As harvest season wraps up among most farmers in East Tennessee, locally we had some generous volunteers to host some hands-on educational exhibits at one of our local elementary schools on October 20.
Luttrell Elementary welcomed the 42 volunteers to teach the students about a variety of agricultural practices.

Thirty-five quilts from hand stitched to machine designed adorned the Union County Museum upper floor for the 2022 Union County Heritage Festival Quilt Show on October 1. Coordinating the event were Ellen Perry, Patricia Campbell, and Cleta Nelson Garner. The judges awarded hand stitched, quilted ribbons for a variety of categories.
Mitzi Talley took Best of Show and Best Patriotic Quilt awards. Patricia Walker received an award for the Best Heritage Quilt, Best Small Holiday Quilt, and the Best Small Quilted Item.
Other winners and the respective categories were as follows:

It was a cold, windy October day, but nearly 1,000 warm-hearted folks came to visit the 18th Annual Union County Heritage Festival last month. The festival was packed with experienced musicians who performed live music throughout the event. On the Gazebo Stage sponsored by Jaxx, Southern Spirit performed Back to Tennessee, Old Stuff, and sneaked in a preview of a tune from their new album that debuts in January.

Chiropractic services are an important first line of defense against pain and, in some cases, chiropractic can lessen a patient’s reliance on addictive painkillers or prevent their use altogether. It makes sense to exhaust conservative forms of treatment such as chiropractic care before moving on to riskier, potentially addictive pain medications. Statistics show that as many as one in four patients who receive prescription opioids long-term for non-cancer pain in primary care settings struggle with addiction.

For some families, a busy lifestyle makes homecooked turkey dinners a thing of the past. More and more families look to restaurants, grocery stores and caterers to prepare their holiday meals. Precooked dinners can be great time-savers, but they must be handled safely to prevent foodborne illness. The same food safety rules you follow when preparing foods at home apply to precooked dinners.
For foods you pick up hot:

A friend of mine came by the central office one day last week. He asked where Dr. Effler was. I told him I believed she was “Zooming.” He asked, “Oh, is she sick?” Possibly she might have been, depending with whom and about what her Zoom meeting was concerned.

When a cold west wind is swirling snow around the yard, I think of "Chicken Soup". You may think of skiing at Gatlinburg; I think of soup. There is no way I am leaving the house unless it’s going to church or I need groceries. If it can wait, I’ll get my groceries after church. I'll open the door only to feed the birds. Anne will drive down to the mailbox to get the mail rather than walk. That is more than I will do on a cold snowy day; but I will make soup. I have lots of soup recipes. Some take a while to make. Some are quick.

I remember my Grandma’s chicken noodle soup. It was delicious. I have made noodles all my married life. I think I’m pretty good at it, but Grandma had me beat by a country mile. Let me tell you about her noodles.
As a child, I would watch in awe as she performed her magic with the rolling pin and dough. I never saw her stir a batch together, just the rolling out and cutting process.

“Squash it, Mamaw! Squash it!”
Right outside of Mamaw Girdle/Myrtle’s bedroom window was the biggest spider I had seen in the five years of my life. It had a colorful, bulbous body with long black hinged legs. In my child’s mind, it was a hideous monster.
“I’m not going to squash it. It’s a writing spider,” she answered. I was amazed because the only other creature that I knew who could write was Snoopy. I wondered if this was a skill some creatures really had.

I love to drive our roads here in Union County and check out the old barns visible to the road. When I get a chance to investigate an old barn I dive on the opportunity. What I have noticed is that most old barns still standing in East Tennessee were built and used mostly to dry and store tobacco. If the barn was built for something else like livestock, it was usually converted later on to dry tobacco. It is very easy to tell that a barn was used for tobacco.