2010 Event Schedule

See the days of pioneer Appalachia brought to life by local families as the Foxfire Museum & Heritage Center hosts two days of living history, with adults and children dressed in 1800s period costumes, showcasing almost every facet of life in these mountains 200 years ago. Cooking simple food in a stone fireplace, crafting wood furniture with hand tools, blacksmithing in a coal-fired forge, one-room schoolhouse classes covering the Appalachian “three Rs” (Readin’, ‘Ritin’, and Religion), short church services, a quilting bee, plenty of old-time kids’ games (everyone is invited to join in), live traditional music — all of these activities (and likely more) bring the Foxfire Museum to life, thanks to the parents, children, and friends of the Rabun Christian Home Educators, reenacting the unsophisticated and strenuous lives of the hardy settlers that created our homes within these majestic mountains.

Hours are 9:30am—4:30pm both days. Regular admission for either day is $6.00 for adults, children 10 and under free. Friday is Home-School Day, when home-school families receive a discounted admission price of $3 per person. Rabun County residents are invited to attend the event on Saturday free of charge (with local ID). On Saturday, there will be a shuttle van operating from the parking lots of Mountain City Church of God and Blue Heights Baptist Church, just off of US 441 at the lower end of Cross Street, so that the Museum's parking areas can accomodate visitors with mobility or endurance issues.

All proceeds will help support the Museum's mission of preserving the heritage of Southern Appalachia and making it available to visitors and students for generations to come.

**NEW LOCATION THIS YEAR** Join Foxfire from 10–4 at the Rabun County Civic Center in downtown Clayton, Georgia (just a few miles south of the old location in Dillard). Meet students who help create The Foxfire Magazine and talk to some of the ‘contacts’ - the folks whose lives are presented therein. Watch demonstrations of many traditional skills and talk with the folks who enjoy keeping these skills alive. Crafters on hand are usually displaying pottery, wood carving, handmade musical instruments, blacksmithing, spinning and weaving, folk art, basket weaving, cornshuck dolls, coopering, broom-making, and much, much more. Lunch will be available from various vendors on the grounds, there will be games for the kids, and live bluegrass and gospel music from local artists on stage throughout the day. The Festival’s massive one-of-a-kind raffle often features as many as 80-100 unique and interesting items donated by area businesses, usually including gift certificates, decorative knickknacks, paintings, pottery, and much more. Come learn about traditional skills, enjoy the music and fun, and help support the students of Rabun County and the preservation of their Southern Appalachian heritage. Admission is $4 for ages 11 & up, $2 for ages 6—10, 5 & under free.

All proceeds from the raffle and gate admissions help to fund Foxfire’s student work programs right here in Rabun County, helping our students further their education and work experience while allowing them to build stronger ties to their community and heritage.

Museum Raffle for a Max Woody Rocking Chair

Renowned traditional chairmaker Max Woody has donated a hand-made rocking chair (shown at right) to be raffled by Foxfire. The chair was made by Max and his son Myron, and is made of red oak wood and constructed using traditional methods that employ no metal fasteners. The seat of the chair was hand-woven by Max's wife, Pat. The raffle drawing will be held on April 10, 2010, during the Museum's Living History Days event (see schedule above for more info on the event). Proceeds from the raffle will go directly to fund improvements to the Museum facility in Mountain City, GA. Tickets are available at the Museum Gift Shop (200 Foxfire Lane, Mountain City, GA) until shortly before the drawing, and online through our Shop here through April 8 (with some conditions). While anyone is welcome to purchase tickets on the rocker, and you do not have to be present at the drawing to win the chair, please understand that we can not ship this chair to you. If you win the rocker, you will be solely responsible for claiming it in person at the Museum office in Mountain City, GA.

Max Woody, a sixth-generation chairmaker, and his son Myron, have been featured by Foxfire numerous times during the 1990s, including articles in The Foxfire Magazine and 1993's Foxfire 10, and Max and Pat have been present at most of the Fall Heritage Festival events of the 2000s. For more background and information about Max and his work, the following is a condensed version of an article that appeared in a 2001 issue of Foxfire News, our annual newsletter.

"‘Tis a gift to be simple, ‘tis a gift to be free." Most of us live our lives and hope to find moments of simplicity and freedom interspersed throughout. Then there are those who have found a different way—those whose entire life is lived in simplicity and freedom. Max Woody belongs in this group.

Having "sawdust genes" on both sides of his family tree, Max was
destined to take up the family trade, learning the bulk of his skills
from his grandfather, and he still uses many of his ancestors'
tools for his work or for demonstrations.

Max Woody has created a life for himself that allows him the freedom to create beauty on a daily basis, and make a living doing it. Max is a chair-maker who lives in a log cabin in the mountains. He turns native hardwoods—wild cherry, maple, black walnut, oak, and ash—into some of the most sought-after ladder-back and rocking chairs in the country. This is what Max Woody does; this is who Max Woody is.

Max was introduced to Foxfire Magazine readers in 1992, and was featured in Foxfire 10 in 1993. Since that time, he has been featured in many regional and national publications—Southern Living magazine, the Knoxville News-Sentinel newspaper, and the nationally syndicated Stanly News and Press American Profile magazine, to name a few. He was also videotaped for Home & Garden TV’s Modern Masters series. In spite of years of recognition as a true artisan and keeper of his craft, Max has maintained consistency in the quality of his handmade furniture and his uncomplicated outlook on life.

Max Woody did not wake up one day and decide to make a chair. Woodworking goes back six generations in the Woody family, beginning with Henry Woody, Max’s great-great-great-grandfather. His maternal ancestors, the Arringtons, were in the business of cabinet-making and carpentry. Having "sawdust genes" on both sides, Max was destined to take up the trade.

"...the nearer I got to Rabun Gap, the faster I drove to get there."
Max Woody is a regualr demonstrator at the Fall Heritage Festival,
and doesn't often pass up a chance to demonstrate and share
his experiences with vistors at other Foxfire events at the Museum.

Max’s father passed away when Max was fifteen years old, so he learned the bulk of his woodworking skills under the teaching of his grandfather, Martin Woody. In the beginning, the Woody family worked with non-electric powered equipment, like his great-grandfather Authur Woody’s spring-pole wood lathe, powered by the pump of the foot. Max now uses a combination of old and new ways to build his chairs. He uses electric-powered equipment in his shop, but all his chairs are made using wooden pegs in their construction. No nails or metal of any sort are used in any of his chairs. Even though it is no longer used in the shop for building chairs, Max still uses his great-grandfather’s lathe for demonstrations and workshops to preserve the history of his craft.

One of Max’s high school teachers once deemed him to be "the least likely of anyone to ever amount to anything." Despite that prediction, he has built chairs for people all over the United States, as well as several foreign countries. With help from his sister, Margaret, or his wife, Pat, Max is typically able to hand-build two rockers or six ladder-back chairs in a week. At this pace, working "half-days," he estimates that it will take him five years to build all the chairs for which he now has orders. Max declares that he believes himself to be "the happiest person that graduated school that year."

Max’s system of building chairs for his customers adds to the simplicity of his life. All of his chairs are built giving careful attention to detail and are built one by one. Chairs are built to the customer’s specifications—the kind of wood, rocker or straight chair, how tall, how wide, arms or no arms. The list goes on and on. Max prefers his customers to come by his shop in Pleasant Gardens for a custom fit (and a visit). Even though every chair is built with a certain person in mind, anyone ordering a chair—be it a "Woody Rocker," a rocking chair Max designed, or a straight ladder-back chair —has to stand in line. He builds the chairs as he takes the orders, never preferring one customer over another. Even the world-renowned evangelist Billy Graham had to wait his turn. Occasionally, time is taken out to build a chair to be used to raise money for one of the many organizations Max contributes his time to.

Max has been a long-time contributor to Foxfire, both as a contact for magazine articles and financially, donating chairs to raise money for the student summer work program and the Foxfire music program. His belief in the Foxfire program has been strong from the beginning. "One of the greatest things that ever happened to me was Foxfire. When I first got involved with it, the nearer I got to Rabun Gap, the faster I drove to get there. It was so fulfilling." He never seems to focus on how much he’s giving, but on the joy it brings him to give.

His satisfaction with the path of life he has chosen is evident when Max declares his philosophy on life. "I have more money than I need, not as much as I want. My debts are all paid and I can go out and pay cash for anything that I need, not everything that I want. I have work I enjoy doing and people that I enjoy working for. I am, of all people, most blessed. All my days are good, some are just better than others."

The Foxfire Book of Winemaking

Our Newest Release, September 2008

Taken from student author Kelly Shropshire's introduction:

"Blackberry wine is good for
the tummyache and it's a
good cure for diarrhea, too.
My mother used to keep it all
the time. It only took a little—
I'd say a quarter of a cup."
—Mary Pitts

For many people of the Appalachian mountains, winemaking is as much a part of their culture as the mountains themselves. Made from the fruits and berries native to the land, homemade wine has been used for everything from curing stomachaches to cooking and, of course, just plain drinking.

Many early settlers came to the South and brought with them the ancient methods of winemaking. Despite admonitions against the evils of strong drink by Bible Belt preachers, winemaking caught on. Over the years, many unique winemaking methods, as well as types, have evolved. There are those like Lawton Brooks, who use the natural yeast on the fruit itself to make their muscadine wine. And others, like Granny Toothman, who refuse to make their wine in anything but a stone jar. Blackberry, dandelion, corncob—the types of Appalachian wines are as diverse as the people who make them.

"Wine is the most wholesome
beverage in the world. That
goes back to the Bible.
The Lord gave Paul grapes
and told him to make wine."
—Bill Park

We first became interested in winemaking during preparation of The Foxfire Book of Appalachian Cookery. We began learning of mountain people who still made their own wines at home from the fruit they had grown themselves. Here was something we’d never done before—a documentation of winemaking in the Southern Appalachian mountains. Toting tape recorders and cameras, we set out on our interviews—and we usually found ourselves directly involved in the winemaking process. We gathered grapes for Bill Park, crushed blackberries for Harry Pitts, and gutted a pumpkin for Effie Lord. We found that the various types of wine were endless—as John Bulgin puts it, “You can make wine out of anything but a rock.”

Now, we offer to you our finished product. This is a book for the amateur winemaker interested in learning the skill, as well as for the experienced winemaker interested in unearthing the roots of winemaking in this region. And most important, in the tradition of Foxfire, this is a book intended to preserve a small piece of our heritage and to pass along the traditions of the people of the Southern Appalachian mountains.