I was tooling around the grocery store today and felt my buns clinching along with my wallet. My eyes even began to water as they bugged out on prices.

If you're like me, and feel like you've been paying more for groceries lately, you're definitely onto something. Why the difference? Unfortunately, the rising gas prices that are pinching your wallet at the pump also have a big effect on groceries. Fuel is needed to process the foods and truck them across the country. Prices for fruits and vegetables as well as milk, wine and ground beef are all on the rise.

Also, the high prices of gasoline have increased the demand for corn-based ethanol, which drives up the price of corn as well as other foods. Half of the corn produced in the U.S. is used to feed livestock that supply meat and dairy products, and corn is used in many food products (just think how many items contain high-fructose corn syrup or use corn oil).

With this is mind, if we are all to keep paying these prices, we should definitely be paying it locally. Support your local economy and your local farmers by patronizing our local farmer's markets, local grocers, and produce stands.

After I put away my grocery purchases and sat down at the computer, I decided it was time that blogging to my friends and readers wasn't all that I could do. I think a letter to the editor of my local newspaper is in order. I will let you know the outcome soon.

I just can't get this little tune out of my head tonight:

All around the mulberry bush

The monkey chased the weasel;

The monkey thought 'twas all in good fun

Pop! goes the weasel.

A penny for a spool of thread,

A penny for a needle—

That's the way the money goes,

Pop! goes the weasel.

Goodnight my friends!

We all will enjoy the cooler days of Fall that is certain, but I will miss the hot days of summer. I enjoy all that summer can bring.

I will miss the thunder showers and the dew covered mornings. I will miss the yellow squash and the fresh tomatoes hanging on the vines. I will miss the smell of hay that is newly mowed and the cool nights after the sun sets with sheet lightning in the distance. I will miss fireflies lighting my sky.






I will miss the frogs groaning in the pond, and the I will miss the barefoot opportunities that exist to wander about my yard. I will just miss the whole season.





But Fall is in the air, and so the farm, grass, and animals are welcoming the cooler evening temps. And, I guess that I am too.

'Fall' conjures up visions of gourds, pumpkins, fodder shocks, and colorful leaves. The local farmers market is still being stocked with fresh veggies, herbs, and flowers each week, but I suspect it won't be long before those wonderful Fall colors will splash through the market and give everyone Fall Fever.

I've also noticed that the new market grows each week. Each Saturday, the locals ascend upon the town for a few hours to pick over the freshest of the fruit and veggies as they socialize and catch up with friends and new neighbors. There are a smattering of children from time to time, but they're usually running about playing with new friends or shyly hiding behind mom's skirt. I think it would be wonderful to include the young in this new market; teach them about the farms and what they produce for our table. With that in mind, I will close this blog. I think I will be bringing that idea up this Saturday. "Children Grow at the Market".

I returned home to the Appalachians of Southwest Virginia a couple of years ago. After the deaths of my mother and grandparents, I decided it was time to bring my daughter and my soul back to my roots. I grew up in this mountainous land; proud of our Scotch-Irish and Cherokee heritage along with the coal boom that made us who we are.

I still wear jeans and boots in these woods, and I still use coal on my fire for warmth. And now I'd like to share an article about the necessities of these things within a community bonded by a railroad.

I wrote this article for a webzine that I introduced to this area in an attempt to bridge the gap of time over state lines including, Virginia, West Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina. The webzine failed after only a few months, but much like my very stubborn predecessors, I haven't given up quite yet.

For over two hundred years now the people of the Appalachians have believed in this area we call home.

Those Things That Bind Us

by Susan Carty Okeson

Like most small-town kids, I grew up in bib overalls.

At remote rural crossings, we used to wave at the engineers that donned those same overalls and count the cars as they rolled by

Growing up in southwest Virginia during the height of the Cold War, it was the reassuring sound of a distant train whistle in the early hours of the morning that meant all was well.

There is a story behind the shapes of the rivers, mountains, and caves, and even behind the locations of forests, roads, railroads, historic towns, and cities in Southwestern Virginia and Eastern Kentucky.

The mountains of this area are unlike those of the Big Smokies to the east, or the Rockies to the west. This area has been described as a deeply-eroded plateau, with chasms, called hollows, following creeks, many of them several miles long. Natural springs are common and widespread. In the early years and even now they are the source of water, not only for livestock, but for family use as well.

The mountain people that poured into this region following the opening of the Cumberland Gap by Daniel Boone were predominantly of Scotch-Irish descent. They brought with them their traditions and customs from the old country. The social structure of the original Scotch-Irish people was built around the greater family.

With the coming of the big coal companies, soon followed the large-scale building of roads and railroads throughout the mountain area, followed by more and better schools.

The success of this area is inexorably linked to the expansion of those railroads along with the one mineral resource that still shapes the economy and culture in southwestern Virginia and Eastern Kentucky. After the Civil War, Northern capitalists financed railroad expansion into the coal fields of this area.

The railroad had been planned from as early as 1835, but it was many years later before any semblance of construction was begun on what would later be referred to as the costliest railroad in America. The average cost per mile was upward of $125,000, and ultimately culminated into over a thirty million dollar project as one article states back in July, 1900.

That particular article contained the story of this great railroad. It was the Carolina, Clinchfield & Ohio Railroad, completed from the great bituminous coal fields of southwestern Virginia and eastern Kentucky to the cotton mill district in South Carolina. The promoter and builder of this magnificent road was George L. Carter. Today it stands as a monument to his genius; one of the greatest pieces of railroad construction east of the Rocky Mountains.

The name "Clinchfield" is derived from the coal region of Virginia as the railroad carried the products of the Clinchfield Coal Corporation from the coal fields and mining camps of the region to distant markets in need of coal for fuel.

..... and what a railroad it was. The Clinchfield line was designed and built by Chief Engineer M. J. Caples to construction standards unheard of for its time. This railroad almost a century after its completion, remains a marvel of construction and civil engineering as it forms the backbone of the CSX railroad system today.

The Lexington and Eastern Railroad that was completed by November of 1912, which became part of C&O Railroad, ran from Breathitt County along the North Fork of the Kentucky River to McRoberts in Letcher County, Kentucky.

Today, the former Lexington and Eastern Railroad along with The Clinchfield are an integral part of CSX Transportation, which has continued to expand after its formation by merging the Chessie System and the Seaboard System into one vast transportation conglomerate.

After the railroad began to arrive in the 1880's, the Appalachian Plateau - especially those counties near the Cumberland and Pine Mountain range - shifted from subsidence agriculture to a cash economy based on lumbering and mineral extraction. Company towns were constructed and new employees recruited to man the deep mines.

A prime example of this is Pike County, Kentucky, located in the heart of the Appalachian coal fields. Pike County has been one of the principal coal producing counties in the nation since 1910. Though exploitable coal deposits in nearly every section of the county were known to geologists and others before the Civil War, their large-scale commercial development awaited the coming of the railroads in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

All of this shows us that indeed, Southwest Virginia and Eastern Kentucky was once a destination, a place to settle between 1750-1800. That's when the valleys between the ridges were converted from forest to farm. And we have seen that the region then became a destination for capitalists and their hired labor between 1880-1920, when the timber and coal barons "harvested" the natural resources of the region.

This area is still unusually rich in minerals; however, our high school graduates continue to move away for schools and jobs - and never return. It has been rumored that we are destined to wither on the vine.

As our mothers' always told us, "don't believe everything you hear." Just because this region has always been isolated physically from population centers and market cities does not mean that circumstances can't change. We shall rely on our natural beauty, reliable workforce, relaxed way of life, easy commutes, and other characteristics of our rural communities as advantages in order to once again become that popular destination as well as bond our communities together again as it was meant to be.

,As printed in the Roanoke Times.
Roanoke, VA

Praising those who helped pass the farm bill

John Eckman, Roger Holnback and Jim Baird

Eckman is a member of the Valley Conservation Council. Holnback is a member of the Western Virginia Land Trust. Baird is the Mid-Atlantic States Director for the American Farmland Trust.

Last month, Congress enacted into law a new farm bill that will give a helping hand to our nation's hungry, stimulate rural development, help Virginia's producers withstand drought, and provide much-needed resources to foster local agriculture.

The farm bill also contains vital resources to steward our nation's land, clean our water and build wildlife habitat, with an unprecedented federal commitment to conservation. In the face of a presidential veto, leaders from this state stood up for the needs of Virginians and pushed politics aside. American Farmland Trust commends them for this leadership.

Although it's known as the farm bill, it should really be called the farm and food bill, because it meets both food production and consumption needs in our country. The bill provides more than $40 billion a year to help feed our fellow citizens who are hungry. It contains new support systems that will ensure our dairy farmers remain viable in a challenging market environment.

There is also assistance for fruit and vegetable production and marketing, enabling Americans from seniors to students greater access to healthy foods and supporting local farm markets. For these reasons alone, this legislation is vital to our region. Yet the bill does so much more.

The 2008 farm and food bill makes an unprecedented commitment to conservation. Significant new resources are provided to help working farms, improve our water quality and wildlife habitat, clean our air and to preserve our most precious natural resource -- our land. The Mid-Atlantic region's farmers will receive about $88 million more a year to clean up the waterways leading to the Chesapeake Bay.

Virginia will be better able to permanently protect working farmland with new funds and reduced bureaucracy in the Farmland Protection Program and the extension of federal tax deductions for conservation easements.

Our region has directly benefited from the leadership of Rep. Bob Goodlatte, ranking Republican member of the House Agriculture Committee, who helped craft this bill and marshal it to passage. Sens. John Warner and James Webb also worked hard for this bill along with Rep. Rick Boucher and other Virginia representatives from both parties.

Our nation will benefit immensely from this new federal farm bill. Virginia and the Mid-Atlantic region in particular will see tremendous environmental, nutritional and production gains.

We should all applaud those of the commonwealth's federal leaders who helped to secure these important gains.