From the Vault: ‘Now & Then’ – ‘I Never Did Change Things Here’

From the Vault: Now & Then is an appropriate play on words and the title for our occasional dive into the archives of the popular magazine Now & Then, the print forerunner to Appalachian Places. The long-running Now & Then ceased publication in 2017 after more than three decades of documenting Appalachian life through stories, essays, interviews, and photography that continue to resonate with readers today. We feel it is appropriate to highlight a story from the first five years of Now & Then in alignment with our celebration of the first five years of Appalachian Places.

This From the Vault entry revisits Jane Woodside's “Ivan White,” originally published in Now & Then, Volume 5, Issue 1 (1988), themed “Working in Appalachia.” Through the story of a Tennessee farmer who continued to work his land with horses and hand tools long after mechanization transformed much of rural America, Woodside explores themes of self-reliance, tradition, and the social changes reshaping Appalachian communities. More than three decades later, the piece remains a thoughtful reflection on the tension between preserving longstanding ways of life and adapting to a rapidly changing world. Interestingly, the name of the farmer was changed to protect his identity, fearing unwelcome visitors might show up at his farm, curious about his traditional farming methods.

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By Jane Woodside

Ivan White believes in work — hard, physical labor, day in and day out. What the Tennessee farmer does not believe in is change. On a fine early spring day, a visitor is likely to find 77-year-old White, having easily climbed the steep slope of the 2,000-foot mountain behind his home, readying horse and plow for planting one of his hayfields. White lives much the same self-reliant life as his ancestors did, farming 80 mountainous acres without the aid of any mechanized implements.

White was the third of seven children born to a farming couple. After completing the fourth grade at a one-room school, he went to work full time on the family farm. “I guess I started following the horse when I was about 10 years old,” White recollects. He talks about the long and strenuous days of his childhood philosophically. “That’s the way we got it, so. Hard work and plenty to eat and hard work. And being tough enough to stand it.” The community White remembers from his youth was supportive. If neighbors who were sharecropping didn’t raise their own wheat for flour and were temporarily unable to pay for a “poke” at the country store, the Whites shared from their supply. In return, the Whites were free to call on neighbors when they needed help.

Community members rarely gathered to socialize unless they had some task at hand — apple peeling or corn shucking, quilting or bean shelling. “When I growed up, people was good to one another. They liked one another. And somebody was sick or somebody got in a tough spot — they could get help.

“We didn’t live out of store like people do now. So we made what we eat,” White maintains. The family raised potatoes, beans, cabbage and wheat. They kept hogs, cows and horses and made molasses. What they couldn’t produce themselves — sugar, coffee, baking soda and salt — they purchased at the country stores which have since vanished from the valley.

The self-sufficient communities of White’s youth began to change around World War II. “Do you remember the Roosevelt, the President, he throwed us into war?” asks White, obviously not one of Franklin Roosevelt’s biggest fans.

During the war, Appalachian residents left the mountains in large numbers to work in wartime industries. For the first time they became involved in a cash economy and got a taste of the outside world. The introduction of electricity, along with improved transportation and communication, further broke down the isolation of mountain communities. Farm machinery became available. The expanding oil industry provided the fuel to run them. Pesticides and herbicides replaced the old-style organic farming methods. With the encouragement of agricultural extension agents, farmers modernized and mechanized, trading in the horse for the tractor. Old-time farmers had increasing difficulty finding hired hands to help during harvest.

Starting with Franklin Roosevelt, says White, “things began to change. And time speeded up, and it changed the time, and it changed, and it changed everything, you see,” he states, using repetition for emphasis. “And back to that time to worse and worse and worse on up ’til now. And so, times speeded up faster and faster.

“Every president changed. Things got different, more different, more different. Things that you didn’t understand, and programs come up that you didn’t, you know, hear tell of or didn’t know anything about. And so you didn’t know the meaning of it, and a fellow like me was out, you see, on the outside of it. Have to get somebody else that understood it or had the education to explain these words to you that I wouldn’t know.”

In the midst of all this social, economic and cultural change, White has done his best to stand fast. “I never did change things here,” he asserts. He did not purchase farm machinery because “hillside farming and all didn’t suit a tractor. But you could take a pair of mules or a pair of horses and go up on these hillsides.”

White also has some less pragmatic reasons for sticking to the old ways. “I do it ‘cause I was raised that way, and I liked it, and I never did care too much about a tractor.” What he does care about are horses. “Good horses. And good mules. I like that better than anything that I have to work with on the farm. I guess that’s the reason why I like farming as well as I do. ‘Cause I like to work this stock. I mean I train them, and they know what I say. And they mind just like a kid would mind you. And I keep stock that’s got sense.”

The farmer has resented the increasing intrusion of the government into agricultural matters, especially “Set Aside” programs designed to increase farm prices by letting fields lay fallow, thereby decreasing supply. He has refused to participate in such programs. “I just didn’t like the idea of somebody telling me what to do with something that I owned. And if I wanted to let it lay out, it just laid out. So I didn’t draw no check on it or anything. And if I had the notion to farm it, why all right.”

In 1951, White married. He and his wife, Bertha, live in the grey-shingled house that his father built. The Whites are connected to the outside world by their telephone and radio. With marriage came more responsibility than he'd “ever had before or ever thought about.”

Other than his marriage, however, White’s life follows much- the same rhythms as those of his childhood. During the growing season, he plows, sows and reaps with his horse-drawn machinery. He is also proficient at various crafts — blacksmithing, veterinary medicine, and broom making. White has increased his dependency on stores over the years, and he and his wife hire a neighbor’s car once a month and get staples such as cornmeal and flour at a local supermarket.

Working the farm the old way presents some challenges White’s ancestors didn’t have to face. Farmers who specialized in some particular craft and provided their neighbors with implements are gone. Many of the parts White requires to do his work are not only scarce, but even worse, are now considered antiques and sell at exorbitant prices. It is not uncommon for White on his rides into town to pass by the plow points that are essential to his livelihood painted and placed as ornaments by the side of mailboxes. White copes by making what repairs he can, tracking down old implements that mechanized farmers have piled in outbuildings or occasionally finding parts in a nearby hardware store.

Although White has done his best to maintain his traditional culture, the rural community that supported that way of life has crumbled. The old families have scattered. Although some farming continues in the valley, most people travel to nearby cities and towns to work. Some retirees have moved into the valley. Younger people move in, then move back out after a brief stay.

The breakup of the old community with its cooperative ethos has forced White to be even more self-reliant than his father. “You don’t go too far in farming any more. Just what you can do yourself,” he says. “Somebody that’s farming like you, well, they busy when you busy, you see? And them that ain’t busy, you better off without them because they ain’t no count when you get them. They're going to stand around and count the hours and count their money.”

White feels alone in more profound ways. In contrast to the old days, people now “want nothing to do with you. Me and mine and the hell with you. That’s the way they live around here. You feel like if something happened, you got no friends around. Kind of cold, yeah.”

White plans to continue rising early, working long days in the field, tending to his animals, and practicing his crafts as long as he is able. For Ivan White, life and hard work are inextricably linked.

Ivan White is a pseudonym designed to protect the farmer’s privacy so that visitors interested in old-time farming methods don’t prevent him from plowing his fields and raising his crops.

Jane Woodside is not a pseudonym. She is a folklorist and Research Associate at the Center for Appalachian Studies and Services. (Woodside later served as editor of Now & Then from 1995-2004.)