This Issue

Features

January/ February

Additional
Features

Win a Branson "Mini-Vacation"
Elevating Woodcarving to Fine Art
Faux Food for Thought
Back In Time in Branson: The Boswell House
Chinquapins: Making a Comeback in the Ozarks?
Heifer International - A Cow Instead of a Cup


Departments

Back in Time
Bookshelf
Coming Events
Cookery
From Silas Turnbo
Golden Country
Hill Boy In A Mountain Town
Looking Ahead
Mountaineer Mailbox Mountain Wisdom Ozarks EarthTalk
Ozark Meanderings
Ozarkerisms
Recordings in Review
Round & About the Ozarks
Then And Now
The Ozarks Herbalist
Where Do You Find?

Feedsack Fashion

Hard Times Were No Hamper to Creativity

Imagine wearing hand-me-downs…from your farm animals!
   Just over sixty years ago millions of Americans sported a wardrobe that began in a barnyard, in the form of recycled cotton feedsacks. Feedsack fabric refers to the bags that contained animal feed, flour, sugar, salt and other milled goods. In some areas, it was called "chicken linen."

Perhaps your mother or great-aunt had cheery kitchen curtains from Red Star Flour, or Pop wore a shirt that bore tell-tale stitching lines from the Ferry-Morse Seed Co. Or you might have been like my aunt as a little girl on the playground, mortified when a gust of wind revealed the seat of her pants to belong to McAllister's Mill.
   My fascination with feedsacks began several years after my grandmother's death – too late for me to hear first-hand her stories of the years folks learned to "use it up, wear it out, make do, or do without." What did survive was a box of fabric...

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The Mountain Maid's Guide to Ozarks Love Lore

Hard Times Were No Hamper to Creativity

In remembering Valentine's Day, it might be wise to remember Shakespeare's line in A Midsummer Night's Dream for all Romeos and Juliets: "The course of true love never did run smooth." True today. True of yesteryear. In the hardscrabble rural Ozarks of the past, hardy souls wrested their living from the hills. Fates (and love) frequently turned on a hunter's skill, nature's whim, and sometimes the merest luck.

The Golden Country

Crocus