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MELISSA WALKER
The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture, 02/2014Book Chapter
Many southern farmers are part-time farmers. Defined as those who earn more than half their income from off-farm sources, part-time farmers devote most of their time to a job away from the farm while spending weekends and evening hours engaged in some subsistence and market-oriented farming activities. The shift to part-time farming in the South first began among the residents of southern Appalachia late in the 19th century. As lumber and mining companies moved into the mountains, farmers were lured into wage labor that they called “public work” to distinguish it from work on the privately owned farm. Appalachian farmers
