The Southern Highland Reader

MURPHY–Dwight Otwell, staff writer for the Cherokee Scout in Murphy, reported recently about efforts made by mountain farmers to diversify and to profit from niche crops.

Agriculture has dwindled rapidly in the mountains, where farmers face not only the standard competition from industrial farming, but the added challenge of a lack of flat land.

Otwell’s lead:

Farmers who make their entire livelihood from working the land are almost a relic from the past in Cherokee County.

As the number of large farms has steadily dwindled, a new type of farmer has emerged, one who can forge a living from an acre or two growing for a specialty market.

He goes on to interview a vintner, a dairy farmer and vegetable farmers, all of whom are using innovative methods to make their famrs work.

Another excerpt:

A new type of market is using the Internet to sell products to high-end restaurants or consumers. The main market for this area is Atlanta.

The idea is that a chef gets the fresh produce he wants the next day, Wood said. The chef knows the farm the produce comes from and he trusts it. A person with as little as a half acre of land willing to grow specialty crops can make $20,000 to $30,000 an acre.

Read Otwell’s story in the Scout here.

REGIONAL–Charlotte Observer Associate Editor Jack Betts posts about the season’s first snow.

A clip:

The snow gave up its ghosts around dusk when it thinned, bucked, coughed and stopped. An hour later the clouds parted and a cold luminescence lit up the landscape, giving these old hills an eerie specter until the wind began to pick up, blowing snow devils around like little white upside-down tornadoes. We threw more locust on the fire and poured a wee dram, and wondered briefly and idly if we might be able to salvage a snowed-in call to the office out of this lovely gift of late fall in the Blue Ridge.

Read the post at his blog here.

STATEWIDE–The Charlotte Observer’s Jack Betts has a look at the challenges facing the decade-old Golden LEAF fund; the non-profit formed to dole out North Carolina’s share of the national tobacco settlement.

An excerpt:

In its one decade of existence, Golden LEAF has sometimes inspired its supporters with potentially transformative initiatives such as $100 million for a manufacturing facility at the Global TransPark in Kinston for aerospace component fabrication.

And it has infuriated its detractors by doling out money in ways that remind them of nothing so much as political slush funds financed with public money. A recent critical report from State Auditor Beth Wood flayed the organization for its inability to produce minutes of meetings, criticized its ethics practices, faulted it for making a spending decision in closed session and blasted its refusal to fully cooperate with auditors. At one point an auditor was escorted out of a Golden LEAF file room that auditors had been given access to, prompting suspicions the foundation was trying to hide something.

Read the entire piece here.

Michael Pollan is author of In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto and The Omnivore’s Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals, along with many other books and essays. His new book is called “Food Rules”.

He says “If you follow these rules, you will be purchasing and eating real, whole food most of the time.”

1. Don’t buy anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. Like anything orange that isn’t salmon, a carrot or an orange.
2. Avoid products containing ingredients that can’t be found in an ordinary pantry. Even better, avoid anything that has more than five ingredients. Better still, if you can’t pronounce most of the ingredients, you don’t want to eat them.
3. Don’t buy anything that lists sugar in its first three ingredients. And NO HIGH FRUCTOSE CORN SYRUP! Not even a little.
4. Shop the peripheries of the supermarket and stay away from the middle–that’s where most processed food is shelved.
5. If it came from a plant, buy it (and eat a lot of it). If it was made in a plant, pass it by.
6. If it says lite, low-fat, or non-fat on the package, put it down. You’ll be more satisfied if you eat a little bit of the real thing.
7. Avoid food that is pretending to be something that it is not. This includes soy-based mock meats.
8. Food making health claims on the package is not food you want to buy. Don’t take the silence of the yams as a sign they have nothing valuable to say about your health.
9. Avoid food that is advertised on television. And remember, if it is delivered through the window of a car, it is not food.
10. Get out of the supermarket. Look to farmer’s markets for the majority of your food and snacks.

Pollan collected more rules from readers of the New York Times Magazine, which can be read here.

MT. HOLLY–It’s been three decades since the place was burnt to make room for a warehouse, but my memories of my grandparents’ farmhouse in the rolling hills near Mt. Holly are all emotion and texture.

The kitchen is at the heart of it, of course, as with all house recollections, so when Tipper at the Blind Pig and the Acorn wrote about cornmeal mush recently I took a second to close my eyes.

The large kitchen had west-facing windows, and coffee in a percolator. There was a breakfast porch for when the weather was right, and giant pin oak trees, a row of stone outbuildings and jumbled blankets of ivy right outside.

Inside there was little breakfast table where my pa-pa rolled his cigarettes. The wall lamp had a rooster shade, and the plate on the light switch said “outen the light”.

My grandmother made cornmeal mush here, although not without complaint. She said it took too much stirring.

NATIONAL–Slate Magazine’s “Green Lantern” provides “illuminating answers to environmental questions” in a Q-n-A format.

The current question? “I know you can buy local or buy organic, but I’ve heard that some crops are simply more resource-intensive than others, regardless of how or where they are grown. So what’s the key to picking foods that have the smallest environmental footprint?”

Here’s an excerpt from the Lantern’s answer:

Certain crops require loads of phosphate fertilizer, for example, which is mined from the ground and can eventually cause stream-choking algal growth. Other fruits and veggies are grown with heavy doses of pesticides, fungicides, and other chemicals that can pollute waterways and cause reproductive problems in animals. So how do you know which crops are best to eat? Here’s the Lantern’s rule of thumb: Try to keep your more extravagant fruit cravings in check, but don’t sweat the low-impact calories that come with your carbs.

Read the piece here.

NATIONAL–The Center for Science in the Public Interest has compiled a list of foods most likely to make you sick.

Here’s a quote from the authors of the report:

“A globalized food system, archaic food safety laws, and the rise of large-scale production and processing have combined to create a perfect storm of unsafe food,’’ the C.S.P.I. writes. “Unfortunately, the hazards now come from all areas of the food supply: not only high-risk products, like meat and dairy, but also the must-eat components of a healthy diet, like fruits and vegetables.’’

Here’s the top ten:

1. Leafy greens
2. Eggs
3. Tuna
4. Oysters
5. Potatoes
6. Cheese
7. Ice cream
8. Tomatoes
9. Sprouts
10. Berries

Of course, these items will make you sick right now. Items that’ll make you sick on down the road come at it from a different angle, and the Center has some thoughts about those foods, too. They think we should tax the hell out of soda pop, for example.

Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center, says this: “Soda is dirt cheap and promotes expensive and debilitating diseases, which in turn run up healthcare costs at all levels of government.”

More reading:

From the New York Times
From CNN
From the Washington Post

DILLSBORO–It’s a big weekend for the Jackson County Green Energy Park, a series of artisan studios, greenhouses and other ventures powered by captured methane from an abandoned landfill.

Chalking at Art at the Park, 2008

The county owned-facility, located outside Dillsboro, hosts its second annual “Art at the Park” on Saturday, from 9am until 2pm.

Family-oriented activities will include sidewalk chalk, mural painting, weaving, tile mosaics, chalk pastel drawing, take-home art projects, and more.  Adults will enjoy free horticulture workshops throughout the day.  The event will be catered by Bubacz’s Underground Cafe’, of Sylva.

Scheduled are live demonstrations of glassblowing, pottery and blacksmithing, as well as the unveiling of the park’s new glassblowing studio.

Horticulture workshops (Free, but please RSVP at 631-0271)

9:00 – 10:30 am – Basic Propagation of Woody & Herbaceous Perennials
Presented by George Thomas, Instructor, Horticulture Technology at Haywood Community College. No experience necessary – beginners welcome. Participants will learn propagation techniques for various perennial plants with a focus on native species. This workshop will include hands-on experience. Bring paper and pen to take notes.

10:30 – 11:30 am – The Art of Bonsai
Presented by Sage Smith, Horticulture Student at Haywood Community College. Bonsai, the art of shaping woody plants to look like miniature trees, has been practiced for thousands of years. Participants will learn basic techniques for shaping, watering, and re-potting plants to create fascinating living sculptures. No experience necessary.

11:30 – 12:30 – Landscaping With Native Plants
Presented by Marsha Crites, Master Gardener and Owner of Harvest Moon Gardens Landscaping. Participants will hear a short talk on landscaping with native plants, followed by a walk through the grounds at the Green Energy Park to discuss and identify the various native species. No experience necessary.

12:30 – 1:30 – Houseplant Care and Maintenance
Presented by Bo Keen, of Ray’s Florist in Dillsboro. Participants will learn about indoor/house plant care, feeding, handling, repotting and propagation. Bring your plants in for problem identification and solutions. This workshop will have a focused question/answer session.

SYLVA – Full Spectrum Farms, a nonprofit autism treatment advocacy organization based in Cullowhee, has just received a major contribution in the amount of $429,000.

Harold Watson, Executive Director states, “This very generous and thoughtful gift from an anonymous donor will enable Full Spectrum Farms to move forward with the purchase of 34 acres of land on Wayehutta Road in Cullowhee for the establishment of our residential farm community.”

Full Spectrum Farms will be moving forward Immediately with the purchase of 34 acres of land in Cullowhee. Watson continued, “This is a monumental accomplishment and step forward for Full Spectrum Farms. The next challenge will be raising the funds to develop the land and actually build the buildings for the residential farm community. We hope that the community will help us achieve this next goal by giving generously and encouraging others to give.”

Full Spectrum Farms was organized in 2002 and has been seeking to raise awareness and secure the funding to purchase the land to establish the residential farm community where adults affected by autism could live and work.

REGIONAL–Tipper at the Blind Pig and the Acorn posts today about fall gardens.

Our relatively mild climate will allow for some light-frost-tolerant crops well into autumn.

An excerpt from Tipper’s piece:

Look for veggies that can tolerate a light frost-like you do in the early spring. Often here in western NC our first frost of the fall will be light and another frost won’t occur for several weeks.

Radishes, swiss chard, mustard greens, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, turnips, and lettuces, are all considered good choices for planting in the fall.

Read the post here.

SYLVA–A ten-year-old mainstay of the Sylva food scene announced its closing yesterday.

Spring Street Cafe owner Lisa Agee said times had become too lean to continue operation, and closed her doors.

Spring St. Cafe and City Lights Bookstore

Agee bought the restaurant three years ago from founder Faye Holliday. Holliday opened in 2000 in a space previously occupied by City Lights Cafe, beneath City Lights Bookstore in Sylva. Holliday had been an employee of City Lights Cafe owners Joyce and Allen Moore for most of the nineties, and had learned her trade in part under Hector Diaz, founder of two famous Asheville restaurants, “Zambra” and “Salsas”.

Holliday’s idiosyncratic culinary flair and long-term staff members were a staple of the downtown Sylva scene through the early 2000’s, and during that time the Cafe’s Sunday brunches and Tuesday night old time music jams were central to the routines of many area residents.

One of Holliday’s employees, Jen Pearson, went on to open Guadalupe Cafe, on Main St., in 2005.

Agee, a baker, moved from Virginia and bought the restaurant in 2006.

ROBBINSVILLE–Former Madison County state legislator Herbert Hyde once said he got into politics for the same reason he mows his grass: to protect children from snakes.

Well, sadly, times are a’changin’ — at least according to some Robbinsvillians, who say the government is to blame for this year’s upward trend in timber rattler sightings and bites. The feds, they say (President Obama himself, no doubt), have been releasing extra snakes into the woods to protect them from extinction.

Snake (l), Feds.

Graham Star editor James Budd wrote about it last month. Here’s an excerpt:

“It’s a lie,” [State biologist Mike] Carraway said. “It’s an absolute lie.”

Carraway used to be stationed in Andrews and served Graham County in the early ‘80s.

He heard the same rumors back then.

“Some people even say we used a helicopter to drop them,” Carraway said.

Shot down by the wildlife folks, I then focused on the U.S. Forest Service …

Read Budd’s piece here, which he wraps up by noting that rattlesnakes are nowhere near endangered.

REGIONAL–Tipper at the Blind Pig and the Acorn would rather put corn back for winter use by way of freezing it than canning it. Here’s how she and her family do it.

REGIONAL-This well-written eastern Kentucky blog offers plenty of thoughts about off-the-grid Appalachian living and parenting.

And in the case of one of her most recent posts, a time-honored point of caution.

An excerpt:

I have been taught since childhood about the importance of watching out for snakes.  I learned how to identify the different species and the ones that were the most dangerous.  I was told what to do if I saw a snake, or if I was bit by one.  It comes with the territory being a child of Appalachia.  One of the things that I have always remembered is – where there are blackberries, there are snakes.

I don’t know if it is the brambles that attracts them, or the plethora of little critters coming to eat berries.  If I were a snake, I’d say it is a little of both.

Here’s the whole post.

Copperhead

FRANKLIN-On Saturday July 25th at the height of the summer season, The Land Trust for the Little Tennessee (LTLT) will hold its first annual “Local Food Gala” at Cave Creek in the Lower Burningtown area of Franklin. This fundraising event will include an open-air evening of music and entertainment with a multi-course dinner prepared by local chefs using exclusively foods grown locally. This event is part of LTLT’s strategic goal to directly align with local food production with the intention of bringing awareness to the value of locally produced food and fiber. Not only do local foods reward our sense of taste, but locally produced food nourishes and strengthens our families and communities, sustains our mountain farming traditions, and protects our natural resources through productive land conservation practices.

LTLT has received generous enthusiasm from growers in its entire six county program region. Gala guests can look forward to a delicious menu artfully prepared by chefs Lisa Thordarson of the Frog and Owl Mountain Bistro in Franklin, Rodney Sanders of Big Mountain Bar-b-Que and Mill Creek Country Club; Jeff Southerland from Riverblaze Bakery, and others. Guest will be entertained by Singer/Song writer Tom Quigley and special guest North Carolina Poet Laureate, Kathryn Stripling Byer.

Please join LTLT in supporting your local growers – buy from their farms, their stands, their booths at the farmers market, and purchase tickets to attend the Local Food Gala to support LTLT in conserving productive land to keep farmland available for future generations. Gala tickets are available for sale at the Franklin Chamber of Commerce, Jackson County Chamber of Commerce in Sylva, Swain County Chamber of Commerce in Bryson City, and through the LTLT office in Franklin or web site www.ltlt.org

LTLT thanks local growers for their support and enthusiasm for our local food gala and recognizes their sponsors: United Community Bank; Macon Bank; RBC Bank; Farm Bureau in Jackson, Clay and Swain Counties; the Smoky Mountain News; Sylva Herald; and Macon Printing.

Since 1999 the Franklin based Land Trust for the Little Tennessee (LTLT) has conserved over 12,000 acres including 1,000 acres on working farms in Macon and Cherokee Counties. LTLT serves the six far western counties of North Carolina – Jackson, Macon, Swain, Graham, Clay and Cherokee.

Jonathan Hearne

LEICESTER-Once, in a field near Franklin, Jonathan Hearne was hit by lightning. Or rather, lightning struck the tool he was using to shear wool off a sheep. The bolt then jumped from the shears to his knees, and with a burst of flame “blew the bottoms off his feet” and killed the sheep.

Jonathan Hearne is a sheep-shearer. His days aren’t this hard as a rule, but it’s pretty tough work, and it doesn’t pay too well unless you work fast.

He owns property between Newfound and Leicester – at the eastern end of Haywood County – that his parents bought in 1966, and he works that land, but he makes his principal living traveling seven southeastern states and visiting farms to shear their flocks.

Like many of us, Hearne had no real idea that this is where life would lead him. “I never dreamed thirty-three years ago, when I was first doing this for a living, that I’d be shearing sheep thirty-three years later,” he says with a laugh. But he adds that he loves it.

A native of Pennsylvania, Hearne learned his trade from an old-time Iowan. Traveling shearers often take on helpers – apprentices, more or less, – that travel with them. That’s how Hearne learned. Then, in 1976, he came to the mountains.

His parents, who had been dairy farmers in Pennsylvania from 1938 until 1966, preceded him by a decade.

“I heard stories about a fellow in Fines Creek that could shear 100 sheep a day,” Hearne recalls. “I thought ‘there’s never been a bigger lie told in these mountains’, but then I saw him shear and I thought ‘OK, that’s different’”.

As he honed his skills, Hearne eventually doubled — nearly tripled — that number.

Now he travels with his son, Ben, a graduate of Earlham College, and they carry on what is becoming a family tradition. The shearing circuit is by no means high living, but they have a good time.

“We’ve got a lot of friends in a lot of places,” says Hearne. “Sometimes we camp out, sometimes we’re invited in. Because we’re sheep shearers, we’re obviously not in it for the money, so we’re generally trusted. We’re welcomed as someone who can do something that people really appreciate. And the people we meet are good. As a general rule, scoundrels don’t keep sheep.”

The economy of keeping sheep for wool is, at this point, poor. In the 1980’s the per pound price of wool started to fall, by the late 90’s it was desperately low – around 3 cents per pound. That was the beginning of the end. Three decades ago, Hearne says, wool sold for around one dollar per pound.

“Wool from your general cross-bred sheep isn’t worth much,” he says.

The main reason that many people keep flocks these days, he adds, is so they can maintain their land’s “agricultural” designation, which has tax advantages.

REGIONAL–The food blog Nourished Kitchen offers up a post called “Get the Most From your Farmers Market: 10 Tips from a Market Manager.”

The author’s lead:

Together, my husband and I run our local farmers market – coordinating with the town, recruiting vendors, connecting with customers and devising eccentric activities that keep the customers returning to the market even after their shopping is done. In the three years since the market began, I’ve garnered a little wisdom and want to share a few tips with you that can enhance your farmers marketing experience.

Tip number one:

Go Early, but Not Too Early

The best stuff goes fast. A farmer may only have a single flat of ripe, juicy blackberries or a couple of pounds of fresh green peas, so arrive early to make sure you get the best pick of the market’s wares. Take care, though, not to go too early. Some markets disallow sales prior to the official hour and the sale you ask the farmer to make early may very well slow down set-up thus reducing the sales she or he can make later.

Read the other nine tips here.

REGIONAL-As Asheville writer Stewart David wraps up his column in the most recent Mountain Xpress, he argues this:

There are definitely good reasons to support local farms. It’s great to do business with our neighbors, keep more money and jobs in our community, minimize “food miles,” eat fresher and tastier food, preserve local farmland and avoid supporting corporate agribusiness. And local farms are generally far less cruel than their industrial counterparts when it comes to raising animals.

But let’s not serve up their products with a side of greenwash. Plant-based agriculture is clearly much healthier for the earth, and thinking locally is only part of the equation: We also need to act globally. Nostalgic calls for a return to the perceived quaintness of days gone by are unrealistic, given the population explosion we’ve experienced.

David was responding, in part, to the notion that locally-raised meat is “green”. He argues, generally, that no meat is particularly green, and that that includes locally raised and consumed meats.

Another excerpt:

Compared with factory farms, family farms do employ some environmentally beneficial practices. Yet in some ways they’re actually less eco-friendly.

Animals allowed to move around expend more calories and thus consume more resources than those crammed into tiny crates and cages. Chickens not pumped full of antibiotics and genetically manipulated to reach optimal slaughter weight at 6-1/2 weeks take longer to raise — and consume more food in the process. Cows raised on pasture produce more methane (a greenhouse gas 25 times more potent than carbon dioxide) than those crammed into feedlots.

The column sparked a lively argument online, worth reading. Here’s the link again.

HIGHLANDS–It’s been a couple of decades since I spent a summer in Highlands, waiting tables at the Old Edwards Inn and having many meals at the restaurants roundabout.

Old Edwards Inn and Spa

The Old Edwards — and its Central House Restaurant — was under different ownership at the time, but the dining room served fresh seafood imaginatively done and was wall-to-wall most nights. It has since gone ultra high-end.

The Lakeside Restaurant I remember as unassuming but very nice — one of those special places where ownership had struck just the right balance between the surroundings, service and food.

Hot off the presses, then, are these reviews in the foodie blog of a Manhattan couple who just happened to spend the Independence Day weekend up the mountain in Highlands.

Many of us take our surroundings for granted, and its easy to put insular Highlands out-of-sight, out-of-mind, but the authors of winedanddined.com remind us that the town is a world class food and wine destination.

An excerpt:

For those of you who haven’t heard of Highlands, it’s a mountain town in the Southern Appalachains and located in the Nantahala National Forest. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind place. There are beautiful golf courses, fantastic restaurants, wine and cheese shops, waterfalls, hiking trails, boutique craft shops and more. What most people probably don’t know is that Highlands is a world-class food and wine destination with 6 restaurants that have received the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. Needless to say, we’ve been doing some intensive ‘wining & dining’ around Highlands over the past few days. Here’s a taste of where we’ve been…

FRANKLIN–Who doesn’t love ice cream?  Many of the customers at Spring Ridge Creamery on Hwy 441 south of Otto are stopping in for ice cream.

Jim Moore, dairyman, with Sharon Taylor of the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee

“A lot of the satisfaction of the business is customer appreciation,” says Jim Moore, owner and dairyman.  “I’m not going to get rich, but it’s something people value and enjoy.”

Jim has 22 jersey cows that are grass fed without antibiotics or hormones.  The cows are grazed on 50 acres along the Little Tennessee River which were conserved in 2005 under a Land Trust for the Little Tennessee Conservation Easement.

The cows are milked 10 months of the year with a “vacation” in January and February in order to rest before calving season.  According to Jim, the cows are the only ones who get a vacation.  Spring Ridge Creamery stays open all year and Jim keeps enough milk, cheese and butter on hand for his regular winter customers.  In April major production begins for the buttermilk, milk, ice cream, cheese, and butter to meet the demand of the seasonal residents and visitors.  Spring Ridge’s products are only sold at the Creamery except for a few specialty ice creams that are produced for a couple of local restaurants.

“Retail sales work better than wholesale for our small farm,” says Jim.  “Keeping it small keeps it manageable and allows us to maintain the high quality that people appreciate.”

Jim has been a dairyman for many years, working his way through school by milking cows. He and his wife Judy began Spring Ridge Dairy in 1990 and began building the Creamery in 1996.  Spring Ridge Creamery opened in 1998.

Dairy farming is a dwindling resource for many communities.  In 1987 there were 1284 dairies in North Carolina but today that number has dropped 75%.  We can all help to reverse this trend by supporting places like Spring Ridge Creamery, local farmers’ markets, and u-pick farms.