Don Mitchell Grew up on a farm. We had two small farms. One was about 100 acres, but now, big part of that was you know woodland. But we raised our own cattle. Sometimes I think the most cattle we ever had would be like 30 to 40 head of cattle, and we had horses and mules and everything was done- you know, the Amish didn’t have nothing on us. We, we done it like the Amish done, not knowing that we were Amish. And I’ve got a lot of Amish friends up know high in different places now that I socialize with, and so their way of life is not strange to me. 

Shyanne Bellamy  -lived off the land 

Don Mitchell  We lived off the land when you know we raised our chickens and all that stuff. And this part of the country, western North Carolina, we grew burly tobacco when it wasn’t unpopular to grow tobacco, and that was our money crop for the winter, and and it usually was selling enough tobacco to work. You know, Christmas was always good. Everybody had a little tobacco crop, whether it was big or small, and we would rent and lease land and grow extra tobacco. You know, back in the day, they used to measure it that it went to poundage. You know, you could grow so many pound a year according to the size of your farm.