Podcasts about edgecombe county

Ta seria morderstw wstrząsnęła spokojnym Edgecombe County w Północnej Karolinie. Zabójca z siedmiu mostów, jak czasem był nazywany, atakował prostytutki. Sprawcą najprawdopodobniej był urodzony w 1978 roku Antwan Pittman, choć organom ścigania udało się go bezsprzecznie połączyć tylko z jedną ofiarą, to po jego aresztowaniu morderstwa ustały.

Phillip Jones is the Founder of the Tar River Community Development Corporation, a non-profit organization based out of Rocky Mount, NC. The Non-Profit's mission is to build and establish a safe, prosperous, futuristic, and healthy ecosystem in Edgecombe County and Nash County through efficient education, access to health and wellness resources, sustainable real estate development, and the establishment of new activities. Thus, increasing the quality of life for the local residents, with a focus on residents in underserved communities.  Tar River Community is hosting an inaugural Real Estate Conference on Nov 19 - 20! Get your tickets now: https://www.trcdc.org #realestate #nonprofit #investing #businesspodcast #NorthCarolina SQUADCAST Episode 1 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Today, we're talking with the President of North Carolina Farm Bureau, Shawn Harding. Farm Bureau is the state's largest farming organization is often referred to as the voice of North Carolina agriculture. In this interview, we'll explore the diverse ways this vital association supports North Carolina farmers and growers. I might also say that there are Farm Bureaus in all 50 states, and from what I understand, North, it's a special pleasure to have Shawn with us. Interview Summary   I was mentioning before we went live that our center has had a nice relationship with Farm Bureau over a number of years. And one thing that was especially, meaningful to us is with your predecessor, Larry Wooten, and several of his colleagues took us on a tour of farms in Eastern North Carolina. And that was very eye opening and a very moving experience for us to get to talk to farmers and understand a little better. So, I appreciated the work of Farm Bureau before, but especially, after that. So, let's begin. You became President of the North Carolina Farm Bureau nearly two years ago. And anyone in the agriculture world knows a Farm Bureau but others may know less. Would you mind telling us what Farm Bureau does?   Yes, certainly. As you mentioned earlier on, we often refer ourselves as the voice of agriculture because that's what we do. We spread the message of farmers and agriculture. And, you know, what's interesting is our organization started 1936 by farmers who felt like they needed a voice. And in 1936 there were a lot of people on the farm. Now, very few people on the farm, very few people that really understand agriculture. So, we feel like our mission to be that voice for agriculture is more relevant now today than ever before. And we try to stay core to that mission and just spreading the word of our farmers and agriculture and what they do.   I thought I heard that North Carolina Farm Bureau was the second largest in the country. I don't know if that was correct then or still is, but what explains why North Carolina has such a robust Farm Bureau presence?   Well, in 1936 a group of farmers got together and started this organization and really their mission was just to help farmers but also help rural people to any kind of issues they had. And in 1953, believe it or not way back then they were having trouble getting insurance. And so, we started an insurance company. In order to buy insurance from North Carolina Farm Bureau you had to be a member. And so, you joined and you were able to participate in our insurance company. And it was very successful very helpful for our rural families back then. And thankfully, we've been very successful over the years proud of our insurance company. And that's one of the reasons that we have such a large membership in North Carolina. We just crossed 600,000 members for the first time in our state, which does make us the second largest Farm Bureau in the nation. And so, certainly we have many members who have no connection to agriculture but just enjoy and appreciate our insurance company. So, we're proud of that but anyone can join North Carolina Farm Bureau. $25 membership. And if you want to support farmers and support our mission certainly anyone can join. Tennessee Farm Bureau is the largest Farm Bureau, our neighbors to the west. And so, we're looking at how long before we could be number one, but we'll see how that goes.   Well, good luck. And 600,000 is pretty impressive, I must say. So, I'd like to talk about one particular part of the work that you and your colleagues are doing, your Young Farmer program. And I recall hearing from Bert Pitt in Edgecombe County saying that the average age of farmers in North Carolina is around 67. And farming is so critical to the future. I'd like to hear about the kinds of support and recognition that your Young Farmer program offers to newer generations of farmers.   Thank you for asking about that program. It's really near and dear to our hearts. I'm a product of the Young Farmer program. Actually, Larry Wooten was a product of the Young Farmer program. And so, we use it as a leadership development program in our organization, but it's more than just leadership development. Farming can be a very isolated occupation and sometimes you can feel like you're just out there on your own and don't have any support. So, one of the great things, I think, our Young Farmer program does, it brings young people together. As you said, there's not a lot of them in agriculture. And so, it brings them together and they really get to support each other to see, hey, we've got some of the same issues. We're dealing with some of the same things. And so, it's a real support system for our young people in agriculture. And as you mentioned, I mean, that's vital with the age of farmers now, but I'm excited, I'm excited about the future. I see young people getting involved in agriculture that are first-generation farmers. So, I think, I often say when I was coming along, it maybe wasn't cool to be in agriculture, but now it's a very cool and hip thing to be involved in agriculture. And that's exciting to me to see young people coming in that haven't had a history in it.   It's nice to hear that optimistic note in your voice. And boy, that would be great if young people really do come in with a kind of enthusiasm that you're seeing in them. So, that's great. You mentioned your own experience in farming. Could you tell us a little bit more about that? What kind of a farm did you grow up on and what kind of farming did you do yourself?   Sure, absolutely. I grew up in Eastern North Carolina, in Beaufort County. A little town called Chocowinity and my grandfather was farming and my father actually, came into farming in the seventies. And so, we grew up on a farm, typical Eastern North Carolina farm that was a tobacco and grain operation. That's kind of what most everybody did a little bit of. And we were small farmers and just enjoy that life. Went to NC State after high school and studied agriculture. And unfortunately, I lost my father the last year of college. And so, you were talking about the age of farmers and certainly, it's difficult to get started in agriculture as a young person, but I had that opportunity right out of college. And so, started farming early, again, going back to tobacco and grain and doing those kind of things. And working with my brother on the farm. We had a partnership, things were going well. And then we came into the nineties and challenges in the tobacco industry. We had the tobacco buyout that came along in 2004. About that time, my wife had started a little side operation with strawberries and I just I looked at it as an opportunity to change what we were doing on the farm. I saw how many people loved coming to the farm to pick strawberries and learn about what we did in agriculture. And I just thought, I think this is the future. So we stopped growing tobacco. We became a strawberry farm. And then of course, added to the strawberries with blueberries, blackberries, all kinds of fruits and vegetables, and just went direct to the consumer. And thankfully, we were very blessed to be successful in that. The opportunity to be Farm Bureau President obviously, came along and and I thought it was a great opportunity for me but also for my children. I have two boys and back on the farm now that are running the farm. Again, giving them an opportunity to start at a younger age in agriculture, and also giving me an opportunity to do something that I love. And that's lead this organization and talk about farming. So, that's a little bit of my story and how I got to where I am and just love agriculture and love what I'm doing.   At the time we're recording this, we're about to enter the full swing of the strawberry season. So, I was really excited to hear you talk about strawberries. More than that, it's interesting to hear about the transition of your farm and the historical things that shape that. So, let's get back to Farm Bureau. And I know that Farm Bureau does a lot to bring agriculture concerns to policy makers, both at the state level in North Carolina and the national level. And that helps farmers prepare to make the case for North Carolina agriculture. Could you talk about the advocacy programming that you do?   It's really one of the top line things that we're involved in. I mentioned that we're the voice of agriculture and that can mean a lot of different things. As I said, we want to share with the public about what farmers do. And part of that public is our legislators who many have been separated from the farm for several generations and don't really understand modern agriculture. So, quite a task there. And so, we stay involved in that. I'm very proud of our advocacy efforts. The other part I would say on that is certainly we have a lobbying team here at Farm Bureau but what we do, what is special about Farm Bureau is we use the term grassroots operation you mentioned we're in every county in North Carolina. And we encourage our volunteer farmers to advocate for what they do. What we found is when you walk in an office as a lobbyist and then they expect you to be at a certain place, but when you take an actual farmer to a legislator, to a Congressman, to a Senator, they appreciate that. And so, we really challenge our young farmers, our women, all our farmers, all our volunteers, to be involved in advocacy for what they do. And that's what I'm proud of as an organization. Our policies come from our people. So, I sit in this role as President, but I don't set the policy for the Farm Bureau. Our people set the policy. And so, we have a policy development process that we go through every year and they really tell us what's important to them. So, I think it's a really fascinating process that was drawn up many years ago and it works really well.   I can see how farmers would be such important advocacy voices. When we were doing the tour of farms that I mentioned before, we found the farmers to be talented, passionate but also very humble people. So, you can see how they would have a special role in this. It was interesting to hear you talk about that. I'd like to ask you also about regenerative agriculture. We've done a number of podcasts with farmers and others from around the country involved in regenerative agriculture. And they've talked about techniques such as diverse, no-till, rob crow techniques, mob grazing for livestock and other things to improve the environment and produce food at the same time even though to improve the nutrient profile in food and to help be more resilient in the face of changing weather conditions. So, how do you think North Carolina itself is poised to deal with regenerative agriculture and those advances?   I'm, of course, very biased. I believe we have some of the best farmers, in the country, in the world, at North Carolina that are resilient, adaptive and always looking for the right thing to do. And so, when talk about climate change and how agriculture can be a part of that then I think we're at the forefront of it. Many people think about this issue and we all have opinions and things we feel like we ought to do and need to do. And that's great, but I don't think people really think about nobody deals with the climate more than farmers. We deal with the storms, we deal with cold, the heat, everything that comes along with it. So, we're on the front lines of this and certainly, we're ready to look at practices that will help the climate change issue. And I think, farmers are always ready to do that, that with a caveat also, always of saying we have to stay in business. We have to have practices that will keep us on the farm so that we can do the positive things we need to do. But we certainly feel like there's a lot of great research going on right now to say, here's some things that we can do to help reverse this climate change issue and agriculture can play a big role in that. And so, I think our farmers stand ready to be on the front lines of that issue.   That sounds really impressive because you're talking about the influence of climate on the agriculture world and then in turn the influence of agriculture on climate and that relationship arrow going in both directions is such an important part of the overall picture that we're facing in the future. So, it's nice to know that North Carolina farmers, in particular, are focusing on that. And speaking of that, the farm bill is such an important piece of legislation nationally, and obviously, for North Carolina farmers as well. I'd love to hear your thoughts on what North Carolina needs from this important piece of legislation.   Well, certainly when you think about the farm bill that's coming up, we will be engaged in that heavily. Have staff members here that are already working on it now to try to say, you know, what's our priority. I think if we want to talk about priorities in the farm bill and for the last couple of farm bills, I think this has sort of been the direction our country has gone is crop insurance. We've just said, agriculture's such a volatile business to be in with climate again as we talked about and storms that the safety net that needs to be there for our farmers with crop insurance is a really important piece for us. And so, we'll continue to talk about that as we head into this farm bill negotiation, the next bill, because that really is what helps keep our farmers on the farm when these devastating weather events happen. And we certainly feel like that's important for our country. We've all seen what's happened the last few years with just turmoil around the world. And so, we say food policy is good security policy, and so, we need to have a good food security policy. And that starts with keeping our farmers on the farm and being successful. And that obviously, crop insurance is the biggest part of that farm bill that we'll be looking at.   I'm happy you mentioned the vulnerability that farmers face because I think most people who don't dive deeply into agriculture don't realize the number of vulnerabilities that farmers have. There are the weather vulnerabilities we talked about today. There are unexpected market fluctuations. There are complicated relationships with the companies that buy their products. All kinds of things go on in that world that make it a very precarious position that farmers are in. And it's amazing that they're able to tolerate that and still prevail generation after generation. So, it says a lot about the kind of mindset and personalities of farmers doesn't it?   We often talk about it's a love, it is a passion. You mentioned seeing that with some of our farmers and it has to be. I mean, just this year, we've seen prices for inputs rise by three times. And certainly, prices of commodities have risen. And some people are saying, well, that equals out. But what I'm trying to tell the general public is we just tripled the risk that we're putting in the ground. With the seed this spring. We just tripled the risk, the seed, the cost of fertilizer. And we don't know what we'll get out of it. So, that's what agriculture is. You mentioned that it's a lot of volatility, but we do it, we love it. I think most farmers feel like it's their responsibility to help feed the world. And so, we want to continue to do that. So, we appreciate the partnerships and people understanding what we do, but there's a lot of risk in it. Absolutely.   I was impressed on the farm tour we were doing with some of the things that you just mentioned. One, was how passionate the farmers were about their work and how much they felt they were performing a very important service for the world, but also how many generations of a family there tended to be on farms and how the farmers felt that they wanted to turn the farm over to children in better shape than they had inherited it themselves. It was very interesting way of thinking. So, that passion I must really impress you all the time, too.   Absolutely, and as I mentioned my story, I'm sort of living it. I go home now every other weekend, see my boys and the pride they have in growing our things and selling it to local consumers. And there is a pride that goes along with that just to see that, to see your, leaving the next generation in a better place. And that's what our farms and farmers are trying to do to just leave it better than we found it. And that goes with our families. But it also goes with our land. You know, the water the air, the soil, that's how we make our living. So, we're trying to leave it better than we found it.   Bio Shawn Harding was elected president of the North Carolina Farm Bureau in December 2019. Harding grew up and farmed in Beaufort County. He previously served the Farm Bureau in various roles, including president in Beaufort County, member of the state board of directors and state public policy director. He is a graduate of the Agricultural Institute, part of NC State University's College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

From 2003 to 2009, 10 women and one man disappeared from the Edgecombe County area of North Carolina. Many of the victims had been stabbed, beaten, or strangled before a large number were dumped along a stretch of the Seven Bridges road. Join Mike and Gibby as they discuss The Edgecombe County Serial Killer, also known as the Seven Bridges killer. One man, Antwan Pittman, was arrested, charged, and convicted for the murder of Taraha Nicholson. But, prosecutors have not yet been able to put together enough evidence to charge him with any of the other murders. You can help support the show at patreon.com/truecrimeallthetime Visit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for contact, merchandise, and donation information An Emash Digital prodcution

Downtown Greensboro, North Carolina. KERI BROWN/WFDD In this edition of Carolina Curious WFDD listener and High Point University Spanish Professor Adam Winkel wants to know the origins of his home city's name: Greensboro. “Why is the ‘boro' suffix in North Carolina usually spelled 'b-o-r-o' rather than 'b-u-r-g' or 'b-o-r-o-u-g-h'?'” As WFDD's David Ford soon found out, it all goes back to history and other languages, because “burg,” “borough” — however you want to spell it — and “bury” for that matter (as in Salisbury) are all Anglo-Saxon in origin dating back centuries to the land of lederhosen and bratwurst. In Germany, “burg” means a town surrounded by a wall. And there are lots of them there: Nuremberg, Brandenburg, Hamburg. So, in England, the closer you are to Germany the more you'll find “burg”s. Director of Local History and Genealogy at the Randolph County Public Library “Mac” Whatley says the suffix “borough” — which also means town — has gone through an evolution over the centuries. For example, Edinburgh, Scotland may be spelled b-u-r-g-h, but it is pronounced as if it ended in b-o-r-o-u-g-h but just runs out of gas on the last syllable. “So, there are all kinds of linguistic rules about dropping the vowels and things like that because of lazy pronunciation, but in England, all of these kinds of things come from history and language,” he says. “You know the Celts, the Saxons, the Vikings, everything in England goes back to some kind of historical event.” Fewer than 100 people? That's a Hamlet. Roughly 1,000 or less? Village. Less than 50,000? Town. More than 100,000? City. More than a million? Metropolis. Meanwhile, here in the New World, America, terms that may have been treated historically back in the day become political. “That's why there's such a variety of names — or suffixes really instead of just names — because in this state in this country, cities and towns are created by the state legislature, and people petition the legislature for incorporating a city or town,” says Whatley. “And whoever is doing the petition can choose the name.” He says, take Charlotte for example: 800,000 people and it's a city. But Kannapolis is also known as a city, and it only has 45,000 people. “And of course, it's a real outlier because “polis” is Greek,” says Whatley. “It means city, so, it was named city of the cannons, you know the cannon mills founded it. But then you've got Pinehurst which is officially a village, and they have 16,000-some-odd people, but Franklinville, where I live, is a town and it only has 1,600 people.” Whatley says some historical suffix influences do endure here in the South. “Ville” from the French began catching on shortly after the French Revolution starting with Louisville, Kentucky, in 1780, and three years later, Campbellton, North Carolina, switched to Fayetteville. And Asheville? Well, that's where things get political. “You would use ‘ville' if there was already a ‘borough.' So, Asheboro is 1796, and Asheville is 1797. And both of them are named after Governor Samuel Ashe. You also had Greenville, which is 1786 in eastern North Carolina, but you had Greensboro which is 1808, and they're both after General Nathaniel Greene. Then you had Princeton in Johnson County 1861, but Princeville in Edgecombe County in 1885." So, when you have lots of little towns like North Carolina has, you've got to be inventive with names. Interchanging suffixes is one way to do that. Whatley says the sounds of words count too. There are lots of Franklinvilles (after Ben Franklin), but no Franklinboroughs. As for all the b-o-r-o cities in the Tar Heel state —Greensboro, Asheboro, Tarboro, Carrboro, Pittsboro, Wilkesboro, Swansboro — he says, they just all sound better than “burg.” But, getting back to our listener Adam Winkel and his question about the mysterious b-o-r-o ending to “Greensboro.” Will we ever know the answer as to why? “Well, I think it's linguistic laziness,” says Whatley. “Because Asheboro, when it was incorporated in 1796 was a ‘borough,' and then it went through a whole period for 100 years where it was just Ashboro. And so, they weren't even spelling Ashe right since it's named after a governor, Samuel Ashe. But they didn't know it had an ‘e' on it, so they just did the quick and easy thing. So, b-o-r-o, it's just easier — quicker when you're writing a letter or [an] envelope or something like that.”   So, after all that history, politics, and linguistic evolution, the answer to our listener's question is, “Because people are inherently lazy?” “Yeah,” says Whatley. “I think that, and bad spellers,” he laughs. Well, ask a simple question, and get a simple answer, but always know this: no question is too big or too small for the Carolina Curious. Support for Carolina Curious comes from Buie's Market Winston-Salem.    Story does not include AP content #suffix #greensboro #boro #borough #bury #burg #carolina curious Culture Normal Tweet

In this episode, Donnell and Jenny interview Irese Robinson and Inez Ribustello, parents and citizens of Edgecombe County. This conversation is centered around the role of parents in a child's education and the transformative power of strong relationships between parents, teachers, students and principals. Thanks for listening! The song featured in this episode is called "Contact" by artist Dylan Longworth, a graduate of Elkin High School.

As the school year ends, planning begins. With the new school year approaching, we look to district and state leaders to decide what guidelines will be in place to keep our students and staff safe. This week we discuss backgrounds, options, and factors surrounding school opening plans with leaders in Edgecombe County as well as state leaders from the Department of Public Instruction. Guests Dr. Beverly Emory, Deputy State Superintendent for School Support Jessica Swencki, DPI Regional Support Team, Sandhills Abbey Futrell, Assistant Superintendent, Edgecombe County

Through community efforts, partnerships, and new funding, many students without broadband access have been provided loaned devices, wifi-hot spots, and community hot spot access in order to complete school work and continue learning. Today we catch up with teachers in Edgecombe County to find out what at home learning and broadband access looks like and take a closer look at a collaboration between Google and Caldwell County and their 31 hotspot school buses. Guests: Kadijah Jordan, Teacher in Edgecombe County Sandy Fulcher, Teacher in Edgecombe County Don Phipps, Superintendent, Caldwell County Melissa Costin, Principal, Caldwell County Norah Cool, Student, Caldwell County Jaime Cool, Parent Gabrielle Pope, Student, Caldwell County Angela Pope, Parent

On the Edgecombe: Stress and Resilience in Law Enforcement explores stress, trauma, and resilience through conversations with the founders of Rural Opportunity Institute, and law enforcement officers in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. It highlights common experiences and practical strategies that can be useful for individuals and communities anywhere. This podcast is produced by Kathryn Carpenter, Maura Drewry, Allie Rothschild, and Juliet Wu, members of a graduate student team from UNC Chapel Hill Gillings School of Global Public Health, in partnership with Rural Opportunity Institute (ROI).

In this episode, we speak with Vichi Jagannathan and Seth Saeugling, the co-founders of Rural Opportunity Institute (ROI), about the work they are doing in Edgecombe County, North Carolina and the importance of focusing on stress and trauma in law enforcement. For more information on ROI, go to ruralopportunity.org.

Today we will dive into digital citizenship and what schools are doing to promote safe and responsible use of the internet with the Assistant Superintendent of Edgecombe County, Abbey Futrell. But first, we close our series of interviewing those who have decided to run for state superintendent with Catherine Truitt, Chancellor of Western Governors University and a Republican Candidate for State Superintendent.

Welcome to the Leading Voices in Food podcast, an educational series produced by the World Food Policy Center at Duke University. I'm Deborah Hill. You're listening to a segment in our Voice of Farming series. At the age of 68, Bert Pitt is lean and tan, with Robert Redford blue eyes and a working man's hands. He's a seventh generation farmer, raising cotton and sweet potatoes now, and lives in his family's ancestral home in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. Farming is both his job and his heritage, and he passionately believes in the value of small family farms. Over his lifetime he's seen tremendous change in farming technology, weather patterns, the status of farming within US culture, farm related politics, and international trade agreements. In this podcast Bert speaks on topics that are often misunderstood about farming, and one such topic is federal crop insurance. Originally enacted in 1938, federal crop insurance is the primary risk management program available to US farmers and is a critical part of a farmer's safety net. It helps them weather volatility in crop prices and to recover from unexpected disasters such as hurricanes, flooding, tornadoes, and more. Crop insurance currently covers 128 different crops, and four crops, corn, cotton, soybeans, and wheat, account for the majority of US acreage enrolled in the program. The insurance program works on the principle of indemnity, meaning it only restores a portion of a farmer's actual losses when a claim is made and keeps farms from getting too far in the hole financially. The program doesn't insure farmers make a profit, and many pay crop insurance premiums for years without receiving indemnity payments because they've been lucky enough to not have experienced crop loss. I'll say right up front in 2018 I did not or our farm did not collect any form of crop insurance, cotton, sweet potatoes, anything, but a lot of people don't realize about the crop insurance, and I insure my crop just as much as I can. That's the only way I can sleep at night. Another thing is nowadays the scale of farming that we do, the bankers and everybody requires you to have a minimum of insurance and everybody does that, but you can get a little bit better, and I get the best I can, but it does not pay me completely out to bankers, equipment, land payments, anything that might come along if I have to collect insurance. The best I can insure my crop is about 75%. It's not like homeowners or car insurance. A lot of people that don't farm, outsiders looking in, think well, he's got insurance on everything. Yes, we do, but we can't have a replacement type insurance. The best we can get is 75%, and nowadays you've got to collect 100% to get around to pay everybody, so you're left holding the bag with 25%. It'll be like, you know, people just don't understand. They think we can go out and insure our cotton and other crops with what we've got in it and even make a little profit on it, and it is not even close to being that way. That's why this North Carolina disaster payment was so important. It probably even came before the people that needed to get an insurance payment, probably before they even got that. It kept things going, people paid that needed to be paid, and the insurance came in and stepped up, I mean and helped every bit as expected. But you can't survive off of 75% of your crop, and that's about what the insurance is. That's one of the things a lot of people that don't farm don't understand. They think that when a storm comes and they see a crop go up... Yeah, I think most people do sympathize with us, but I think they got a misunderstanding about the insurance, that we've got it insured where we'll be fine and probably even make a profit, and that's not the case. Does farming make you think of the New York Stock Exchange? Many crops are sold as commodities. This means that it doesn't matter who grew the crop or how much it cost a specific farmer to produce their crop, the price is the same for everyone on that day on the commodity market. This creates challenging conditions for farmers and has necessitated the need to connect with brokers and sophisticated price monitoring and forecasting. We get a lot of good information from the extension office, a lot of good publications out of there. We get the information that we need. I think we need more of maybe marketing information. I would encourage... I can go to NC State's website and find out the best way to grow anything I grow, but it's hard to find out how to market your crop, and that's something I don't completely know the answer to. There is services out there that you can buy, and we do a little bit of that too to help us market, but it needs to be made on a government type level, some financial experts or whatever that would help us, you know, kind of give us the advice that the extension office gives us for growing the crop. That would be one thing I would like to see. I don't want to discourage... Of course young folks in farming, they're going to be too busy to listen to this anyway, but I don't want to discourage any young farmer from getting into it. You don't really get in farming for the money, so if there's a young guy farming, he's in it for the right reasons. He didn't get in it to buy yachts and live at Miami Beach. One of the worse things going on in farming now that's got everybody... It don't matter what size farmer you are, it's got us behind the eight ball, and I will say it like it is. All right, I'm going to tell some personal stories. I don't mind doing that. But we are farming with prices the lowest they've been in years, I mean in years. When I started back growing cotton in 1991, our family farm went from maybe 10 to 12 years without growing cotton because of prices. Prices gradually got a little better. In 1991, I started growing cotton again and marketing it at 91 cent a pound. And if I had to sell my cotton today, in 2019, it is 58 cent a pound. So the challenge I give to everybody that don't know about farming, that lives in the city, take a third of your income for the whole year and see how you would survive. Now you can survive, but the question was how, and that's what we're doing. We're cutting back on a lot of things that we probably need to do on the farm. Right now we're sitting in a shelter that needs to be replaced. Like I said, one of my shelters was blown down in Hurricane Florence, but you can't legitimately find a way to pay for it, so you just have to do without. The equipment sits out in the sun and rain and everything, and you're talking about some high dollar equipment sitting out that needs to be under shelter. But if you can't pay for it you don't do it. And the markets... The one good news that I do, sweet potato markets are up. A lot of that is because of the hurricane last year. It takes a lot of money to grow sweet potatoes. A lot of farmers have backed up on the acreage they're planting just because of the amount of money you got to put up to grow that crop. Cotton to me is a high dollar crop. We got a lot invested out there. It costs me about $700 a acre to grow cotton, a roundabout figure. By the time we get through and ready to sell cotton, I've got about $700 an acre in it. Another figure just to throw out, I grow about 1,000 pounds to the acre. You multiply that times 58, that's $580. Yes, we're going to get as farmers call it a Trump payment, but it is a payment because of the tariff problems that's going on on the farm that's hit the farmers big time. I'm going to get $70 a acre in Edgecombe County for that. That's an already known fact. So you add the 70 to the 580, you got about $650. Now my question is where am I going to pick up the other $50, because it's going to take that to break even. I told everybody to start with I'm a 1,000 acre farm, so 50 times 1,000, that let's everybody know how much we're in the hole. The next part of the equation is I told everybody we were in a dry area, we're not going to make 1,000 [inaudible 00:10:32], so you got to deduct that too. So we've already sat down and figured up we're going to lose about... Unless the cotton fools me a little bit, unless the yield is a little better, and it could be, and we're always optimistic, hoping the prices are going to get together, but you got to be realistic more so than hopefully, so there's a good possibility we could lose $150 a acre, and multiply that times 1,000. So that lets everybody kind of know what were going on in the farm, and if it's that case for me it's everybody. The market's not just the cotton. Our soybeans in 2013 and '14... We sold soybeans for $15 a bushel. Today they're $8 and a half. That's even worse than the cotton. We don't really rely on soybeans as much as some of the neighbors in other parts of the country, but that's what's going on. Our job is to raise food, cotton for not only the United States, but the world. We have to believe in the people, not just the President, but all our legislators, representatives, everybody that goes to Raleigh and everybody that goes to Washington, DC... We got to believe in them and trust that they're working for us while we're doing our job back home. There's so many things going on in these legislative ideas that we can't speak to everything, but we just have to have the faith, and the farmers do at this time, still got the faith, that the people that we have sent to represent us haven't forgotten, and we would like to think that what President Trump is doing with the tariffs in China and maybe some other countries does have a long range help to the farmers. But we've got to be able to get that, and we can't lose this $150,000 in my case for another year. We might can one year. We had a big hit last year. It's putting a big burden on the sustainability. But you know realistically, and that's what we're talking about with this China tariff, we might never win this thing. It might never come about like it's presented to us or what we would like for it to happen. It gets back to this carrot dangling in front of my face type thing that we think we can get and we never quite get it. We got to face... We've got to be optimistic. We got to face reality, so something has got to be done in the United States. We cannot... Honestly, we cannot raise cotton at 58 cents. It's got to be the minimum 70 cents, and that's not sustainable. But I don't know the answer other than the American public, unless they want their food and their cotton and everywhere... That comes from everywhere they don't know the place, if that's what they want, that's what it's headed to. Farmers today are often called upon to testify about the conditions of farming and the need for different support mechanisms. Bert's wife, Gwen, has been deeply engaged with such activities and this is the subject of another podcast. Farmers are busy. They're farming more and more land. There are less and less people. We don't have time to be a voice or an advocate like you're saying, but Gwen here does take a good amount of her time to do it. I respect that and I try to do it. It's a little bit easier for her to do it. I respect her for what she does, and I'll say this, she can say the same things I do, the exact same words, and I've seen people respect her saying it more than me because I might get rocks throwed at me or whatever, but people look at a woman's voice different. Same thing with farmers, they might. They'll say he's saying the same old thing. But when they... I've seen it. When she gets up there and says the same thing the audience perks up. They listen more. They respect what she says more than me. That's putting me on the spot. I had a cotton meeting in New York City with some growers from Tennessee, Texas, all the southeast, and the guide, she carried us to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel and she says, "Okay, I want one of you all... You all pick out one person to go there and order the drinks at the bar," and everybody pointed to me, and I says, "Why me?" They said, "There's something about your voice." I said, "Well, you're from Texas." They says, "No, no, no. It's you. It's you." I went up there and... Because naturally all five of them gave me a different drink so I had to talk awhile. I started... I walked up there in the best non-southern, non-North Carolina voice I could do, trying to order these drinks, and out of the corner of my eyes I could see everybody's head start turning and looking. The bartender finally stopped at about the third order. He said, "Buddy, if you want these drinks tonight you're going to have to speak faster than that," and I was doing the best I could do. Everybody just busted out laughing, and I looked back over there and my buddies were laughing. Conventional farming uses agricultural chemicals to control pests and disease or control and promote growth. Farms like Bert recognize their responsibility to keep soils healthy and water sources clean and actively work to stay informed on the safe use of chemicals. I will offer my farm to anybody that's listening to this anywhere, to come out and see what we're doing. I don't know any farmers, me or anybody, that's abusing the environment, abusing the chemicals, fertilizers. To start with, you can't afford it. Why would I want to spend more on chemicals when I'm not even making a profit now? So we're not doing it. Financially we're not doing it. But we're not doing it for the right reason too. My family farm was voted the soil conservation farm family of the year in 1989 in North Carolina, and a lot of that was because of what we were doing on the farm. But all my farmer friends, nobody... And people just have to trust me on this, because I'm a scientist. I don't know the chemical makeup of what we're spraying, but I have to believe in people to tell me about the chemicals, if it's safe. I told everybody my main job on the farm is running it safely. I want it to be safe. I'm the one who's handling it. And Gwen... Because she'll tell you about this in a minute, but she's the one out there actually scouting the crops. Our farm well is within I'll say 100 feet, but I'm being generous, of the cotton fields, so we don't want anything in our water. She'll tell you more about it. They'll believe her on it. They might not believe me, but she's the mama, she's the grandma, and she's not going to have anything in our home that'll hurt her family. But getting back to that, we're not... We're doing the things that we should be doing to the best of our knowledge, to the best of our knowledge. Now my farm, I'll let anybody that wants to come see what we're doing, that would like to know, I mean for the right reasons. I don't care if they've got my political views or not. Half our customers probably don't, so there you go. Thank you for listening. If you would like to subscribe to the Leading Voices in Food podcast series you can do so at Google Play, Stitcher, Radio Public or Apple podcasts, or by visiting our website at the Duke World Food Policy Center. This is Deborah Hill. 

Welcome to The Leading Voices in Food podcast, an educational series produced by the world food policy center at Duke University. I'm Deborah Hill. You're listening to a segment in our Voice of Farming series. According to the US Department of Agriculture's census of agriculture, women now make up 36% of farmers and 56% of farms have at least one woman farmer. But this isn't a surprise to today's guest, Gwen Pitt of Pitt Family Farms in Edgecombe County, North Carolina. One of the things that I would like to say is that women in agriculture, there are more women that are into agriculture now, but the way I see it, women have always been in agriculture. They've always been either in some capacity, they've been here backing their husbands who are out there on the farm and it's just that the role has changed now to where we're more out there on the farm because technologies have changed things and the technology has allowed women to ... I mean, we do physical labor out there but it's the combines, the tractors and the equipment is more so there to help with the heavy lifting and now women are able to go out and work more like in the capacity that I do. The younger women, they've got the technology of computers they've got ... they can go out there and handle computers that will tell them what the temperature is in the barn. And so if they know they need to go change it, then go change it. So the capacities are changing. There's more women out there per se as far as farming, but in my opinion also women have always been been farming. I was like I say, raised in, in Virginia. My dad worked with a rock quarry there and so he was transferred to Fountain. I came straight out of high school and started working at a small bank there in Fountain. So I had three years of banking and then I left there and went to North Carolina Natural Gas in Tarboro and was working there as a dispatcher. And then when my daughter was born we decided that I wanted to stay home to raise her. As she got older, then of course she didn't need me as much when she started school, so of course I was called on to help take out tobacco or work on the farm where I could, but not in a full time capacity. My mom was a seamstress and I enjoyed sewing, so started making window treatments, curtains, draperies for people just working from my home, which when you're here at home and you're working and then your husband needs something on the farm like, "Come move me to another farm". He calls me right then I have to drop everything and then go. So I was always still in interacting with the farm during that time to to help him do that. But I did have that business for about 20 years, stayed busy the whole time, realized that sometimes at Christmas eve I was still working and I felt like that was taking away from my family. So I backed off of it a little bit. And then when the grandchildren were born, I have not have not done my window treatment business anymore, but I have now added more to the farm. And it's not a bad life at all. It's not, I mean, yeah, I start sweating there in the heat but I also know that to me whether it's one seed that's planted or millions of seeds that are planted, there is a gratification that overwhelms you when you finally see it pop up and you see that plant pop. And to me it's a good feeling whether it's in my garden or whether it's out there when the cotton crop has been put in the ground, the sweet potatoes, when you see that end product and you're like, "I did that. I was a part of it." It just really is gratifying. When I moved here, which I was always, I was in the 4-H up in Virginia, I moved here and Burt was in the Jaycees, he was in the Farm Bureau Board of Directors in Edgecombe County and they had a women's committee. So I joined the women's committee where I was asked to be a part of that and also the Jaycees. So I married into those organizations, it seems like. Farm Bureau is an advocate for farming for agriculture and that's why I decided to do the women's committee. And it was hard for me when different ones would say, "Well, no. This is not for me." I'm like, "But you farm and that's your livelihood and this is an organization that stands up for your livelihood." But I mean I've stuck with it all this time and then went to the state women's committee of Farm Bureau and now I have from there learned a lot as far as advocacy for Farm Bureau. I learned how to talk with our legislators, go up to Washington or Raleigh, whichever is needed depending on what the subject is and testify there. Just to be a voice for agriculture is what I'm here for because sometimes when the farmers are in the field, Raleigh can call them and then they can go. They've got to be in that field because weather reasons, when the crop is ready to come in, you got to get it or if it sits there, it's not going to be there. So I'm like, it's easier for me to be able to pick up and go to Raleigh when they need me or to Washington when they need me. So that's one of the parks of a woman being a woman in farming. I can go do that. Testifying for farmers can be intimidating and when you go to Washington, you've got ... Everybody is sitting there looking at you and you've got to have this prepared and you've got three minutes to do it to talk about what the issue is. Farm Bureau staff, we have staff that help us prepare for that. They will definitely make sure that when you get there, you feel comfortable with what you're going to say, what you've written, they'll help you and guide you and be there for moral support. So when they ask me to do it, I'm like, "Okay, I need my pointers now." And they will definitely brief me and help me with what I want to say. So it is to me, if we didn't have Farm Bureau, who would the farmers have? Women are advocates now. Women, they play roles on the farm that are different than what they were the last generation and the generation before. And I think they want to be more of a voice. Women have always been caretakers. It's just that now we're trying to take care of the farm too. We look at the science part of it too, we get all the data we can get on it. Like Burt says, we've got to trust the scientists. We've got to trust those that are putting together these formulas that can save a crop when the bugs come in. Because otherwise they again can't feed anybody, can't clothe anybody if the crop doesn't make it because of the insects and such. Being on the farm Bureau Board of Directors, being in Farm Bureau as many years as we've been in, I do appreciate what they do to help educate me on how to speak on the subjects, because people do need to know. They need to hear, and if I can help out, I want to be that voice. Thank you for listening. If you would like to subscribe to The Leading Voices in Food podcast series, you can do so at Google play, Stitcher, RadioPublic or Apple podcasts, or by visiting our website at the Duke World Food Policy Center. This is Deborah Hill.

Welcome to The Leading Voices in Food podcast, an educational series produced by the World Food Policy Center at Duke University. I'm Deborah Hill. You're listening to a segment in our Voice of Farming series. Today we're talking with Gwen Pitt at the Pitt Family Farm located in Macclesfield, North Carolina, a rural city in Edgecombe County with a population of just 477 people. Agriculture is the leading industry here. Fields of tobacco and corn, sweet potatoes and soybeans, and of course cotton dominate the landscape running right up to the edge of freshly mown lawns. Houses are grouped in clusters, signaling extended families living and working together on family owned land. It's a tradition of life that goes back so many generations that numerous farms in the area also have private family cemetery grounds with headstones dating back to the 1800s. Gwen is the scout at the Pitt Farm. She scours cotton and sweet potato fields on the 1100 acres she farms with Burt Pitt, her husband of 40 years, looking for insects and testing the soil. Right now the cotton has completed its flowering stage and there are bolls. So now we just sit and wait for a little bit, and then as it starts turning cooler that they'll pop open and then it'll be time. Of course, you've got to go in and defoliate it. We will defoliate, which means we will put something on it that will make the leaves die and drop off. You can't pick it with the cotton picker if the leaves are still on it because then you end up with green lint and then you'll be docked for that. They will test the cotton when it gets to the gin as to the whiteness, as to the size of the fiber. And then most of our cotton, what we grow, goes to making jeans or T-shirts. Every crop has its purpose, and every crop goes to a certain area so that we can all have what we want in the grocery stores or in the stores. It's going to be there for us to have T-shirts, jeans, or nice shirts. So the bolls will finish maturing, and then they'll pop open, and then you'll see, hopefully, a field full of white, almost like snow. Our daughter, when she got married, she told her dad at the beginning of the year, she wanted to get married in October, and she said, "Your only job is to make sure the cotton is white on both sides of the path." She got married on the front porch, and it was the most beautiful crop we had had. It was pretty. Globally the US is the third largest producer of cotton behind China and India. Most of America's cotton comes from southern states in the so-called Cotton Belt. North Carolina is the country's eighth largest cotton producer. 20 years ago, we were raising cotton then, you always have to have a scout to go out and check for the insects. And they would be different insects that would destroy the boll, the worms that would get in it, the stinkbugs, such as that. If you hire a contract scout, it could cost upwards of $10,000 for a season. So I looked at it, and my husband's like, "You could do this." And I said, "Yes, I can do that to save this farm that much money." So went to the extension agent, and he actually came out and literally showed me how to scout. Actually he said, "You will do better than a contract because the contract worker gets in here one week at the first of the week, then they've got other farmers they have to go to. So then that one, it takes them a while to get back, and then in the meantime you may have some more bugs, a flight that comes in to where you needed to have sprayed two days before she gets back." Whereas I'm here, I'm hands on, I can go out there every day and check if I need to, if I feel the need to. And I enjoy doing that. I do the soil samples late fall and early, well, February, March, I'm out there doing the soil sampling now because I've got a Kubota, go around, do the boundaries, go out there and do soil sampling. And I've gotten that to where we have a local lab that I can just pick up and take to, it saves time. When you start hiring out those kind of jobs, it's costly and like you say, they may get to you or you may have to wait a week before they can get to you. And time sometimes is of the essence. It saves us money and this day and time with the low commodity prices, sometimes the disasters, it does save us money to do it that way. And that's when I've gotten more and more involved seeing things that I can do, and actually when I learn to do them, they're really interesting to learn about the different soils and what it takes for the different crops, and then too, the insects. You know, I'm scared to death of a spider crawling in my house, but now I can go out there and look for the stinkbugs and see all those wasp and everything. It doesn't bother me. I've been lucky that I have not come upon a snake or anything. So I enjoy what I do. It's rewarding. It is rewarding that I can be here and then start doing things around the home or get the grandchildren now, hoping, and we're seeing that, you know, they are very interested in farming. The first word out of the youngest's mouth, it wasn't mama, it was tractor. And that just tore her out of the frame that he said tractor before he said mama. I have two grandsons. We have one daughter, and she does live right across on the farm. I think they realize that they wanted them to have the farm life. They really did. My son-in-law said he wanted the grandchildren to be able to come out the back door. He wanted them to have that experience to be able to go to grandma's and go to the barn. They love to go to the barn and have supper or have lunch. We'll have lunch out at the barn. Cotton is graded in several ways such as fiber length, the uniformity, fineness and strength of the fiber, and how clean the cotton is in the bale. Cotton is also graded by color, namely the gradation of gray to white to yellow and the presence of any spots. Bright white is considered the highest quality. Farmers can influence cotton color by having good leaf defoliation and by getting the crop harvested before wet weather damages the fiber color. Well, of course, you know they used to pick the cotton by hand I don't know how many generations ago. That was probably two, three generations ago. Now, it is with the harvester, well, a cotton picker. A cotton picker, if you're not familiar with, when you go buy a cotton picker, I know it used to be like $400,000. We've had one now, so I know the prices have probably steadily gone up. You've got one man running that. The cotton picker goes through and just pulls the lint, which is the white, the cotton itself, the fiber, pulls it out of each one of those pods, so the sticky parts, which used to cut people's hands, is left in the field. And then you come along afterwards and mow the stalks. And so the picker only picks the fiber and the seed. It just kind of pulls it out of the boll, puts it in the back, and then you dump it into the boll buggy, which carries it to the module builder and presses it in. When it gets to the gin, that's when they separate the seed from the lint. And then they do sell the seed, and you know, we get a little bit for the seed, or either we put it into the cost of the ginning. And then we market it through a broker that actually sits there and watches the prices constantly. So he's on the computer every day, and he's shooting us emails every day, or either phone calls if he thinks we need to move on something. So you know, that kind of thing has changed over the years to where you don't just take it to a market. You've got someone up there sitting there at a computer watching it for you day after day, and saying, "Yes, we need to book some," or "We don't need to book right now." And hopefully at the end of the year, you've done well at that and your prices are where you can handle them. But like I say, the price has dropped so low right now because of tariffs that I'm just hoping it's going to go back up before time to sell it, you know. I think the more that I learn, the more Burt calls on me to do it because sometimes you can be too efficient. Thank you for listening. If you would like to subscribe to The Leading Voices in Food podcast series, you can do so at Google Play, Stitcher, RadioPublic, or Apple Podcasts, or by visiting our website at the Duke World Food Policy Center. This is Deborah Hill.  

In this episode of Relentlessly Rural, host Lamar Gilchrist interviews a group of volunteers at the Conetoe Family Life Center just outside of Greenville in Edgecombe County. In this episode you'll meet "Mrs. Bunch," a long-time volunteer with the center, Glover Ford an agricultural educator that uses his skills to help the center grow the food it shares with the Conetoe community, and Tarboro High School football coach Jamie Williams who directs the center's summer programs.

As we get closer to our November 27 Forum called ReCONNECT to Community, we wanted to give you a preview of how citizens are participating in helping our communities solve the big challenges. This week’s First in Future guest, Seth Saeugling of the nonprofit Rural Opportunity Institute in Edgecombe County, learned about the impact of trauma on children’s ability to learn in rural North Carolina schools through his experience in Teach for America. He and others, work to see how to apply emerging research on brains in a real world setting, not with a pre-developed program, but instead listening and learning. We learn how he is working with others in Edgecombe County to figure out how to translate the research into results.

Murder + Horrific = Murderific. Perhaps the movie "Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri" was inspired by this sordid tale. The Edgecombe County Serial Killer is the topic of this podcast. Contact Us: murderificpodcast@gmail.comPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/join/murderificpodcast?/PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/murderificpodcast/

Welcome to the fourth episode of our series on the I-95 corridor in North Carolina. Someone spent years preying on the vulnerable women of East Rocky Mount, NC. After several women were found murdered, and one still missing, authorities finally prosecuted a suspect for one of the murders, that of Tara Nicholson. The rest of the cases are still open and up to $20,000 in reward money continues to be offered for information leading to the ultimate conviction of the killer of the women of Edgecombe County, many of which were dumped off Seven Bridges Road. Police are still looking for the killer/s of Jarniece Hargrove Roberta Williams Travis Harrison Denise Williams Yolanda Lancaster Melody Wiggins Jackie Thorpe Ernestine Battle Elizabeth Smallwood Christine Boone   Also, there are more missing people throughout the region, and we profile a few of those missing people. Have you seen Joyce Renee Durham? She has been missing since 2007 from East Rocky Mount. If you have any information regarding her disappearance, please contact the Twin Counties Crimestoppers at 252-977-1111. Have you seen Jalesa Chantell Reynolds? She was last seen 2/22/10 in Scotland Neck, NC.  Have you seen Shonda Stansbury? She was last seen 12/7/06 in Halifax County NC. Have you seen Amy Wells Bridgemen? She has been missing since 6/24/13 from Weldon, NC.   WE ARE NOW ON STITCHER AND ITUNES! ADD US TO YOUR FAVORITE SHOWS SO YOU DON'T MISS AN EPISODE! Discuss or get more info about these cases. Music: Modum    by: Kai Engel    Album: Caeli Link to more music by Kai Engel Check out Kai's website

Join your hosts, Ken McClenton and Legal Analyst Shelby Emmett as they delve into the cultural, religious, and social foundations of conservatism, with their unique perspectives, on ACNation Radio Network [www.social.acnation.com].  News with Shakeal Moore and The Warrior Report.  Mondays at 10:00 PM EST.  10:00 PM EST Special Guest Shakeal Moore, 17, serves as County Director of The Fredrick Douglass Foundation of Edgecombe County, NC.  The High School student, will develop community outreach projects for housing, job training and literacy skills.  The Foundation Kick-Off is December 17, 2011.  Website: http://www.wilsonncteaparty.com  10:15 PM EST Special Guest Vernon Robinson , North Carolina’s Most Conservative Candidate, will discuss his bid for the State’s 8th Congressional District Seat.  Mr. Robinson will comment on the efforts of Congressmen Larry Kissell (D-8), Brad Miller (D-13), Mike McIntyre (D-7), and Heath Shuler (D-11).  He will give us a status on his Congressional Campaign in North Carolina. Website: http://RobinsonForCongress.com  Tonight's News Is Sponsored By Realtor Shataa Whittle, Exit Right Realty, (202) 276-2295 or swhittle@exitrightrealty.com.

Join your hosts, Ken McClenton and Legal Analyst Shelby Emmett as they delve into the cultural, religious, and social foundations of conservatism, with their unique perspectives, on ACNation Radio Network [www.social.acnation.com].  News with Shakeal Moore and The Warrior Report.  Mondays at 10:00 PM EST.  10:00 PM EST Special Guest Shakeal Moore, 17, serves as County Director of The Fredrick Douglass Foundation of Edgecombe County, NC.  The High School student, will develop community outreach projects for housing, job training and literacy skills.  The Foundation Kick-Off is December 17, 2011.  Website: http://www.wilsonncteaparty.com  10:15 PM EST Special Guest Vernon Robinson , North Carolina’s Most Conservative Candidate, will discuss his bid for the State’s 8th Congressional District Seat.  Mr. Robinson will comment on the efforts of Congressmen Larry Kissell (D-8), Brad Miller (D-13), Mike McIntyre (D-7), and Heath Shuler (D-11).  He will give us a status on his Congressional Campaign in North Carolina. Website: http://RobinsonForCongress.com  Tonight's News Is Sponsored By Realtor Shataa Whittle, Exit Right Realty, (202) 276-2295 or swhittle@exitrightrealty.com.

The tech prep grant was used to supplement the high school academies. The students take their beginning courses at their local high school and then finish their academy at Edgecombe Community College. The students earn a certificate from Edgecombe Community College after their completion of the academy. The focus this year was on the Health Science Academy along with the Electronics Academy.

George Higgs was born in 1930 in a farming community in Edgecombe County near Speed, North Carolina ("a slow town with a fast name" as he is fond of saying.) He learned to play the harmonica as a child from his father, Jesse Higgs, who enjoyed playing favorite spirituals and folk tunes at home during his spare time. George got to catch the medicine showman and harmonica player Peg Leg Sam playing locally in Rocky Mount during the tobacco market season and he made a lasting impression on the young harp player. He was later attracted to the guitar as a teenager and reluctantly sold a favorite squirrel dog to a neighbor to raise funds to purchase his first. As a result of their close proximity the dog spent more time at George's home than at his new owner's, so he got to have the guitar and keep the company of his dog. Acoustic Piedmont blues by George Higgs, a North Carolinian, who was inspired to take up the harmonica as a child after hearing Deford Bailey on the radio and seeing Peg Leg Sam at medicine shows and then learned to play guitar as a teenager. f you could wrap Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee into one package, it would probably look like George Higgs. Not only does Higgs play blues on the guitar, but he also is an artist on the harmonica. While his songs are in the Piedmont Blues tradition, they have the melancholy flavor of Mississippi Delta blues. Born in 1930 on a farm near Tarboro, he learned the skills of farming from his father and later learned carpentry. As a child, he would listen to his father play spirituals, and "Cryin' Holy Unto the Lord" on his father's harp led him to begin thinking of following his father's model. George Higgs Rainy day blues buy your cd at cdbaby for george higgs