Kermit’s Striped Stick Bean, Cades Cove, Tennessee

In this episode, we are setting the table with “Kermit’s Striped Stick Bean”. We visit with John and Rachel Davis, owners of J & R Farms in Blount County, Tennessee. John Davis’s Great Grandmother is Lois Shuler Caughron, and her late husband was Kermit Caughron. The Caughron family has raised and saved an heirloom bean for generations that they call the “Striped Stick Bean”. This bean comes from the last remaining descendants of white settlers and residents of Cades Cove, Kermit and Lois Caughron. When the Great Smoky Mountains National Park was established, the residents of Cades Cove where made to move out of the area over a certain amount of years. These last remaining residents of Cades Cove are John and Rachel Davis’s ancestors. This family is very involved with a non profit organization called the Cades Cove Preservation Association, and a link is below to find out more about this organization and depository of artifacts and pictures of the families of white settlers who formerly lived in Cades Cove. I (Amy) am actively gathering recordings and information on the original settlers of Cades Cove and Eastern Tennessee Mountains, Native American residents who long before white settlers came to the area of East Tennessee lived. I hope to be sharing podcasts and radio shows on the Native American perspective through the lens of food over the next months. For his “Potluck Radio” series, Fred Sauceman recalls a Tennessee memories of the Franklin Club and of Raymond Bautista owner of the former restaurant “Raymond’s Fine Foods” along with Raymond’s recipe for Cole Slaw. Raymond’s Fine foods was inducted into the Tennessee Restaurant Hall of Fame.