“An old almanac in the Goschenhoppen Folklife Library contains a woodcut showing a farm boy with a baseball-bat size club whacking away at a walnut tree. The late Thomas R. Brendle records the practice of waking-up young fruit and nut trees that are reluctant to start bearing by beating them with club. The folk practice…
This is a good one if you are having some guests over and you want to be disappointed at how little impressed they are after you undertook a time-consuming process to present them with this delicious and elaborate stuffed cabbage. Don’t get me wrong: this was actually very good. It’s just that the end result…
In 1971, a woman in Fruitland, MD, recovering from an illness, took out an ad in the Salisbury Daily Times to express gratitude towards the “many friends who contributed in any way” towards her recovery. She thanked friends, neighbors, ambulance drivers, doctors, her Pastor, and she praised the Lord. She also thanked “Bill Phillips and…
“In a year of low incomes from cotton, such as 1934, tenants speak of their [winter] store of sweet potatoes in terms which make it clear that they regard this store as life itself. A man’s sweet potatoes are his banked resources, his protection against starvation and destitution until advances begin in the spring.” –…
As of this post, the Old Line Plate database has 14 different “pone” recipes in it. These fall into three basic categories: straight-up corn pone, old-fashioned pone containing molasses (usually also containing cornmeal or just ‘meal’), and sweet potato pone. According to the “Post & Courier” of Charleston, SC, sweet potato pone evokes a special sentimentality in…