USA 2008: 2 - Old Rice Farm and Snug Hollow Farm

We had arrived in Latonia, Kentucky to stay with Victoria, Jay - and four-month-old Darvik, who we hadn't met until then. Here's the boy!

Victoria took the photo below.

Our great excitement was the trip to see the land Jay and Victoria had bought near to Irvine, Kentucky. First, load the all-important ATV to be towed south. We took two cars as Victoria and Jay were presenting one of them to Jay's daughter Jessica who is studying at UK (no, not the country but the University of Kentucky) in Lexington.

We picked up Jessica in Lexington and went to Denny's for breakfast. Here's Jessica with Jay.

We arrived at the land. In this part of the country it's a 'holler' - a valley leading off the main river valley. The house is over a century old. At the moment it has a family living in it, but at some point will be used by Vicky and Jay when they develop the land as they intend with accommodation for tourists.

The name associated with the farm some years back was Rice. It is still called 'the Rice place' by local people. So Jay and Victoria have decided to know it and the little valley as Old Rice Farm. This raises another interesting point. Victoria's mom was a Thomas with links running back to Rhys ap Thomas in Wales in the late middle ages. Rice, as the farmholder's surname, might well stem from a corruption of "ap Rhys" - son of Rhys. It might be a coincidence as their are many thousands of people with Welsh descent in the USA - but it's an interesting one.

March means the trees are still largely bare, the fallen leaves cover much ground. Heavy rain had swept away part of the main track up through the holler. At our visit the flood had subsided.

Victoria look sat home in this kind of country. It's a project long dreamed of. Now the enjoyment is here. The cabin is their weekend home - or will be when it's finished!

Victoria and Jay talked to a local carpenter, Brady, about building them a cabin. At first he wasn't keen as he thought they would be city folk telling him what to do all the time. When they said he should build what he thought was right for the place, he was happier. Up it went. A veranda stretched along the front, another along one side. It made sense. It was the sort of cabin that looked good in this place. The neighbour who sold them the land came by. He thought it good, too.

Getting the details right is essential. Hand-crafted ironwork and rough-cut timber is within the tradition. Water will come from a spring - Vicky is just rinsing a pan here. Communications are assigned to Kentucky Bell - ring it for meal times, baby needs changing or the creeks a-flooding.

I don't know what the Kentuckian is for loo. Here it's a hole with a shed on top (got a polished toilet seat, though). Don't assume all Kentucky folk only have one of these - most of them have spruced-up porcelain. This one's just spruce.

Now for the inside. One spacious room downstairs, one ditto upstairs. There's a heater, a table and a few chairs at the moment. Not much else. Electrics and some plumbing will be the next job, and our backwoodsmen and woman hope to be in by Christmas. For the weekend visits, that is.

Below is seen the approach to the cabin and the view back away from it from the side veranda. Can we call the travellers on the right 'pioneers on the trail'?

Victoria had arranged for us to stay that night at Snug Hollow Farm. This is a B&B establishment which is very, very tucked away in another side valley just a couple of miles away. To reach it we had to drive up a long, narrow road up the valley. Farm land lies in the bottom and woodland clothes the high slopes which end, as behind Old Rice Farm, in a layer of cliffs right round the valley. A gate has to be opened to go further, then closed behind you. The road twists and climbs slowly. At last Snug Hollow Farm is reached - below. We were staying in the cabin seen to the right front here. The Farm appears in recent map supplements on the Appalachians in National Geographic - one of the very few to be included in that area.

The woodman's skills are dominant in shaping the valley's architecture. Back at Old Rice Farm they're going to lead the way in defining the feeling of the place. That's all-important in satisfying visitors wanting to savour the beauty of the area, running as it does along a sliver of the Appalachians. Daniel Boone found his route across the mountains from the eastern colonies in 1775 on the eve of the American War of Independence. Native Americans from the Shawnee people had been defeated in preventing new settlement and conceded land now known as Kentucky after a bloody series of battles. Boone and his fellow pioneers founded a town called Boonesborough close to Lexington, only twenty-five miles from Old Rice Farm and its valley. Within a quarter century some 200,000 settlers had crossed through the Cumberland Gap, opening up the first new state and one which was never a colony of England. Pioneering would dominate the culture of the western migration for a hundred years.

What Americans call a 'cabin' would be a cottage in Britain - even a 'small house'. It is often more towards the luxury end of the wilderness market: homey (= homely in Brit-speak) but well provided for. You could shoot your own deer or catch some fish - and there will be a good freezer to put them in. Old Rice Farm is likely to be rather different: a set of smaller cabins, more basic in content.

Sitting out on the veranda: the Stevens family taking it easy while Jessica celebrates her birthday opening presents.

We all breakfasted together the next morning in the main farm house. Barbara Napier and her helper serve vegetarian breakfasts to guests. We sat with a young couple from Louisville who had been staying a few days in the main house. Barbara took the photo below and sent a copy to post here. It was a delightful stay in a very beautiful, peaceful place.

For some more information about Snug Hollow Farm, click here

The Appalachians isn't all log cabins and wild life. This is what is left of one of the iron works which used to operate near Beria and Irvine. Red River Furnace smelted iron for a period in the nineteenth century. It took some finding. Even though it's an important local monument it wasn't well signposted, so we took in a little more of the countryside than we planned before tracking it down. Worth it, though.

Along the riverside next to John Roebling's famous suspension bridge is the story of Cincinnati shown in a series of wall paintings.

A few miles from where Victoria and Jay live in Latonia is Covington, across the river from Cincinnati. In that town lived Daniel Carter Beard in a house beside the Licking River which flows in to the Ohio close to the Roebling Bridge across to the main city. Dan Beard founded the Sons of Daniel Boone in 1905 with similarities to Robert Baden Powell's Boy Scouts, set up in England two years later. Both aimed at teaching boys the spirit and skills of outdoor life as a means of character building and self-reliance. Beard's movement merged with the Boy Scouts in 1910 and he is regarded as one of the key founders of scouting in the USA. Both these movements also drew on the writings of Ernest Thompson Seton about wilderness life. The house and a commemorative statue and plaque record Beard's work. By the Roebling Bridge are
the series of just-completed murals. One shows Dan Beard and some scouts. His house still has a patch of wooded ground at its side where he must have mused about the ideas behind the Sons of Daniel Boone ... the pioneer who crossed the mountains close to the land Jay and Vicky bought.