Foxfire 2: Ghost stories, spring wild plant foods, spinning and weaving, midwifing, burial customs, corn shuckin's, wagon making, and more affairs of plain living

The Foxfire Series #2

by Eliot Wigginton (Editor), Foxfire Students

This second volume celebrates the rites and customs of Appalachia, featuring sections on ghost stories, spring wild plant foods, corn shuckin's, spinning and weaving, midwives, granny women, old-time burial customs, witches and haints, and wagon making.

Table of Contents:
Maude Shope

Sourwood Honey

Beekeeping
Spring Wild Plant Foods

Happy Dowdle
Making an Ox Yoke

Wagon Wheels and Wagons

Making a Tub Wheel
Making a Foot-powered Lathe
From Raising Sheep to Weaving Cloth

How to Wash Clothes in an Iron Pot

Anna Howard
Midwives and Granny Women

Old-time Burials
Boogers, Witches, and Haints
Corn Shuckin's, House Raisin's, Quiltin's, Pea Thrashin's, Singin's, Log Rollin's, Candy Pullin's, and...
Kenny Runion

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Reference, Crafts, Folklore, Nature, Survival

410 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1973

About the author

Eliot Wigginton (born Brooks Eliot Wigginton) is an American oral historian, folklorist, writer and former educator. He was most widely known for developing the Foxfire Project, a writing project that led to a magazine and the series of best-selling Foxfire books, twelve volumes in all. These were based on articles by high school students from Rabun County, Georgia. In 1986 he was named "Georgia Teacher of the Year" and in 1989 he was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship.
Wigginton was born in West Virginia on November 9, 1942. His mother, Lucy Freelove Smith Wiggington, died eleven days later of "pneunomia due to acute pulmary edema," according to her death certificate. His maternal grandmother, Margaret Pollard Smith, was an associate professor of English at Vassar College and his father was a famous landscape architect, also named Brooks Eliot Wiggington. His family called him Eliot. He earned his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in English from Cornell University and a second Master's from Johns Hopkins University. In 1966, he began teaching English in the Rabun Gap-Nacoochee School, located in the Appalachian Mountains of northeastern Georgia.
Wigginton began a writing project based on his students' collecting oral histories from local residents and writing them up. They published the histories and articles in a small magazine format beginning in 1967. Topics included all manner of folklife practices and customs associated with farming and the rural life of southern Appalachia, as well as the folklore and oral history of local residents. The magazine began to reach a national audience and became quite popular.
The first anthology of collected Foxfire articles was published in book form in 1972, and achieved best-seller status. Over the years, the schools published eleven other volumes. (The project transferred to the local public school in 1977.)
In addition, special collections were published, including The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery, Foxfire: 25 Years, A Foxfire Christmas, and The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Toys and Games. Several collections of recorded music from the local area were released.

Reviews

[Beth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This one that has ghost stories in it...rather amusing tales of "haints" that people have seen or heard about.

The talk of corn shuckin's and quiltings and other community affairs really made me realize how much the industrial revolution changed our lives forever. Not just the skills but the community togetherness that these people had. All workin' and livin' and helpin' each other through good times and bad.

I'm probably romanticizing way too much, but it's appealing to think about. Seems we've lost the ability to be sociable or something.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

A continuation of the project begun in the first book, and just as good. I wish schools everywhere had young people doing projects like the one that resulted in these books.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as many ‘how-to’s in this one, and the topics were sometimes out of my interest range, but this was still a great read to pop into now and again between other books

[Kaethe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I confess that all I recall are the ghost stories that used the word "haint". I haven't needed any of the other stuff. I'm not a wagon-making kind of gal.

[Colin Mann]

Like any compilation, some of these articles are more engaging than others - particularly for me the descriptions of beekeeping and midwives. The perspective of the people interviewed is very interesting not only compared to our time, but also to the time the interviews were taking place (there is a lot of comments about the moon landing). One thing that strikes me is the detail these students put into their articles when documenting weaving, wheel making, and other technical issues. This level of granular information is an amazing documentation of how these items were made. Well worth at least a cursory read for anyone interested in these topics.

[Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I very much appreciate the preservation of the history in these books. These were very labor-intensive and time-consuming ways of making things, but the people who did it cared. I kept thinking how difficult it must have been to survive back then. It's a wonderful skill to be able to weave your own blanket, going from sheep to finished product, but you could spend weeks or months on that one task. Or building a single wagon wheel could take days of labor, during which time you couldn't do anything else. Or washing in an iron pot that took an entire day once a week. Those certainly were hard times but it resulted in a very hardy and clever people.

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

My appreciation for this book is immense. No other series of literature captures the historic cultures east of the Mississippi River like Foxfire. This is information that our current western ways of living often overlook. Reading this book will humble you with the hardwork people once put in to do tasks that we take for granted today and with the pure creative problem solving accomplished with the most basic of tools and materials.

[Katie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found this book even less interesting than the first Foxfire book. I received it as a gift; one of those imperfect gifts in which the giver makes incorrect assumptions about who you are and what you like.
Still, it was another popular series enjoyed by folks who were in the back-to-the-land movement, or (more likely) wished that they could be.

[Debra · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a continuation of the article’s written in the 1970’s about their rural
north Georgia Appalachian area and the people that inhabit it. Some topics we’re definitely more interesting to me, as well as others I am sure would like different ones. There is such a wide variety of subjects, I am sure most would find this series interesting.

[Mandy Havert · Rating 4 out of 5]

This second in a collection of newsletter articles continues the exploration of mountain living and the 'pure life' of Appalachia. This collection focused more on community and care of the community with spotlights on healing, barn raising, quilting bees and more.

[Cactuskid · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some interesting stories about how people lived back in my parents & grandparents days. They made everything from scratch and the kids had to help to keep the household afloat. They were happy people, made their own entertainment and had a hard but good life.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

In all, I liked this better than vol. 1, though my eyes glazed over a little while reading the section about weaving. I find it hard to believe that somebody could set up a loom and weave just by following the instructions given. Maybe that says more about me than about the writers, though.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin · Rating 4 out of 5]

More fascinating customs and folkloric traditions of the mountain peoples. Particularly interesting are the character sketches, especially Maude Shope and her mule, and the collection of ghost stories.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Re-read.

[May · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very interesting collection of topics in this edition.

[Lydia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Most interested in the "haint" stories and oral interviews, lessso in the diagrams (though I suppose it's very good practical information!)

[Maryjane Nordgren · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating old-time techniques and glimpses into mountain people's hard lives.

[Ellee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting. I like that they included diagrams and measurements when they were available. I also liked the mix of instructive or just interesting oral history (like the part about midwives and the part about ghosts & ghost stories) and how-to. I am going to copy parts of the section on edible spring plants & how to prepare them. There's a lot of them that I've known you could eat for a really long time, but didn't know how to prepare other than to eat a few leaves (or seeds or whatever) raw. Also the recipe for violet jelly. Interesting. :)

Recommended for hipster urban farmers, homesteaders, and other people who just want to read (but not "do") the olde days.

[David Ward · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foxfire 2: Ghost Stories, Spring Wild Plant Foods, Spinning and Weaving, Midwifing, Burial Customs, Corn Shuckin's, Wagon Making and More Affairs of Plain Living (The Foxfire Series #2) by Eliot Wigginton (Editor), Foxfire Students (Anchor Books 1973) (917.58). More transcribed interviews by the students at Rabun County High School in Georgia with their rural elders (See The Foxfire Book). My rating: 7.5/10, finished 1975.

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a transcribed oral history of the peoples of Appalachian Mountains. It covers various topics such as making wagons and their wheels as well as oc yokes and spinning looms. These present plenty of drawings and pictures that could be a little more details. There are also some burial customs and ghost stories. This continues a project to save information and skills from the pre-World War II period of the region.

[Charles · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Great Series on how on people use to do thing when they were mostly self sufficient, and not store dependent different volumes cover everything from snake handling. to log cabin building to planting by the seasons, a must for DIY'ers and survivalists. Check out amazon.com for individual contents.

[Crickett · Rating 5 out of 5]

I absolutely love the Foxfire books so far. They teach a lot about how people use to do things when they didn't have much. I recommend this book and all the others to people that love to learn how things were did in more simpler times, and what it was like when our grandparents and great grandparents where growing up and what they had to go through

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoying this one right now. I'm on the chapter on springtime edible plants. This is more of a history/folk tale book with its chapters on burial customs and ghost stories than Foxfire 1. That was more of a how-to book. I haven't got to the chapter on wagon making and corn shucking yet. I think there's a chapter on how to make moonshine...

[KennyO · Rating 5 out of 5]

Foxfire 2, more of the same. It's rare that the phrase "more of the same" is a compliment but it certainly is in the case of the Foxfire series. My thanks to Wigginton and the students of Rabun County H.S.

[Jay Wright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a series about life in Appalachia. This is the second book in the series. Excellent stories of people, edible wild plants, hog cleaning and on and oln. I love this type of how they lived and the details involved.

[Marguerite Hargreaves · Rating 3 out of 5]

Revisiting this series I read many years ago. Some of the chapters hold up better than others. I learned a lot during my first reading. Now that I reside in Appalachia, I might find the books more useful. The photos tend toward the dark and indistinct.

[Marty · Rating 5 out of 5]

Interesting book of those times. Survial was hard, but this describes how folks made it.

[Blast · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you want to know how to live without electricity then these books are for you!

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great stuff you never knew you wanted to know about Appalachia and Appalachian traditions!

[Taylor W. Rushing · Rating 3 out of 5]

Big fan of the broom making section.