Recent Rye In My Region

[possum]

Just learned from an Old timer (yea, age is relative) that the farmers where I live were commonly producing rye on the marginal shale ground near the mountian here in south central PA. Ok, so what? Aparently they were brewing and stilling pretty large amounts of RYE Whiskey out of thier agricultural harvest up into the 60's. Ill try to get more info about this, but my older family members arent talking about it, so I have to ask other sources.