|
Home
What is the
Colporteurs Program?
Colporteurs & Events
Join
About Us
Contact Us
Links
|
Granny Mae Series
 The 2008-2009 Colporteurs-in-Residence Series is
named in honor of Granny Mae Rhoades. Mae Rhoades was a native of backwoods
Arkansas. She lived through hard and joyful times “down on the farm” and
in the cotton patches of the American South. Granny mae lived her married life
in Oklahoma sharing love and a wealth of knowledge about gardening and
cooking with her family, church, and community.
Until she passed away on November 5, 2007 at the age of
ninety-three her energy and humor infected everyone around her.
 Justin Pitts
(Spring 2008)
April 25th-26th
Justin Pitts will be at the Ethnoecology Lab (Room 105A Baldwin
Hall) at the University of Georgia telling stories
and talking to classes on Friday, and on Saturday he will speak at
the
11th annual SSL Seed Swap.
Mr. Justin Pitts is a seventh
generation Mississippi farmer. He grew up on a farm that
raised Pineywoods cattle,
Gulf Coast sheep, and
Spanish
goats. Justin Pitts is currently farming using the rare breeds of his
youth and sells his products to health food stores and at
farmers’ markets. Mr. Pitts' knowledge of Gulf Coast food is
impressive and he is reputed to be the last man in
Mississippi to log with Pineywoods oxen.
Accompanying Justin Pitts on his visit will be
David Shoemate, a farmer and attorney from Mississippi who is
interested in researching and preserving Southern history.
 Tom Brown
(Fall 2008)
October 23-25th
Tom Brown,
an old timey apple collector, will spend the Thursday and Friday
at the University of Georgia speaking to classes and telling stories
in the Ethnoecology
lab (Room 105A Baldwin Hall). There will also be a public lecture at Common Ground on Thursday evening.
Tom spent his early childhood on a small
farm in rural Iredell County, NC. He has many fond childhood
memories of he and his brother making cider from their McLean apples
and his mother making delicious pies from their Pound apples.
Gradually the old apples became distant memories as he attended
college at NC State University, took a job with a paper company in
Richmond, Virginia and still later worked for a tobacco company in
Winston-Salem, NC.
Tom and his wife always loved farmers markets and they even plan the
sequence of their vacations to hit key farmers markets in other
states. Every Saturday they visited the farmers market at the Dixie
Classic Fairgrounds in Winston-Salem. Tom was fascinated at the
wonderful varieties of heritage apples one man brought the market
every year. He learned that there was a lost heritage apple variety
from his area of Frosyth County, the Harper Seedling. This initiated
his search and eventually lead to his finding five very rare apple varieties in his childhood county of
Iredell.
This reignited his interest and the search was on. In about ten
years he has found over 800 heritage apple varieties in six southern
states. Once found he donates grafted trees to preservation
orchards, shares cuttings for grafting with people who sell heritage
apple trees (sending these from Alabama to Alaska), and also sells
apple trees himself. His goal is to return these valuable trees to
production so they might be enjoyed by future generations. Now at
least 300 of the varieties he has found are either in preservation
orchards are being sold by heritage apple nurseries. His current
pursuit is establishing preservation orchards in many counties
containing heritage apples representative of what was in the county
100 years ago.
Visit Tom Brown's website.
|
