Tree Season in Grassy Creek

North Carolina leaf color peaks in October. By November, we expect cool weather, bare trees and fallen leaves. Indeed, though the mountain roads are warm on sunny days, in November, the hardwoods barely hold the last traces of red. Evergreens will soon be all there is of color.

As leaves fall, evergreens show their beauty.

Last November Red

When leaf season is over, tree season is not. Even in winter, Ashe County boasts lots of green because Frasier Firs thrive here. The county-wide Christmas tree business supports many local families and provides seasonal income for large numbers of itinerant workers.

 

 

Like the olive groves that spread over the hills of the Mediterranean basin, rows of cultivated Frasier Firs cover the hills of Ashe County.

Tree farmers grow their trees on large plots of land they lease or own all around the county. For many, it's a family business, and they hire additional farm-workers.

  

Here in Grassy Creek, even before the first of November, Frasier Firs and white pines as well are prepared for harvest and shipment to all parts of the U. S. in time for Thanksgiving weekend.

The first step is marking selected trees which have been growing as a cultivated crop for at least seven to over twenty years.

 

Trees are cut, wrapped and loaded onto trailers for transporting to convenient staging areas.

Sanford Fishel, owner of Grouse Ridge Christmas TreeFarms

Todd McNeill of Grouse Ridge Christmas Tree Farms

From here, they are loaded onto tractor trailers for moving down the mountain in convoys to far-reaches of the U.S. where they will be found on Christmas tree lots just before Thanksgiving. 

One grand tree from this county will decorate the Blue Room in the White House in Washington, D. C. again this year. It was chosen for 2012 by the National Christmas Tree Association from Peak Farms, owned by Russell and Beau Estes near Jefferson in Ashe County. Last time it was from North Carolina was in 2008, and it was from the same farm.

See: White House Trees from North Carolina

 Starting later this month, a crowd of choose and cut-your-own tourists will flock to the county and strap a fresh tree atop the car to take home to decorate.  Shady Rest Tree Farm is one such place in Glendale Springs. It's a great way to start the holidays.



the Renfro's 2011 Christmas Tree at A Point of View.

Happy Holidays from Ashe County



Feels Like Home to Me

You ask us how we found this place and I tell you it was listed in the Second Hand News, but you still wonder how we  knew it was ours. You wonder what drew us, what spoke to us. Life changes in a moment, with a single thought, an idea, and sometimes a feeling. Familiar is a good feeling and it just happened, trust me. No one saw it coming.

In its prime, what we now call A Point of View was a self-sufficient farm.

My grandparents on both sides were Alabama dirt farmers, and I remember my aunt telling me about the Harris family farm in Tallapoosa County where her grandparents lived. They too were self-sufficient. The diagram she drew looked like the map of a small town.

They worked many acres of land and lived in a centrally-located house with a wrap-around porch. Alongside the house, they planted vegetables for the table and grew rows of fruit trees and berry bushes. Also close to the house, there was a well, a bell-tower and an outdoor privy. Further back, they got eggs from a chicken house, raised pigs in a pen and cured meats in a smoke house. The mule lived in a fenced area with his own barn next to sprawling fields of cotton.

Conveniently located across the road from the house was a fenced cow barn with milking stalls. Beyond it, cows roamed the pastures. Just down the road ,a car barn housed Grandpa John's new Model A Ford next to another barn for a prized and well-cared-for wagon. Behind that was a blacksmithing house and fields of corn and sugar cane. Syrup making was an celebrated annual event. The mule moved a turn-style that extracted juice from sugar cane, sorghum and millet which was then cooked down to syrup.

I don't remember that farm in its heyday. My grandparents got a farm of their own when they married, and then they moved to town (Opelika, AL) soon after my dad was born and opened Harris's Grocery. But I do remember the Saturday I got to travel back to the country with my grandparents for a hog killing. While I've repressed any memories of an actual killing, I remember the pot-bellied stove and making lye soap out of fat. I also recall the taste of biscuits with fresh butter melting under a drizzle of cane syrup. 

My mother's family (Barnes) even a generation later managed to be self-sufficient as farmers and grew cotton  as a cash crop. I remember eating pomegranates under the kitchen window  and my grandmother's pound cake at the table. She made clothes for 8 children of which my mother was the last.

Traylor's family (Traillour in France) was more diverse, but not much. His family had more ministers, bankers and Kings (James of Scotland,) than farmers, although there were Parks and Bakers. Maybe he was meant to direct things and people, and thus-no surprise-ended up in Human Resources with one foot in Grassy Creek and the other reluctant to leave the city.

And what about those Scotch-Irish and English immigrants who settled the Highlands of North Carolina? They were our ancestors. A John Harris arrived from Leith, Scotland in 1685, and Renfro which means "flowing brook," traces back to the Renfrews of Renfrewshire, Scotland. We both have roots in England, Ireland, Wales and a smattering from parts of western Europe.

We live off Sussex Road near the Youngs (Scottish) on a farm that was long owned by the Waddells (Scottish) with a flowing brook and rolling hills. Still, we are less than a day's drive from the coast.  Couldn't we be somewhere in the past in the British Isles?

And maybe it's also natural to love Spain. Over 5000 years BC, the mountain people of the central Iberian peninsula (Basque country) migrated to what is now the British Isles. Those early wandering people remained a genetically unaltered race because there was little outside influence. Even after the Celtic expansion, there was little genetic change in the Scotch-Irish people, while the Iberian peninsula itself was under constant, sometimes radical change. (see www.worldology.com/Europe)

Finally, out of farming comes a love of food, fresh food, processed only as needed to make it safe or to survive the winter. What I remember about both of my grandmothers is what and how they fed us. We ate with them on Sundays, and Sunday dinners in the South have always been more than the average meal, but to me the dining room table was the altar in the home. We prayed there and we were nourished there.

So there it is. I've come to believe in genetic memory. It just feels right to be here. The rolling hills, animals grazing, gardens and forests, neighborly folks around us raising chickens and blueberries and making apple cider, sewing and digging in the earth.

We work hard, play hard, and eat well-close to the earth. Feels like home to me.

Grassy Creek, North Carolina, USA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEcv5uPbYsU

link to a YouTube slide show of the Isle of Harris, Scotland

How We Got Here

We found this place listed in the Second Hand News on a Sunday morning in November of 1999. We were supposed to be leaving Ashe County, but we took an unexpected turn-about.

I had finished my novel, Spanish Doors (although it became the first draft of the novel) and I was thinking about a new project. I mentioned this to a friend. "What I really want to do is create a writer's retreat, somewhere away from town that is quiet and close to nature." He offered his weekend home as a base for exploration. "Ashe County has been discovered," he said, "but check it out. It's a good time to buy."

I found the newspaper there by his fireplace, the Second Hand News with the ad: "50 acres in Grassy Creek."

At the time, friends were  actively concerned over Y2K and the possible collapse of modern communication. Maybe that's why we wanted a piece of solid ground to walk on. We got out of the car and walked the property, looking past the dilapidated buildings near the road. Had we not, we never would have fallen in love.

We trekked the cow paths and the old farm trail and tried to find a fence line around the property, not sure what 50 acres looked like. The price included only the land, but there were two barns, a stable, a woodshed, a chicken house plus two other foul houses, a tool shed, a cannery, and a small house. The house had been crushed by a fallen tree and exposed to the elements. Having no plumbing or electricity, we knew it could not be a home. Most of the buildings still held crocks, jars, ropes, beehives, buckets, and various other supplies and equipment. It had been 15 years since the owner died and willed the land to his son.

The loveliest characteristic was that behind the house, through a narrow passage between hills and over a small branch, we entered a magical place where the land opened up into magnificent bowl. Cows grazed the sides. Wild flowers (knee-high to shoulder-high)  were freeze-dried and beautiful and I could only imagine how they had looked in summer.

The hills were steep to climb but we took an around-the-rim approach, lessening the grade. We walked side by side in silent awe, with an occasional, "Do you think that field is part of the 50?" and a lot of deep breathing. Deer antlers, hawk feathers and marshy plants suggested a kind of life we couldn't see. Colorful fall leaves were crisp under foot, but the trees were blown bare already. What would this be in the growing season?

It took vision. We saw the potential. We fell in love. 

But we had to get back to Charlotte, to work and family, a busy life. When would we find time to look at other properties and compare prices and views and who knows what else? We called the owner back because he had planned to turn the sale over to a realtor the following Monday, but said if we might be interested, he would wait. I told him to give us two weeks. We closed on the property the week after Christmas, before the New Year, 2000.

What an exciting year. But that is only the beginning of the story.

I felt the presence of God here and I knew that it was not just about me, or us. God didn't mean for us to come here and stare agape, but share agape.

And so we started to build...