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Community Corn Shucking Party
A tradition of families helping each other prepare for the winter
Saturday • November 12
3 PM until dark
Have you heard your parents or grandparents talk about corn-shucking parties? Yancey County farmer John Hughes fondly remembers how families on Shoal Creek would work together to help each other.
After a long day of harvesting, they would take turns meeting in each other’s barn to ensure everyone had their corn ready to store for the winter. They would lighten the load by swapping stories, singing songs, telling jokes, and sharing a meal. The idea was to help each other so the work didn’t feel like work.
Like barn-raising or quilt-making parties, we guess this is something you haven’t seen because since technology has taken over, community corn-shucking parties don’t exist.
Join us on Saturday, November 12, at 3:00 PM to recreate this entertaining family activity at the Center for Pioneer Life.
We’ll have a load of freshly harvested corn ready for shucking while sitting in a circle in the barn. Local farmers will demonstrate how shucking was done by hand.
You’ll learn about various types of corn, different cultural traditions, and you’ll also be able to try your hand at making a corn shuck doll another dying art.
This event is FREE and open to the public — donations are encouraged.
Music will be provided by Bruce Greene and Don Pedi thanks to support from
The Yancey Fund, an affiliate fund of The Community Foundation of Western North Carolina. The Yancey Fund is an endowment created to support the charitable needs of our community.
Bruce Greene is known worldwide for preserving and playing old-time Kentucky fiddle music. He is also a skilled old-time banjo player, singer, and collector of traditional Appalachian music and culture. Bruce respects older traditional musicians, and he takes time to learn their local styles and repertoires. He features a bowing technique that is relaxed but precise.
Don Pedi started playing the dulcimer in 1968. He is known for developing a playing style on the mountain dulcimer that can match a fiddle, note for note, while maintaining the rhythms and characteristics of traditional music. Over the decades, he’s developed a national reputation for collecting, preserving, and performing traditional Appalachian music.
