Stinking Creek Stories: Memory, Agriculture, and Community in Rural Southeastern Kentucky

Abstract

Stinking Creek Stories:Memory, Agriculture, and Community in Rural Southeastern Kentucky Kathryn Engle (bio) "What does agriculture mean to you?" A hot July day was winding down on Coles Branch in Knox County, Kentucky.1 Conrad Smith, a bachelor in his mid-60s with a small stature and toothy smile sat on an old lawn chair in the middle of his extensive vegetable garden. He seemed at ease in his work clothes with his scruffy face partially hidden by his ball cap and large sunglasses. I sat on a nearby five-gallon bucket used for watering. We had already toured his plot as he eagerly showed his garlic, beans, squash, cucumber, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, and cabbage. We chatted about the weather, bugs, and people we knew as we wound through the rows and half rows scattered with hoses, mulch, and wire cages. The sun was slowly setting over the large sunflowers that rimmed the garden. The buzzing of the bees in the tops of the sweet corn began to subside. The humidity hung thick in the air while the sound of summer night bugs emerged. I propped the recorder on the [End Page 457] tiller sitting between us—it teetered on the only surface available. Conrad told me he fashioned it out of two different tillers from the 1980s. We continued our conversations, now with the red light of the recorder on. I met Conrad in 2014 when he became a participant in the Grow Appalachia Gardening Program I coordinated through the Lend-A-Hand Center, a nonprofit organization in Walker, Kentucky, that has served the community since 1958. As we began, I asked him about growing up, what his family was like, the different jobs he had over the years, and what it was like to live in the area of Knox County, Kentucky, known as Stinking Creek. He told me of his experiences with the Lend-A-Hand Center and its founders Irma Gall and Peggy Kemner and recalled the community center program through the Community Action Agency in Knox County during the War on Poverty.2 Conrad reminisced about cutting hay, killing hogs, canning vegetables, plowing with mules, selling strawberries, and keeping bees. About three quarters of the way through the interview I asked, "What does agriculture mean to you?" There was a long pause. The silence hung between us as he picked at the ground with his shovel. He struggled to find the words. "Well, I'd say it'd be my way of life. Being in this gardening, farming. I growed up with it. That's all I know here. I can't imagine not knowing it. It'd be terrible not to know how to raise something to eat. We've all got to have something to eat so it's simple to me, but I know a lot of people can't do it."3 Conrad's thoughtful answer reflected deep emotional ties to place. He explained his family history on Coles Branch and how his father bought the farm from money made working in the coal mines. He remembered the practices handed down that he has carried on through the years. His pause pointed to the complex meaning of agriculture [End Page 458] in rural Appalachia, in addition to tensions and uncertainties about the future for a way of life that is in many ways waning. Through oral history, this account will profile Stinking Creek residents and share some of their stories and the meanings they give to agriculture, community, and the small, local nonprofit service organization, the Lend-A-Hand Center. The stories, experiences, and knowledge of Stinking Creek residents like Conrad provide insights into larger changes in agriculture and the political economy of eastern Kentucky. While Kentucky is known for horses and tobacco, small-scale diversified agricultural and gardening practices in eastern Kentucky have likewise made important contributions to the history and development of the state.4 Rural communities in eastern Kentucky employed diverse economic practices and adapted to changing economic and agricultural systems. These insights shared by Stinking Creek residents reveal agricultural traditions of the past and provide local possibilities for the future, including relocalization of food systems and...