Southern Appalachian Digital Collections
Mountain Cornfield
This image looking down a hollow includes a corn crop in the foreground and mountains in the background. B 64 is written on the negative. The photographer, “Doc” Kelly Bennett (1890-1974), was a prominent pharmacist in Swain County, NC. Owner of the Bryson City Drug Company, Bennett served as alderman and mayor of Bryson City, on the Swain County Board of Education, as well as several terms as NC State Senator and NC State Representative. He participated in numerous other initiatives and organizations. Known as the “Apostle of the Smokies,” Bennett was an instrumental figure in the movement to create the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. He was also an avid photographer, skillfully documenting a wide variety of people, places, and events in Swain County and the surrounding area.
—Southern Appalachian Digital Collections
What a lovely mountain cornfield Bennett captured. If you look closely (going to this page and clicking on the photo allows you to enlarge it considerably) you can see a couple of trees growing in the corn as well as the stump of a tree. A small shed or corn crib is visible on the right side.
I’m thankful our cornfield is on level ground and that it has no trees nor stumps growing among the rows.
We had our first fresh corn last night. It was so good! Also on the menu was our first mess of Mother Stallard beans, meatloaf, cornbread, and Granny’s simple salad of cucumbers, onions, and tomatoes from the garden.
Summer suppers are the best eating of the year.
Corie and Austin’s tomatoes are getting ripe quicker than our’s and they have been sharing with us.
Last night’s video: Sourdough Bread, Flower Butter & Pesto from the Yard – It was a GRAND Day!
Tipper
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Yes!… “Summer suppers are the best of all the year”! … and Granny’s “simple” salad is refreshing on a hot steamy day (well, ‘refreshing any time)!
I was shocked this week, when I saw that you were already enjoying your sweet corn! … so I guess the motto that all the farmers and neighbourhood gardeners go by pertains to a smaller neck of the woods! I grew-up hearing the motto, as it relates to corn, “knee-high by the 4th of July” . . .if your corn was knee-high, your corn was growing fine and would not need to worry about having corn that year. I didn’t grow up on a farm, and yet it was common, on a Sunday drive in late June, to hear Mom or Dad comparing one field to another! I suppose ‘their generation’ came into play somewhat (they, and all the adults around my growing-up, had lived through the Great Depression, and THEIR parents’ generation depended solely on the home garden for their meals), but I would have thought that this familiar phrase related to most everyone . . .with only a week or two difference for geography, making the longest adjustment for “the deep South”.
You’re doing pretty darn GOOD, if you’ve already been enjoying your own sweet corn for supper, by the third week of July (especially on the North side of the mountain)! North Carolina has long been debated, with regard to if it is personally considered (up here) to be part of the South, or above that cut-off! If your corn is ready, I guess I’ll reconsider my thoughts on ‘how far away’ (you) seem, . . . but in most other respects, I’ll still consider you a neighbour!
Hi Tipper and Acorns. What an inviting plate of food. Our corn fields and tater patches were on hillsides like that. So were our tobacco fields. I loved farming. It was the best days of my life. I keep everyone here, including Papaw Tony, and up Wilson Holler in my prayers. I ask that you pray for Ed and me. TY. I love y’all. -Barbara
That meal is right up my alley. That’s my favorite kind of meal & I was raised on that fine food. I miss it. I’m a city dweller & have no place to plant veggies & mine have never done well in pots. I miss that good Southern food. My Mom always said, “people are starving to death for good Southern food & don’t even realize it.”
I wish I knew some farmers to buy from. Mama’s cooking is the very best.
That’s a great picture and a good reminder of the harsh conditions settlers had to face as they started homesteading in the area. The Southern Appalachian Digital Collection is such a treasure!
Your supper looks good! We enjoyed steamed snap beans last night with corn on the cob, cucumbers, Asian Greens and fresh tomatoes. Yum!
Those fresh-from-the-garden vegetables sound delicious! And you have certainly earned them. When I see an corn field like that I not only think of the work it took in those days to produce food but that the land had to be cleared, trees cut, stumps and rocks moved, etc before they could even plant seeds. You mentioned new ground recently. My dad had a place on a hill adjoining a field that he always called the new ground. Some of our land was already cleared when he bought it in the early 1930’s but I heard him say he did clear some as well. Few people today would be willing to do that. Enjoy your fresh corn!
Sallie, today the ones that would clear the land the old way by using their hands and hard manual labor are few and far between. They now have someone come in with a bulldozer or some other type of equipment. Nowadays we have a lot of land being cleared in my area, some I would have never dreamed of because of the poor quality. But instead of planting crops they are building houses!
What a DELICIOUS looking meal!
Those sidehill cornfields were sometimes out of necessity. Successive generations of farming, shrinking farms because of inheritance, declining productivity with little or no fertilize and the dependence on corn for bread and stock feed made for ‘a hard row to hoe’. Slopes had to be pressed into service.
Don’t forget the taking of much of the best farmland to dam up the rivers that created it, forcing the population back up the creeks and onto the hillsides.
Great archival of the mountain farming ways and a delicious supper indeed! Folks had to plant on hillsides and slopes where they could. Necessity and determination.
Last nights meal sounds great. Fresh corn from the garden is amazing! Enjoy all those veggies as long as possible . They will be gone too soon!
I’m a flatlander with a question, is it true that the production quality of a mountain cornfield is measured by gallons to the acre instead of bushels to the acre? Recently a still was found and busted at Pickens, SC. The sheriff was on the news talking about how unusual it was to find a moonshine still these days when so many people of today are into selling drugs.
The idea that mountain people only grew corn to make moonshine is racist. The stories, movies and tv shows publish such exaggerations to make money to the detriment of honest, hardworking, Bible believing Christians. We aren’t and weren’t what they make us out to be. Gallons to the acre is a joke gone wrong.
That kind of rhetoric repeated over and over and over become truth to those foolish enough to read, listen to, watch, then believe it.
I, for one, take great offense to such suggestions!
Amen!
Beauty of the land and the bounty of homegrown food—who could ever want for more???!!!
Today’s post brings back memories of the cornfields that people planted when I was a child. The crops were always planted on the steep side of a mountain, as there was very little flat ground left after they built their houses. It still amazes me how the mules were able to pull the plow while keeping their balance.
Looks like home to me! Can you even imagine trying to plow those fields with a tractor?
I loved that picture, Tipper – it speaks loudly of ‘where there’s a will, there is a way’ and those back in the day did find ways to garden – or at least grow corn for sure – even if on a hillside! Your meal looked delicious too.
Bennett’s black & white photo was breathtaking! What a testimony of the mountains, and growing food in them! Pictures like this make me think of all the history that is lost when old photographs are discarded after they have outlived the families that owned them. I’m so glad that Mr. Bennett and others like him created archives to preserve the history of these wonderful areas.
This mountainside full of corn reveals how hard people had to work to feed their families. Everything from planting, to weeding, to harvesting would have been back-breaking work. Your supper plate makes me hungry for all those vegetables and for meatloaf too!
We don’t have land here in the city of Lawrenceville to grow, but have bout veggies to put up. We don’t have air conditioning, only fans so cooking is a hot ordeal but worth the work and heat. We’re so blessed to have food to eat and a place to sleep. A cool shower or bath help. Love y’all
Sounds like a delicious supper!
I always thought that was amazing planting corn on a mountain side or steep hill. I have heard my Mamaw Seal talking about it. When we visit the Smokies on Roaring Fork trail their booklet would tell you they did back then and show you the area.
All my life both my Papaws and my Dad plowed on level ground to plant corn.
One thing I have tried this summer is roast corn using melted butter with black pepper and paprika and herb & garlic. no salt because the butter is salty, and no aluminum foil. I just turn the corn every 6 to 7 minutes brushing the butter mix on it till it brown some. It’s so good. I am wanting to try roasted Okra. Ya’ll have a bless day.
If they all ate like that, Americans would be much healthier, especially if they grew some of it themselves, with the added benefit of easing the family food budget. Sadly, rural gardening seems to have greatly declined over the six decades since I was a teenager tilling, planting and harvesting a big canning garden. I’m blessed to still have a small vegetable garden.
Watched your video last night that you mentioned, it was really good and that sourdough bread looked delicious! I need to get my starter going again, right now it’s sitting in the fridge looking pretty sad. We had our first meal of local home grown corn last night and it was really good. We’re lucky in that we have 2 stands we can buy the corn from, one east from us and the other is west. I need to check our neighbor who has a farmers stand and see what fresh tomatoes they have to buy. I do miss my garden this year!
I have getting tomatoes and almost daily eating tomato sandwiches for about a month, but it is now all over except for the crying, the hot days and dry spells have done them in. I only planted 5 plants and was still unable to take care of them like I needed too. Many of you know I write or complain about missing out on rain, this weekend there was an article on a local news station about the drought in the area that has been going on for several years. It was by NOAA. The upstate SC region would need 30 inches of rain except for a small area of the mountains in Oconee, Pickens and Greenville counties near the NC/SC state that would need 40 inches and then the area from Franklin,NC over to Hendersonville or Asheville,NC would need 32 inches all in the next 6 months to get out of these drought conditions. I don’t think that will happen. So far this year we have been getting more rain this summer than we have in the last several years but nowhere near enough to bring the water levels back up to more normal levels. Some of the public boat ramps on Lake Hartwell are being closed because of the low water conditions.
Lucky only planted around five tomato plants because we decided we weren’t canning anymore with just the two of us. Well, those tomatoes have produced at least 3 bushels. I have canned and shared tomatoes with the family and still plenty of green ones on the vines. This is the first year that we have had beautiful large carrots. We have had messes of fresh green beans and I put up some Icicles Pickles from a recipe that a dear neighbor from church gave me years ago. The recipe has to be well over a hundred years old. I also got all of my jellies made. Canning is just in my blood and I can’t stand to let food go to waste. God is so good to us all. Have a wonderful day.
Meal looks absolutely wonderful. We’ve been eating some of our own Tommie toes, my neighbor Mike’s slicing tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and squash. I agree it is some of the best eating all year. Diane even made me some salmon patties before VBS last night. Fantastic meal.
Your meal looks delicious! I made meatloaf the other day too for dinner. We do have a few tomatoes on our one plant that seems to have survived, but they are still green. Thankfully three of our surviving cucumber plants are producing well. To pair with our meatloaf I made a cucumber and onion salad, cooked carrots and potatoes. My hubby had bread and butter with his, because that’s what he wanted. I’ve been making more sandwiches than I should now days since it’s just been way to hot to cook, even with air conditioning my kitchen seems to be the hottest room in our house. I made my meatloaf in my slow cooker, which it turned out way better than I thought it would and it didn’t heat up my kitchen. Sometimes I forget how handy the slow cooker really is use in the summer.