Photo courtesy of Western Carolina University Southern Appalachian Digital Collections
To see an enlarged version visit this page and click on photo.
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.
Old photos showing corn growing on steep mountain grades always amaze me. I’ve read accounts of folks in the 1800s simply poking a corn seed into the ground where they had crudely tried to beat back the woods to make a field.
Growing corn was still hard even when mules, horses, and oxen were commonly used for clearing and plowing. But it was a necessary way of life if one wanted to make it through the winter months when no fresh food was available for people and farm animals.
There’s even hard work in tilling a corn patch like Pap did.
The corn we planted this year is still standing and is setting ears although like every thing else in the garden it is in desperate need of rain.
This is the driest year we’ve had in a good long while, but I’m still hopeful we’ll get to eat fresh corn even if it’s a little scrawny. And I’m still beyond thrilled to once again be growing corn like those who came before me.
Last night’s video: The Prettiest Zucchini Bread.
Tipper
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Enjoyed the picture and story. We always had Corn in our garden growing up. We grew yellow sweet corn. I remember buttering it up and sitting on the porch outside eating it. Followed up by some watermelon that had been iced. Wow that was great.
Takes me back to childhood at my great-grannies farm! Pleasant thoughts.
From the idea in my head of the topography in and near the ‘big garden’, I’ve wondered why there aren’t irrigation canals for it. Now that Matt has the tractor – or your friend could use his excavator – it should be simple matter to dig them. There should also be ample creek rocks to line a large feeder canal which could be filled from the creek and kept full until sluice gates are open.
We’ve been getting some pop-up thunderstorms here in north Alabama and I think y’all usually get rain a day or so later if it follows the usual route. So hang on, it’s coming.
Tipper–I was fortunate enough to have know Doc Kelly quite well when I was a boy, and his drugstore was the favorite hang-out of teenagers for multiple decades in the middle of the last century. The logo for the drugstore, which also had a soda fountain with a marble counter, offered ice cream, sundaes, milkshakes, and even sandwiches, was “Ask Bennett, he knows.” Far more often than not he did know. There’s a mountain in the Park, Kelly Bennett Peak, named for him. He once showed me his photo collection, which was housed upstairs in a balcony and office area overlooking the main floor. I have vivid memories of row after row of wooden boxes holding prints. Most of those are presumably now in the collection at Western Carolina, where the folks in archives have done a wonderful job of digitizing. Foolishly, at the time I was only interested in images related to hunting and fishing, but now I know he left posterity a true visual treasure. I greatly admired him and his daughter, Mary Alice (also a pharmacist), and he will be the subject in a book I’m finishing up profiling some three dozen mountain characters of lasting interest.
Jim, is the drug store and its soda fountain still there and operating? I used to vacation in Swain County staying at the Fryemont Inn when George Brown and his wife were running it. I think their son, George, Jr., is running it now. Bryson sure beat the tourist trap places in Cherokee and Gatlinburg yet gives great access to the park and other areas.
A thing to remember about those steep corn fields; all labor was by hand or animal, too steep and too sideling for tractors, which few who had to work steep fields would have had anyway. Not unusual for hills to be “banked” with rocks, roots, chunks, etc to hold the dirt against runoff, a constant problem. They were certainly not intimidated by hard work. Our long history now with power tools makes it ever harder to believe what they would do with axes, grubbing hoes, mattocks, etc.
To be specific, this view is from the head of Kirkland Creek, which empties into the south side of the Tuckasegee River about a mile and a half east of Bryson City. It is less than a mile, as the crow flies, north of Fry Mountain. That is the Smoky Mountains in the background. Clingmans Dome is the high point just a little right of center. To the left of it (closer to center) is Andrews Bald. Below and to the right of Clingmans Dome is a rounded top peak; that is Coburn Knob.
In the valley, there is a low ridge with trees on top and cleared on the foreground and background of it. The foreground lies along the Tuckasegee between the mouth of Kirkland Creek and Bryson City. The cleared area beyond it is on Deep Creek. Barely discernible beyond the clearing on Deep Creek is Sharp Top, a very recognizable point whose top is part of the divide between Deep Creek and Lands Creek. It is a corner point of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The point where Kelly Bennett was standing to take this photo is above the uppermost home site on Kirkland Creek.
We’ve been eating Gold Queen corn since before the 4th – very unusual to get it in that early and I attribute it to the abnormally hot weather we’ve had in June and thus far in July. We’ve both eaten to our satisfaction and given far more away. I prefer Silver Queen, but the seed store didn’t have it when I was ready to put in the first setting. It’s my second setting and should be coming in about a week.
We’ve also had tomatoes – a variety I tried for the first time this year, Parks Whopper. It came in early and is productive, but the flavor isn’t up to my favorite, Mr. Stripey. We’ll have some of those shortly.
I watch another channel by a married couple (their kids are grown) who bought land in some of Michigan’s remote forested mountains. Together they built a cabin at their highest elevation, a garage and workshop, and put their gardens on slopes having cleared the forest for everything they did. They are a slightly younger version of you and Matt, and I’ve been able to see their progress on the property from the beginning which, like you and Matt, began with their house. I’ve been astounded by the challenges of the rocky and sandy land with all their endeavors, but as you said, the necessity to grow food, no matter the terrain, is what people everywhere have done in the past and continue to do to survive. I cannot help but ponder God’s bounty provided in soils, clay, sand, on rocky mountains, and everywhere in the world, and the first thing that struck me looking at your beautiful photograph.
I love the look of corn plants in the mornings at the end of the season with morning glory vines woven around them.
At first I thought that was a photo of sorghum which was very common in these mountains because it tolerated shade better than corn. Sorghum resembles corn. The sorghum “tassels” make delicious flour and the canes of course make the tasty sorghum syrup we all grew up on. After crushing the canes for the sap, the canes were used as silage for the livestock.
We finally got heavy rain and thunderstorms last night that lasted until daylight. I’m so thankful for the rain but it may be a little late for some of the crops around here, including mine. It was common to see cornfields on the mountainsides in eastern KY when I was growing up. Most families had barely enough flat land to raise their garden of green beans and tomatoes.
This picture of the corn reminds me of the year we moved to a farm in Robertson County Ky. The first year we were there Dad grubbed one hillside like that for our tobacco crop and corn crop that we grew for the chickens and the horses and cows. I was in school when he did most of the grubbing (digging the roots of the trees loose enough for the horses to pull the stumps out) but after school and the weekends I was right there with him as well as my middle brother,we always had a big garden behind the house so our eating corn was there along with a little bit of everything which Mom was the master gardener, but after school she had help
from the kids.
Morning everyone. We are in the upper delta of Arkansas. We usually get rain a couple of times a week. Not this year. Maybe a week ago we got some good rain, but it is so hot it dried. Last night’s rain didn’t happen. There are some dark clouds coming in and they are predicting rain today. It will be in the 80’s this week and lots of days of rain. I know they get the weather wrong a lot, but I can hope. My volunteer tomatoes are doing good, but only 3 tomato fruits. But I usually don’t get tomatoes til September even October. I am so glad I didn’t grow a garden this year. With my son working more and the mosquitos being really bad, this would have depressed me. I hope everyone gets some rain. I keep telling myself, it could be worse. Anna from Arkansas.
It was 98 here yesterday, felt like 101, to be hot again today but storms roll in this afternoon and cool us off for tomorrow and the rest of the week. Yay! There are so many cornfields to admire as I drive to my country farm stores. Beautiful to see!! Hope you receive some good rain. Your zucchini bread looked really good. I make a lot of that bread and my sons love it! I do have your cookbook so I will look at it to see if your recipe is like mine. I put chopped pecans in mine but I’m now going to put some whole ones on top like Granny because that does look pretty:)
I stepped out on the patio last evening to pick a few tomatoes and movement coming down the tree line caught my eye. It was a mama racoon with four babies. I had my camera so I snapped a picture and she had her back up as she saw me too. She signaled her kids and they ran under the pine tree and then she did too. I think she was headed on across the yard and I’m sure crossed the road in the night to continue on to get further over and down the hill, maybe a mile and a half, to the creek. It has been really dry here so I’m sure that creek is where she was headed.
While on turkey hunts in WV on several occasions in years gone by, my host always seemed to have a jar of moonshine in the cupboard. I’m not much of a drinker–I take only enough to kill the worms–but that white likker went down easy after a day’s hunt in those Hampshire County mountains. Made me sleep good, that and the sound of the Cacapon River far below the rustic camphouse. I never asked where he got the ‘shine–you just don’t do that–but my host volunteered one evening that it was a NC product from a trusted source. That was good enough for me. Now, I enjoy a little red wine, for medicinal purposes, of courses.
Gene, I knew a moonshiner that got ran out of Hogwalla because of the law getting so hot. He claimed his moonshine was as smooth as drinking water, you didn’t think there was anything to it until you tried to walk out of the room. After moving to my area he continued to make moonshine until one Sunday morning when he was coming home from his still and met his wife and children coming home from church. He was convicted of his ways, went to church that night and was saved. Jesse became one of the finest Christian men you would ever meet. His family has relatives still living in Salem.
Hoping and praying everyone gets the rain they need. And the gardens produce a bountiful harvest. ❤️❤️
It come a gully washer yesterday in Waynesville around 5pm. Only lasted maybe an hour but buddy it put down some rain! I was on my way home from town and had to drive 20mph because I could just barely see the rd. I think I prefer short heavy rainfall as opposed to a lingering lighter rain. Gets the job done and doesn’t keep the outdoor workers out of work long. I hope y’all got some of it!
I prefer the longer lighter rainfall. Heavy rain here don’t have time to soak in and so just runs off, often carrying valuable topsoil and maybe my garden plants along with it.
That is just such as great photo of all that corn growing with the mountains all around. It looks like a path and if it had been a color photo instead of being in black and white, it would be absolutely beautiful image.
My grandfather was always most fond of his corn and honeydew melons. He had dentures, so we often cut off the kernels for him. As children, we all loved fresh corn if only because it meant one thing: we could throw the cobs over the fence behind us to the grazing cattle in the field that butted out yard It was a real treat for them … and us to see them up close. Eventually, I would trespass and climb that fence to fetch manure for my little suburban garden never large enough for a real patch of corn.
Most years, I’ll put a kernel or two of seed corn at either end of my flower bed, purely for ornamental purposes. Most anytime someone stops and comments it’s usually along the lines of “Huh, that’s pretty cool looking; I never thought of that!”
There is almost nothing prettier than a mountain cornfield. My aunts and uncles in eastern Kentucky planted their cornfields on the sides of mountains along with other vegetables like potatoes, beans, tomatoes, and cucumbers. Driving by the corn they looked like their tassels were waving at you. When I was a child and up to a young adult, they used mules and horses to plow and till the huge gardens. One uncle had been a moonshiner for many years and grew huge amounts of corn and potatoes. I once asked my mother why they needed so many since they had a small family, not knowing that he made moonshine. She shushed me up and said something like “they can them” and “give them away.” My family also grew field corn for their animals. Not one of them had a weight problem because of the tremendous energy they expended to take care of their gardens. My mother said that while growing up she had to be on the hill at dawn with the rest of the family to beat the heat and hoe the corn and other vegetables. Sometimes they went back later in the day if it cooled down. Recently I asked her how they kept the varmints like deer and other animals out of their gardens. She said people turned loose their dogs at night and it worked to a great extent. Our weather here in southern Virginia has been hot like most places in the country. Yesterday’s temp was 98 degrees. Today is supposed to be up to 95. The weather forecasts rain next week. We had two heavy rains about a week and half ago but nothing since that time.
Tricia, dogs no longer run loose around here. Some of my neighbors have began to put radios in their garden and turn them on during the night to a talk radio station. They all say this seems to help. The deer have been especially bad this year, maybe it is because of the dry weather.
What a hoot, Randy! Wonder what those talking heads would think of that idea, being a deer repellent? I know I couldn’t stand it long.
Ron, I was serious about the radios and talk stations. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I think I remember someone mentioning disco deer, reckon our deer would become disco deer if the radios were tuned to some rock/rap stations?
My whole family loved corn. We would leave a huge pile of cobs. This was the time of government commodities and wonderful butter . We no longer had cows so the corn was especially good. Our son usually plants corn in our garden and it is beautiful this year. Maybe we can get it before the raccoons do. We are getting a good rain this morning—right after watering the garden!
That is a great photo of the corn field and very interesting to read about “Doc” Bennett and all he accomplished in his life. I have wondered how your new old corn patch is coming along and in one of Katie’s videos about her truck we got a glimpse at it; it looked like it was coming along nicely which I know is exciting and proud for you all. We actually got a little storm yesterday evening in the Charlotte area. I do not think much rain fell here, but the smattering did seem to be steady for a little while. I have not checked the rain gauge yet to see what it amounted to. The rest of this week it looks like we are due to get more rain which is good because my little raised bed garden is still coming along really slow. However, our first ever Cherokee Purple tomato is about to be ready, it is huge. I hope a hornworm does not get into it before it’s ready! Hope everyone has a great day!
I’m praying ya’ll get some rain soon. Weather is so unpredictable, even with technology today, you just never know.
We finally got some rain yesterday here in central eastern WV. I don’t remember the grass turning this brown and crunchy like it is now. We have rain predicted for this evening too…so thankful for that, and the fact that the temperatures are cooling off a bit for a few days. I got all of our dried garlic braided and hung in the basement yesterday. I have some left from last year, and I think I am going to try dehydrating it to make garlic powder. We harvested hot cherry and banana peppers and a few tomatoes from the garden too. Your zucchini bread did indeed look pretty last evening. My daughter-in-law shared some zucchini from her garden with us, and I need to try your recipe. Have a great day everyone!
Tipper, I just pulled out my mom’s recipe for zucchini bread to use today. She always made this delicious dessert / bread for us. I recall one summer when we had a abundance of zucchini and she made seventeen loafs that day. Being a child from the depression, she wouldn’t waste any produce from our garden . I think all of our neighbors enjoyed a loaf that day. It has been 12 years since she passed away, but her zucchini recipe brings such great memories.
I only had two short rows of G90 corn. I managed to keep it watered enough to make and the deer didn’t bother it but I lost everything else to dry weather and deer. I ate some of my corn for supper last night, it sure was good. G90 corn is said to be the closest corn to the old no longer available Merit corn. I can’t say one way or the other. We have farmers in my area that have hundreds of acres of corn planted that looks like it has been lost due to dry weather. In the past, I think corn was one of the most important crops many people grew, it not only provided food and cornmeal for the people but feed for the farm animals. I just looked at the weather forecast and it seems like the hot dry pattern may be breaking after today, temps in the 80’s and a pretty good chance of rain for the next 7 days.