Stokes County – Into the Woods

Yep … I’m in the woods

A drone 235 feet directly above the abbey. Click here for high resolution version.

I’ve been interested in photography drones for a long time. But only recently did drones become halfway affordable. Smaller and smaller computer chips, improvements in battery technology, and smaller and better cameras have made it possible to build drones that weigh less than half a pound but which can shoot excellent 4K video. The drone I bought is a DJI Mini 3.

I took the photo above by putting the drone on its landing mat in the driveway in front of my house. There are trees all around me, so the driveway is the safest area for avoiding trees. I flew the drone straight up to an altitude of about 235 feet, then pointed it southwest to shoot this picture. The low mountains are the Sauratown Mountain chain, a small chain of mountains in Stokes and Surry counties (of North Carolina) about forty miles south of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. The three bumps to the right include Hanging Rock State Park, and the bump to the left is Sauratown Mountain.

It will certainly be a while before I have the skill to shoot any dramatic video with the drone. Learning to fly drones takes a lot of practice. Some of the YouTube videos shot with drones are amazing. There are lots of people who have been flying drones for years and who are very good pilots as well as good photographers and video editors. And it seems that a great many of them live in picturesque places such as the coasts of the U.K. (including Scotland) and Ireland. I have a lot to learn. But I’ll certainly have drone videos, and more drone photos in the future.

A haul from the farm stand

The vegetable gardens are to the left behind the tractor.

Here in the middle of nowhere where some people consider Dollar General a grocery store, the best thing that has happened in years is the new farm stand. Two years ago, they started with strawberries. This year they expanded to include summer vegetables. Strawberries and vegetables are picked in the morning. The farm stand, which is right beside the fields, opens at 10. They sell all their produce into the local market. People flock in to buy it. By sometime in the afternoon, everything for that day is sold out. The fields are irrigated from a rain-fed farm pond. Vegetables are all $1.50 a pound. The tomato crop should start coming in next week. The produce is not organic, but they promise no pesticides.

The economic model makes so much sense that I don’t understand why it took so long. We have plenty of land here and lots of ponds for irrigation. We have the odd farmer’s market or two, but those are poorly attended, the prices are too high, and with some items such as tomatoes I’m skeptical that the sellers actually grow what they sell. In the past, though most have gone out of business, we used to have produce stands that sold trucked-in commercial produce. The quality was poor, and nothing was ever fresh, partly because it was never refrigerated. A farm stand eliminates all sorts of expenses and impediments to quality. There are no transportation costs and refrigeration costs. When you sell out every day, there is no waste. Everything is fresh. Not only do you meet the farmers, you see the fields. I hope this is a trend that is growing, nationwide.

The farming work here is done by a crew from Mexico, on visas for seasonal farm workers. The farm provides the workers with housing. From the quality of the strawberries, which were perfectly cultivated and perfectly picked back during May, I knew that the summer vegetables would be good, too, because the farm workers know what they are doing, and they work the fields every day. For example, a common mistake in gardening is to pick vegetables such as cucumbers and squash after they’ve gotten a little too big. Late picking increases the weight of the crop, of course. But the vegetables aren’t as good because they start to turn dry and seedy. These vegetables are picked on just the right day for maximum quality in the kitchen.

The blueberries come from a nearby farm. While peaches are in season in South Carolina, they’ve been sending a truck to South Carolina once or twice a week to bring a load of peaches. The peaches, they say, sell out almost immediately. The best peaches in the United States (sorry, California) come from South Carolina and Georgia.

The fall crop will include pumpkins. They assured me that, in addition to those horrid bright-orange pumpkins that people use these days for Halloween, they’ll also have “pie pumpkins.” That’s a huge deal for pumpkin lovers like me. I haven’t had much luck growing them, and besides they need a huge amount of space. For years, it has been difficult to find pie pumpkins in the fall — a terrible cultural failure if there ever was one. Even most country folk these days make pumpkin pies from canned pumpkin. Never in my life have I done that, and I never will.

I still have my garden, but this year I’ve reduced its size, given how much easier it has become to get fresh-picked summer vegetables at a reasonable cost. I’m growing tomatoes, basil, and cucumbers.

If you’re in this area, Manuel Farms in on Stewart Road northwest of Walnut Cove, North Carolina.

My haul, after I got home

Who doesn’t love a band?

Stokes County’s biggest public event is the Stokes Stomp, an outdoor music festival that happens each September on the weekend after Labor Day. The Democratic Party had a booth, of course. But I sneaked away from the booth when the army band arrived.

As the band regrouped at the stage for the national anthem, I asked the band director, “When’s the Sousa?” Much to my disappointment, he said that too many members of the band were sidelined with Covid for a concert band performance. Drat. Maybe next year. And by the way, a nicer and more polite group of people you’ll never see.

Mysteries of the upper Dan River

⬆︎ The Dan River along Kibler Valley Road, Claudville, Virginia

One of my New Year’s resolutions is to go on more photo-taking and hiking expeditions. Yesterday I explored the upper Dan River, on a quest to figure out where the river comes down out of the Blue Ridge Mountains into the foothills.

The Dan River is part of the Roanoke River basin, one of the river basins of the water-rich Blue Ridge Mountains. The river meanders down out of the Virginia mountains into Stokes County, North Carolina, and flows about two miles south of Acorn Abbey. The river meanders back into Virginia again (near Danville), then back into North Carolina again. It reaches the Atlantic Ocean through Albemarle Sound. Though Acorn Abbey, altitude about 1,000 feet, lies just south of the mountains, the fact that this area is in the same river basin really makes Acorn Abbey a part of the Blue Ridge. If you’ve heard Joan Baez sing “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” then you’ve heard of the area, when she sings, “Virgil Caine is the name, and I served on the Danville train.”

Though I know this area very well, recently I realized that I had no idea where the Dan River comes down out of the Blue Ridge Mountains (altitude about 3,000 feet at that point) into the foothills (altitude about 1,500 feet at that point). With a rapid 1,500-foot fall, shouldn’t there be some drama there worth seeing? What I learned is that the falls are no longer in their natural state. There are two dams on the mountain that hold back the water, sending part of the river’s water down a large conduit to a small hydroelectric plant built in 1938. The plant still supplies electricity to Danville, Virginia, which owns it.

⬆︎ The red dot shows the location of Acorn Abbey

⬆︎ Low-water bridge — no guard rails!

⬆︎ The headwaters of the Dan River lie in Meadows of Dan, Virginia. I know where roads cross the river, but I lost the river among the hills and valleys. So I stopped to ask at the Mayberry Trading Post where the river lies and where it falls toward the foothills. Speaking of Mayberry, if you’ve seen the Andy Griffith show, you might assume that the name “Mayberry” started with the television show. That is not the case. Andy Griffith grew up in Mount Airy, North Carolina. I believe he was descended from the Mayberry (shortened to Mabry) family of Carroll and Patrick counties, Virginia. Griffith chose the name “Mayberry” for the television show because of its local history and local color. My great-grandmother was a Mayberry/Mabry. This is where my roots are in old Virginia.

⬆︎ Peggy Barkley runs the Trading Post. She told me where to find the dams, and she told me how to get to the hydroelectric plant (which is far from obvious). Peggy is a great fan of science fiction. She was sitting at the counter reading when I went into the store. I asked her to hold up the book and show us what she’s reading.

⬆︎ I couldn’t get to the dam, when lies about a mile below this gate. So I headed down the mountain via Squirrel Spur Road.

⬆︎ Looking south from Squirrel Spur Road

⬆︎ Mayberry Presbyterian Church

⬆︎ Along the road to the lower dam

⬆︎ Mayberry Presbyterian Church is now on the National Register of Historic Places. The church was built by an intinerant preacher.

⬆︎ Looking down into Kibler Valley from Squirrel Spur Road

⬆︎ Squirrel Spur Road

⬆︎ Squirrel Spur Road near Meadows of Dan, Virginia, looking down into Stokes County, North Carolina. The low mountains are the Saura mountain range. That’s Pilot Mountain on the right, which Andy Griffith called “Mount Pilot.”

⬆︎ A river-bottom pumpkin patch near Kibler Valley, Claudville, Virginia

⬆︎ Tiny house on Kibler Valley Road

⬆︎ Kibler Valley

⬆︎ A section of the conduit that brings water down from the dams to the power plant

⬆︎ I understand that this telephone still works, though it’s not much used anymore. It rings up the mountain to the dams.

⬆︎ Tommy MacAdams, the operator who was on duty when I was there

⬆︎ On the way up the mountain, I had breakfast at the Cafe of Claudville in Claudville, Virginia.

⬆︎ On the way down the mountain, I stopped at the Cafe of Claudville again, for supper. This is salmon cakes and fixin’s.

All the photos are digital, shot with a Nikon D2X with a 28-85mm lens, except for the food shots, which were shot with an iPhone.

Farm porn

Click here for high-resolution version

A high dynamic range photo of a farm on Flat Shoals Road, Quaker Gap, Stokes County, North Carolina. This is a digital photo and will become part of an experiment to compare results from a film camera with HDR digital photos.

I return to the Mystery House

Somehow I knew that only special people could live in that old house. There were many clues: The complete absence of no-trespassing signs; the horse tracks; the lace curtains in the upstairs windows; the smoke from the kitchen chimney; the unpretentious elegance of the clutter; the not giving a hoot what people think; not living like other people live; an obvious reverence for the best of the past; an un-consumerist self-sufficient style with nothing bought from Lowe’s. Late this afternoon I met Gary (one of the two human residents), Abby (the horse), George (a cat), and Sam (George the cat’s brother and a fellow drop cat¹. The lady of the house was not in.

Here is a link to my previous post about this house, when I saw it only from the road.

I had been on a photo-shooting expedition and had a lot of camera stuff in the car. I drove by on my way home, hoping to see someone outside. I was in luck. Gary was out back sawing firewood. I politely left my car on the side of the unpaved road, walked up the driveway, hailed the man who was cutting wood, and introduced myself to Gary.

“I’ve heard of you,” said Gary. I didn’t ask how or where, but it’s good to know that I’m notorious — at least with those with similar values. I stayed for more than an hour, and we had a very fine neighborly talk. Gary showed me the interior of the house. He introduced me to some of the animals. He showed me some of his projects. We talked about the neighborhood. The abbey is about two miles from Mystery House by road, but only about a mile and a half if you walk through the woods up Lynne Creek, which touches the abbey’s land as well as Gary’s.

I was wrong about the age of the house. It’s much newer than I thought, built in 1910. Though it was not an inn on the Great Wagon Road², as I had imagined, it does sit right on the old wagon road. Gary knew much more about the exact path of the old wagon road than I did, including the place where the road crossed the Dan River, just downhill from Mystery House. Though the house wasn’t an inn, it also was not a farmhouse, as I had guessed. It was built by the family of Gary’s first wife. They had outside income, Gary said, and did not rely on farming for a living.

Inside, the kitchen, parlor, and downstairs hallway were cozy, with a wood fire going strong in a large steel stove. The parlor was decorated for Christmas. I saw a television, and a washer and dryer, but otherwise everything was completely old-fashioned and greatly reminded me of how my great uncle Barney’s house looked in the 1950s. Gary said that he and his wife consciously do their best to live the old way.

I remarked on the absence of no-trespassing signs and ventured a guess: “You don’t believe in that, do you?” I asked. Gary shook his head. He has the same attitude toward neighborliness and the openness of the land as the residents of the abbey. Gary knew far more about the local history than I do. He and his wife are members of the county historical society. I learned a lot from talking with him. We are true neighbors in the old-fashioned sense: We live on the same creek. We’d give anything to see the Dollar Generals going bankrupt because local people are creating their own economy.

⬆︎The parlor

⬆︎Gary and George on the front porch

⬆︎Abby

⬆︎Gary puts on Abby’s halter

⬆︎Abby wears Gary’s cap

⬆︎Abby and Sam

Watching Abby interact with Gary, I easily detected that he had raised her from a colt. They understand each other. Abby is confident and sociable. She let me kiss her nose. I told Gary that if he ever needs a horse-sitter to please let me know. Gary promised to ride Abby up the creek for a visit.

⬆︎Gary is building a stone cottage in his free time, behind the big house.

⬆︎Sam

⬆︎Gary also is building an Amish-style cart for Abbey to pull

⬆︎Sam ended up climbing inside my car.

1. Drop cat: An abandoned cat typically left near the home of someone who, it is suspected, will take it in and take care of it.

2. Great Wagon Road: During American colonial days, a major wagon highway from Pennsylvania to Georgia. See the Wikipedia article.

In search of environmental justice

Since 1974, the people of the Walnut Tree community have lived in the shadow of Duke Energy’s Belews Creek Steam Station, Duke’s largest coal-burning power plant in the Carolinas. Not until 2008 were scrubbers installed on the plant’s stacks. For all those years, people in Walnut Tree were at Ground Zero for the plant’s emissions — fly ash, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and all the extremely toxic heavy metals that are found at trace levels in the wastes from coal combustion.

Unsurprisingly, people began to get sick. Also unsurprisingly, the official response was that the steam plant had nothing to do with it.

It would be difficult to overestimate the political and economic power of Duke Energy in North Carolina. Working largely through the Republican Party, Duke Energy (along with other fossil fuel fortunes including the out-of-state Koch brothers) helped engineer the Tea Party takeover of North Carolina in 2010. North Carolina’s governor, Pat McCrory, worked for Duke Energy for 28 years. McCrory and the right-wing legislature have moved with terrifying efficiency to try to protect Duke Energy’s interests, to bring fracking and offshore oil drilling to North Carolina, to slow the state’s investment in renewable energy, and to weaken environmental regulations and the state agencies that enforce them. Part of the purpose of North Carolina’s so-called bathroom law is to distract people (and the media) from the rest of the right-wing agenda in North Carolina.

In February 2014, a massive coal ash spill into the Dan River near Eden focused the nation’s attention (at last!) on what Duke Energy and the politicians they own were trying to do in North Carolina.

Back in 2012, when I and a small group of sassy (and very smart) Stokes County citizens started the organization that we call No Fracking in Stokes, we had no idea how the fracking issue would play out or how it would end up connecting with the coal ash issue. There is much local history here that needs to be written, but by 2015 a powerful coalition had formed to fight not only for the environment but also for environmental justice in our obscure little county. Among these organizations are No Fracking in Stokes, Appalachian Voices, Clean Water for North Carolina, the Blue Ridge Environmental Defense League, the Southern Environmental Law Center, and the NAACP. I sometimes refer to these organizations as the cavalry that rode in to help us.

As readers of this blog know, Stokes County is a rare piece of largely unspoiled earth in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The beautiful Dan River winds down out of Virginia, through Stokes County, and back into Virginia again. North Carolina’s most popular state park, Hanging Rock State Park, is here. Climb to the top of the Hanging Rock promontory and look around. You’ll see what we’re protecting. But because the county is controlled by Republicans, and because many of the people are poor and are too busy just trying to get by to pay attention, outside interests would like write the county off as an environmental sacrifice zone.

Now the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has gotten involved. That group held a hearing in Walnut Cove last month, specifically on the question of environmental justice in the Walnut Tree neighborhood. Last year, the Rev. William Barber, who has led North Carolina’s powerful Moral Monday movement, spoke in Walnut Cove. He also brought the resources of the NAACP to the struggle.

It seems quite possible that, in the larger statewide struggle to hold Duke Energy accountable and to expose the corruption of the Republican Party’s protection of Duke Energy, Walnut Tree will be Duke Energy’s Waterloo, because in Walnut Tree the legal questions relating to environmental justice become crystal clear.

These photos are from a cookout last Saturday in the Walnut Tree community. They’ve gotten organized. They have plans to build a community center. They have a legal strategy for getting the Walnut Tree community annexed into the little town of Walnut Cove (Walnut Tree desperately needs Walnut Cove’s water, which comes from deep wells that are a safe distance from the coal ash impoundments).

As someone from Appalachian Voices said, this is what winning looks like. It has taken 40 years, though we’re still not done.

Stokes County terrain at its best

Click on image for high-resolution version

Given enough time, Americans can ruin just about any landscape. Suburbanization is one of the most popular methods.

Suburbanization requires major expenditures on roads. We don’t have those roads here in Stokes County. Our roads are narrow and crooked. Suburbanization also requires population growth and money. We don’t have that either.

The photo is of Younts Wine Farm near Walnut Cove.

Faces of the First Amendment

My camera is one of the most important political tools I have. Whether it’s a political campaign or organizing for environmental groups, photos are important, especially on social media.

I find photos of public meetings strangely moving. Sometimes they capture the spirit of a Rockwell painting. I’m thinking, of course, of Rockwell’s “The Four Freedoms.” Freedom of speech and freedom of assembly are the bedrock of our American democracy.

These photos were taken at a commissioners’ meeting last night. A coalition of environmental groups and plain unaffiliated citizens pleaded with the Stokes County commissioners to draft and approve an ordinance protecting the county from fracking and coal ash. Here’s a link to a news story on what the meeting was about.

On the one hand, this was a heartwarming outpouring of love for our county and concern for our rural way of life. Black people and white people, conservatives and liberals, are working together in this county like they never have before. But I also am a cold-blooded political operative. This event was organized. Back in May, environmental activists had politely asked the commissioners for an ordinance. They crudely blew us off. This was payback. Note the attitude of one of the commissioners in the last photo. It’s the classic attitude of an authoritarian who’d rather not be bothered with the people — at least when the people disagree with him.

I sense something historic here

The Rev. Dr. William Barber II at Rising Star Baptist Church in Walnut Cove

North Carolina government has been taken over by right-wing politicians who have been hastily enacting the billionaire agenda — lower taxes for the rich, higher taxes for working people, the worst voter suppression laws in the nation, the privatization of education at the expense of the public schools, refusal to expand Medicaid simply to spite the president, cuts to unemployment insurance, the fast-tracking of fracking, and eagerness for oil drilling off North Carolina’s fragile coast. The chief source of resistance ought to be the state Democratic Party, but the state Democratic Party has been missing in action, largely because of exceptionally lousy leadership and debilitating scandals.

The NAACP rose to the challenge. The Moral Monday events in Raleigh have irritated and embarrassed state government every step of the way. The mastermind of Moral Monday and the president of the North Carolina NAACP is the Rev. Dr. William Barber. In the first two years of Moral Monday, not much was said about environmental issues. But now the NAACP has come out swinging on the matter of environmental justice. One of the catalysts was a deal between the state of North Carolina and the little town of Walnut Cove (in Stokes County) to do a core-sample drilling on town property to assess how much frackable gas might be down there. The site of this drilling is only a couple of miles from a large and dangerous coal ash impoundment owned by Duke Energy (at the Belews Creek Steam Station). It’s also near the Dan River, less than 20 miles upstream from a coal ash spill into the river last year. The coal ash impoundment and the core-drilling site are right on the edge of black neighborhoods.

Last night, the Rev. Barber spoke in Walnut Cove. Actually, it was a sermon, in a small black church nearly full, half with black people and half with white. His sermon was about why taking care of the land and water is a moral issue. I have never heard anything like it. We white people were stunned, because we’re well aware of how some religious people find support for the exploitation of nature and “dominionism” in scripture. But the Rev. Barber found quite the opposite, drawing mostly from Genesis and Zechariah.

Those of us who have been down in the grass roots for the last three years, locally fighting fracking, feel as though the cavalry have ridden in. It’s not just that the NAACP may file suits under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. It’s also that no one is better at focusing attention on injustice than the NAACP, or better at organizing people. And frankly, those of us who have been working locally, more or less alone, managed to make our cry for help heard. I suppose it depends on what happens next. But it feels historic to have the NAACP’s most charismatic leader here in our little county. And I think it’s likely that right-wingers won’t control the state of North Carolina for long. They have overplayed their hand and exceeded their mandate, and lots of people including some Republicans are not very happy about it.

This was historic in 1978. To my knowledge, no African-American has run for political office in Stokes County since then. We are working on that.