#Muck fires full#

My mom made brooms from little trees in the woods, and just bound them together with hay twine. Most of them had a fence around the whole yard, and the chickens kept all the grass and flowers pecked off.Įllene: You didn't have to mow. When we moved down here, you didn't see a farmhouse that had any flowers.

We called it 'wonderland' back then- you wonder what's going to happen next! You hardly saw the sun the first five years we were here. You couldn't throw a cigarette down, it would sure take off! The sun would shine on a jug of water and set the land on fire, like a magnifying glass. The fire was burning so far down in the peat, rain didn't hurt it. They couldn't stop it, and it would burn a house up. The muck fires would burn under the ground and flare up here and there. Her father built a lot of houses in Terra Ceia, too, but most everything burned up in the muck fires. If the mule didn't have the shoe, then he sank up to his knees in the mud. The muck shoes kept them from slogging down, almost like a tennis racket.Ĭase: They were about the size of a dinner plate, and they were fastened to the mule's foot. REA - the Rural Electric Administration - came along and then we got our electricity.Įllene Van Wyk: My dad made the 'muck shoes' for the horses and mules. There was a cart path, but we graded it up, put bridges in, and made a nice road. All the roads were dirt except for 32 and 264. And the road was so bad, we couldn't use it. The roots were pushing farther into the fields all the time. As soon as they opened up canals through the high part, we got our drainage.

#Muck fires full#

Originally, this farm was full of cypress. Eat you up during harvest time! They'd last a day or two and then they'd die, and then there'd be the next wind blow them in again.

When you'd get an east wind, those saltwater mosquitoes would blow in here from Hyde County, them big, long, stripy-legged mosquitoes. They'd rub their hands on their horses' bellies, and there'd be blood dripping off the hand. The mosquitoes were so bad, they had to wear newspapers inside their jackets to keep the mosquitoes from biting them. Most people probably didn't think we were going to stay long. Case Van Wyk: When we first came to Terra Ceia, we were just a bunch of Yankees. When I left Terra Ceia, my car was loaded with daffodils, a gift from the Van Wyks, and my heart was brimming with hope and joy at the coming of spring. Today, only a few farmers raise flowers, but I could understand those springtime pilgrims to Terra Ceia. Standing out against a landscape hard-bitten by the Great Depression, their tulip and daffodil fields attracted sightseers from across North Carolina. They sold bulbs and cut flowers as far away as Chicago and New York. In the 1930s, the Dutch realized the 'muck land' was also ideal for growing an Old Country crop: flowers. They opened ditches, pulled stumps, and slogged through the 'muck land.' That dark black soil was so peaty it burned like hot coals and was nearly impossible to extinguish once kindled. Then, gradually, the Dutch settlers hewed out farms. Deeply religious, they made a Dutch Reformed church and a Christian school the heart of the community.Ī bold lumber baron, John Wilkinson, first dug canals into the swamp. Later immigrants were escaping from Nazi invaders or the devastation wrought by World War II. Many left the Netherlands in search of new farmland. Located on broad, low plains beyond little Washington, in Beaufort County, their community was once the southern end of the East Dismal Swamp. I talked with Case and Ellene Van Wyk in the Dutch farming settlement of Terra Ceia. ' Listening to History,' News & Observer. Case and Ellene Van Wyk: Flower fields and muck firesīy David Cecelski.