these weeds and I was gonna make dye out of them.”

She says the owner wasn’t upset. In fact, he asked her for advice on how he could grow grass on the lot to hold down the dirt. Styles told him, “You don’t need to do that. Nature has put here on this lot the very best plant to hold this soil. These broomsedge plants have the deepest roots of any plant around.”

Styles worked out a deal with him to leave the broomsedge alone until she could harvest it in the fall. “I said, ‘Look, if you will not mow it until like November every year, I’ll dye some wool and make you a hat.’”

And she did.

“I made him a hat that was dyed with the broomsedge on his land,” Styles says. “He thought that was great.”

Styles’ interest in protecting local plants goes far beyond her need for dye weeds. She wants people to recognize the important role that these plants play in the ecosystem so that they will become better caretakers of the earth. And one way she spreads the word is by giving natural dye demonstrations across western North Carolina.

Heritage Day At The Folk Art Center

Styles talks to a family about how to make natural dyes at the Folk Art Center’s Heritage Day, a celebration of traditional crafts and Southern Appalachian culture.

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

At Heritage Day at the Folk Art Center off the Blue Ridge Parkway, near Asheville, there are dozens of artists demonstrating traditional Appalachian crafts. In her tent, Styles has about 50 skeins of beautifully colored yarn in yellows, greens, blues and purples spread out on a table and hanging from a line.

Styles points out some of the many shades of yarn she created using native dye plants to a Heritage Day visitor.

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Off to the side, a big iron pot sits on a propane burner, and every so often, Styles walks over and stirs the dark liquid inside.

“The brown that I’m doing today I made with sumac berries,” she says. “Here’s how they looked after I cooked them, see?”

Styles stirring the pot of her dye bath made with dried sumac berries. Since water can affect the color of natural dye, she only uses water collected from a creek by her home.

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

As Styles describes the plants she uses, a few younger-looking folks drift her way. They are graduate students studying landscape architecture at the University of Tennessee.

Graduate students studying landscape architecture take notes and ask questions as Styles talks about the local plants she uses to make natural dyes.

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Soon they surround Styles, and start to ask questions.

“So, are you worried about, like, anytime in the near future not being able to find what you are looking for?” a student asks.

“I am,” Styles replies. “I am lucky, because I have a big field in front of my house where I can grow a lot of the stuff. But I am even more worried about the insects. And everybody that eats food should care about pollinators.”

“Absolutely,” says another student.

“So, as often as you can in your designs, plant things, native things, that can support the pollinators,” Styles says. “We have to change. Now that there’s so many of us, we have to change how we look at the world or we’re doomed.”

And there it is — her not-so-secret mission to save the planet by getting people interested in local plants and weeds.

But Styles has been the dye lady for a long time. She’s been hauling iron pots and giving outdoor demonstrations for 24 years.

“I’ve been out there in the rain and the snow and the thunderstorms and the lightning and everything,” she says.

And she’s getting a little tired. So Styles tells me she’s taken on an apprentice. She received a Folklife Apprentice grant through the North Carolina Arts Council to mentor a younger artist and teach her all she knows about the craft of natural dyeing.

Yarn that Styles and her apprentice have recently dyed, hangs in the rafters of her home. Styles and her apprentice, Janet Wiseman, received a Folklife Apprentice grant so that Styles can pass on her knowledge of the traditional craft of using native plants for dyes.

*Photo Credit: Rebecca Williams/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

“I think that the most important thing … not that all the people who see me are going to be dyers,” Styles says. “But what I really hope they take from it is an appreciation of the natural world. That what they thought was a weed can actually do this thing, this beautiful thing. And make them more aware as they move around in their day of what they see on the side of the road.”

To learn more about making natural dyes from native plants, check out the book Wild Mountain Time: Native Dye Plants by Dede Styles and Frederick Park.

For more information about natural dyeing or to learn about upcoming dye demonstrations, visit the Southern Highland Craft Guild in Asheville, North Carolina.

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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.

The Rooted East Knoxville Collective Brings New Perspectives To Restorative Foodways Justice

Across the country, poor and largely Black neighborhoods were bulldozed and replaced with new highways and civic centers in the 20th century. That concept is known as urban renewal — and it tore communities apart. Now, one woman in Knoxville, Tennessee, is using food to try to heal generations of damage in a city neighborhood. Folkways Reporter Wendy Welch has more.

This story originally aired in the June 16, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

Femeika Elliott drives me down Magnolia Avenue, the street dividing east Knoxville from west. The east side is a historic Black neighborhood where Elliott spent summers with her grandmother.

Elliott, a foodways entrepreneur who brings nutrition-dense foods to east Knoxville shoppers, is pointing out the lack of healthy food options in the neighborhood.

“If we ride down Magnolia Avenue, we see that there are zero healthy food options, compared to all of the other fast food options and drive through liquor stores,” Elliott says. She points to a liquor store as she speaks.

“I often say that it’s very likely for someone that stays in east Knoxville to die by the drive-by or by the drive-through,” Elliott says.

Most people have heard the term food desert, but Elliott uses a different term to describe east Knoxville’s lack of healthy food options: food apartheid.

Most people are familiar with the term food desert, which describes a place where healthy options are hard to find without suggesting why access is difficult. Activists often prefer the term food apartheid since it points to systemic discrimination, which most often occurs in politically disenfranchised neighborhoods.

Femeika Elliott holds a regional magazine showing one of her many awards.

*Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

“Three non-healthy food options to every one healthy food option is typically considered, ‘food apartheid.’” Elliott’s fingers mark the quotes with one hand as she drives.

It’s hard to say what upsets Elliott more about the situation in East Knoxville: what she sees, or what she doesn’t see. As we pass an ordinary-looking side street, she points it out as the former boundaries of the now-defunct Black business district known as The Bottom. “The Bottom was perceived to be one of the richest places in Knoxville when it comes to Black Knoxville entrepreneurs and business owners. That was before gentrification or what my community calls Black removal,” Elliott says.

Along with businesses, east Knoxville used to have a lot of farms and gardens. Kimberley Pettigrew, Food Systems Director for the Greater Knoxville United Way, has evidence. At Knoxville’s Beck Cultural Exchange Center, she found archival photographs and transcripts that point to the history of grocery stores, restaurants and seed stores in the area.

“People had chickens, people were farmers,” Pettigrew says. “And [they] sold that food to White people in the same location where the organization I worked for ran a farmers market.”

All that began disappearing in the 1970s, the most active period of Black removal in Knoxville. “So it’s something that was taken away,” Pettigrew says, “It was taken away intentionally.”

Thriving Black businesses in east Knoxville were long gone by the time Elliott was born into a military family there. Raised in multiple locations, she spent summers with her grandmother in Knoxville and returned after university graduation, planning to launch a career in social work.

Instead she launched a healthy meals business and began a lifelong fight for food equity and restorative justice in her community. She wanted her community to have fresh fruits and vegetables available.

“The way that I see it, we should get back to our traditions and learn how to be self-sufficient and sustainable,” Elliott says. “I practice the art of Sankofa, which is an African proverb meaning ‘going back and getting it.’ Which is the methodology of going back and restoring our pathways and traditions that made us who we are. And so gardening, farming, we taught folks that.”

She first provided nutritional advice to a few friends and family members, like her former housemate Zerconia “Z” Davis.

Davis recalls experiencing “tomato envy” when Elliott began coming home with fresh produce she grew at her mother’s house — on a tiny second story balcony.

Elliott laughs. “Yeah, it was funny because she was like, ‘Where are you getting these tomatoes and peppers from,’ and I was like, ‘Oh on my mom’s balcony.’ And she’s like, ‘What are you doing out there?’ and I’m like, ‘Huh, we just made a garden.’”

“How?” Davis asks with a grin as the two dissolve into laughter. “How do you grow a garden on a tiny balcony?”

When Davis moved out, she started her own garden. Elliott gave her seeds and ideas, and soon Davis had so many of her own tomatoes that she was sharing them with Elliott instead of the other way around.

“I got so many tomatoes, come get ‘em,” Davis says with another laugh.

“You go girl,” Elliott shouts. “We’re making salsa, hello!”

The duo looked at ways to container garden in small spaces using recycled household detritus, including toilet rolls, two liter milk jugs and boxes.

Davis says she found in gardening not just healthy food she wanted to eat, but peace she hadn’t experienced since launching her fast-paced career in finance.

Zerconia Davis was the first taste tester of Femeika Elliott’s healthy meal kits.

*Courtesy Photo*

“Gardening is honestly a form of therapy in every way, shape and form.” Davis says. “It teaches you patience. In the world we live in today, with phones — everything is instant. Learning patience and learning how to be present in the moment and just enjoy the fact that your seed sprouted. And then you get to watch it turn into a flower.”

Elliott helped Davis with another problem, too.

“My first job, it was a very stressful job, and I had gained a lot of weight. I wasn’t healthy,” Davis says.

So Elliott started making healthy meal plans for her friend.

“When I first started meal prepping for her prior to her learning on her own, it was an uphill battle, because she was like, ‘Whadaya mean I gotta portion this off? And what the hell is quinoa? And why am I eating this?’ It was all questions, all the time,” Elliott says.

While Davis had expected to lose the weight, she hadn’t anticipated enjoying the process.

“I think what surprised me the most was how easy it could be while it could still taste good,” Davis says, adding that Elliott’s meal kits were ahead of their time in both taste and nutritional content. “It looked like something you would want to eat when you were done making it.”

Encouraged by her friend, Elliott began selling meal kits at the local farmer’s market. But she wanted to reach more people in the east Knoxville community. She recalls reckoning with herself:

“What you’re doing now is not cutting it, like it’s not enough.”

A famous proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” That was on Elliott’s mind as she found three other foodways activists and entrepreneurs also focused on restorative foodways. Together they formed an organization called the Rooted East Knoxville Collective.

“I started Rooted East because I saw a need to bring our Black community back into equilibrium.” Elliott sums up her motivation.

Rooted East began winning regional awards. In 2023, the collective helped a historic Black church put 36 raised beds on its lawn. In 2024, more than 100 beds went in on the lawn of that same church, plus 30 gardens in the larger community.

This pleased Elliott, but she is not about to stop there. “I also want to see people coming together over food, breaking bread, learning, you know, about what they’ve experienced in the city, in their homes, in our lives — just bringing people back together,” Elliott says.

The Rooted East Knoxville Collective asks where gardens and businesses used to be in the area, seeking the wisdom and memory of community elders, and then attempts to put these resources back. Elliott describes it as hard but rewarding work that should be done within the community for the community, a concept known as Ujima.

“At some point we have to hold ourselves accountable and acknowledge hey, we strayed away from tradition. And we need to practice Sankofa, you know, we need to practice Ujima,” Elliott says. “It’s a collective work and responsibility.”

In east Knoxville, restorative justice grows organically from within the community.

Battlefield Farms is one of the collective garden sites in east Knoxville.

*Photo Credit: Wendy Welch/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

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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.

In W.Va., Hip Hop Has Gone From Marginalized To Mainstream

Last year, communities celebrated the 50th anniversary of hip hop. Over the past half century, hip hop has gone from a marginalized art form to a mainstream powerhouse. It developed in major metropolitan centers like New York, Los Angeles and the South, but took root in Appalachia, too. Folkways Reporter Vanessa Peña reports on hip hop in West Virginia.

This story originally aired in the June 16, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

I’m in Eric Jordan’s home studio in Morgantown, West Virginia. He’s walking me through his process of making a beat.

“As you can see, that’s the signal there, and I’m capturing it,” Jordan says to me over the music.

The song “All My Love In Vain” by Sonny Boy Williamson II plays on Jordan’s turntable. The turntable is connected to his computer, and it captures the audio from the record. The signal is moving up and down in squiggly lines that identify sound waves.

“I’m just sort of listening for something that captures my liking,” Jordan says. He allows the music to play for a beat longer. “Alright, let’s mess with that.”

Jordan takes a snippet of the song. He creates a drumbeat and layers it underneath the music. The sound of electronic drums begins to play as Jordan feels out the sound.

“Alright, I got my drums. I feel comfortable enough to play around with these chops,” Jordan says as he puts his drumbeat to loop.

Eric Jordan works at his desk, creating a beat using a song by Sonny Boy Williamson II as a base.

*Photo Credit: Vanessa Peña/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

In 2023, communities all around the country celebrated the 50th anniversary of hip hop. Here in West Virginia, hip hop has gone from a marginalized art form, to a mainstream powerhouse.

Jordan is a familiar face in the West Virginia hip hop scene, where he’s known by his stage name Monstalung. Hip hop has been a big part of Jordan’s life from a young age, in part because of the influence of his father, Norman Jordan. Norman Jordan was a distinguished poet and artist.

In the ‘60s and ‘70s, Norman Jordan was at the forefront of the Black Arts Movement in West Virginia and Ohio. He was part of this nationwide effort to foster pride in Black history, arts and culture.

The Black Arts Movement inspired a diverse body of poetry, theater and visual arts, and in 1973, a new musical genre: hip hop. This was the backdrop of Jordan’s childhood. As a kid, he and his siblings often performed alongside their father. These performances included dance, music and Norman Jordan’s poetry.

“He didn’t waste time with me. I was his bongo player when I was nine,” Jordan says as he reflects on his experience performing with his father. “I mean, we performed at Berkeley College, Howard University and different things like that. I was in all his productions. Me and my siblings and my mother were, you know, we were a family unit.”

The drum Eric would use when performing with his father, Norman Jordan.

*Photo Credit: Vanessa Peña/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Inspired by his father’s passion for poetry and performing arts, Jordan started breakdancing in high school. He got gigs at mall fashion shows and local restaurants. Jordan says he and his peers were pushing boundaries.

“At that time, people were doing hip hop, it wasn’t trendy yet. This is the early ‘80s so we stuck out like sore thumbs. You can see us coming a mile away,” Jordan says.

After college, Jordan fully immersed himself in the world of hip hop — DJing, MCing and making beats — from Maryland to New York. In 1999, he returned home to West Virginia, where he started a record label with his brother. Their mission was to make hip hop music for, by, and about West Virginians.

“We made a conscious effort to make music that dealt with self-esteem and state pride. We just felt like that was something that wasn’t here,” Jordan says.

Jordan formed a hip hop group called the 304 Reconz under his label. They performed all around West Virginia, collaborating with artists in Huntington, Charleston and Morgantown. But it wasn’t easy getting started.

“It was rocky at the beginning, because there was really no hip hop scene here at all, so we had to create one,” Jordan says.

By the early 2000s, hip hop had gained traction in big cities like New York, Atlanta and Chicago. But in West Virginia, it hadn’t built momentum yet. The 304 Reconz had to get creative.

“When we first started doing shows, we did raves, we did biker bars,” Jordan says.

The 304 Reconz were performing a genre of music rooted in Black culture to majority white audiences. And not everyone knew how to react.

“You know, a couple of times I thought we had to fight ourselves out of these places, but ended up winning over the crowd and winning over the differences in culture,” Jordan says.

Through their efforts, Jordan and his peers laid the groundwork for a new generation of hip hop artists in the state.

One artist who is at the forefront of this new generation is Isaac Fadiga, commonly known by his stage name Shelem. Shelem is 27 and lives in Charleston. When he first started making hip hop music in 2007, the 304 Reconz were already well established. And with the internet, he could learn from successful hip hop artists all around the world.

Shelem at his home studio in Charleston, West Virginia, demonstrating his work flow and organization.

*Photo Credit: Vanessa Peña/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

“Right around the time I started writing my own stuff was when Soulja Boy was big, so that was an inspiration in itself, because he was so young and he was doing everything on his own,” Shelem says. “He was producing his own songs, and he was using the same software that I was, so it was like a clear vision of what it could be if you did it right.”

As a student at Marshall University, Shelem started performing in public.

“I did the talent show. That was my first time performing. And then that same week, there was an open mic,” Shelem says. “And then from there I met this band called The Heavy Hitters and they ended up inviting me to play as part of their set at pretty much every venue that they played at in the area.”

In just a few decades, hip hop artists in West Virginia have gone from “sticking out like sore thumbs” to being accepted and even celebrated by the mainstream. Last year, Jordan and Shelem spoke at Marshall University on a panel about hip hop’s 50th anniversary. And now, Shelem is the face and voice of the West Virginia restaurant Tudor’s Biscuit World in a commercial that launched last year.

“I got a call from their marketing manager who said, ‘Hey, we have this idea we want to do, we want to do a rap about the breakfast wraps and we thought you’d be good to do that,’” Shelem says. “It was exciting to have been chosen for something like that.”

After getting the deal with Tudor’s to make the jingle, Shelem called Jordan to tell him the news. Jordan remembers Shelem thanking him for paving the way for hip hop artists in the state.

“New people like Shelem,” Jordan says, “I think he’s the future of our state when it comes to hip hop.”

In January, Shelem released his third album titled Hope This Helps. Later this year, Jordan will release a memoir titled Child of the Poet, Son of the Dreamer along with an accompanying album, An Appalachian Hip Hop Story.

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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.

W.Va. Couple Follows Passion For Woodwork By Building A Life And A Business Together

For Sue and Stan Jennings, woodworking isn’t just a way to make a living, it’s a way of life. What started out as a passion for the craft was born out of necessity. Over the last 30 years, the Jennings have developed a thriving business making wood objects called treenware — small wooden kitchen utensils.

This story originally aired in the April 21, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

The Jennings learned to make spoons through a lot of trial and error. But both of them can trace their passion for woodworking back to their childhoods.

Sue grew up helping out her father who was a contractor. Stan’s father had a sawmill and his grandfather was a carpenter. “I had a little bit of woodworking in my DNA,” Stan says.

Their mutual love of woodworking ended up being the foundation for their own relationship as a couple.

“When I met my husband, we were both working in the coal mines underground. And when we first started getting to know each other, the question we would ask is, ‘If you had anything in the world you wanted to do, what would be first on your list?’” Sue says. “And I said I wanted to be a woodworker. And he had the same dream. So right off the bat we knew there was something pretty special there.”

The chance to chase their dreams came sooner than expected. Not long after the couple met, Sue and Stan were laid off from the mines.

“We all walked in and got our pink slips and that was the end of our coal mining business,” Sue says. “And that’s how this evolved, because we needed a way to make a living.”

To make ends meet, the couple started selling odds and ends at craft shows. During that time, both experimented with making spoons.

Stan says the first set of spoons he made were less than impressive, but were created from the heart. And because he needed a cheap present for Sue.

“I suppose I was too tight to buy a Christmas gift,” Stan says. “I made her a set of dogwood spoons. And that was actually the first set of spoons we made. I’m ashamed to even show people, it turned out so bad, but Sue hung on to them.”

Sue also caught the spoon-making bug and tried to make a set herself. “The first spoon I made was a set of measuring spoons, and I made it out of rhododendron [wood],” Sue says. “And that’s because we had gone to a show and we met a spoon maker, and we talked and talked about him. I was fascinated from the very beginning.”

The Jennings discovered there was a whole culture around wooden utensils when they stumbled upon the book Treen and other wooden bygones. This book ended up changing the direction of their business. But they almost didn’t buy it.

“At the time it was like a $50 book and we stood there and agonized over spending $50 on this book because we couldn’t afford a book for $50,” Sue says. “So there was our first exposure to the word ‘treen.’”

Sue Jennings holding her copy of *Treen and other wooden bygones*, a book by Edward H. Pinto.

*Photo Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Treen is a Saxon word that refers to wooden items made from the tree for use in the kitchen or dairy. After buying the book, Allegheny Treenware was born. Much of the inspiration for their product design — and the name of their business — has come from the book.

Over 30 years later, the book is still on their shelves. It’s thick and well-worn, filled with photos of wooden kitchen items. There is a clear design connection between what is in the book and what the Jennings make today. The items are both functional and beautiful.

Over the years, the couple has grown as craftspeople thanks to a combination of grit and learning from other woodworkers. Now, times are not as tight and their process is much more sophisticated. They have several employees and a workshop full of high-end equipment. Their treenware is sold online all around the world, and the spoons are coveted collector’s items.

There’s a lot of action on the shop floor to fulfill these orders. Staff shift between workstations dedicated to a specific purpose. Each spoon starts with a pattern that is traced onto a board of wood and cut, just like a clothing pattern for fabric.

“When we make the spoon or whatever, there’s no duplicating machines, there’s no computerized equipment. Everything is truly made by hand here at this shop,” Sue says.

While there is now a team behind Allegheny Treenware, the Jennings reserve the most difficult part of the process for themselves: the shaping finish of the spoon. This requires very coarse sandpaper on a spinning disc which can cut your hands if you’re not careful.

Sue says her approach to shaping is different from Stan’s. She pre-shapes the spoon first, while Stan starts by planning things out before he sits down at a machine. “We’re different sides of the brain and we go about things differently,” Sue says. “[Stan’s] very methodical and I’m not, but we end up in the same place.”

Patterns used to make wooden utensils at Allegheny Treenware.

*Photo Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The Jennings also have complimentary skills as business partners, especially when they were selling at craft shows.

Sue reflects on how she and Stan would interact with customers. “I’m always at the booth selling and his job was to entertain,” she says. “He’d be hand-carving a spoon and he’d be telling stories, entertaining the men while the women went shopping. It worked perfectly.”

Before a spoon is complete, there are some finishing touches put on it. They burn their initials “SJ” into the spoon and then soak it in food grade oil to bring out the color of the wood.

Back of a classic wooden “granny spoon” made by Allegheny Treenware.

*Photo Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Detail of engraving on the back of a wooden spoon made by Allegheny Treenware to indicate it is made of cherry wood. Initials “SJ” indicate the product was made by Sue and Stan Jennings.

*Photo Credit: Capri Cafaro/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

These spoons are much more than wooden utensils. They represent the sweat equity of one couple who has stayed true to their dreams, and each other, for over three decades.

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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.