Photo By: Micah Abshear
It’s time to dust off your grandpa’s old Farmer’s Almanacs and get to work.
A few days ago, I was shopping for cleaning supplies and came across a bundle of eco-friendly surface sprays for $41. While I did want to purchase something friendly to the environment, this price was too steep and made the product inaccessible. This made me think back to my childhood.
I grew up in a low-income family that often struggled to make ends meet. For my mom, it was impossible to be conscious of the planet while still feeding her children. This is the case for many rural families. How can I support the environment while still supporting my basic needs?
Creativity. Our greatest asset as rural citizens is our creativity. For centuries, Appalachians have had to be creative to survive with the little resources they had. It has now become a pride for many of us. Appalachians face many hardships, and through these hardships, creativity blossoms.
Take my Nan, for example – almost everything she owns has been made by her hands, and she is proud of this fact. She has made birdhouses from old milk jugs, pillows from old scrap fabric, seed starters from old egg cartons, and much more. She and many others from older generations reminisce on how creating something from nothing was a family event that brought relatives together. Nothing goes to waste in my Nan’s household.
Speaking of grandmas: next time you visit for Thanksgiving dinner, take a look at the old bookshelf. Odds are you’ll find some old almanacs and magazines that can give you some ideas on how to be sustainable in everyday life. For decades, Appalachian families have used these publications as sources of inspiration for their projects.
My great-grandma is a perfect example of the power held within these pages. She used to use the patterns from old magazines to make quilts from ripped jeans and dresses for my Nan from flour sacks.
If creativity is a pillar of rural Appalachians, then knowledge is the foundation. When you have nothing, your asset becomes what you know and what you can do. This is why not just old books but community is so important to our prosperity. Long gone are the days of crafts being passed down through generations and advice being gifted by neighbors.
This has left us to the whims of consumer culture. If a necessity or a sustainable product is too expensive for us, we are presented with the option to either go without or pay the lofty price or forgo it. As time goes on, more of us have lost the third option, which is to create.
I was lucky enough to have learned skills such as sewing, woodworking, and how to grow my own food. But, there are many people my age who were not taught these self-sustaining practices. Our generation has lost the ability to create in times of need, and we are left with a world where to be sustainable, one must be a consumer. This does not have to be the case, however.
As mentioned above, our Appalachian heritage is filled with communities coming together to teach and create in times of hardship. My generation needs to return to this heritage that we have chosen to forget. There is so much beauty that we have forgotten, not just the beauty of craft but the beauty of community. Appalachians used to come together to create the most beautiful quilts, and sadly this is just another piece of us that has been lost to major corporations.
Learning these skills and crafts will not just allow us to be more sustainable but to connect to our past.
So, next time you are walking through the grocery store and spot a $25 birthday cake, consider making it yourself. Or use it as a chance for your grandma to teach you her favorite recipe.
