News from rural America.

This week, we start off talking about a movement to grow water-conscious and delicious grains in Colorado’s San Luis Valley. Then, culture reporters Susannah Broun and Madelon Basil dissect the latest albums from Noah Kahan and Kacey Musgraves, two rural artists whose new music is all about leaving home, and coming back again. Daily Yonder contributor Nhatt Nichols takes us to coastal Washington, to learn about how local organizations are repopulating native Olympia oysters to repair the Salish Sea’s complex ecosystem. And Taylor Sisk introduces us to Yvette McDaniel, an opera singer and community arts advocate from South Carolina’s low country. We’ll hear music from Clover Lynn, a banjo picker who brings a gothic flair to traditional mountain music.

TRANSCRIPT

Hi, I'm Jared Ewe, the host of Yonder Radio.

Every week we bring listeners rural conversations with national reach.

This week we start off talking about a movement to grow water-conscious and delicious grains in Colorado's San Luis Valley.

Then, culture reporters Susanna Brown and Madeline Basil dissect the latest albums from Noah Kahn and Casey Musgraves, two rural artists whose new music is all about leaving home and coming back again.

And Daily Yonder contributor Nat Nichols takes us to coastal Washington to learn about how local organizations are repopulating native Olympia oysters to repair the Salish Sea's complex ecosystem.

And Taylor Sisk introduces us to Yvette McDaniel, an opera singer and community arts advocate from South Carolina's Low Country.

We'll hear music from Clover Lynn, a banjo picker who brings a gothic flair to traditional mountain music.

So tune in to hear all that and more on this week's episode of Yonder Radio.

We'll see you next time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Yonder Radio, rural conversations with National Reach.

Speaking of rural, we're going to talk about that very word on the way, as well as trivia.

And of course, our musical guest joins us today as always an incredible story with the music and they are intertwined.

So all of that is coming up on Yonder Radio and more.

But right now, from the Daily Yonder Newsroom, the Daily Yonder News editor, Jan Patolsky, what is happening in rural America?

Hi, Jared.

This week, we're starting with a developing story from AP.

It's the screwworm infestation that's happening in Texas and now with the first confirmed case outside of Texas.

The screwworm is a fly larva that pesters animals and can really hurt them.

It feeds on live flesh.

And the worry here is that the response to it has not really been as effective or as quick as we would hope to see.

And eventually that could affect beef prices.

Already Canada temporarily stopped importing cattle, horses or other livestock from Texas.

One interesting thing is that we are also witnessing a conflict between USDA and the Texas Ag Commissioner.

So, you know, that's not a good sign when you have a misunderstanding and a conflict between two agencies that are supposed to coordinate on the response.

Well, speaking of parasites, what is going on with private equity and mobile home parks?

The conversation brought interesting research.

The research specifically looks closely at Wisconsin, but it gives some national data that I thought was interesting.

Rents in the parks, trailer parks, have been going up steadily and increased by 45% over the past decade.

And those in rural areas are typically places that provide most of the affordable housing.

Private equities tend to come in, buy up those mobile parks, and then immediately increase the rent, which makes it really difficult for folks living there who are already on a tight budget.

I lived in some pretty janky trailers as a child, and nothing about those arrangements said that we could afford more rent.

And from Brookings, you got a story here about President Trump's support declining in rural America.

What are the details?

Yes, Brookings Institute published their recent study where they looked at the declining support for President Trump, specifically among longtime Republicans in rural areas.

That has been something that, according to Brookings, has been a little underreported.

You know, it coalesces around economic issues.

The numbers are fairly staggering. 24% of white rural voters think that the condition of the economy is excellent or good, and 77% think it's poor.

The economic concerns concentrate around farm closures.

Last year alone, according to Brookings, 15,000 farms closed.

Those concerns also include manufacturing jobs.

We've lost 77,000 of those.

It's the beginning of Trump's second term.

The Center for Rural Strategies commissioned a poll with Lake Research Partners among 13 Senate battleground states.

We did that in March.

Our findings were similar in that regardless of ideological bent, both Democrats and Republicans agreed that their worries focus around economic issues.

So informative. then hear me out, Mr. Patolsky.

You're the only yawn in the house.

Thank you, Jared.

Only yawn in the house.

That's really good, I have to say.

I appreciate that one.

That was Jan Patolsky, news editor for the Daily Yonder, dailyyonder.com.

Up next, I'm talking to Daily Yonder reporter Ilana Newman about low-water farming innovations in Colorado San Luis Valley.

We can have a win-win here, folks.

Use less water and still get yummy goods.

This is a great story.

This is a choir of community coming together, and it's all about rye, which is making a resurgence in the San Luis Valley in Colorado.

Ilana, talk about the rye resurgence.

This is a project started by a farmer, Sarah Jones, and a water manager, Heather Dutton, in the San Luis Valley of Colorado.

The San Luis Valley is very agricultural and it mostly grows potatoes.

It's actually the second largest potato growing region in the country.

I didn't know that till I read your article.

Now I have some extra Colorado pride in me.

I know.

I mean, there's a Colorado Potato Association in Monta Vista and I just love that.

In your face, accountants, we got our own CPA.

Exactly.

So potatoes use a lot of water and And Sarah Jones, her family, or it's actually her husband's family, has been a farmer in the San Luis Valley for five generations.

And they've historically grown rye as a cover crop for a long time, but they weren't really selling it for anything.

And so Sarah was thinking it would be really great if they could figure out a way to actually make a profit on their winter rotational crop and to get other farmers to grow more rye. because barley and alfalfa are also common crops grown in the San Luis Valley, but they also use a lot of water compared to rye.

So rye uses about 10 to 12 inches of water per acre, whereas barley uses 18 to 20 and alfalfa uses 24 to 26 inches of water per acre.

So it's pretty drastically different.

It is kind of the perfect time to be pursuing this low water crop because, you know, Jared, you live in Colorado, I live in Colorado, I can look out my window and look at the mountains and there's almost no snow on them.

And it is spring and spring is supposed to be our peak of our snowpack right before everything melts off and contributes to our rivers and our aquifers and our reservoirs.

And we use that water all summer.

And when I talked to Heather about the water in the San Luis Valley, which is part of the Rio Grande watershed, it was at about 13% of snowpack, which is at the time was one of the lowest on record.

But because you couldn't really sell the rye compared to this alfalfa, the barley, the potatoes, a lot of people weren't growing it.

So there was a grant, a state grant a few years ago, and they used that money to start the Rye Resurgence Project, which is basically connecting farmers to businesses that will use their rye and doing basically, they're kind of the rye marketing team.

They're trying to redesign the image of what rye is and that it can be used for so many things.

Tell me a success story of a member of the rye resurgence.

Maybe it's a retailer, someone seeing the rye process work in their favor.

Yeah.

So the Rye Resurgence Project has a bunch of partners all over the state.

They're partnering with bakeries, with mills like Mountain Mama Milling in Monta Vista, which is also in the San Luis Valley.

And with distilleries, they're making rye whiskey and they're making flour and they're making bread and cookies and all of these things.

So it's kind of this whole life cycle and integrating itself into the food system, both in the San Luis Valley and all across Colorado.

One of the partners that we got a chance to have lunch at was Tumbleweed Bread.

And Tumbleweed Bread was started by Jessica Lariva.

She started baking out of her house and then eventually opened a cafe and they're a partner of the rye resurgence project so they sell rye in in the bakery they sell flour and they sell baked goods made out of that flour straight from sarah jones's farm as a baker as the person who did the research for this story and shared it with us on dailyyonder.com is there anything we're losing if we use rye as compared to other flowers other crops that you know of?

Yeah.

When you use 100% rye, it definitely doesn't rise as much.

That's kind of any 100% whole wheat.

Pieces of the whole grain when they're ground up can kind of break some of the gluten fibers.

Now this is getting a little bit technical into the bread baking world.

Oh, we got bread geeks out there who are loving it.

Yeah.

So you're not going to get as much of a rise out of a fully rye or fully whole grain, any type of grain loaf.

It's going to be better for something like shortbread cookies, which you can get at Tumbleweed Bakery.

But as long as you know what you're getting into and kind of learn how to work with these whole grains, it tastes so good.

That's definitely the plus side.

And it's really good for you.

So I guess that's also great.

And then the other plus side is that you're using a foot less water per acre.

Yeah, we're supporting drought resilient crops in Colorado.

Well, I can already see a save water drink whiskey campaign doing quite well.

All right, we should get that to them.

They're also looking at other types of grains that they might be able to also find buyers for that it'll be interesting to see what other kinds of drought resilient crops we can get into.

Alana Newman going down and, well, trying some bread from the crops they are growing there to save water.

The resurgence of rye.

Thank you so much.

It was a really, really rough reporting trip.

Visiting a mill and going to a bakery.

Terrible times.

Well, it's good to see you on the other side.

Thank you for making it.

Thanks, Jared.

That was Alana Newman of the Daily Yonder throwing herself on the sword.

Actually, throwing herself on the baguette to sacrifice for all of us and bring us information about delicious and water-conscious baked goods.

And now it's time to hear from this week's featured musician.

Clover Lynn, who is also known as Hillbilly Gothic, is a bluegrass and Gothic country musician hailing from the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia.

After a stint working in the tech industry, she moved back to Appalachia, where she taught herself banjo and became an avid musician.

Here she talks about music and what it means to be a trans woman in a traditional family. well we're talking to clover lynn and online is hillbilly gothic war on the clover lynn journey coming up but i do have a question this is a musical question i don't know a lot about banjo but claw hammer or three finger banjo which are you are you both is there a rivalry um yeah so i I will say I am both, but to a greater extent.

I started with three finger, which is more like the bluegrass sound that you'll hear.

And a claw hammer is kind of the modern name for a style of banjo that dates back, really you can trace it back to West Africa with the way that that instrument came over here.

But specifically the way that I play claw hammer is very traditional to my region of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Southwest Virginia and the historic name for it.

And I prefer it a lot more than Claw Hammer is thrash down.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah.

I try to say thrash down as much as possible.

So I say I play both three finger and thrash down.

So what is for the lay banjo person such as myself, what's the difference between the thrash down, which is the coolest new term and the three finger.

Three finger is played with picks, a thumb pick, and two metal finger picks.

The thumb pick is plastic.

It has a much more of a syncopated sound, and there is a way of approaching it that is you are playing individual strings with your fingers, and you play it in a roll pattern, and that roll creates a drive, and that is the musical term that I'm going to botch real quick is the arpeggiation of the melody or the chords in such a way that like provides like a different texture to the music and then for thrashdown or as many people would say claw hammer you were playing it with the back of your fingernails you were creating a rhythm with both that's called very modernly a bum ditty which is a one two and there's less drop thumb almost no drop thumb at all really and drop thumb is when you uh instead of doing that brush or you will end up playing a second melody note with your thumb.

Thrashdown utilizes that less, but gets those same melody notes.

I like to say on stage that the hippies call it Claw Hammer, and I call it Thrashdown just to drive that wedge a little bit further, because I do think my music is both a return to tradition while also diverging from a modern sensibility of tradition.

Well, this gets into you as Hillbilly Gothic, hundreds of thousands of people know you as Hillbilly Gothic.

What are the artistic ingredients that go into that name?

Yeah, absolutely.

So like I was just goth as a kid and a teenager.

And, you know, I grew up watching a lot of horror movies.

And like my favorite movie when I was like six or seven years old was in like Shaman's The Village.

My mom was really concerned about that.

But then, you know, she would like let me read Stephen King when I was really young. that kind of all led to me being an alternative person.

Growing up, I very much pretended like, oh, you know, like I'm not like the rest of my family.

They're all hillbillies and X, Y, Z, and I don't want to be that.

And then I moved away and people still like caught on to where I was from and they would make fun of me in like mostly playful ways, but in ways that made me like really miss home.

And so I ended up moving back home and really embracing the fact that I'm from the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia.

The culture that that comes along with, like I come from sharecroppers and German Baptist brethren and can never separate myself from that.

So I should fully be that as much as possible.

Yeah.

Those people violated a cardinal rule.

Like I can make fun of my hillbilly family, but you can't.

No, exactly.

Yeah.

So you go back home.

Are you a punk or are you family or are you both?

All of the above.

Yeah.

I think in a lot of very literal and figurative ways, I'm the black sheep of the family, but not, but in a small room family, being the black sheep of family never really is being fully excluded from the family.

I've never felt excluded from my family.

They love me.

They make jokes at my expense and I make jokes at their expense.

And that's like the good thing.

Like if my family didn't make jokes about things, it would not be good.

Yeah.

How would you even communicate?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Like it's, if they didn't bring up the transness, it would be kind of like, it would feel a lot worse.

It'd feel a lot scarier that they just didn't talk about it as where if they make jokes, it's a thing that is real and around and we can talk about it.

Specifically in my family, it's been harder for them to embrace the fact that I'm a professional musician than it is that I'm trans.

Like they're like, while Papa's always talking, he's like, he's like, well, you need to get a job with health insurance or you know what's going to happen and you know uh he is much more likely to ask about job stuff and how i'm you know making ends meet than he has to ever like be like oh you're going to go to hell or something you know have you seen that maybe you've opened some opportunities for people who didn't think they were there before they saw or met you absolutely no i've had people say that, you know, I'm the reason they were able to come out or I'm the reason that they discovered that they were trans or people just telling me that they love the fact that like I like embrace this like alternative style and while still try to be as faithful to like my roots as possible.

Well, truly an inspiration.

And what is the latest that people should be looking for?

What do you want people to find that you've done.

I just put out an EP end of last year, cover the shows.

The shows are, I like to say they're like the old bluegrass and folk shows.

They're a little bit of a comedy show.

There's songs.

You'll laugh, you'll cry.

You might learn how to make better cornbread.

Important.

Well, thank you so much for the time, Cloverland.

This has been fantastic and enlightening and inspiring.

Awesome.

Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it.

That was Clover Lynn.

We'll hear another song from her in the second part of the show, but now it's time for trivia.

We'll give you a total of three clues and reveal the answer.

Now, this is the first clue.

The answer to this week's trivia question is a facility that safeguards humanity's future.

Oh, just that little task.

It's located in one of the world's northernmost inhabited areas.

Coming up on Yonder Radio, we are going to help out the environment.

We're also going to have some album reviews, and we're going to talk about the word rural.

That's all on the way on Yonder Radio. guitar solo yonder radio rural conversations with national reach hello my name is charity we we're sitting in the share circle now and right now our editor of yonder radio susanna brown is talking with madeline basil about her album review she wrote for the daily yonder they're discussing the very popular releases of casey musgraves and noah cons their new albums and their rural roots so this spring there were two very anticipated albums they were casey musgrave's album middle of nowhere and noah khan's album the great divide they both have a lot to say about rural america and so with me now is madeline basil who wrote a review on these two albums for the daily yonder we have a lot to get to but first i want to know did you like these albums the short answer is yes I definitely, as a longtime fan of Kacey Musgraves, was already expecting to love "Middle of Nowhere" and that proved true.

The Great Divide definitely snuck up on me a little bit.

I had listened to "Stick Season" kind of like the rest of the world.

Yeah.

But I feel like Noah Kahn's writing on this new album gripped me in a different, more intense So I really liked both of them.

Yeah, I did too.

I had been fans of both of them.

And one thing to point out for both of these artists is they are really known for their rural roots.

So they both grew up in areas with populations under 5,000.

For Casey Musgraves, that's Mineola, Texas, and she grew up in Golden, Texas.

And then for Noah Kahn, that's Stratford, Vermont.

What are their perspectives on their rural hometowns?

And how does this show up in these two albums?

Definitely for Kacey Musgraves, the title track and the first track on her album, Middle of Nowhere, really sets up her reverence for Mineola, Golden.

She says this track was inspired by a sign that she saw.

Oh, really?

Yeah, she says she saw a sign outside of Golden, Texas that referred to it as the Middle of Nowhere.

So she was inspired by that kind of unapologetic owning of your morality.

Out there on the edge of the world, way past common sense.

Past the Dairy Queen, the county line, where there ain't any fence.

Yeah, it's kind of like reclaiming things like flyover country or middle of nowhere because it's a pretty positive track.

Yeah, it's a very positive track.

Treating to this place that she sings about, the place that, in her words, is out there on the edge of the world, brings her lots of peace.

This dynamic that she sets up in Middle of Nowhere appears throughout the album.

One track I'm thinking of is Loneliest Girl. which really emphasizes this idea that being alone isn't necessarily a bad thing whether you're feeling emotionally stranded after a breakup or geographically as she would say in the middle of nowhere you can own that and it can bring you peace so in Casey Musgraves album it's a lot about finding solace and comfort in your rural hometown is that also how Noah Kahn talks about his rural roots Noah Kahn seems a little more They're ambivalent about this act of returning to your rural roots.

He does a really great job on The Great Divide of building this cast of characters.

There's stayers, the people who never leave their rural hometown.

There's goers, people that he kind of characterizes as fleeing or running away from their rural hometowns, and returners, so people who are called back to where they grew up because of a whole mix of feelings. obligation, guilt, and also this appreciation for the place that made you you.

Of these different archetypes, one of the most evocative is really embodied on this track dashboard, where Khan is singing as the stayer, calling out almost the goer.

It has some really scathing moments.

I mean, the first line already is biting.

So it really creates this fraught dynamic between the people that stay in the hometown and the people that leave.

Noah Kahn is calling out himself, right?

Like, he is the goer.

My favorite song on the album is Haircut, and it's also this scathing thing of being like, you got too big for your britches or you got famous.

Don't forget where you came from.

And also, though, don't judge me for still being here.

Because he's able to see himself and call himself out, I found that the album was really honest.

I don't think he hates his hometown.

He's always sung about his love for New England and his love for small towns, but he is realizing the change in his life.

Absolutely.

I think that's part of why I'm so drawn to The Great Divide as an album is because it absolutely recognizes that those two things can be true.

There are these very heavy emotions associated with, you know, coming, going, staying.

And at the same time, there's so many tracks on the album, especially the last one, Dan, that has this really beautiful description of the kinds of wonderful community and deep cutting relationships that are very specific to growing up in a rural area.

So I'm with my best friend Dan now, camping on the county line, Hand around the middle line, waiting for the sun to rise.

A couple of hometown heroes fighting over politics, sitting and remembering.

So both of these artists are on tour later this summer.

And for Madeline's full album review, you can go to dailyonder.com and subscribe to the arts and culture newsletter, The Good, The Bad and The Elegy.

Thank you so much, Madeline, for talking some rural music.

Thank you for having me.

It was so fun.

That was Susanna Brown and Madeline Basil.

You can read more of Madeline's thoughts on these new rural-focused albums at dailyyonder.com.

Speaking of albums, here's another song from Clover Lynn's latest, Gothic Mountain Bluegrass.

This song is Foot in the Grave. guitar solo That was Foot in the Grave by Clover Lynn.

And something else that is music to our ears is when we hear about something good in our surrounding natural habitats.

We have that now from Daily Yonder contributor Nat Nichols. takes us to coastal Washington, where community groups are teaming up to repopulate Olympia oysters in their natural habitat.

When we think of reintroducing an animal back into its natural habitat, it's typical to take into account the impact it will have on the rest of the ecosystem.

Think beavers and dams or wolves and deer.

But for a new program on rural Washington's Salish coast, Introducing a particular shellfish back into its native waters has built more than just a healthy aquaculture.

These tanks are for growing Olympia oysters to support restoration in Puget Sound.

These are just little baby oysters, yeah.

That's Rain Crim with the Puget Sound Restoration Fund, which has been growing Olympia oysters since 2014 to support restoration through Puget Sound.

One of the new things they're trying is partnering with other groups to grow oysters and increase their capacity.

We're really limited with how many oysters we can put out. in the wild.

And we're limited at our sight, how many we can grow.

Enter Simona Klotznitzer, the school program manager for the Northwest Maritime Center, and Neil Harrington, the environmental biologist for the Jamestown's Clallam tribe.

Together, they recognize the impact they could make by combining their school programs with growing Olympia oysters.

Though you can eat these oysters, that's not the reason these organizations have partnered to grow them.

They're an essential part of the local ecosystem, One that, in Neil's words, have been largely extirpated from their historical range.

So you can find them on a lot of beaches in Puget Sound, but at highly, highly sort of depressed numbers.

And so we're working to restore those populations and really sort of restore the habitat that they create.

So what has happened is these habitats that were historically oyster beds on these tide flats are now mud flats.

And these actually were often spots where you would find winter villages of the Coast Salish people, including the Sklalem tribe, would often have village sites in these areas because it's a readily available food.

And so we're restoring them for other reasons, not so related to food, but things like water quality and habitat complexity and just sort of a cultural icon of the Northwest in a lot of ways.

There's another reason why growing Olympia oysters is so important.

Here's Simona with an excellent question.

It's our only native oyster species, correct?

Correct.

The native oysters grown here will eventually travel a few hours north from Port Townsend to Chukenut Bay, which historically had Olympia oysters, but currently doesn't in any kind of numbers.

And so in these areas where you have very few existing oysters, you can't really rely on natural reproduction.

You have to kickstart it in a way.

And so these oysters, you know, so there's broodstock taken from the environment.

And those were brought to Puget Sound Restoration Fund's hatchery down in Manchester.

And so they produced quite, I don't know, tens of thousands, millions of larvae.

We got 7 million larvae.

We got 7 million larvae.

We got 7 million larvae.

The goal there is to have a self-sustaining population in Chocanap Bay of Olympia oysters, which have been absent for probably 100 years.

But it's not just about recovering what we've lost.

Oysters do a lot for the ecosystem, supporting plants, animals, and water quality.

They're all filter feeding, and so they're drawing down, they're improving water, like light penetration, so things like eelgrass will do better in clearer water.

Jamestown collaborated on a study that was led by the Swinomish tribe to look at what habitat value Olympia oyster beds provide to out-migrating baby salmon.

And it turns out that there's more good baby salmon food on Olympia oyster beds than adjoining mudflats.

So the idea here is that you're actually improving salmon habitat by restoring oysters.

Simona is interested in a different kind of cultural improvement, connecting students to all the potential the natural world has to offer.

From Northwest Maritime's side, we were really excited to have this oyster project on campus so that we could have an opportunity to engage our students who are doing all kinds of maritime learning here, especially career-connected learning.

We're out on the water all the time as being in a maritime organization, but we really wanted to bulk up how we're giving back to the environment.

And we wanted to participate in something that was helping to restore the Salish Sea.

And how does that fit in with their youth programming?

Youth are the future.

They also just care so much.

They're going to inherit this place.

And if we can involve them in restoring it back to a healthier ecosystem, That is an incredible way for them to feel more connected to it, to have a sense of place, to learn about their own place in the world, even if they don't end up going into marine sciences or conservation.

Just feeling connected to the ecosystem, the planet, their home, will really inform how they move through the world.

Ave Arroyo is one of the students in charge of caring for the baby oysters.

I caught up with her in the boat shop where the food is stored, and I asked her what baby oysters eat.

It's like an algae paste.

I don't know where they get it, but it's really stinky.

Abby and the rest of the volunteers will be feeding the oysters twice a day for around two months until they get to be around five millimeters.

Yeah, they were microscopic, and now we can see them a lot better from just our eyes.

And I get the microscope out and look at a couple of shells, and then I put them back.

Abby told me this opportunity was a natural fit.

I've always been interested in marine biology, and I've been doing it a lot of my life.

But it's not very often that you can say that you helped restore a whole oyster population.

Abby and the rest of the volunteers are hoping to join Brian as he releases them into Chukinut Bay, where they'll do important work filtering the water, encouraging eelgrass, and improving the native ecosystem.

I'm Nat Nichols, reporting for Yonder Radio. well it's time for our second break but before that another trivia clue for you here it is the norwegian government funded the construction of this facility which was built 430 feet deep inside a sandstone mountain and remains at a temperature of 0.4 degrees fahrenheit at all times i'm not sure if the norwegians are cool with us using fahrenheit but we're talking to Americans here.

So that's what it is.

We have more clues for you coming up and the answer.

And we're going to talk to a woman who helps empower kids as they figure out what they can do with their collaboration and education.

Coming up on Yonder Radio. piano plays softly yonder radio rural conversations with national reach we have our trivia answer coming up and we're going to tangle with a difficult word and now though we're going to hear from daily yonder contributor taylor sisk taylor has a series called a rural calling in which he profiles difference makers in rural communities across the country for this feature he traveled to the low country of south carolina and spent some time with yvette mcdaniel yvette grew up in this region went off traveled the world as a classically trained operatic soprano, as what does, then returned to mentor young people and share wisdom gained from a life in the arts.

On a sweltering late July Wednesday in the small town of Denmark, South Carolina, a dozen or so young people are gathered at the Bethlehem Baptist Union for an event convened by Breathe Easy South Carolina.

Yvette directs the program, which involves three days of education, training, fellowship, and fun.

These kids are designing anti-smoking campaigns they'll champion when they return to their schools in the fall.

Throughout my interview, as you'll hear, there's a good amount of buzz and background chatter.

But as Yvette explains, It's not noise.

It's exciting.

These young people here for this program don't yet know their advocates, Yvette said, but it's dawning on them.

They're listening to and learning from one another and their instructors.

This work has always been a part of Yvette's life.

Advocacy has always been a part of who I am.

In part, that's because it's a family legacy.

Yvette shared with me some of this history.

I'm going to give you the highlights.

Yeah, the highlights.

Okay.

Born in Douglas, Georgia, to parents who attended Claflin University, a mother whose grandfather was on the original board at Claflin.

And in her family, everybody went to Claflin, so they moved back to Orangeburg for us to go to Claflin.

I was six.

Yvette's great-great-grandfather was enslaved.

His son helped found Claflin University, the oldest institution of the historically black colleges and universities in South Carolina.

Yvette's relationship with the arts was established in her early schooling.

I went to Felton Laboratory School, which was a lab school on the campus, and had many opportunities.

The guy that played the original Fossa, also the grape and the fruit of the loom commercials was my drama coach in the second grade.

There was a parochial school.

My parents couldn't afford the parochial school, so we went to the lab school.

But at the lab school, there are many opportunities because we were taught excellence is our goal.

That's all we heard.

You must be better than.

And you have to remember, you know, they still had signs in Orangeburg that said whites only in the restrooms.

And my parents, who were getting their master's from Columbia University in New York, They could not go to a public restroom, even if they bought gas at the station, until we got to Washington, D.C., to the Mason-Dixon line.

Yvette's father was in the Air Force and performed in the Singing Sergeants, playing jazz saxophone and singing operatic bass baritone.

I fell in love with opera then, and they say when I was three that I went to a voice lesson with him at Columbia University, and he couldn't hit his high note right, and so I hit it and sang Italian.

Now, I don't remember that.

I remember singing, but I just loved it.

So at 10, some of the people at South Carolina State made sure that I met the great Leontine Price.

And as a 10-year-old, I guess she was charmed.

She put me in her dressing room for hours and talked to me, and I had to call into her during her career every year on my birthday to tell her what I was doing.

At 36, South Carolina Philharmonic called me, having never heard me, but having heard of me, and offered me two performances of the Verdi Requiem.

And as a soprano soloist, that's the height of heights.

And the oboe cleared, and this was the best compliment I've ever gotten.

He said, I've heard Lantene Price, who is my idol.

I've heard Martina Arroyo, and that was my voice teacher.

And he said, now I've heard Yvette McDaniel.

Yvette traveled the world performing opera.

She eventually returned home to help care for family members, intending to go back to her life on the stage at some point.

But she ended up staying at home, working to nurture both individuals and initiatives in the low country of rural South Carolina.

In 2016, President Obama designated six counties in the low country as a Promise Zone, an initiative designed to generate opportunities in communities across the country with high rates of poverty.

The South Carolina Arts Commission launched Art of Community Rural SC, And under its auspices, McDaniel helped found CRAWL, the Community Rural Arts Work League of Bamberg County, to advance health, education, and workforce development.

And it's the Arts Commission that started Art of Community, which was to use arts and social justice in the Promise Zone.

This area was a Promise Zone, and that's when Susan came down and did what she did.

That's Susan DePlessy, Community Arts Development Director for the South Carolina Arts Commission.

And taught me about real, I've always done advocacy work, but didn't know what to call it.

And so taught us about social justice.

Taught us how to use arts with a small A, as well as arts with a capital A.

And in an area like Denmark, where there is no high school choir, there is no high school drama program, there's no high school gaming building program, there's no health club like that.

The value, educationally, dealing with mental health, dance and movement for physical health and things, people just don't get.

And it's hard to keep it going in these areas, but we're doing it.

Back at the Breathe Easy program that Yvette is leading, I asked her why she pushed so hard to have this program in Denmark, South Carolina, and what makes the town so special to her.

For me, having worked here, it is the support you get from many of the citizens.

And it's like a hidden gem quality.

There are a lot of astronauts who are from here.

This is a huge town for veterans.

There are a lot of people that care.

We've had several citizens who have gotten the Governor's Awards for volunteerism.

And on the other side, you have the helplessness and the hopelessness.

So it's not a feeling that we cannot do, but a feeling that if we just have a shoulder that will help push a boulder or open a door.

For these kids, we give them a safe space.

Somebody's listening to them.

Somebody's teaching them.

We're excited here for this to have taken off.

We want them to feel that confidence.

And this is their first foray into speaking and understanding that they are the people we will listen to and that they have power.

We have to give our youth something to do.

And so that's one of the things that we're trying to do, as well as, like I said, to expose the arts, but we deal with social, emotional, physical, and mental health through the arts, through the advocacy, through building character and self-esteem, through just changing lives.

Yvette has been confronted with some challenging health issues the past few decades. limited mobility after a fall from the stage and diminishing eyesight but it hasn't slowed her down she continues to inspire future generations through the arts, education and advocacy and her unwavering belief in the greatness of our community My mother always told us you give the best that you have to the highest that you know For the Daily Yonder and Yonder Radio I'm Taylor Sisk Do you know someone making a difference in a rural community?

You can nominate them to be featured in the Rural Calling series by contacting Taylor Sisk.

That email is WTSISK1 at gmail.com.

That's WTSISK, the number one, at gmail.com.

And now you might not think of Southern New Jersey's Pine Barrens as a farming utopia, but there's someone who did, and we have that story.

Daily Yonder reporter Anya Patron-Slepian is here to tell us about a 19th century Jewish farming settlement in Alliance, New Jersey, and how their descendants are preserving their legacy today.

In 1882, 43 Jewish families immigrated to Salem County, New Jersey, and formed the community of Alliance.

Five generations later, William Levin and his wife Malia formed a non-profit on the same land.

We thought maybe we could do something Jewish and creative and revive perhaps the spirit of the Jewish agrarian community that once thrived in South New Jersey.

The Alliance colonists were part of an ideological movement called Am Olam, which sought to create utopian Jewish farming communities in the New World.

With the help of philanthropists, immigrants founded Am Olam settlements across North and South America.

But most settlements were short-lived.

Because of laws that prevented Russian Jews from owning any land, few settlers had any farming experience.

Far-flung am-olam colonies in Louisiana, Oregon, Colorado, and South Dakota all failed within a few years in the face of difficult economic and environmental conditions.

The success of the Alliance colony was an exception, due in part to its accessibility via train to major markets like New York and Philadelphia.

Tom Kinsella is the director of the Alliance Heritage Center.

It was fairly well thought of here.

Even if the ground wasn't most fertile, it was inexpensive.

It was close to places where you could sell.

The Levins say preserving the history of the farming colony is important, in part because it complicates the idea that Jewish immigrants in America were exclusively urban.

They're also part of a growing community of Jewish farmers, who believe that agriculture can help Jews reconnect to the historical and cultural roots of the religion.

Most ancient Jewish texts speak in the language of an agricultural society.

If you go back to a more agrarian-based lifestyle, the Torah can seem more relevant and immediate for you.

For Yonder Radio, I'm Anya Patron-Zlepian.

Thank you, Anya Patron-Zlepian.

To read her full story, go to dailyyonder.com.

Oh, we got something we need to talk about, America.

And we don't talk about it because, well, it's hard to.

It's the word rural.

How did country kids end up with a rural?

Sounds more like a burp on the breeze than what we need, which are hard consonants.

They're like auditory landmarks that create our mental map.

The claying of a cattle guard, the crack of a branch, the slam of a screen door.

We got nothing to hang on to with rural.

Alliteration and accidents fell into a verbal stew.

Siblings took off with onomatopoeia and splash.

You're left drowning in a sea of tongues.

Rural.

Sounds like a bear that just woke up after hibernation and is trying to say you need something to eat.

Let me just say, turns out I'm not alone.

What's a word that you have a lot of trouble saying, maybe because of your accent?

I'm in the Appalachian Mountains.

I grew up here in eastern Kentucky.

And of course, I've got a little bit of an accent.

But I think this word might be hard for everybody.

But we'll find out.

That word is rural.

Rural.

Rural.

Rural.

It's so hard to say.

Rural.

I did a little better that time.

Do you all have a hard time saying that one too?

Well, thank you.

That is Appalachian Sam saying, you're not alone if you have a struggle with rural.

Still just saying it right now, it gets me a little perturbed.

You can find Appalachian Sam on Facebook, an Appalachian content creator, always digging into the news of the day with his commentary.

I greatly appreciate having some backup on that, but I can't be the only one.

Although, is there a word that you struggle with?

Or do you have some commentary on rural?

Are you there to defend rural as a word?

Well, you can.

Info at yonderradio.com.

And now, our final clue.

The third and final clue, that is.

You already know we're talking about a facility built at great expense by the Norwegian government to safeguard humanity's future.

Here's some more information.

The facility currently contains 1.3 million varieties, of what we can't tell you yet from nearly every country in the world and the answer is the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Since 2008 the Svalbard Global Seed Vault has become an international repository for seed samples and kind of an international rock star as of late.

The Seed Vault was created to be the ultimate insurance policy for the world's food supply protecting biodiversity and securing the future of agriculture.

It has the capacity to house up to 4.5 million seed varieties and already represents the most diverse collection of seeds in the world, ranging from staple crops like wheat, rice, maize, and sorghum to Cherokee heirloom seeds that predate colonization.

Built to survive the climate crisis and located in a sparsely populated area unlikely to be a target of military action, The Seed Vault is humanity's best proof that we sometimes are capable of planning ahead.

Just don't tell my wife that I was a part of a planning ahead programming note because she won't believe you.

Well, this has done it.

Another show, and we are happy that you are here.

Yonder Radio can be found at yonderradio.com.

And if you're listening on a radio station, support your local radio station.

We greatly appreciate you and them on Yonder Radio.

Thank you for listening to Yonder Radio, a production of the Center for Rural Strategies, publisher of the Daily Yonder.

I'm your host, Jared Iwi.

Thanks to Don Castle and the Tennessee Sheiks, Steph Gunno and the Lone Tones, Quincy Ponfair, Leo Pozel and Tim Merima for the great music.

Our editor and producer is Susanna Brown.

This episode was also produced by Anya Patron-Slepian, with additional support from Alana Newman and Julia Tilton.

Our executive producer is Joel Cohen.

The executive in charge of production is Adam Georgi.

Yonder Radio, Rural Conversations with National Reach. guitar solo Thank you.