“Under my basement stairs, there’s a toilet, and that toilet was for the help. They had to go to the bathroom in the basement because white people did not want them using their restroom.” 

If you’ve spent time in older Southern homes, there’s a good chance you’ve encountered a toilet like mine. Tucked under the basement stairs of our 1927 foursquare in Roanoke, Virginia, it’s where the help used the bathroom, and the help, back then, was almost always Black. 

I wince whenever I walk by it, on the way to our basement fridge or getting Christmas decorations. It’s a grim reminder of a mean-spirited era, one none of us created but we all inherited. The folks at Practical Preservation podcast recently invited me to talk about how we can face the full histories of our homes — the good stuff and the grim stuff.

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“The trend I see in preservation is to acknowledge all the history,” Danielle Groshong-Keperling said during our interview. She’s the host of this weekly preservationpalooza, which covers everything from old smokehouses to historic gardens. It’s been named as a great podcast for historic preservation fans by The National Trust for Historic Preservation. 

We also chatted about my family homeplace and tough choices we make to save money during the restoration process. When replacing long-gone steel casement windows, I once replicated the originals using wood rather than steel. “We took it as close as we could,” I said, “without going broke and having to sell our cars!”

If you’ve ever restored an historic home, we’d love to hear about your trials, joys, and discoveries. Please be sure to leave a comment below.

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The post Facing The Full Histories of Our Homes first appeared on The Revivalist.

I didn’t even know I had a cousin Edna until my mid-thirties. As my interest in (perhaps obsession with) our old family farm grew, my grandma said I had to meet Edna and her twin sister Elma. They were raised in Stewartsville, Virginia, near the farm my husband and I now own. 

When I first visited the twins in 2008, they regaled me with old stories for three hours — who was kind, who was difficult, who plowed their land stark nekkid in the height of summer!

These ladies remembered it all. 

Sadly, Elma has since passed, but Edna is going strong and on tech’s cutting edge. At age 101, she began making TikTok-worthy videos, in which she sings tunes learned from older relatives. This one — “The Texas Rangers” — was taught to her when my great, great grandfather William Byrd Ferguson visited.

“That night after supper, we sat by the fireplace, and Byrd Ferguson sang this song and patted his foot to keep time.” 

This man came of age during the Civil War and remembered hiding his daddy — a soldier who deserted his post more than once to help his destitute family. When the military came looking for Byrd’s father, the family would spirit him off to the woods until the search party gave up and moved on.

To have a first-person account of Byrd’s life is downright remarkable, and to have Edna alive, kicking, and recording her memories is a true gift. Please consider sharing her video because this lovely lady deserves to be internet famous!

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The post Cousin Edna, Age 101, Sings The Texas Rangers first appeared on The Revivalist.

Let’s be honest. A lot of tiny houses look like they were thrown together from Home Depot remnants. But the folks at Getaway, a vacation rental company with 16 outposts nationwide, take a different approach. They build style-forward structures that are more MOMA than modular home.

In their location outside Charlottesville, buildings are clad with blackened wood, which is both chic and cozy. Inside, an enormous picture window defines the space, bringing the outdoors indoors. Getaway cabins are finished with neutral tones and amenities like crisp white linens, micro-kitchens, heat/AC, and their own wee libraries.

This Virginia outpost is special, said Getaway spokesperson Jordan Sweat, because it is located just 30 minutes from Shenandoah National Park. And nothing has been overlooked. From a simple self check-in to doggy bowls, Getaway covers details so visitors can clear their minds and reconnect with nature in a beautiful space.

This was previously published in Virginia Living. 

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The post A Rocky Road to the Dearing Homeplace first appeared on The Revivalist.

“…we have loved creating an entirely new palette based on foods we both love.” 

— Katlin Kazmi, coowner of the Pakalachian

Comfort foods from Appalachia and Pakistan come together in this Abingdon-based food truck with a decidedly down-home vibe. “It’s all very familiar, like mac ‘n cheese, on the one hand,” says Katlin Kazmi, coowner of the Pakalachian, with her husband Mohsin. “But we use the unfamiliar, too, for a whole new culinary experience.”

Think fried green tomatoes meet pakoras—or pot pie samosas.

Katlin and Mohsin, who met as students at Virginia Tech, married in 2014 and soon began blending the flavors of their childhoods in a home-cooking mashup. Mohsin, the son of Pakistani parents, grew up in New Jersey, while Katlin is from smalltown Castlewood, Virginia, near the Kentucky and Tennessee borders.

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Story by Madeline Mayhood

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The post Virginia Living: The Pakalachian first appeared on The Revivalist.

“Silas and Polly Dearing took up land in Bedford County near Stewartsville…They arrived there in the fall of the year and only had time to build a lean-to before very cold weather came…Without the help of neighbors…they might not have survived until spring.”

— Maxinne Kitts, my great aunt and author of “Decedents of Silas Dearing”

Y’all might remember that, though it was never part of our life plan, my husband and I recently purchased a large farm in Bedford, Virginia. We now hold the deed to 225 acres of rolling hills with stunning Blue Ridge views plus the remnants of a farmhouse that has occupied my imagination for most of my adult life.

Until recently, all its doors and windows were boarded, but just before we bought the place, one door was opened by someone else, probably a vandal. It was unnerving to learn some hoodlum broke into the house, but it wasn’t much of a surprise. The place is dilapidated and, at this point, a bit spooky, making it a favorite haunt of bored teens. And there was an upside to having one door open — we got to see inside for the first time ever. We were stunned by what we found.

Beginning in 1779, Treasury Land Warrants were issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia for “waste and unappropriated land,” meaning, of course, former tribal land. Among The Commonwealth’s stated goals — “encourage the migration of foreigners hither.”

First, some context. My family occupied this farmhouse for a very long time. After being cleared of native people, the surrounding land was purchased from the Commonwealth of Virginia in 1850 by my great, great, great grandfather, Silas Dearing. He was likely the first European to own it. Age 45 at the time, Silas was a German immigrant who came to this country when he was very young. At least that’s what his great grandchildren told my great aunt Maxine when she was doing genealogical research in the 1960s and 70s.

Old timers also said that, after securing the land, Silas and his wife Polly built a lean-to, finishing it just before a devastating winter. The freezing temperatures might have killed them, oral history suggests, had it not been for kindly neighbors. Once snow melted and the ground thawed, the couple built the first part of their house. It was just one or two rough-hewn rooms with a loft. 

Dearing homeplace in 1889 with two-story extension on left and servant shack in the right foreground.

Silas must have done well as a farmer because he managed to add a two-story extension to the house and purchase several human beings. This chilling reality — that people were held captive on our land as forced labor — is difficult to absorb, but we’re trying to face it with eyes wide open. After Emancipation in 1863, some former slaves stayed on the farm as servants. A census from seven years last suggests that as many as seven Black and mixed-race people lived in the crude, one-room shack that abutted the farmhouse.

It’s worth noting that the mixed-race folks were almost certainly related to my ancestors. (More on that in future posts.) I mention it now because it means my family looked out the windows of their comfy home — with three fireplaces and plaster covering its log walls — to see people who were part of their daily lives, some of whom were their relatives, living in nearly the same conditions as their livestock.

I often hear folks say, “Well, it was a different era,” or no one living today is responsible for the past. Sure, those things are true. But when I stand on our tallest hillside, next to Silas and Polly’s ornate gravestone, trying to figure out where Black people are buried because their graves were not marked, I can’t pretend my ancestors were a mere reflection of their time. They had a choice in how they lived, and in this case, they chose so poorly.

The Dearing homeplace today with the chimney of the former two-story extension in the foreground.

Fast forward a century. My grandfather’s generation was the last to be raised on the farm. By the 1960s, no one resided there, and by the mid-80s, the two-story extension was demolished and the remainder of the house boarded up. The servant’s shack collapsed soon after and area youth began breaking inside and vandalizing the place.

Parlor of the Dearing homeplace.

Devil worship has been a favorite theme of the vandals.

Kitchen of the Dearing homeplace.

And we can’t help but wonder what Snoop Dogg and the fellas from Metallica would think of their handiwork.

Stairs leading from the Dearing homeplace’s living room to its loft.

A few furniture pieces are still inside the house, though most are badly damaged.

My brother Mike and his wife Erin inspect the loft inside the Dearing homeplace.

All told, the house doesn’t look like much, but with foot-thick log walls and a roof that’s holding, it’s surprisingly sound. Over the next year or so, we’ll restore the existing farmhouse and expand it, turning it into a vacation rental and a retreat for friends and relatives. 

Along the way, we’ll dig through its historic rubble — both literal and figurative — which is daunting but also important. Nowhere means more to me than this farmhouse. To truly love it is to try and understand its rich and complicated past.

Remains of the servant shack at the Dearing homeplace.

The post Inside Our New, Old Farmhouse first appeared on The Revivalist.

“We as humans need to address and acknowledge that our actions are changing bear behavior and causing conflicts. Managing our habits, understanding how they impact bears and adjusting our activities will solve bear-human conflicts, not hunting.” 

— Change.org petition with over 8,000 signatures

After a decades-long ban on black bear hunting in North Carolina’s bear sanctuaries, residents there will be permitted to hunt in three different bear sanctuaries later this year.  

North Carolina’s Wildlife Resources Commission voted to overturn the state’s bear hunting ban in designated sanctuaries that was first enacted in 1971 when the black bear population was fewer than 1,000. Since then, the species’ numbers skyrocketed, and the black bear population is now estimated to be at 15,000. The University of North Carolina Charlotte Urban Institute said that over the last 30 years the population has expanded at an estimated rate of 6 percent per year. 

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Story by Shirin Ali

The post The Hill: N.C. Black Bear Hunts Resume After 51 Years first appeared on The Revivalist.

“Sure, the likelihood of urinating near a highly venomous serpent nosedives when it’s 20 degrees outside. But colder weather also deters many folks from venturing past the couch…”

It’s really hard to stop peeing.

Even when you realize a timber rattler is slithering just inches from your bare buttocks, it takes some real restraint to pause the stream and pull up your muggy trousers. I know firsthand.

Last July, my wife and I had a random Saturday off. She’s a chef, so we almost never get a free weekend together. When we do get time to explore, it’s usually a random weekday when most 9-to-5’ers are in the office. All this to say, we had yet to witness the pandemic-driven outdoor boom until we pulled up to find a historically overlooked trailhead in North Carolina’s Pisgah National Forest teeming with long-haired brahs and fetid summer campers. We let out a collective grunt.

Intent on squeezing all the life we could out of the day, we started hiking anyway. But as soon as we gained momentum, 20-somethings in sandals and couples with toddling kiddos would round the corner, forcing us to step off the trail. The hike continued like a UPS delivery route—stop and start, stop and start—and as the miles dragged on, I could feel my bladder squirm.

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Story by Lauren Stepp

The post Blue Ridge Outdoors: Why Winter Hiking Is Better first appeared on The Revivalist.

I’m Mark Lynn Ferguson, the founder of The Revivalist, and I have some pretty big news. And when I say big, I mean about half the size of Monaco.

In a strange twist of fate, I just ended up buying a large farm in Bedford, Virginia that was founded by my great, great, great grandparents, Mary and Silas Dearing. This short video fills in the details and shares what comes next as my husband and I begin to restore the Dearing homeplace.

The post A New Day: Restoring My Family Homeplace first appeared on The Revivalist.

Lore’s proposed new city would generate its own power through renewable energy – its central power would have a photovoltaic roof. It would grow at least some of its own food through aeroponic farms. It would be designed so that almost everything – work, school, amenities – would be no more than 15 minutes away.

Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson have been to space (maybe). Elon Musk wants to go to Mars.

Another billionaire has more earthbound ideas. Marc Lore wants to build a new city, a $400 billion eco-friendly metropolis that makes use of all the latest technology and would be the “most open, most fair and most inclusive city in the world.”

He also might build it somewhere in Appalachia.

Now do I have your attention?

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Story by Dwayne Yancey

The post Cardinal News: Should a billionaire build a new city in Appalachia? first appeared on The Revivalist.