How Appalachian People Eat, Sleep & Survive Cut Off From the Modern World

How Appalachian People Eat, Sleep & Survive Cut Off From the Modern World Somewhere in a holler in eastern Kentucky right now, a woman is pulling a quart jar of green beans off a shelf, canned last August from a garden she planted herself, to feed a family that hasn't seen a grocery store in over a week. The nearest one is forty minutes down a two-lane road that washes out every spring. When the jar is empty, she'll can another batch next summer, the same way her grandmother did, and her grandmother's grandmother before that. Appalachia stretches across 13 states and 26 million people, but tucked inside it is a smaller, older Appalachia. A network of hollers and ridge communities where entire counties are losing residents faster than almost anywhere else in the country. Some are projected to lose nearly half their population in the next 25 years. And yet the families who stay haven't lost a single one of the skills that got their ancestors through 300 winters before the power company, the ambulance service, or the internet ever showed up. So what do these communities still know that the rest of us gave up learning? #appalachia