Oconaluftee
At the Pioneer Farmstead in Oconaluftee you can get a glimpse of what daily farm life was like in the Smokies. Besides the ongoing kitchen tasks, chores included tending cows and chickens, cutting and stacking hay, building and repairing barns and wagons, and a thousand other things.
Self-sufficiency and individuality were strong traits in the Smokies. Each person had to do a variety of tasks, and each family member had to help or complement the others. Just as Milas Messer (see pages [90-91]) exemplified these traits personally, the Pioneer Farmstead at Oconaluftee on the North Carolina side of the park represents them structurally. Various buildings have been brought here to create a typical Smokies farmstead on the banks of the Oconaluftee River.
In the summer and fall farm animals roam about the farmstead and a man and a woman carry out daily chores to give you an idea of what the pioneers had to do just to exist. At first these Jacks- and Jills-of-all-trades had no stores to go to. They made their own tools, built their own houses and barns and outbuildings, raised their own food, made their own clothes, and doctored themselves, for the most part.
The log house here is a particularly nice one, for John Davis built it with matched walls. He split the logs in half and used the halves on opposite walls. The two stone chimneys are typical of the earliest houses. Davis’ sons, then 8 and 4, collected rocks for the chimneys with oxen and a sled.
Behind the house is an essential building, the meathouse. Here meat, mostly pork, was layered on the shelf at the far end and covered with a thick coating of salt. After the meat had cured, it was hung from poles, which go from end to end, to protect it from rodents. In the early years especially, bear meat and venison hung alongside the pork.
Apples were a big part of the settlers’ diet in a variety of forms: cider, vinegar, brandy, sauces, and pies. And of course they ate them, too, right off the tree. The thick rock walls on the lower floor of the apple house protect the fruit from freezing in winter. The summer apples were kept on the log-wall second floor.
The Indians’ maize, or corn, was the most essential crop on the typical Smokies farmstead. Besides being used as food for livestock, it was the staple for the pioneers themselves. With corn they made corn bread, hoe cakes, corn meal mush, and even a little moonshine. The harvested crop was kept dry in a corncrib until used.
As the pioneers became more settled and turned into farmers, they built barns to provide shelter for their cows, oxen, sheep, and horses, plus some of their farming equipment and hay. The large, log barn at the Oconaluftee Farmstead is unusual. It is a drovers’ barn—a hotel for cattle and other animals driven to market. The barn is located close to its original site.
Most farmers had a small blacksmith shop where they could bang out a few tools, horseshoes, hinges, and, later on, parts for farm machinery. These structures were not very sophisticated; they just had to provide a little shelter so the fire could be kept going and to protect the equipment—and to keep the smith dry—during inclement weather.
The springhouse served not only as the source of water but as a refrigerator. Here milk, melons, and other foods were kept, many of them in large crocks. The water usually ran through the springhouse in one half of a hollowed out log, or in a rock-lined trench. On hot, muggy days, a child sent to the springhouse for food or water might tarry a moment or two to enjoy the air conditioning.
The farmstead is open all year, but the house is open only from May to November.