Foxfire Museum

Years ago, I discovered this series of books called Foxfire. They were started in the early 70's by some high school students as a sociology project. They interviewed some older appalachian people who lived a primitive lifestyle. They teach the old ways of doing things, but also, they just talk about things, wherever their minds wander. The reading is slow for me since they try to type exactly as things sound...which is with a thick southern accent. Kind of like reading the dialouge in Mark Twain's books. I have the first three and refer to them every now and then.





A couple of months ago, I discovered that they have a museum in North Georgia. So we took our day long staycation on Friday and drove up to see it.

You end up driving on a narrow gravel road up the mountainside to get to it. It was a really pretty ride.

The enterance fee is only $6/person. This is the first cabin you go to. It's a gift shop and where you pay. From here, you start the hike.


We didn't realize there would be hiking. We had a very large breakfast at Cracker Barrel since we knew we'd be skipping lunch. The hike to the first two cabins was not sitting well with either one of our stomachs but it got less steep after that, plus we took our time in each cabin so we eventually digested it.



There are 20 cabins scattered throughout the museum. Some are locked since they house archives from the books and other artifacts. They were all extremally old cabins that were taken apart and brough back to Foxfire and rebuilt. The only exception is the church building. They hadn't been able to find a community willing to donate their old church so that one is a new building, designed after one in Tennessee.

The first cabin you come to is the oldest one, originally built in 1820. It has a front door and a back door. The loft would have been accessed by a ladder. The furnishings in this cabin is what you would find in any ordinary cabin of the time.


A pie safe/jelly cupboard and other food storage, cooking tools, spinning wheel.


A loom. Adam mentioned that the loom was much larger than the bed. It really was big!


A bench to sit on. Can I have one of these beauties?? And notice the straw bed beside it? That was actually the trundle bed that slides in under the main bed. This was one half of the house, split in half by the doorways. At the door is the loom, the bench and then the bed...and the ladder would have been beside the bed.


On the other side of the room was the "kitchen". The jelly cupboard area, the fireplace where all the cooking was done and the table.


The back porch was large enough to sit on and held the stuff for washing up.


Most cabins were like this one...no windows. The first thing you notice when you walk in is how dark it is. It was about noon when we first got here...the sun was shining without a cloud in the sky. Both doors were open but inside the house, it was like you were in a cave almost. I could only see most of the things in the house when the camers lit it up with the flash. How depressing it must have been to be a woman as they mostly had to stay in the home and take care of the food and other care her family needed. I am sure she spent as much time outside as possible, shucking peas on the porch, cooking over a fire in the yard, tending her garden, picking berries...whatever she could find to do outside. But in the winter when they were all stuck inside, having to be careful of how many candles they went through so they'd have enough to last until they could make more.

One of the buildings was a wagon shed. It had an old conestoga wagon, the kind the pioneers used to move across the plains, and another buckboard type wagon that was built in the 1980's.


The blacksmith's cabin was open so you can lean in, but not so you can walk in. The smell of the shop is really strong. It's still used to make replicas and full cool tools.


This is a good pic of the type of setting it is in. On a mountainside with lots of trees and greenery. Doesn't it just make you want to live there?


This cabin was locked but it had actual windows...but it wasn't lit by any artifical lights so it was impossible to see anything inside. It had a few sets of stilts leaning against the porch so I tried my hand at it. The pictures I've seen makes it looks easy...I mean, kids can do it, so I should be able to too, right??


I tried and tried with no success. Two steps was my record.


The church was the highest building on the hike. After that it was all downhill. The church is an exact replica of an old one. It has a working bell in the tower (adam tried it out timidly...but the kids who came up later rang it boldly). We had just steppinside the church when Adam got a call for a tow. He spent about 10 minutes on the phone getting the info he needed. I looked around, took some pictures, then sat down on a bench. As I sat there, sweat was rolling down my back. It was hot and muggy inside, much like outside. There were 6 windows in this building and it was still dimly lit. It made me wonder what they thought about sweat rolling down their backs back then... They knew nothing different in the summer. It had always been that way. Like the videos of people in Africa letting flies crawl all over their skin, they've given up fighting it because it is just a part of life. I don't write well what I am thinking...but this and the cabins with no light were really what struck me the most here at the museum.



There were two coffins on display in the church: an infant's and an adults. A little creepy, but certainly much more a part of daily life back then than nowadays.


The church has 6 windows (8 if you count the stained glass windows in front) and more well lit than most of the other buildings and yet, this is how dark it was. Can you imagine?


Some high school students got this from the first woman they interviewed for their project. She donated it and they moved it to the museum and rebuilt it and even made the motor work again....but it's nowhere near water so it never runs.


One of the cabins has the village weaver camped out in it. She spends all day weaving towels and hot pads and spinning yarn to sell in the shop. She talks while she does it too. She made it look easy and it has now been put on my list of things to someday learn.


Hot pads and kitchen towels that she weaved.


She demonstrated how to make yarn. She started with raw wool, carded it, rolled it, spun it into yarn.


There were a few more cabins to look at then we were back at the beginning. I have even more respect for these people than I did before. Makes me want to read the books again.

Revisiting the farm

I am behind and this was actually 3 weeks ago now. That farm park I found had an event going on that Saturday and Adam was having his friends come over to play a session of D&D so I already knew I wasn't going to be spending the day at home...so when I found out about this event while riding through the park on Thursday, I was totally excited.

I wanted to get there around 11 or so so I would have plenty of time to go inside the buildings and see what all was going on. But after getting all the fruit and veggies cut and all the other food laid out, I only had one hour to explore the park. I started by stopping at the blacksmith shed. I talked with the blacksmith about blacksmithy stuff and how it all works. He was making a spoon.

Then I stopped by the main farm house where a woman, the "farm wife", was cooking dutch oven food and moitoring the children who were dipping candles and churning butter.


I took up some of her time and found out that they will be ahving an event there called "A civil war Christmas." and they're looking for volunteers so I am going to get in touch with her about that. :o)

I took a tour through the house. You could only walk down the main hall and peer into the 4 rooms off of the hallway. Each room was decorated as if it were in the late 1800's.

Back door overlooking the orchard.

Isn't it a beutiful house?

Down the front porch steps, I stopped at the hand quilting booth. A woman who hand quilts had a few baby quilt tops on display (not quilted yet) and a basket of hand sewn squares she is working on. I talked to her some. She told me though that you should never use a hand sewn quilt because they're much too fragile. That didn't sit too well with me since I know that's now true....or maybe she doesn't make her stitches close enough to last...I don't know.

Then I wound around back down to the little 2 room cabin in the last post. 2 black woman were down there. One was playing the guitar and they were singing black gospel songs. Then they started getting into a conversation and it was appearant that the "daughter" was acting and she was doing a really good job, with accent and everything. Then I got to go inside the cabin and take some more pictures.

By then, a car had pulled up and they were loading up their stuff into the car and all the booths were disappearing. I didn't get to see half the stuff they had going on. Now I have to go to the next one. ;o)

Walking back to the car, I passed by this picnic table that hadn't been undecorated yet...I want one just like it (but it needs the same setting). :o)

Discovering McDaniel Farm Park

If I leave work and go home then I have to almost turn right back around to make it to the public session at the ice rink on Thursday nights. So I decided to take my bike to work with me and ride somewhere while waiting for the session to start. I heard of this park and passed by the sign for the turn for the park many times but was never curious enough to go to it. But on the internet I had seen that there was an old farm house in the park so I decided it would be worth a visit at least once. Plus, there were bike trails so I could get a ride in and see an old house...two of my favorite things....history and biking. :o)

From the parking lot you can see the big barn and the big vegetable garden. I got excited because I didn't realize it was kept up as a farm. But as I went down the trail, I didn't see any other buildings. Instead, the trails went back into the woods. It was nice and shady and breezy so I was really enjoying myself. It opened up in a field occassionally.

One of the petals was almost as big as my hand...big flowers! This is for you, Sheri. ;o)

Most of the trails were paved but this one wasn't. It was also a very nice trail, all in the shade. Toward the end, I came out of the woods and saw this little cabin at the top of the hill. It was so cozy and cute. I had to wind around the trail to get to it to look inside the windows.

This was in one of the two rooms of this cabin. It was one of the only pictures that didn't have glare from the window in it. I really like the way this pic turned out...if only that stereo weren't there!

I really liked the look of this outhouse. I opened up the door and it was a one holer but there was a piece of wood screwed over the hole so I have no idea if it was real....I'm thinking it's not since this is a museum type of place....plus it didn't smell like it was real.

This is what was on the table in the other picture, a crock with sourdough starter (really empty but that's what it's supposed to be), a dough bowl, a rolling pin and some wooden utensils and an oil lantern. I really like this little cabin. I found the farm house too. But it was closed up like this little cabin. The next post will have pictures of the farmhouse because I actually got to go in it on a subsequent trip.

This is the view I was greeted with when making my way back to the paved trail from the cabin. Itwas so magical.

I spent too much time there because I was just really enjoying myself and loving life. I was late for ice skating but it didn't even bother me.

Old Idaho Penitentiary

We had planned on hiking on Monday and the only trail head I knew about was attached to the parking lot of the Old Idaho Penitentiary. When we finally found it, there was an office so we went in to ask them if they knew where the different trails went. Adam found a brochure for the Pen. It’s $5 per adult and it sounded interesting so we decided to take a tour before we went hiking.

The brochure read: “Idaho Territory was less than ten years old when the territorial prison was built east of Boise in 1870. The penitentiary grew from a single cell house into a complex of several distinctive buildings surrounded by a high sandstone wall. Convicts quarried the stone from the nearby ridges and completed all the later construction.

Over its century of operation, the penitentiary received more than 13,000 convicts, of whom 215 were women. Spurred in part by conditions that sparked a general riot in 1971 and an even more severe riot in 1973, the inmate population was moved to a modern penitentiary south of Boise and the Old Idaho Penitentiary was closed on December 3, 1973. After the Penitentiary closed in 1973, the site was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Begin your visit with our video presentation recalling prison history, notorious inmates, and daily prison life. Once inside the Yard, imagine life in the foreboding sandstone cell houses, see the contrasting beauty of the historic rose gardens, and view the effects of the 1973 riot. Visit Solitary Confinement, known as "Siberia," as well as Death Row and the Gallows. Exhibits are located throughout the site.”

There’s an 18 minute video you can watch first. While it was not the most interesting video it was informative about the buildings and some of what went on in them. We took our map and went through the different buildings. I can’t find the map so I have no idea which building was what.

The first building we went into was the first building to get indoor plumbing. Even in 1973, not all the buildings had plumbing. Some of the cells had plastic buckets that could be pushed into a ventilation pipe when not being used. In that building, the doors were made out of flat iron bars, instead of the round bars. They were easier to break out of but cheaper to make. Unfortunately for the prisoners in those cells, they made for less ventilation and light. The paint was peeling off the ceilings and walls from years of neglect.

All the buildings had 2-3 heaters placed under the windows on the ground floor level. I seriously doubt that they did much to keep anyone inside very warm. I know that the heaters weren’t on while we were there but it was so cold inside. At least one of the buildings had fire damage from the final riot which caused everyone to be moved to the new prison that had just been built sooner than they would have been moved. The dining hall was destroyed in the same riot.

There is a maximum security building which was the last building to be built sometime in the 50’s with a gallows room and a room below where the prisoner would fall into. That was where they witnessed the death.

They had a shirt factory where they made shirts. Later, a laundry room and shower room was added. The prisoners did laundry for the air force bases as well as the laundry for the inmates. There are exhibits on either side of the laundry room. One is a weapons exhibit and the other is a transportation exhibit. Further away, in an old building that I don’t know what it used to be, is a prison tattoo art exhibit and an electricity exhibit that has seen better days.

Then there’s the solitary confinement. One of the signs said that the prisoners were each given a blanket or two, a meal, or sometimes 2 meals, a day and that’s it. The only light available was from a small air tube at the top of the cell and if the small hatch door was left open, they could get a little light that way as well. There were 2 little heaters in that building but the thick metal doors would have certainly kept most of the heat out while the small air tune was letting in outside air. They had no mattresses, only the 2 blankets they were issued and there was a small covered hole in the floor. I am assuming that that was where they were able to go to the bathroom but I’m not sure about that. They didn’t know how long they’d be in there when they were put in. It could last anywhere from a few days to a year. The last door is open so you can step inside. Even knowing that there was no one to lock me in and no reason to be paranoid about it, I felt very vulnerable and scared when I stepped into it. I imagined living in one for even a few days. It was cold and dark (but lighter than it would have been for anyone locked in it since the door was still open). I knew that 2 blankets wouldn’t have been enough. I can understand why there was such a high rate of insanity or suicide while staying in there. What a scary fate for someone. I got Adam to go in it and I closed the door most of the way. He wasn't too thrilled with that...I'm assuming he was having some of the same feelings that I had. The room wasn't much bigger than Adam. The hole Adam is looking through is the hole where they got light, food and blankets through.

There’s a woman’s section as well but we didn’t make it to that one before it closed. It’s outside the main gates into a second sandstone fortress.

There is a rose garden behind the min fortress near the barn. It is supposed to be beautiful but it is dormant right now so we didn’t get to see it. From there, we picked up a foothills trail.

There were only a handful of other people there and we usually weren’t in the same building at the same time. I think that helped. It was so quiet, eerie almost and I got to really think about how I felt looking at certain things. I am so grateful for the upbringing I had that led me to live a fairly good life…one where I am in no danger of ever living in such a place, where all your freedoms are taken away. It’s obvious that the people who end up in prison don’t care about the people they harm, but how can they be so indifferent about how what they do will affect their futures? They are missing out on so much in life; sadly, few will ever realize that.