Going Hog Wild...One Step At a Time

One can never tell when or from where encouraging news might come. We are now over half way through what has been the most disappointing summer that our program has ever endured. Yesterday I learned that horses are not permitted on the Colonial Parkway so a big event that I was hoping to to put together for the little riders went back to the drawing board. The litany of defeats and disappointments could fill a lengthy and dreary post but....

Last night I got a lead on what could become a tremendous boost in the historical educational component of our program. We may be adding a formerly wild (feral) hog to our program.

What silly people we are when we consider our nation's early development. The very phrase, Southern Colonial Agriculture brings to mind plantation homes, landed gentry, and the nightmare of slavery. These were a component of colonial history, but they are not representative of the most common form of southern agriculture--the small farm, a humble home, a few outbuildings, and patches of land teeming with livestock. These things typified the lives of the vast majority of Colonial Americans, both white and free black.

One of the greatest failings of American scholarship is that American history has all too often been presented simply as a view of how rich folks used to live. Is it any wonder that it has so little relevance for the vast majority of Americans today?

Early America is not best symbolized by the manor home and the elegant carriage horse. It is better symbolized by the Spanish horse, the humble goat, the ubiquitous chicken and the self reliant hog, free foraging hog.

It is that aspect of American history--equally mundane and spectacular-- that we hope to depict as the Gwaltney Frontier Farm comes into being. Sunday a group of descendants from across the nation who are coming to Smithfield for the National Gwaltney Family Reunion will come out to see the Corollas and learn a bit of what we do.

They will visit the area that their ancestors began farming in the 1600's. They will see the horses that their ancestors rode in the 1600 and 1700's. They will pet the goats that their ancestors raised in the 1600 and 1700's. They will hear the music that their ancestors played in the 1800's and they will see site of the future/past Gwaltney Frontier Farm that exists so beautifully, though at the moment it exists only in my head.

(The picture above has utterly nothing to do with the topic at hand, but it is a great picture of Abby and Ice.)