The Foxfire series of books was compiled from what was originally a magazine called Foxfire . A fellow named Eliot Wigginton started it with his 9th and 10th grade English classes in 1966 in the Appalachian Mountains of north Georgia at the consolidated Rabun County High School.
The books feature the folk wisdom of elders in the Appalachians. Foxfire 3 covers a number of topics such as tanning hides, wild edible plants, animal care, butter churns but for me most importantly, a chapter about building banjos and dulcimers. Banjo makers Ernest Franklin, M.C. Worley, Tedra Harmon, Stanley Hicks, Leonard Glenn, Dave Pickett, and Dave Sturgill, are profiled along with mountain dulcimer builder Robert Mize. The articles include photographs of the instruments along with diagrams and even measurements. What a treasure!
I learned about Foxfire when I started researching mountain banjo designs. In a number of places, I came across references to Foxfire 3 and it turns out it is still easily available. Later I’ll learn about some of the other Appalachian traditional skills but since the book arrived in the mail the other day, I’ve been reading all about the mountain banjo.
27th Street 
The folks skills the mountain people developed were quite remarkable. A serious chunk of country was simply cut off from the rest of the Excited States because of the mountainous geography of the area. Really, even today the main access to the area from the east is through the Cumberland Gap. The soil in the mountains was steep and rocky and would barely grow expectations – profitable commercial crops were pretty much out of the question. There wasnt a whole lot of money circulating around and folks simply made do with what they had or what they could build themselves from local materials. Ya a lot of the mountain folks lived in houses at the extreme end of rustic. I guess the good news is they didnt have to cope with Canadian winters.
If you are gonna be a banjo picker you need to fully embrace the groundhog. I hear they are pretty tasty and I have what sounds like a good recipe if you want it. You need to be a pretty good shot though if you want the hide for a banjo head – you dont want stray holes in the hide. And well there are a few groundhog sorts of old time tunes that are fun to play.
In fact there were 12 Foxfire books in the complete series and pretty much each one is a jewel of self sufficiency knowledge. I have actually read 1 through 4 cover to cover but that was back in the late 70’s – early 80’s and found them to be totally fascinating. Cheese making, horse trading, witch tales, Appalachian folk crafts, and a whole world of other fascinating topics. One of the volumes has a section on making gourd banjos as well but the vol. number escapes me at the moment. You can learn more about the books here:
http://www.foxfire.org/thefoxfirebooks.aspx
I’m planning to set up a little workshop over the next few months and one of the things I’m planning on doing is making a mountain banjo or two. I will stop short of trapping a groundhog and tanning it’s hide.
The books are a brilliant idea and have captured all kinds of wisdom that would otherwise be lost. On the banjo makers in the book though, from the photographs it looks like they were better at banjo building than cabin building because some of those guys lived in rough quarters.