Cedar Bluff Heritage Festival 2009

The town of Cedar Bluff, Virginia, has an annual street fair which draws a good selection of exhibitors, vendors, and fairgoers.  The 2009 version went off well, with very sunny weather instead of the scattered showers that had been forecast.

Note: Click on any image for a larger view.

Fairgoers and loiterers in front of the Cedar Bluff Elementary School, which serves as a hub for the festival.

Friendly guys for the yard.  There are numerous craft vendors at the event.

Then there are the food vendors, some featuring the usual fair fare (blooming onions and such) and others selling the good stuff.  On the right, home canned molasses and apple butter for sale -- good stuff.

Best barbecue in the Virginia highlands.  The place for lunch, and I recommend the sweet sauce. I don't kid about such things. Their wood mix includes applewood and a touch of oak -- no hickory. 

The machine illustrated above is a belt-powered gristmill which is used to produce cornmeal on the spot.

Corn meal on the right, grits on the left.  A bag of corn meal went home with me -- it doesn't get any fresher than this.

Bikes parked in front of a music performance tent. Live music is played here and also in the town square beside the school.

Inside the tent, performers and fans.

There's a variety of ways to keep the kids entertained.  On the right, a sample of the blow-up rides and amusements available. There are lots more of these, including dinosaurs and such.

And then there's the real thing -- dromedary rides.

But if a dromedary doesn't suit, there's a burro, or a choice of llamas.

"Seriously, pal, get the camera out of the face."

Portable barbecue setup, smoking away.

On the left, two ladies making apple butter in the traditional way.  A fire is contained in the pipe below the kettle, and the apple butter is stirred until done with a wooden paddle.  The long handle is a real help on hot days. Below: pumpkins and squash for sale . . . and in the background, a youngster takes advantage of the shade.

Recalling The Log Cabin Times Of The Southern Piedmont

The following is from my friend Tom Evans, a distant kinsman through Clan Gunn, who hails from the Virginia Piedmont.

My father, sixth of the seven children of his family, was born in July, 1919, in a one-room log cabin on a rented farm near Wentworth in Rockingham County, North Carolina. A later owner of this land burned the cabin in the late 1960s to "get rid of that nuisance." It had stored farm tools for more than 30 observed years, before it was burned, and probably since the Evans family moved out of it.

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Backcountry Architecture - - The Craft of Log Cabin Corner Joints

While it is possible to simply stack logs without notching the corners and thus make some sort of enclosure, such structures are neither stable nor durable.  Log cabin construction thus requires some sort of notching at the ends of the logs where they are to be stacked to form the corner joints of the "crib."

The Saddle Joint.  The Scotch-Irish immigrants learned the craft of log construction from settlers who brought the techniques with them from Sweden and Finland.  The Nordic cabin-builders used two very similar methods.  The simpler method is the saddle joint, which needed few tools and but a little practice . . .

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Log Houses Of Abingdon, Virginia

The Parson Cummings Cabin

Parson Cummings Cabin at Sinking Spring, Abingdon, VirginiaCharles Cummings was minister of the Sinking Springs Presbyterian Church from 1773 until 1792. “Parson” Cummings built this cabin, which was originally located about two miles north of Abingdon on the road now known as U.S. Route 19. The cabin was given to the church by Cummings’ descendants and was moved to its present location at Sinking Spring Cemetery in 1971.

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Log Cabins and Stone Buildings

David Peery Cabin at Crab Orchard Museum, Tazewell. This is a nice single-crib log cabin with a loft.The early settlers of the Backcountry built cabins, barns, spring-houses, and other structures of the materials at hand - - logs and stone.  Foundations, fireplaces, chimneys, and sometimes walls were built from fieldstones and river-rocks.  Trees were felled and hewn into logs, planks, and shingles used to construct cabins, sheds, barns, and shops. Because nails and iron hinges were expensive, these structures were made as much as possible without them; a cabin can be built entirely from stone and wood.

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Fiddlers' Conventions

click on the picture for "A Fiddler's Convention In Mountain City, Tennessee [1925]"A tradition throughout the Backcountry - - and these days, beyond - - the "fiddlers' convention" is a gathering to celebrate traditional folk ("old time") music. Fiddlers' conventions go back at least a century, and probably grew out of smaller community gatherings where music was played.

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How To Pronounce "Appalachia"

The Appalachian Mountains stretch from northeastern Alabama to southern New York. An "extension" called the "Northern Appalachians" runs from southern New York, through New England and into New Brunswick; the New England range is not however characterized by the geology of the ancient Appalachian Basin, which is composed of many layers of sedimentary rocks - - sandstone, shale, and limestone. So the New England range is the Fake Appalachians. Strictly speaking, Appalachia consists of two geological provinces, the Ridge and Valley Province and the Appalachian Highlands or Appalachian Plateau (see map at right).

All of Appalachia was encompassed within the Backcountry of colonial and early American times. The point where my abode is located sits on the hinge line between the Ridge and Valley Province and the Appalachian Highlands.

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