Pickled corn in a Crock

Old Log Barn in Bunker

 

Bunker, aka, Renfro Valley, in the early day, was home to about 40 households (more or less) during it peek time. The households of small families where people lived quietly, and everyone knew everyone. The families were mostly farmers who raised cattle, horses, hogs, sheep, chickens, crops of all types, young'uns and rocks. The dirt was rich with mineral and material for raising crops and such, which had the amazing ability to reproduce rocks. Along the upper east side of the road there was a rock wall built from where people cleared a field. The rocks on the west side of the valley were mostly copper brown in color which would lead you to think that the water would be a little irony which meant that the water had a high degree of iron in the water which would stain and sometimes stink. The east side of the valley the rocks were mostly a gray color which meant it was most likely a limestone rock which would produce a limestone water which is sweet and good tasting. 

Of course, there was a lot of hard manual work to be done in the valley. Tilling the land with teams of either horses or mules; milking the cows, feeding the chicken and gathering eggs; moving the cattle or sheep from one pasture to another. Making sure the spring (A spring is a natural exit point at which groundwater emerges out of the aquifer and flows onto the top of the Earth's crust (pedosphere) to become surface water. It is a component of the hydrosphere, as well as a part of the water cycle. Springs have long been important for humans as a source of fresh water.) and the springhouse was cleaned and operating well. The fresh milk along with other food would have been kept in the springhouse to keep it cool. The houses where the families lived were all handmade from the tree that were grown on the ridges of Bunker.  The men would cut enough trees down, setup a sawmill, saw the lumber that was called for by the house plan. 

The green grass grew tall along with the stock and the young'uns. That tall grass would be cut with a sickle horse-drawn mower, or they harvested their crops the old-fashioned way – with a scythe. A scythe lets you cut standing crops easily and quite quickly, and can also be used for cutting hay, clearing weeds and general control of vegetation.  A specialized type called the cradle scythe adds long “fingers” to the handle, which catch the cut stalks so they can be easily stacked or laid out, but for general work around a small farm a traditional scythe is more flexible. Once the tall grass was cut it would have been "shocked up" where each one would be left to dry and put around a pole in shocks to be left to dry or shocked up into the loft of a barn to be given to the livestock in the winter months. 

Firewood have had to be cut to heat the fireplaces, heating stove, or cook stove, that would take a lot of wood gather in for a large family. Both the men folk and the women folk would have had to help with the gathering and cutting of the wood stock.  Cutting trees with axe or a crosscut or two man cross-cut saw to cut the tree down.  An ax combines the cutting edge of a knife with a hammer’s ability to deliver concentrated force, and if you want to cut things in a hurry it’s hard to beat. Pioneers used axes to harvest timber, clear land for farming and split firewood. A hatchet is also a great tool for rough shaping of wood, and if you’re building a log cabin it’s unbeatable for getting the joints done.

The women had their load of work as well as the men and sometimes the work was done by both. The clothes had to be washed of course, that meant the water was carried and heated by a wood fire. The big iron pots would be lift upon a stand most of the time, but it would be heated at ground level as well. Once the big iron pots were filled with water they were heated to a boil, then the clothes were rubbed with lye soap and boiled. The clothing and bed linens were snowy white, then they hung out to dry. There were 3 meals to cook plus other foods, such as desserts, breads, and pastries.  Plus, the ladies had the pleasure of making all the clothing for the family and sometimes the neighbor's clothing as well.

In the early days, a grain was grown called flax. The flax seed would be sown in a sodded field. To reap both seeds and fiber, harvest the flax about four months after planting. The leaves on the lower half or two-thirds of the stem will be turning yellow and dropping off. Most of the seedpods will have turned gold or tan; if you shake them, the seeds will rattle inside. Grasp the stems, a handful at a time, right at ground level and pull them up, roots and all. Shake the soil off the roots, lay a few handfuls of stems together side by side, and use ties or string to secure them into a bundle.  One method is to slide a pillowcase over the top end of a bundle, when the stalks are stiff and dry, you can thresh out the seeds. tie the case securely around the stems, Beat the pods through the cloth with a block of wood, roll them with a rolling pin. Processing the bundles of stems to extract the fibers for spinning is a complex task that requires simple but special tools, a lot of hard physical work, and a sense of timing and judgment that comes only from long experience. The first step, called retting, involves soaking or wetting the stems for a period of days or weeks to promote bacterial action, which separates the different layers of stem tissues and loosens the fibers. After retting, the stems are dried again, then crushed between the wooden blades of a tool called a break or brake, which breaks the woody core into short bits that fall away from the mass of fibers. Finally, the bundles are combed through metal-tined combs called hackles. The result: a smooth bundle of long, straight fibers called line flax and a pile of fluffy, tangled, shorter fibers called tow. The line flax is used to make crisp, glossy fabrics, and the tow is used for everyday goods. 

With all the families in the valley there was a large number of children to educate. The old log barn pictured above was the location of the Bunker School and church. The school was much like all the other schools in the small valleys and the hills of Southwestern Virginia with a one room building sponsoring grades from the primer to 10th grade. The older girls would help the teacher with the teaching and the care of the smallest children. The children would walk to school and carry their breakfast or lunch in paper bag (poke) that could have a leftover from the night before, maybe a piece of cornbread, or a boiled egg, a breakfast biscuit with maybe a scrambled egg on it or maybe some strawberry jam or applebutter, if you were lucky. When the older children came home from school, they would have to watch the younger children, get supper if mother was gone, feed chickens, gather the eggs and other small chores. When mom and dad came home, they would eat supper, wash dishes, do schoolwork, get ready for bed when it got dark, get up at daylight and start all over again. The family would occasionally go to a social (party, picnic, dance, barn-rising). Bunker, aka, Renfro Valley, was once a beautiful and idyllic place to live and raise a family much like a Kyle Wood or Walt Curlee fine art painting. Only it's not reality. I am sure they loved their families and friends, but their life was hard, and they worked to make the best of it. And I for one, think they did a damn pretty good job of it. They were amazing people.