Asheville is a granola and hops town. We spent Saturday and Sunday at the Organic Growers School held on the campus of UNC - Asheville. This event is just one of the cogs in the machine that supports the amazing local and organic food industry in Western North Carolina. It is the largest conference of the type in the Southeast - and a great "people-watching" spot. Some of the attendees are bright young unconventional college graduates (many attended Warren Wilson College and have no previous farm background) that are making a life in the mountains organically farming small tracts of land. When apocalypse comes, the earth will survive but if the human race survives it will be because of folks like these and the tribes of New Guinea each involved in sustaining life without petrochemical and pharmaceutical and other industrial inputs.
It all reminded me of a day in Vermont last summer. After leaving the Shenandoah on our way to the Maritimes we had camped a night in Pennsylvania, several in the Adirondacks, one on Lake Champlain at the ferry, had not had easy access to laundry facilities since Edinburg VA and had about 30 lbs of dirty laundry. So we were heading East across Vermont on Highway 15 along the Lamoille River (stopped at an organic farm and bought gorgeous vegetables) and pulled into Johnson Vermont. There was a laundromat so we parked. We walked up main street and found a hippie cafe in a house on the main street and ordered panini and terrific iced coffee - sat at a table on the porch and watched college girls on skateboards with dogs on leash on the sidewalk. Three guys in work boots and Carhartt shorts discussed the recipe one of them was fixing that evening (pulled pork and a nice sauce). The County Sheriff drove by in his official Prius. I haven't seen so many Saab automobiles in years (and I have had 2 or more in my driveway at once). The town (home of Johnson State College) is so green it crunches. We were in rapture. We left town with a smile and clean clothes.
We left the Organic Growers School with seeds, knowledge and inspiration and the wish (rare at our age) that we were younger.
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If you would like to see my collection of Carolina Lowcountry memories—"Magnolia Elegy: Place In the Edisto Fork," you can view the book trailer here, and see the book page here on the publisher's website. The book is also available from Amazon, B&N, and your independent local bookseller.