Family Stories

Freshly baked hickory nut pie. | Hillside and Holler | Stories of Appalachia

Grandma Lillian and Hickory Nut Pie

I collected my hickory nuts a little late this year. Hickory nuts and Grandma Lillian came into my life around the same time. She wasn’t my blood grandma, but she surely was my heart grandma. Grandma Lillian was like that . . . adopting grandchildren in whatever manner they came, birth, adoption, marriage, or stray. You would never know that granny-ing didn’t come so easy for her.

Grandpa Jake Skeen Appalachian Fox Hunter | Hilside and Holler - Stores from Appalachia

Grandpa Jake

Grandpa Jake’s life was full of work…from sun-up to sun-down, from the day he could walk to the day he couldn’t. He provided for his own children, a handful of grandchildren, and even a great-grandchild or two… all from the rocky soil of a mountain top farm in West Virginia.