Putting cows on the front page since 1885.
Putting cows on the front page since 1885.
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Years ago when country decor was the rage, a popular saying was "Home is where you hang your heart." While the adage may be old, the thought remains true, as evidenced by a growing trend to make a home inviting not only for the occasional guest but for those whose hearts hang inside. Industry experts estimate we are spending in excess of $540 billion this year on home improvements across the United States. Floor features That money is paying for massive renovations and square foot additions,...
She was a simple woman who led a simple life in what would be by today’s standards considered a shanty at the base of Lock Mountain, Piney Creek Road. Yet mention of her name, Marjorie Gertrude Ferry, brings pleasant memories to many Martinsburg area residents. Known by everyone as Margie, she lived off the land, ignored the copperhead snakes in her spring house and could cook a young ground hog to make it taste as good as chicken. But the thing she may be best remembered for was the 1929 Model A Ford she drove to town, only when absolutely n...
Without looking at a calendar or spotting a harvested corn field, it's clear fall is marching headlong into our lives with evidence outside most grocery and big box stores. Chrysanthemums, commonly referred to as mums, are popping up everywhere. Their colors of yellow, maroon, rust and orange attack the senses and often launch a search for pumpkins and corn shocks. While die-hard gardeners faithfully search for the healthiest, most perfectly shaped mums, pay the price, bring them home for...
An invitation by AARP urging the recipient to take a state-approved driver safety course serves as a sobering reminder of one’s age and the potential disaster posed behind the wheel as senses and reaction times are affected by a naturally slowing brain. The retiree-focused group offers a financial reward, a savings on vehicle insurance as an incentive, but an even more effective incentive likely should be information from sources that the chances of causing a crash and even killing someone increases dramatically as we age. It was this i...
The microclimates that comprise Morrisons Cove can make for interesting conversation, especially when counting inches of winter snow fall or summer storms and rainfall. It is these microclimates that may be cited for the vastly differing reports of summer garden crop success and failures. To quote from the writings of someone by the name of Alice Hoffman: “When all is said and done, the weather and love are the only two elements about which one can never be sure.” Certainly Hoffman’s thoughts on weather are holding true when it comes to veget...
A half century before the world was available through a touch to a keyboard, someone, somewhere heard that farmers in Morrisons Cove where pretty good at using their prime farmland to grow topnotch sweet, juicy corn, opening the door to a commercial cannery that helped feed the nation. A Giant corn op The Blue Mountain Cannery, a division of Green Giant foods, processed its first season of Cove corn in 1937 just as the United States was emerging from the Great Depression. For the next 20 years the seasonal processing facility provided revenue t...
For many of us, it all starts about the first of July and starts winding down around Labor Day. Those two months are filled with great prospects of that first crunch into the buttery, salty golden kernels that present themselves on the dinner plate. This season of pleasure begins winding down toward the end of August when the blue jean waist is tightening up and the kernels are not quite as juicy as they once where. Whether one prefers to call it sweet corn, roasting ears or corn on the cob, if...
It was a time of heroes with the likes of Babe Ruth and his baseball bat and Richard Byrd flying over the Arctic and a good-looking, likable Williamsburg boy flying with a pretty lady across the Atlantic. The "boy," as media folks called him a century ago, was Wilmer Stultz. While his heroics brought him widespread fame, he was getting ready to enjoy life as a 30 year old when he lost his life in a wonderful flying machine that shared similarities to the one that brought him his fame a year...
Life often boils down to perspective, even when it comes to nature, gardening and insects, especially bees. Staff of the Morrisons Cove Herald has fielded telephone calls in recent weeks with some gardeners concerned with what they view is an increase of bees. That can be bad, but it also can be good, depending on what type of bees are creating the headaches, according to Kelly Baker of New Enterprise. “There are carpenter bees; they’re a pain. There are yellow jackets and wasps, and I’m still waiting to hear what of any good they are,...
Wilmer Stultz was just three years old when Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first controlled flight south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, yet in a few short years he would develop a fascination for aviation putting him on a notable path for himself and his hometown of Williamsburg. This month 93 years ago, residents of Blair County and the northern Morrisons Cove community of Williamsburg turned out en mass to celebrate this country boy who regularly rubbed shoulders with the likes of Commander Richard Byrd, famous for his flight to the...
It’s the perfect storm. Excuse the pun. The tomato plants are ripening and the zucchini flowers have already formed shiny, dark green fruit. The frequency of rain and amounts of precipitation are diminishing and the temperatures are heading toward August highs. But wait a minute, the calendar says it’s time to start packing for that vacation planned last winter. While color-coded charts provided by Penn State University show no immediate concern for drought in the Blair-Bedford region, as August approaches, things are already starting to app...
Change can be tough, but it's a fact of life. A break away from the decades-old Martinsburg's annual July 4 celebration being pushed forward a week might be a good opportunity to roll with the new format. But the newsworthy change also provides a great opportunity to look back on past celebrations and talk to some with notable memories. The new schedule has been well publicized but as a reminder the Agricultural Parade – the highlight of the celebration for many – will be Tuesday, July 12, wit...
The term “volunteers” can conjure up any number of images, including thoughts of free helpers at a library, nursing home, local fire company or a blood drive: all commendable ventures. But maybe we can look a little closer home to draw attention to a different league of volunteers. In fact some could be just outside the back door. Volunteers this time around are the unexpected plants, be they vegetable or flower, that pop up in the garden pathway, under shrubbery, even in the grass. Some may be a pestilence and some are welcomed by the gar...
It’s black leather and measures five inches by nine inches, with a firm clasp along the top rim and is filled with a host of things depicting the life of a teen age girl in the 1950s. The dusty clutch bag was found secreted away in an opening of an interior wall of Canary Labs, a state-of-the-art computer services business. Started in 1985 by Martinsburg residents Ed and Gary Stern, Canary is described on the company web site as a time-series data base built for industrial automation. Canary develops “solutions from the end user’s persp...
It is with some hesitancy I admit that at 71 years of age, I have never mowed a lawn. Dad and the boys did it when I was a kid and no grass came with the patch when I moved out on my own. Hubs, who hated cooking, said he would do the outside maintenance if I would cook, proving to be a pact that worked well for us. He took great pride in mowing. He loved timing himself to see how quickly he could get it done. This plan was never challenged until about a decade ago when he had an ankle surgery that included doctors orders of no weight for six...
The many words that have been spoken and the stories that have been written pale to those of one young man who spent six years at Morrison Cove High School in a most unusual capacity. Don Grabill of Martinsburg lived at the old Brownstone, a three-story plus basement structure, which stands high on a hill overlooking Martinsburg. “I could always sleep in,” said Grabill, a member of the class of 1958 of his close proximity to his classes. Grabill, 81, his parents and three siblings lived in a two-floor apartment of the imposing school, one of th...
As certain as the seed catalogs start arriving every December to January, a large number of Morrisons Cove residents have already or will soon trudge out into the yard, spade a patch, sow some seeds or earth in some plants. Veg gardening for most of us is a tradition, something we witnessed as young children and something even the oldest among us find a sense of accomplishment. Someone once said that as the hunter-gatherer got weary of the road he found a suitable spot, made a hut and plowed a...
The girls hugged and cried while the boys laughed and punched each others shoulders as pomp and circumstances played for the last time at the Morrisons Cove High School. The year was 1960 and the commencement ceremony held the usual milestone significance for the 96 students, but was even more poignant because the brownstone school, just outside Martinsburg, was set to be moth balled. Barry “Butch” Rhodes was a member of that class 62 years ago, a long time, for this 81 year old Martinsburg man. But the memory holds on to lots of little thi...
Sunny days and warm breezes are making the garden soil pliable and ready for planting, but despite the calendar, an unexpected cold snap has brought more than one basil, tomato or cucumber plant to an early demise. Planting time is something I struggle with annually, despite the advice received years ago from an Old Order Mennonite friend. Lydia Zimmerman, who more than five decades ago started what is now Spring Farm Greenhouse just outside Curryville, said to follow the moon for spring...
It had been a while since Sandy Davis thought about her days scampering around Musselman's Grove in Klahr, but mention of the place brought a laugh from this Martinsburg-area woman and a flood of sweet memories. "Oh I remember Musselman's Grove, I used to go there all the time," she said. "I lived in East Freedom and my grandparents lived in Klahr and I'd stay with them on weekends." The entertainment history and the nostalgic memories linked to Musselman's Grove as time passes have prompted a...
For anyone who has been on Mars or some other exotic place, Sunday is Mother's Day, a day when some grit their teeth while others revel in honoring the woman who gave them birth. The last year I had a momma I could physically celebrate was 1987 so I observe the day through fond memories. As the middle child of 11, needless to say our celebrations did not include much cash expenditures, but the day still was filled with fun. After returning from church, we grabbed old scissors and headed out and...
Referred to at times as silent stone sentinels, lime kilns, once essential to sweeten Morrisons Cove’s farmland, are but a faint memory to many of our oldest residents. But a closer look at the countryside shows evidence that there were dozens of these furnaces within the Cove boundaries stretching from Williamsburg to Dunnings Mountain. “You can still see the remains of many if you know what you’re looking for,” Sheryl Hart, a lifelong Williamsburg resident said. That evidence is piles of stone along the banks of many country roads. Through...
The Easter ham and coconut cake may be just fond memories but the pots of daffodils, tulips, lilies and hyacinths will continue to thrive for a while, happy on the counter getting that occasional drink. When the blooms begin to fade, dig a hole in a sunny spot, pop them out of the container and into the ground. Chances are some will make a revisit next year, but in some cases they may not, according to one local grower who has been working with Easter flowers for more than 30 years. "It all...
As certain as warm breezes will move through Morrisons Cove this month drying excess moisture brought by winter snow and spring rain, farmers soon will begin preparing thousands of acres of fields and pondering the condition of the earth they depend upon. Following the practice of generations of farmers who have gone before, these soil jockeys will be on the look out for evidence their fields are too acrid, lacking magnesium and trace minerals needed to help sweeten the manure and adjust commercial fertilizers needed to grow tall corn, soybeans...
An individual with a modicum of intelligent emotion once penned that happiness is a way to travel, not a destination. To me that thought is a passport to find everyday happiness in big things such as God and family, but it opens the door to find happiness in what many may consider the mundane. The late winter robin, the musty, wonderful smell of damp leaves gathered under an overturned pot, the stiff, green foliage of the first spring crocus bulb, even the steady hum of a mower in the distance....
