>> This week on Kentucky Life, learn about the brave women who risked it all as pack horse librarians, visit the town of Nancy for a taste of the fall season, Robert Beatty is a Lexington-based artist who just might be behind the cover of your favorite album, and the Beaver Dam Amphitheater in Ohio County is a hub for bluegrass music.

That's next on Kentucky Life.

Hey everybody, I'm Chip Polston, your host here on Kentucky Life, and today >> we're back in historic Bardstown, visiting the absolutely beautiful My Old Kentucky Home State Park.

absolutely beautiful My Old Kentucky Home State Park.

Now during the Great Depression, the FDR administration began a program to bring books to the people of the Appalachian region to help increase literacy rates for those who were hungry to read and learn.

The stars of this program were a group of women who would ride horses and mules along dangerous mountain trails, bringing satchels of books and magazines to neighbors anxiously awaiting the visit from the pack horse librarian.

>> In the 1930s, as much of the nation fought to recover from a devastating depression that would earn the title, the Great Depression, the new Franklin Roosevelt administration sought ways not only to get Americans immediately back to work, but to use these new jobs to educate and expand culture throughout the nation through arts and libraries.

>> Led by the First Lady, the Works Progress Administration, or the WPA, discovered an idea begun in Kentucky to teach people the power of libraries and the benefits that borrowing books would bring to their lives.

May >> Stafford was a woman who was very, very interested in getting books into the hands of people in some of the more remote areas of Johnson County.

So she came up with the idea of a pack horse library in which the librarians would take the books to farmers living along creeks in Johnson County who didn't have easy access to come into town.

>> She wanted folks to have access to books and to be able to read, become more knowledgeable.

>> Eleanor Roosevelt's people initiated the Pack Horse Library program.

The idea was to establish a library in each county, fill it with books, and then hire women to ride off into the mountains to deliver those books.

In some towns, buildings were donated by businessmen who might also offer their services and help direct the library operations.

>> Citizens across the Commonwealth came to the aid of their fellow Kentuckians.

Kentucky's PTA and library organizations sent out requests nationwide for the donation of reading materials.

Crates of books arrived from around the country to fill the shelves of the newly formed libraries.

The Pack Horse Librarians often used their own funds to pay for shipping.

For the women who would ride into the mountains, they were faced with a daunting task.

It was a job with many dangers.

As there were no paved roads, they rode horses and mules along mountain paths or used creek beds as highways.

The children of these pack horse librarians remember the stories from their mothers like Tina Slone Cook, who would face the elements.

In the winter, >> given the water that would splash up from going through creeks or rain or snow, or you'd name it, on more than one occasion, she would come home with her feet frozen in the stirrups and my dad would chip the ice off before she would get off.

>> In 2019, The Book Woman of Troublesome Creek by Kim Michele Richardson was released, extolling the strength and character of these women.

>> These women were risking their lives to do what they were doing, to deliver books, to bring hope to the people of Eastern Kentucky.

They got up at the crack of dawn and didn't get home till late.

If their horses died suddenly, they would have to deliver those books themselves.

Their job was never easy.

>> But through all the dangers, these Kentucky women proved their resilience.

>> They did what they had to do because their goal was to get the books out there to everyone and every child.

They wanted every child to have a book in their hand.

And they were so resilient.

If your horse or your mule died, you walked.

You walked those 12, 15 miles to get those books to those communities, and you carried the books, 50 to 100 pounds of books.

They were not weaklings.

They were strong women.

They were determined women.

>> One of the favorite stops for these riders was the one-room schoolhouse, greeted by the voices and laughter of children waiting on the treasures held in the saddlebags of the book woman.

>> The children enjoyed seeing the pack horse librarians come because that was their internet, that was the way they got information from the magazines, principally, and the books that they would bring.

>> Until the pack horse came, the only book I had to read was my history book school book, and then when the Pack Horse Library came, it was one of the brightest >> times of my life.

>> It was exciting because they knew they were on the foreground of something very special.

During a midst of their own sickness, poverty, they were bringing hope to the people of Kentucky.

>> I think the success of the Pack Horse Librarian program is in the numbers.

In 1936, they had eight pack horse librarians.

The fact that they ended up serving half, the eastern half, of the state of Kentucky, over 200 schools, it just grew tremendously.

People loved the books.

People loved the program.

I think it was a wild success.

>> From pumpkin patches to apple orchards, hay rides to Halloween, there are countless traditions that go with the fall season.

Now it's been said that Kentucky is at its most beautiful when fall rolls around.

I have to agree with that.

And this next story touches on a few of those traditions taking us to Nancy, Kentucky where two local farms have become yearly attractions, providing those classic fall activities to this small town community.

Here >> you go.

Here, hold it.

>> Haney's Appledale Farm has been an apple orchard for around 150 years.

I am the fifth generation operating here in Nancy, Kentucky, and we've been trying to come up with as many apples as we can for the public as often as we can.

It started off as more of a traditional farm with row crops and that sort of thing, but there have always been apples on the orchard.

Probably about 75, 80 years ago, we really started expanding the apples that we actually planted on the farm.

My grandfather really grew it into more of an apple orchard than a traditional farm.

My father and my uncle are the current owners.

They have been running it for a little over 50 years.

They took it over for my grandfather and he kind of helped them out for about 20 years until he passed on, and then they've been running it ever since.

>> We've been here since 1870 in our family growing fruit.

First trees were planted in 1870.

Our busy time is in the fall.

I mean, we're busy during the summer too with different varieties of apples and peaches, but fall is where it's all at.

I mean, we just have the school tours and the parents that come with them and people come, again, from a long distance to come here and it's sort of a tradition with a lot of families.

>> The things that we do in the fall are geared primarily towards you pick apples, but we do have a playground, things for the kids and we do a lot of tours through the week for local school groups.

We have some of them that come from two or three counties away, and we have a lot of adults who come in now who say, "The first time I came here was on a tour with my school."

So that's really helped us reach that population and kind of start increasing it, of the people who want to come back, who bring their children back, and we hope to just keep that going.

We want those kids that come in today to bring their kids in 20 years from now and we want to make sure that we're here to be able to do that.

One of the bigger fall traditions around here obviously is people taking a full day on a Saturday and they might go to Bear Wallow as a starter for the day and then come by us on the way back or vice versa.

>> Bear Wallow Farm is a family tradition farm, pumpkin patch, corn maze located in Nancy, Kentucky.

Bear Wallow >> has been here since 1999.

With that, I mean obviously we've become a family tradition for a lot of people.

We're seeing a lot of return visitors from the very beginning, and those people are bringing their kids back and even been here long enough now that we're starting to see some grandkids.

>> Fall in Kentucky is almost like a cult following.

I mean, it really is.

>> As soon as that first crisp morning hits, it's like all right, let's get our sweaters on and our boots on, and it's family picture time and it's pumpkin patch weather, and it's hay ride weather and let's do a bonfire.

I mean, it's almost like a checklist in Southern Kentucky for fall.

>> I've been on the farm since I was old enough to walk, so I don't know any life any different.

So a lot of our passion behind Barrow Wallow and behind the fall traditions and bringing people out to the pumpkin patch and the corn maze started in conversation between me and my wife that how important agritourism and getting kids on the farm and families on the farm.

We want the connection back to agriculture from the public.

We don't want to hide anything from the public.

We're proud of what we do.

We're proud of how we take care of our land and our animals, and we want people to see that.

So it's really an honor to get people back out here on the farm and them see.

>> When you take a hayride through Bear Wallow, you see soybeans, you see corn, you see whatever crops we've got in the field that year.

I mean, there's been years in past we've been harvesting while we're open, so you get the opportunity to see those things.

I want kids picking a pumpkin from a vine.

A lot of people that are in the industry doing what we're doing are bringing in pumpkins and they're picking them up out of a grass field somewhere.

I want kids to have the experience of understanding that pumpkins don't grow on trees, they grow on vines in a field, and I want them to see that.

When people think about fall, they think about pumpkins and they think about the changing of the leaves and they think about going and doing something with their family somewhere in the community.

I think that's kind of what Bear Wallow offers, and I think that's kind of what you see in our county and in our area, no different than any other in the state, is that come fall, people are looking for to go outside and then capture that one last little bit of nice weather before the snow starts flying.

>> Memories here I feel like are a good thing, and it really ties our community together.

Memories at Haney's, memories at...

I mean, even at the coffee shop, Mill Springs.

We went to Bear Wallow and then we learned about the Civil War.

I mean, there's so much here to offer and so much here to really bring families together I think is very important.

>> When a record comes out, our first impression of it is the art gracing the cover.

Now, what if I told you that your favorite new album's cover art or illustration in your favorite magazine may have been created right here in Kentucky?

Local artist Robert Beatty's artwork can be found literally all across the world, and while back home in Lexington, his event flyers and designs are a familiar site.

I have been >> making art my entire life.

Since I was a kid, I was drawing and I think I had a drawing that went to the state fair one year, which was the biggest thing that ever happened to me as a kid.

I grew up on a farm in Jessamine County.

When I was 21 I moved to Lexington and I've lived in Lexington my entire adult life.

I probably started doing artwork more for other people probably around 2008.

People started reaching out about doing >> artwork for album covers.

>> The thing that kind of pushed me into some new realm was doing the Tame Impala cover for Currents.

I was there at the right moment, >> and that was 2015, so seven years ago, and I still see that every day.

Not something I ever thought would happen.

After that, I started getting asked to do illustration work for newspapers and magazines.

>> Because my artwork has >> a little bit of a dystopian sci-fi edge to it, I get asked to illustrate a lot of things like artificial intelligence going bad and climate change.

The biggest thing I've done is I did a bunch of work for the new album by The Weeknd, Dawn FM, but the whole time I've been doing stuff for more kind of underground and experimental music.

That's really important to me to do The Noise band that has 500 copies of their record.

At the same time I'm working on an album cover for Kesha.

It's like the dichotomy that creates is really interesting to me.

A lot of the work that I do is emulating kind of older processes, whether that's airbrush art or early computer art.

The same way with a lot of the video work that I'm doing, it's very much rooted in this analog kind of look.

A lot of this stuff, I feel like it's kind of been abandoned somewhere along the way and there's still some life in it.

>> It's important to me to still do stuff on my own that's my own work.

I made this book called Floodgate Companion that I >> worked on for four or five years.

It's kind of structured in a rhythmic way, strictly through ephemera from another world.

>> I see a TV laying on the street and I'm like, "Oh, I got to get that TV or it's going to end up in the trash."

It's how I have a lot of the stuff that I use.

That was kind of how I got into music, taking apart toys and just figuring out how to make things, make sounds as they weren't supposed to.

And I think a lot of it was just being poor for a very long time.

Everything I used was just from thrift stores.

So much of the art I love is just made by people who were just doing things on their own, didn't go to college for it, which I didn't ever go to college.

There's something to be said for working with what you have access to and not sweating that you don't have the best thing possible for the job.

Music and art have always kind of been connected.

When I was a kid, I had found WRFO, >> like the college radio station here.

That was a huge window into the world for me.

Being in a small town, there was kind of a small scene of people playing experimental music in Lexington and we started just playing shows and that became Hair Police.

Thurston Moore from Sonic Youth got ahold of one of our records and wrote about it in a magazine, and then >> that eventually led to us opening up for Sonic Youth on a tour in 2004.

When Hair Police started, I was doing a lot of the artwork for that.

It was all kind of collaborative and that was kind of where I cut my teeth.

Over the years, in addition to Hair Police, I've been in a lot of different bands now.

I'm using the name Ed Sunspot, which is a name I've used off and on for years just as an alias.

>> Did you just remember you're here?

The pace of life here compared to if you end up >> in a bigger city is I think kind of an incubator for a lot of things that you're not able to get other places.

I've always kind of enjoyed >> coming back here.

It's a nice place to have as a home base.

You can kind of do your own thing at your own pace and just make your own world.

>> Ohio County has a bit of a reputation for music as the birthplace of bluegrass legend Bill Monroe and home of the infamous Rosine Barn Jamboree.

It is known around the state, and even the country, as a hub for bluegrass.

But one Ohio County town is making a way for music beyond bluegrass, and in the process transforming the town's spirit.

>> Any Kentuckian who loves live music has probably seen one of their favorite artists at Rupp Arena or the KFC Yum!

Center, but in Ohio County, another venue is making a name for itself as a concert destination.

Bringing in artists from Tyler Childers to ZZ Top to the Beach Boys, there's a little something for everyone at The DAM located in Beaver Dam, Kentucky, but what is The DAM?

Locals to the area will be happy to tell you.

>> The DAM is a world-class venue set in a small little town.

It was built in 2014.

>> It'll seat about 5,000 people, which is kind of unique since the population of Beaver Dam's 3,600.

We have all kinds of shows, Christian concerts, rock concerts, country.

We have a little bit of everything to choose from.

It is located in our city park, which is half a block from the downtown business district.

>> When you walk around the corner and you see the lights, you know that you're at The DAM.

>> With an amphitheater big enough to hold the town's entire population and then some, Beaver Dam is a small town with a big dream, becoming one of the top destinations for music and entertainment in the state.

And while it may be small, city leaders believe that Beaver Dam's location near towns like Owensboro and Bowling Green, but also major cities like Louisville and Nashville, make it perfectly positioned to make that dream a reality.

But as Mayor Paul Sandefur says, getting the town to this point has been a long time coming.

>> I grew up here, born and raised here, and we always kind of made our own activities and our own fun.

But in this day and time when you're trying to work economic development, you want to try to have a community that people want to live in, and we really didn't have that.

There wasn't a whole lot a city our size can do as far as incentives for economic development.

Myself and one of our city commissioners, Kevin Davis, were out, this was back in 2010-11 when the park was under construction, and it was like there was this hillside over here and it's like, "What's something we could do?

A amphitheater would be really cool right there."

Now granted, we were thinking more along the lines of a stage with a cover over the top of it, do some local shows there, but we had a gentleman here that was a member of our tourism commission.

He was kind of like, "Mayor, let's look a little bigger here."

So we just jumped in and did it, and it's been a pretty good thing for us.

>> Beaver Dam's aim of becoming an entertainment hotspot involves more than just the amphitheater.

In fact, city officials have partnered with local businesses to offer a variety of activities for tourists and locals alike all year round.

Local favorites include Sounds on Second, a weekly free concert series downtown, the Strawberry Festival held on Memorial Day weekend and seasonal events like the Christmas Festival and Oktoberfest.

The goal of events like these is not only to make Beaver Dam a more fun place to live, but to grow the local economy through tourism, >> and small business owners in the area say they're seeing a difference.

>> On concert days, it's the busiest that we are.

In the restaurant business, it seems like summertime is your slower time.

Well, here, that's not the case because we have the music on Second Street, we have the concerts at the amphitheater.

I mean, we have people from Canada.

There was somebody from Canada that ate in my restaurant to go see a concert in my hometown, and that's pretty neat.

>> I've been here about 46 years and owner for close to 20.

The city has really kicked in.

I mean, it's just amazing what all they've done in the last seven or eight years, because seven years ago there wasn't hardly any building down here occupied.

Now there's no building down here that's not filled, and then everybody's taking old buildings that were about to fall in and fixing them up.

You can drive up the street on Friday nights and they have the Sounds on Second and streets blocked off and there's all kind of people down here listening to music.

I never thought I'd see that.

>> The DAM has become a focal point and a beacon of hope for what was once a struggling town.

Locals say that having such a bustling venue right in their backyard has generated a sense of hometown pride that Beaver Dam was once lacking.

>> For the longest time.

People always talked about there's really nothing to do in Beaver Dam, and I'll be honest with you, when they started building the theater and having these concerts, I was like, "Nobody's going to show up."

For the first time I came, I brought my kids and just a whole atmosphere of the community and getting together, hanging out, talking.

We don't have to go to other towns, we can come to our local town, spend the money here.

>> We just love this town.

This is where we live.

We chose to raise our family here, and so it's awesome to have so much choice in your backyard and so many venues to go to, but still have the small town atmosphere that Beaver Dam is known >> for.

I think all of us feel a little part of the amphitheater.

At first, it was the city did it and now it's, "Oh, that's our amphitheater."

It's just amazing the interest that people have.

Like he said, six years ago, there wasn't any place to shop on this little part of the block.

Now people will come in and tell me they're from out of town and mill around in our little downtown and we've really seen the difference.

>> Well, that about wraps it up on another episode of our program.

It's been so great having you with us and we really want you to come back.

But before we go, we want to leave you with this moment.

I'm Chip Polston, cherishing this Kentucky Life.