By Stephen Smoot
Last April, with one of West Virginia’s most famous foraging crops in full growth, the Lumberport Farm Club, or Progressive Farmers Club of Jones Run Community, held its annual ramp fundraising dinner.
Few foods have a deeper tradition in the state than ramps, a food enjoyed by Cherokee Indians as both an early spring fresh treat and a useful medicine. On this day, the club’s ladies and officers joined efforts to provide potatoes, freshly cut and cooked ramps, brown beans, cornbread, and homemade desserts.
People from all walks of life, from fellow farmers to candidates for office, filed into the building to enjoy a down home feast.
“It’s been going on since the 70s,” said Denzil Morris, the organizational treasurer. He explained that the mission of the club lies in holding “meetings once a month to go over things farmers need and do, and share what’s going on with farming.”
The club usually holds its meetings in the Jones Run Community Building, which has its own history stretching back over 60 years. According to the club’s flier, “young women of rural Lumberport area, including Jones Run, Reeses Run, Shinn Run, and Nolan Run recognized the need for an Extension Homemakers’ organization.”
They founded the Four Creeks Homemakers’ Club, which 10 years later raised money and put in hard work to construct the building used today.
In 2015, the Progressive Farmers Club of Jones Run Community started offering “educational materials, programming, and fun activities,” including agriculture classes and expert presentations.
Morris stated that between 30 and 40 come to each meeting, most of them involved in cattle and related fields, but others come to learn about more effective gardening.
Cattle farmers need more support than ever, he added, explaining that the cost of farming continues to rise. “There’s a lot more to it than going out and feeding cattle. It takes work, time, and everything else.”
One of the recent programs featured by the club allowed cattle marketing experts from Ohio State to share information.
Carol Minnix, who during the dinner helped to man the kitchen, explained that the club provides a forum where they can “have farmers come in and bounce ideas off of each other. It’s a place for people to come to gather, socialize, and learn.”
“We could use some younger people,” said Tom Harrison, a long time member and vice president for the club. Minnix said also that “it would be a good thing for the future for the FFA to be involved.”
The club would like to see a diverse membership that engages in widely different types of farming. Harrison added “we’re always looking for new members,” and said that they welcome people from all different fields of farming. “If they have something to promote or some kind of class, we welcome all of that.”
Preserving and promoting a mutually supportive farming community, however, remains paramount. As Greg Marshall explained “we keep tabs on each other.” Harrison said “Greg is a leader of a lot of what we have going on.”
As in every agricultural organization, women have assumed bigger roles in advancing organizational missions. “Women are the engine that push the thing,” said Harrison, who pointed out how they ran the ramp dinner.
“Something else we’ve done,” Harrison shared “is create a little public library.” At the Jones Run Community Building, the club took an idea formed by local farmer Becky Osborne and converted a small storage building into an open lending library. Although Osborne contracted cancer and did not live long enough to see it come to fruition, the group named it “Becky’s Lending Library.”
From the floor to the ceiling, the club stuffed the structure with a variety of types of fiction and non fiction books, kept for the use of the community.
With renewed interest in small scale farming of diverse crops, the emergence of new techniques, and the increasing appeal of homesteading, the Progressive Farmers Club serves as an ideal forum and community to serve as a resource no matter how experienced a person is who wants to work on the land.