Over the weekend I attended the Appalachian Studies Association Conference in Cincinnati, Ohio. I has invited to speak at this years conference to talk about my experience farming, growing up in East Kentucky, my decision to stay in the face of out migration, and barriers I've experienced. The App. Studies Conference was a great event. I was able to take part in some interesting workshops, and discussions, and I had the chance to reconnect with some old friends and colleagues that I hadn't seen in years. Below is a slightly edited version of my speech. It touches on some sensitive events from my early childhood, with some humor sprinkled in. This is a story of my life in the foothills.

Looking Down Burning Fork Toward my Home Town of Salyersville
Introduction

I can't pretend that Central Appalachia is this romantic place of forgot values, and simpler ways. It's always been hard. It's always been violent. Because the place is birthed out of colonialism. Even the name Appalachia is rooted in the Spanish invasion into what became the southern U.S. Displacement, extraction, and disease have been some of the weapons used on mountain people from then to now. From the first European flag to stab the soil of the First Nations, to the American flags that snap and pop above the fracking wells today. The colonization of the Americas is ongoing, and we can only expect the outcomes we see today.

---

Born in a Buzzard Nest

My life's journey started on Tea Kettle Rock where I hatched out of buzzard egg in 1981. At least that's what I was told, and believed, until I was around four. My dad was one of my grandfather's hunting buddies, and 20 years older than my mom. My grandmother "Maw" didn't want my Paw to know. Whenever I would ask who my dad was, Maw would tell me I didn't have one. She said I hatched out of a buzzard egg, and they found me on a fishing trip. I remember going up Jellico, where Tea Kettle Rock is, and my maw pointing it out and telling me the story. They thought it was cute. It kind of is. The only reason I stopped believing that was green stamps. You got them from the grocery store when you spent so much. If you saved enough you could get something like a frying pan, a piece of a dinner ware set, or in my case an installment of a health encyclopedia. I think we had three, and one had pictures of a woman giving birth. I couldn't read, but I could understand pictures, and they showed it all. I learned I wasn't really a buzzard, and I was the only kid in head start that knew were babies come from. My mom married a local man right around the time I learned of my true origins, but he was a violent alcoholic. He made it clear that if she ever left he would murder us all, so my mom sent me to live with her parents. My Maw and Paw. Growing up in Magoffin county was hard. It was violent. I fought my way through school, and somehow managed to avoid the pain pills that plague the foothills. If I could avoid ice cream with the same proficiency I'd be a lot better off.

---

Foothills Nomad

In 36 years, I've moved 36 times. I could probably add a couple more, but I wanted to be conservative. I've lived in Magoffin, Knott, Letcher, Morgan, and Rowan counties. I also spent a month in Switzer, WV. Moving frequently is something I was born into. My grandparents moved a lot. You can't build wealth if you don't have a permanent place. With each move something breaks or gets damaged. You spend what you got saved. You not only lose your material possessions, you lose a little piece of what connects you to the land and your community.

Of all the places I've lived, two have shaped me the most. My love for soil, clay, and the creek was born on Cripple Creek. Days spent wading and swimming in the Big Deep Hole, climbing up to the High Rocks, and playing out back in the pines are still the most sentimental memories I have. Cripple Creek has managed to avoid the intense development that most other places have seen and is one of the healthiest watersheds in Magoffin County. But I can't say that will last. I met my dad for the first time when I was ten and living on cripple creek. My maw also died on Cripple Creek when I was thirteen. My Paw had died when I was five. I tried living with my mom. I felt like she needed me. It was ok for a month or so, but that didn't work out. She had left her husband, but had to go back for my younger brother's sake.

After that I moved to place called Paddle Creek to live with my dad. I lived there all through high school. Big Pat was huge man at 6'7", 290 lb. He was plowing bottoms at age ten, and driving mules in the log woods by fourteen, barefoot. I've seen him kill waspers by squishing them between his fingers. He was sort of a modern-day Paul Bunion… if Paul was whore and cussed every other word. I learned a lot about subsistence living from him. He taught me how to identify trees and put a handle in an axe head. He forgot more about living than I'll ever know. I also had a neighbor named Joe Russel who taught me how to find different plants that grew in the hills around my house, and how to use them as medicine. When he healed a deep cut in my foot using powdered Goldenseal root, I went out and bought a Peterson Field Guide. I would study the guide for hours then hit the hills looking for the leaf patterns I had burned into my memory. I've used what I learned over the years to teach several workshops and to take groups of people on guided tours. Most of the workshops were taught at annual Growing Appalachia conferences, hosted by the big sandy chapter of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth.

Big Pat Montgomery during a game of Donkey Basketball

---

Resisting Out Migration

By the time I was twenty-four I had decided I wanted to stay in Magoffin county. I had went through a period in high school where I wanted to reject my identity, and heritage as an Appalachian, but that was short lived. I realized quickly that people outside the region were no better, often worse, and I had nothing to be ashamed off. The media works hard to marginalize and degrade us. That's a centuries old problem, that many of our young people are falling victim to. I was sitting on the couch one day around that time, thinking about what I could do with my life. I wanted to do something that I could live with. I wanted to feel like I was doing something virtuous. I had worked a few jobs at this point, but always felt guilty about them. People lives were worse because of what I was doing. Then it hit me all of sudden. Farm. Supplying cheap, local vegetables to my friends and neighbors seemed like an occupation I could live with. I had a vision of driving a team of mules up and down the hollers, selling produce to people.

I thought going to college was a good place to start. I didn't really know much about farming out side of raising vegetable gardens, and I thought school would be the place to meet like-minded people. That was the first mistake I made. As far as my farming career is concerned, going to Morehead State University was the wrong idea. I met plenty of great people, and had great experiences, but the only Ag related benefit I gained was learning what not to do. MSU's Ag program was geared toward large scale, chemical and machine dependent systems. I left MSU with what amounted to a worthless degree and almost 20,000 in debt. I could have just went back to Cripple Creek and started raising crops on my great aunts farm.

I learned quickly that farming isn't inherently good. Our modern Ag practices are actually the exact opposite. I've used my share of 10-10-10 and Sevin-dust, but I've focused primarily on organic methods. My first interest was vegetables, and that's what I focused on at MSU. Here is a picture of me in my first vegetable garden back in 2008.I had helped my Maw when we lived on Cripple Creek, and I had raised some watermelons the year before, but this garden was close to a .5 acre. Me and my dad hooked an old horse-drawn plow to a four-wheeler to turn the soil. We had the worst drought I had ever seen that year, so I kept everything alive with horse manure tea I had brewed in the barn.

My interest changed when I moved to Wild Heart Farm at the mouth of Black Water Creek in Morgan County back in 2015. Here I worked with Katahdin sheep, and soon learned raising livestock isn't nearly as much work as raising vegetables. At least that's how it felt to me.

The most ambitious project I've taken on was raising hogs. While we lived at Wild Heart we had access to considerable pasture land. My first idea was to get a couple bottle calves and start from there. I went out to a nearby livestock auction in Wolf County to see what cattle was going for. While I was there they ran some pigs through, and I was surprised to see them selling for as little as $15. I convinced my wife to let me go back the next week to buy two, but I came home with eight. A year later I had thirty-two. I was working as a cook at MSU at the time and had access to all the waste I could carry home. Early on I was able to feed them exclusively with food from work. But eventually I had to start buying corn. When my wife got a job teaching in Letcher county I had to sell out. Luckily a spray crew for the power company just happened to come to the house to see if they could spray, and one of them bought all of my pigs.

I would have made a profit on my hog venture, if we hadn't moved. Again. Even though I had to get rid of them, I did o.k. I've never turned a profit farming, unless you count the year I put up around forty quarts of crushed tomato, white half runners, and pickled hot peppers. I've had two years with 100% crop failure, but what I've lost in cash I've made back in experience.

While weather, deer, and other pests have hindered my success, the largest obstacle I've faced is my own brain. My life, particularly my early child hood, was filled with violence and abuse. My adult life is filled with anxiety. It's too easy to slip into depression, and without support I tend to let things fall apart, or just never start them. Defense mechanisms I devolved as a child make it difficult to interact with people and maintain relationships. These tendencies are primarily the reason I've not been as successful as I could have been, and have all but wasted the last 13 years. Still, farming is in my blood, and this year I'm planning on planting two acres in sweet corn, green beans, tomatoes, and bell peppers.

---

Farming Heritage

On both sides of my family farming was the primary occupation, or at least an important supplement, for the past five generations. This is my great great grandfather on my mom's side, John Tackett. Alongside his family he raised tobacco, sugar cane, and corn. His son Wayman, Papaw Tackett to me, did the same. Farming goes back on my dad's side all the way to the Revolutionary war.

John Tackett

I'm also a descendant of Gorge Golden Hawk Sizemore, "The progenitor of many" who was born in 1783. A man as famous for his ugliness as his numerous children. Possibly more than 50, with four partners. He was indicted for bigamy in Floyd County. The judge asked him, "Mr. Sizemore, I understand you have about fifty children, to which he replied, "I guess you're right. But, judge, if I'd been half as pretty a man as you are, I'd had more than that."
There's no pictures of Gorge. This is his daughter Agnes, and her husband Silas. Their marriage formed the Montgomery line that lead to me. Golden Hawk is reasonable for most of East Kentucky's population from the way I got it figured.

Silas Montgomery and Agnes Sizemore

---

Environmental Activism

Booger Hill, Sand Bottom Kentucky

Before I finish I'll touch briefly on my activist work. I saw my first mountain top removal mine when I went Alice Lloyd College in 2006 when I was 24. I'm still amazed that I could have lived in East Kentucky that long and have now clue it even existed. I had been on a shelf mine before, but it was over forty years old, and fairly over grown. I knew something was wrong about it, but without context I couldn't really understand what I was looking at. I thought that was the extent of strip mining. The mine I visited in Knott county was a shock I had not expected. I knew I had to stop it, because I knew that everything I wanted to protect in life would be destroyed otherwise. I got involved with Kentuckians for the Commonwealth during the Week in Washington lobby effort. I ended up going back to D.C. three more times. I was very active with KFTC for number of years. I gave speeches, attended workshops, and participated in rallies and direct actions. I also got involved with mountain justice and helped with projects there.

This is me at I Love Mountains Day on the steps of the Kentucky Statehouse in Frankfort. I gave a speech in front 1,200 people about why we need to end surface coal mining and about the potential that exists in the hills of East Kentucky. I got my first experience with community action as a child when my great aunt Toad helped form a group to stop a landfill from coming into Magoffin County. They won. I haven't been very active in the last few years for a bunch of reasons. Most recently I was a leading voice in a union effort at my former job as a cook with Aramark at MSU.

---

The Hills are Every Thing I am, and Every Thing I Want to Be

I said at the beginning that I didn't want to romanticize. It's not fair to deny the reality of living in Central Appalachia. But, Appalachia is a romantic place. It's the place where I can say, "That barn has been there since before I was born", or tell my sons "Your Mammaw used to live up that holler when she was your age." I know were to set the minnow trap, and that's my Goldenseal patch. I planted that. I didn't have any choice but to stay. It's who I am. I've had the chance to leave for love and adventure, but my love for the hills was to strong. I've let a lot of years slip by, but it's not too late. How does a person fail at farming? The same way you fail at anything. Don't try. As long as you try, you've never really failed.