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.

CULLOWHEE–In a letter published in this week’s Smoky Mountain News, Jeannette Evans, owner of Cullowhee’s Mad Batter and principal in the area transportation advocacy group Smart Roads, has a look at where the “southern loop” issue stands.

A clip:

A new bypass has enormous potential to drastically change our community’s traffic patterns, economy and landscape. Conversely, all the other projects located in the CTP are designed to improve and/or expand existing roads, thus improving current traffic patterns and preserving our landscape. DOT’s own modeling showed that the 107 Connector would not solve the congestion on N.C. 107 or at the intersection of Asheville Highway. It is primarily these congestion areas that are cited as reasons for building the 107 Connector.

Read her letter here.

New life for the old post office

It’s hard to think of much that would bring more life to a quiet building than a dance academy, and that’s just what’s coming to Sylva’s old post office, located on Landis St., and closed since spring.

Triple Threat Performing Arts Academy is moving from its current location adjacent NAPA Auto Parts on the Asheville Highway into the old post office. Renovations there are ongoing, and owner Valerie Tissue hopes to crank up in March. Downtown merchants will take note; the academy has over 230 students, whose parents and assorted caretakers have a lot of time on their hands between drop-off and pick-up.

Spring St. Cafe to reopen

Spring St. Cafe would celebrate its ten-year anniversary in March — if it were open. And apparently it might be, as owner Faye Holliday and space-owners Joyce and Allen Moore are close to reaching terms with an interested party …

Downtown wayfinding system

Downtown merchants — particularly the ones who aren’t directly on Main St. — have long complained about the lack of a standardized signage system for the downtown area. Many have resorted to various sandwich boards placed here and there, bringing about the occasional visit from the sign ordinance folks. Town Manager Adrienne Isenhour has been working this year to implement the needed system, and her efforts got a boost this week with a $9,000 municipal grant from county government.

Downtown Sylva Association; another successful parade

From the DSA: Downtown Sylva celebrated its annual Christmas parade Saturday with a great turn out and amazing floats that showed the time, effort, and talent that went into making such a special presentation. Wilmot Baptist Church won “Best in Show” and $200.  Honorable mention was a tie and goes to Yesterday’s Tree and Heritage Christian Academy.

STATEWIDE-The Raleigh News and Observer reports that the state of North Carolina will urge 78,000 state residents whose unemployment benefits recently expired to re-apply for extended benefits recently approved by congress.

An excerpt:

The N.C. Security Employment Commission is preparing to send out the letters this month as it begins administering the extension, which increases benefits by up to 20weeks. Congress boosted maximum jobless benefits five weeks ago from 79 weeks to 99 weeks in the midst of the nation’s most severe economic recession in decades.

Read the story here.

REGIONAL–From Onvia, by way of the North Carolina Economics blog, here’s a nice interactive map of federal stimulus spending in North Carolina. Click on counties to read a summary of projects.

The short take:

• Jackson: 9 projects at a value of $3,811,725
• Swain:  12 projects at a value of $15,667,128
• Graham: 3 projects at a value of $1,260,556
• Cherokee: 9 projects at a value of $98,949,966
• Clay: 3 projects at a value of $25,806,709
• Macon: 6 projects at a value of $6,220,760

NATIONAL/STATEWIDE–A federal stimulus program designed to help keep the unemployed insured is phasing out.

The lead from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

At a time when the unemployment rate tops 10 percent, many unemployed Americans will no longer qualify for federally subsidized health insurance.

That’s because a nine-month health-insurance subsidy that was part of the federal stimulus legislation began to end Monday for many who have relied on it. As many as 7 million people were eligible for the subsidy in 2009, according to government statistics.

People who have not used up their nine-month subsidy will be able to finish it. But no one laid off after the end of the year will be able to start using the subsidy. Parts of the stimulus legislation dealing with the insurance coverage end Dec. 31.

Read the story here.

STATEWIDE–The Raleigh News and Observer’s Mark Johnson writes today that North Carolina’s community college system is seeing a huge jump in enrollment.

We posted here, earlier, about increases in enrollment at Southwestern Community College in Sylva, and also noted a substantial increase at Western Carolina University. The WCU jump bucks a trend of more-or-less steady enrollment at four year schools statewide.

Here’s an excerpt from the N&O story:

College enrollment nationally hit an all-time high last October of 11.5 million, or 40 percent of young adults from age 18 to 24, according to a Pew Center study released Thursday. Enrollment has been rising for years, but the recent spike was entirely at community colleges, according to the report.

While enrollment at four-year institutions was flat from 2007 to 2008, community college student ranks jumped from 3.1 million to 3.4 million young adults. The schools have seen that uptick continue this year.

“That’s the community college story,” said Scott Ralls, president of the state system. “The worse the economy is, the more likely we are to grow.”

Read the entire N&O piece here.

REGIONAL–Asheville Citizen-Times op-ed contributor Kim MacQueen makes a pitch for the importance of town centers, using Asheville as an example.

She writes:

Despite their size, locally-owned businesses offer benefits to our communities that big-box stores simply cannot:

• Local flavor.
• Contributions to the local economy.
• Money spent in locally-owned businesses stays in the community.
• Donations to charities at more than twice the rate of national chains.

She also writes what the community needs to continue to improve:

• Continued support from the city government and Chamber of Commerce.
• To understand the problems with downtown are problems for all of us.
• To make a commitment to shop downtown and support local merchants …
• Those of us who live and work downtown have a responsibility to sustain our neighborhood, keeping it vital and attractive.

Read the specifics of her arguments here.

STATEWIDE–State of North Carolina legislators cobbled together a piecemeal budget this year, after the economic downturn and plummeting tax revenues left the state in a bind.

The result will cause plenty of discomfort during the next year, and as the Hendersonville Times News reports points out in this editorial, legislators will need to take a hard look at tax reform when they reconvene.

An excerpt:

The current tax code was created when farming, cigarette factories, furniture plants and textile mills dominated the state’s economy. The economy has vastly changed since then — the tax code hasn’t.

This year, budget writers included a $1 billion package of tax increases to close the budget shortfall including a sales tax increase from 6.75 to 7.75 percent.

It’s a short-term solution that puts money in the state’s coffers while punching tax reform in the gut. Lawmakers need to look beyond Band-Aids and prepare for major surgery. North Carolina has always had a balanced tax system based on taxing income, consumption and property. It has gotten away from that balance with recent 11th hour fixes made in the heat of a budget crisis.

Legislators plan to hold meetings this fall to try to come to agreement on a plan.

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–Nantahala Outdoor Center (NOC) President and CEO Sutton Bacon will testify before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Small Business tomorrow. The “Heroes of Small Business” hearing is scheduled for 10am.

An excerpt of a release published on SNEWS:

At the hearing Bacon will discuss NOC’s $48 million impact on western North Carolina’s economy and the company’s plans to open NOC’s Great Outpost, an 18,000-square-foot LEED certified flagship store in Gatlinburg, TN bordering the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

NOC’s Great Outpost is a rare example of dynamic small business expansion during the current economic slowdown, and Bacon will testify on the importance of innovation and new product development through tough times. The new store will occupy an anchor position in Gatlinburg’s downtown shopping and entertainment district, one of the most popular vacation destinations in the Southeast with over 14 million visitors annually, and will feature a wide selection of top outdoor apparel, camping, climbing, cycling, paddling, hiking and travel brands. When it opens it will become the largest retail store in Gatlinburg, creating approximately 55 jobs.

According to a recent Western Carolina University study, NOC, the nation’s largest outfitter, contributes $48 million to the economy of western North Carolina and supports over 579 full-time jobs in a region that had been reeling from a loss of traditional manufacturing jobs. Bacon’s testimony will emphasize the importance of outdoor recreation as a regional economic driver. According to the Outdoor Industry Association—of which Bacon is a board member—the outdoor industry sustains 6.5 million jobs and contributes $730 billion to the nation’s economy.

The release goes on to describe NOC’s 18,000 sq. ft. “Great Outpost” flagship store, soon to open in Gatlinburg.

Read the entire release here.

CULLOWHEE – A delegation of Russian regional governmental officials and agricultural business executives visited Western Carolina University on Monday, May 4, to explore potential partnership and exchange opportunities with the university.

The 12-member group, hosted by former U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor, met with university administrators and faculty members, learned about agricultural- and environmental-related research efforts now under way, and toured WCU’s Center for Rapid Product Realization. The center is located in WCU’s Center for Applied Technology. It was built using federal appropriations secured by Taylor when he was a congressman.

James Zhang, associate dean of Western Carolina University’s Kimmel School (center), leads a Russian delegation on a tour of the Center for Rapid Product Realization as part of a campus visit Monday, May 4.

Taylor also is founder of the International Trade and Small Business Institute, which fosters educational exchange programs to bring foreign students to study business and entrepreneurship at several colleges and universities in Western North Carolina.

“We are expanding the activities of the institute to be more meaningful, with increased opportunity for exchange between Russian students and American students,” said Taylor, who has personal banking and agricultural interests in Russia.

The delegation included the head of the agricultural department of the government of the Ivanovo region, chairman of the Komsomolsk district agricultural cooperative, chairman of an agricultural food cooperative from the town of Kineshma, chairman of a regional committee on local economy and agriculture, and representatives of private farms and agricultural companies.

As part of the Russian delegation’s daylong visit, Cynthia Atterholt, head of WCU’s department of chemistry and physics, discussed her ongoing research into the use of pheromones – the externally released hormones that many living creatures use to trigger a behavioral response from another member of the same species – to disrupt the mating patterns of insects. The research has led to the development of an environmentally friendly form of pesticides that do not rely on chemicals, Atterholt said.

Jerry Miller, who holds WCU’s Whitmire Distinguished Professorship in Environmental Sciences, told the Russian visitors about his work in South Africa studying the impact of agricultural runoff, including sedimentation, fertilizers and pesticides, on water quality. Miller, who also is director of the Institute of Watershed Research and Management housed at the university, is especially interested in how agricultural activities may affect the supply of drinking water.

Peter Bates, director of WCU’s natural resource and conservation management program, described his ongoing research on sustainable forestry in WNC. Bates oversees the Western Carolina Forest Sustainability Initiative, which provides “objective information” to private forestland owners and biophysical assessments of several municipal watersheds across the region.

SYLVA-A pal has a good story from her college days, back in the nineties.

Seems she and some friends, a couple of whom might’ve smoked a little more pot than the optimal amount, took a long weekend road trip from their midwestern school to the nation’s capitol. They wanted to see some tourist sights.

So they drove all night, crashed on somebody’s Washington floor for a couple of hours, and got up early to go see the shining city on the hill.

It occurred to them – slowly – as they were walking up the steps of their first stop, the capitol building, that one of them carried a considerable amount of weed, along with a water pipe, in her backpack. So they had a strategy session, and a foolproof plan was adopted: one of them would stuff a big bag of pot in her bra, and another would disassemble the water pipe and place the pieces in different parts of the same backpack. And then they would go on in.

Later, in the capital building police station, just before he let them go, the chief said “kids, it doesn’t really matter to our department what you do with your spare time. If you want to sit around the house and smoke all the marijuana your hometown has to offer, that’s your business. All things considered, though, it might be best if you didn’t bring it with you to the capitol building.”

It’s one of those great, simple lessons that life offers up every so often, which is why it came to mind a few weeks back, when, buried in a news story about the sentencing of the students who last fall dumped a bear carcass at the entrance to the campus of Western Carolina University, was the news that two of the kids involved were tossed out of school.

For those whose memory of the event is appropriately in line with its actual significance, a refresher:
1. College kids go camping.
2. Near their campsite, they find a smallish black bear carcass, shot through the head dead from a head wound after being struck by a car.
3. College kids spend the night, and go home.
4. Eureka! Wouldn’t it be cool to go back up into the woods, fetch that dead bear, and take it to a few parties?
5. Later, the kids discover that the head wound is oozing on their vehicle. Blech.
6. They grab a nearby campaign sign, which is folded over the top of a wire stand and taped down the sides, and is thereby engineered to fit perfectly over an oozing bear head. Problem solved.
7. It’s an Obama sign.
8. Later, it seems like it might be clever to dump the bear body in the roundabout at the entrance to campus, as a prank.
9. All hell breaks loose, as the action is interpreted as a veiled threat to candidate Obama, the feds become involved, and the national media goes with it. And goes with it. And goes with it.

Kids, we don’t care of you like to hang out with rotting bears in your spare time. That’s your business. All things considered, though, it might be best if …

WCU’s administration, being sensitive to criticism, was very embarrassed. But was the expulsion of these students the best outcome for all parties? When it comes right down to it, the failure to dispose of animal corpses in an appropriate manner is not such a big deal, so it seems as though these students got tossed because they embarrassed the school.

As an alternative, it might’ve been refreshing to hear the school say, in so many words, “helping young people become adults is what we do for a living, so while this incident has been an embarrassing distraction to the school, we look forward to helping our student body — including the students involved — to learn, grow and ultimately, to move on.”

Besides, the football team gave up 69 points to Florida State and most of them are still around.

However, just when it seemed like I might be able to file the capitol steps anecdote away for another year or two, along came one more layer to the story.

Western, a major economic engine for the region, has fired a big bunch of people this spring because of state budget cuts. The atmosphere there has been appropriately tense, all the more so because several shiny buildings are under construction on campus, and because plenty of money continues to be spent on athletics (we know, different “pots of money”, but still). Then, a little more than a week ago, news of some end-of-the-year hijinks among WCU administrators turned up and made our friend’s friend’s dope-between-the-boobs trick look like rocket science.

Seems that some of the institution’s most highly paid administrative minds put together a skit for one of their year end get-togethers. The skit included a good bit of crude sexism — or at least what qualifies as crude amongst faculty members on college campuses. Mm-hm. OK, that’s odd, but it was their get-together, so, so what? First amendment and all that. Well, “so what” is that the higher-ups video-recorded their skit and emailed it to everyone on campus.

Now that’s thinkin’.

So everybody with me now, in your best italicized voices:

Kids, we don’t care if you have dumb skits at your parties. In fact, we’d all like to encourage you to party more often. Pop open a box of Franzia. Loosen up some. Maybe even invite a few of the little people.

All things considered, though, it might be best if …

One of the people who emailed us the video — all anonymously, oddly — wrote this: “People are scared at WCU. Top down administration plus bad economy means pressure put on faculty and staff to do more. We have never had much power under (the current administration) and it is only getting worse.”

FRANKLIN–Angel Medical Center of Franklin has announced its intention to cease providing home health care in Swain, Graham and Jackson counties beginning May 1.

Officials and Angel cite the faltering economy, as well as increasingly restrictive Medicare regulations and a growing number of uninsured or under-insured patients.

Both Angel and WestCare Health Systems have provided home health in the region for at least one decade, and WestCare will continue to do so.

Read more about the home health cutback here from the Smoky Mountain Times.

Barbara McRae at the Franklin Press offers this broad-ranging interview with Angel CEO Tim Hubbs about the health of the organization.

SYLVA–In September of 2008, citing a struggling economy and the challenges associated with providing community health care, WestCare Health System of Sylva and Haywood Regional Medical Center of Waynesville chose to work together to evaluate the options of affiliations with larger health care networks.

They signed a Memorandum of Understanding in October to formalize this agreement and sent out the Requests for Proposals in December.

On January 31, two comprehensive proposals were received from Carolinas Healthcare System and Mission Health System. Novant Health chose not to submit a proposal.

Each proposal is now being reviewed by the consultants for presentation to the Joint Study Committee meeting on February 16. The committee will look over the proposals and report back to the Boards of both hospitals.

After a period of stringent review, the Boards of WestCare Health System and Haywood Regional will jointly decide whether to negotiate with one of the systems or, at their option, to turn down both proposals.

Mark Leonard, CEO of WestCare states, “Although we are bound by confidentiality agreements to not give out details of the proposals, we will continue to let the community know about the evaluation process and where we are in it.”

WestCare made the decision to look at possible affiliations almost a year ago. Several reasons lead to this decision. The growing demands of providing health care have jeopardized the mission of small rural hospitals.

In order to continue to improve the quality and cost effectiveness of healthcare in western North Carolina, small hospitals have to consider whether to align themselves with larger health systems. The current state of the economy has increased the challenges to these small hospitals as charity care at WestCare has risen significantly from last year.

STATEWIDE–Federal judge Lacy Thornburg, of Webster, ruled in favor of North Carolina in its lawsuit against the Tennessee Valley Authority yesterday, and ordered the TVA to install pollution control systems on its four plants closest to the North Carolina border.

From Clarke Morrison’s story in the Asheville Citizen-Times:

Judge Lacy Thornburg said in his order that pollution from TVA plants harms the health of North Carolina residents.

“I’m pleased that the court ordered the TVA to clean up air pollution coming from its plants closest to North Carolina,” said Attorney General Roy Cooper, who sued the giant utility in 2006. “This will help our air, our health and our travel and tourism economy.”

The lawsuit claimed pollution from the TVA’s plants in Tennessee, Alabama and Kentucky drifts into North Carolina and harms the health of people living here while degrading the environment.

The lawsuit seeks to force TVA to make reductions of emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, mercury and soot similar to those required of utilities in North Carolina by the Clean Smokestacks Act.

RALEIGH/STATEWIDE–The North Carolina Council of State today approved an expedited schedule to sell $742M worth of bonds to finance 28 major construction projects across the state, with a goal of “easing the pain of a sagging economy.”

All of the projects are state and university buildings. The westernmost project, though, is at the WNC Agricultural Center in Asheville, which will upgrade to the tune of over $8M.

More here.

WAYNESVILLE–National hardware retailer Home Depot, which had planned a location in west Waynesville, adjacent the new Wal-Mart Supercenter there, has cancelled those plans, according to the Smoky Mountain News.

Home Depot has taken some shots in the current downturn, and has closed a number of locations nationwide, but its Waynesville plans were reversed more recently.

National hardware retailer Lowe’s has a location in east Waynesville.

Moreover, Haywood Builders, a locally owned hardware and building supplies outlet, has proven quite competitive against outside competition.

REGIONAL–Tourism is the major economic engine in the mountains these days, and economic downturns are notoriously hard on tourism.

North Carolina’s tourism industry has proven fairly resistant to such threats as gasoline prices and recession over the years, though, mainly because of the state’s proximity to major population centers. The Great Smoky Mountains National Park is the most visited park in the nation for the same reason.

Still, these are extreme economic times, and visitation to the Blue Ridge Parkway and the Great Smoky Mountains National Park have slipped. Nancy Bompey reports for the Citizen-Times.

STATEWIDE-A strong perception – the residue of stories from the depression, mostly – is that local banks are in a weaker position than the the national and international institutions.

Hal L. Millard of the Mountain Xpress explains why this isn’t necessarily so.