For both teachers in the classroom and local administrators, this is shaping up to be the most challenging budget year in North Carolina history. At times like these, those of us who value a quality education system will be left to rely on the expertise of these professionals to do more with less. There’s simply no other option.

Last week we published a story detailing the budgetary challenges Haywood County schools will face in meeting the needs of its students as it deals with a loss of potentially $4 million. As most teacher assistants disappear, textbook money is cut drastically, and more local dollars will have to go toward buses — along with myriad other cuts — there’s just no need for hand-wringing.

Haywood Assistant Superintendent Bill Nolte, discussing the state House budget proposal and what might happen locally, summed it up very matter of factly:

“I don’t think we can, in good conscience, expect the (county) commissioners to come up with revenue that they don’t have,” said Nolte. “It’s impractical, in my professional opinion, to say to our county commissioners, ‘Hey, the state cut all of this; fund it.’ There is a worldwide economic crisis, and to our knowledge, our commissioners do not have new revenues that would make up for any state cuts to any agencies.”

What it comes down to is this: teachers, already strapped for resources and perhaps overworked, will be asked to do more with less. Especially those working with young children in first, second and third grades, where teacher’s assistants are destined to be cut. Haywood has a pot of money it will use to try to keep assistants in the younger grades for at least one more year, but in many counties those assistants will disappear.

This is happening at the same time money for the More at Four pre-K program is being cut, meaning many children will enter kindergarten less prepared.

As all the peripheral dollars are being cut, perhaps this is an opportunity for certified teachers  — those actually doing the hands-on work in the classrooms — to get more attention. Studies have shown that teachers in all those countries that perennially outscore us on all those standardized tests are treated much better than teachers in the United States. They earn more, are treated more like professionals, and more of the good ones tend to remain in the profession for longer.

For many years there has been teacher shortage in this country. That’s because it hasn’t been a career that enticed the best and the brightest. Anyone who wonders why Finland, Japan or Korea outscore us need only look at who becomes teachers in those countries. When we take the same approach, there’s little doubt many of our education problems will disappear.

Money will be tight in public education for years to come as we struggle through this recession. Perhaps it is a good time to focus on teaching and use the resources we have to entice the brightest among our college students to spend their lives in the public school classroom.

Just a few minutes into weedeating and I feel lobotomized. Perhaps the heady roar of the little engine that can obliterates my ability to discern what’s being whacked until I’m in full, lethal motion. Maybe it’s the power of wielding a mechanized cutting machine mixed with the angst of an uptight, obsessive personality that does me in.

Be that as it may, once launched with a weedeater in my hands, I sense a strong internal drive to cut everything the same height — somehow blind to the carnage I’m wreaking in my lust for a flawless, perfect, three-inch tall green expanse.

In a different life, I might have been an excellent builder of golf courses. Though in this life, I dislike golf and golf courses (environmentally poisonous cesspools built so a few people can tap little balls into holes using sticks). And I would add a dislike for those who play golf, but that’s not actually true. I don’t dislike people who play golf. But I don’t comprehend the fascination, and I don’t much care for those I inwardly suspect of ulterior motives for playing golf: the modern Silas Laphams of the world and their upwardly mobile climb to the top. (Though having advertised my snobbishness, I’m tempted to add qualifiers about how I know golf is a fun game (though I don’t really believe it’s fun), and how I’m sure people don’t really hit the golf course for networking reasons alone (though I know many, in fact, do just that)).

Whatever … I give up. I’m heading from this self-built sand trap back to safer ground: weedeating.

It seems I always destroy at least one irreplaceable and expensive flower, shrub or tree during a weedeating outing. This weekend, the sacrificial victim was a serviceberry tree. It’s a fact that our forests are filled with serviceberries. So, on first blush, the loss of one, tiny serviceberry doesn’t seem like much. But my friend, a few years ago, had carefully selected this tree from a nursery, ordered the serviceberry sapling and planted it. She had weeded and nurtured the serviceberry, openly admiring her excellent work mere days before I, with a single heedless pass of the weedeater, took said prized serviceberry from a height of three or so feet to a mere three or so inches.

I looked back, oops, too late to prevent the destruction, and there — stark evidence of my recklessness and need for perfection — was a tiny stump, the remnants of her beloved serviceberry tree.

“Well, if you had to cut something down, I’d rather it be that than, say, the plum tree,” my friend said bravely, as if she were in the Strait of Messina choosing between Scylla and Charybdis.

A few years ago, I ordered eight very expensive tea plants from a nursery in Chapel Hill. I planted them. Within a week, I had chopped down two. Innumerable flowers have given way to my weedeating, and even a fair number of vegetable plants — each time I mow the paths in the garden, I take out a broccoli here, a row of carrot tops there.

I’ve long toyed with the possibility of using a scythe rather than a weedeater. My biggest fear isn’t the physical labor involved — a weedeater beats the hell out of you, anyway — it’s sharpening the blade. I’m very bad at sharpening anything. I have ruined many a fine knife by trying to “fix” it, dulling the blades beyond the repair of the most skilled professional knife sharpener. These days, I use a serrated knife that never requires sharpening, and I resolutely squelch desires for chef-quality kitchen equipment. I know I’d just be throwing away my money if I bought nice knives.

This might prove the case with a scythe, too. There is something deeply satisfying, however, about the thought of using this finely crafted tool instead of a machine. No motor, no need to string; more time to think, some protection I hope for the plants. Additionally, my inner peasant finds a certain rustic appeal to the possibility of looking like I stepped out of a Bruegel painting. And that’s a feeling I certainly never get when using a weedeater.

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

We’ve written before about how important the downtown business districts in our mountain towns are to their communities, but it needs to be said again in light of the debate now going on in Sylva. Town leaders in the Jackson County town will be making a big mistake if they pull the plug on support for the Downtown Sylva Association.

At this time town leaders are debating what level of funding to give to the downtown booster organization in the coming year’s budget. We would encourage those elected officials to provide as much as they can, and to begin looking for additional ways to support downtown Sylva.

The primary complaint by those opposed to the funding is that DSA is too downtown-centric. In other words, a majority of the town commissioners say giving money to the organization is unfair to other parts of town that don’t benefit from its work.

We think that argument leaves out too many of the proven reasons why a vibrant downtown is a rising tide that lifts all ships. Other merchants throughout Sylva benefit when the downtown is alive and full rather than empty with storefronts boarded up.

If someone is thinking about opening a new business anywhere in Sylva, it’s obvious a thriving downtown would provide a strong signal that the town has a healthy business environment. When the hospital, the university, the community college, the school system and private businesses are recruiting single professionals or families, downtown Sylva surely helps. Throughout the mountains, Sylva is known now as a place where those who keep our Appalachian musical, craft, and literary traditions alive will find patrons, whether that’s at a reading at City Lights or a concert at Bridge Park.

These are important, tangible reasons for keeping downtown Sylva healthy. There’s also the tax benefit to Sylva and Jackson County of a healthy downtown. And we won’t even go into the festivals and special events that bring real dollars to Sylva and Jackson County, helping everyone from grocery store clerks to gas station employees.

Look, asking town leaders to support downtown Sylva is not a revolutionary idea. From Charlotte to New Bern to Waynesville and Franklin, civic and elected leaders have realized the benefit of supporting their Main Streets. Drive downtown anywhere and you take the pulse of a community. Sylva’s pulse is strong, and that’s why about 20 people showed up at a meeting two weeks ago to encourage town leaders to support DSA. We can only hope they were listening.

The next time you are standing about the yard scratching your head in confusion about which tree climber in Jackson County to call because there’s a swarm of bees in the tippy-toppy portion of a tree, let me please recommend David Hatton, a very fine tree climber and a man whose resume now includes experience in the hellish ways of honeybees.

David this week heroically ascended a rather smallish but very tallish white oak at my behest. He cracked jokes about how much he was enjoying being 50 to 60 feet up the tiny tree as it swayed wildly about, rather like a Q-tip might writhe before gale-force winds. He endured four stings in his scalp without (much) complaint — although David did, I noticed, descend the oak tree at an alarmingly rapid pace after announcing: “That’s it” in a calm, but resolute, tone of voice.

David endured all of this only to watch the bees take off for parts unknown, sort of “Westward, Ho!” and down, out of sight they disappeared into the valley below.

And thus this tree climber unwittingly, but gamely, became an initiate into the world of beekeeping. David learned firsthand the great lesson bees are here to teach us: the knowledge that the subject of one’s ardor will, as often as not, receive the attentions lavished upon them ungratefully; and in return for adoration, will visit great pain and, sometimes, absolute rejection upon us.

Does that sound a bit dark, a tad jaded, a wee bit pessimistic? Let me hasten to add that I am wild for swarms, and passionate about honeybees. Something deep inside me thrills when I see that tornadic rotation of thousands of bees launching upwards from a hive, and I hear the astonishingly loud buzzing roar that signals a swarm.

Even if, as so often proves the case, the swarm disappears without so much as a “thanks, dedicated beekeeper, for feeding us all winter.” And this just a couple weeks before, you’ll note, it is time to start collecting honey for said beekeeper. And just one day — one day! — before I planned to split this particular hive to hinder swarming.

I console myself it’s only through my losses, and the losses of other beekeepers, that the forests will be repopulated with honeybees.

(Though, philosophic resignation be damned, I would really like my swarm back. So if someone in the Fairview community spots a large wad of honeybees hanging about, please get in touch with me (unless the bees went into the walls of your home, in which case, that most certainly wasn’t my swarm)).

•••

This seems like as good a place as any to answer some of the many questions I get about honeybees.

Q: Dear Quintin, I’m really interested in getting into beekeeping. How many hives should I own?

A: Two to start with. More than two is too much work; fewer than two and you don’t have a point of comparison.

Q: Dear Quintin, where can I get bees?

A: It’s really late in the season to be getting bees. Most beekeepers take orders in the fall for the following spring. So think about doing it next year, and in the meantime, join a bee club (call your local N.C. Cooperative Extension Service agent for more information).

Q: Dear Quintin, I have bees, somehow they survived my total neglect and lived through the winter. What should I be doing now?

A: I hope you’ve been feeding them sugar water, or there’s a very good chance your bees starved this spring even after surviving the winter. If they are alive, I for one am strongly considering putting my supers on now — I spotted some locust in bloom, and it looks as if the poplar trees are getting ready to bloom, too. Stop feeding sugar water when you super up. Actually, I quit earlier this month — you don’t want them to store sugar water instead of honey.

Q: Dear Quintin, why not just put the supers on early, say March? Why the what’s-in-bloom-now fixation?

A: Put supers on too early and the bees will use the wax in the frames for other purposes, not necessarily as a place to store honey.

Q: Dear Quintin, what the hell is a super?

A: Supers are boxes that contain frames of foundation, usually made of wax that encourage bees to store honey, which you can later rob from them.

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

The crane games are beautiful beasts, shiny and brightly lit, with a glass belly full of forlorn and lonely stuffed animals waiting to be rescued by obsessive 9-year-old girls with a pocketful of quarters and reasonably good aim. My daughter literally cannot walk past a crane game — not at Shoneys, not in a grocery store, not in an arcade or a Laundromat — without plastering herself like a sheet of badly laid wallpaper against the crane game, her nose pressed to the glass, looking in at the sad assortment of captive creatures, any one of which would be so very grateful to find its way to a little girl’s bed come nightfall.

“Oh daddy, oh daddy, oh daddy,” she half sings, half pleads.

How much is that doggie in the window? About $17, most likely, maybe more. I’m pretty sure that the crane game — or the claw game, as some people may call it — is fixed, set on some mysterious device deep in its internal organs to grip firmly enough to extract an animal from the teeming pile about one out of every 10 or perhaps 20 tries, and that is if the crane has been perfectly positioned by the victim, I mean operator, who has been feeding the crane game beast quarters like Ritz crackers for nearly half an hour.

More often, the crane attaches half-heartedly and very briefly to an extruding foot or arm, pulling it upward gently for just a moment so that the animal seems to be waving to the child, “save me, save me,” only to release the animal back to the pile, while the crane returns mechanically, even coldly, to its original position, waiting to be fed again.

My daughter, bless her, believes she has the game figured, the beast tamed. She doesn’t. She’s a 9-year-old version of Willy Loman from “Death of a Salesman.” Willy figured he was a great salesman and couldn’t figure why he was having such a hard time making ends meet every month. In the end, he relied on his neighbor Charley to pay his bills, essentially to subsidize his illusion of success.

In our version of the play, I am Charley, paying for my daughter’s illusions and obsessions. On her bed are approximately 65 stuffed creatures of various species. Of these, I would say about half of these are the spoils of victory from the arcade and carnival game wars. She has taken in these orphans, made them her children, arranged them in a community in which she is both mayor and head nurse, tending to them and their unpredictable and never-ending assortment of ailments.

I look in on them at night when she is fast asleep, surrounded by them, submerged in them, a foot poking out from under an alligator’s snout, one arm around a koala bear with one ear. Now I find that I am the one with my nose pressed against the glass. Believe this: I’d scoop her out of there and keep her if I could. I’d use all the quarters I could find, all I could afford or borrow, play all night if necessary. But there is no crane above her bed — just a ceiling fan, marking time. I know all too well how this game is rigged. She’s growing up too fast, and there is no rescue I know of for that.

“Oh daddy, oh daddy, oh daddy.” Those eyes.

“Here, baby,” I mumble, fishing out whatever quarters there are in my pockets. “Are you going after that turtle?”

“Nope, the yellow bird.”

She feeds the beast, and studies the bird, moving the crane past it, and then back, a smidge too far, and then over just a sliver. She studies it some more, looking first on one side, and then the other. Perfect. She pushes the button and the crane descends, its massive jaws closing over the bird’s head and upper body, pulling it just slightly before letting go.

It’s the not the letting go that bothers me, I don’t suppose. As I said, I know the game’s rigged. It’s how easy the crane makes it look to let go. It’s infuriating, maddening. My daughter isn’t fazed in the least. She’ll get ‘em next time. She has it figured out.

“Wait right here,” I tell her. “I’ll get change for a dollar.”

We’ll play all night if we have to.

(Chris Cox is a writer and teacher who lives in Haywood County. He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Governments at all levels and all across the nation are broke. At every county courthouse and state house, money taken in from taxes and fees can’t match the spending elected officials have become accustomed to. As they say in literature, a reckoning is coming. Over the next several years, the relationship between taxpayers and our government will undergo a fundamental shift.

It’s a pendulum swing, similar to what we experienced with Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Many of us won’t like the consequences, and so we’ll write opinion pieces or letters to the editor, or blog, or protest in the streets, and finally elect folks who will do our bidding. That’s the way it works.

As I was reading about local unrest toward government spending, I got an email form Doug Woodward about the McCoy Bridge in Macon County. You can see his thoughts in our letters section.

Woodward and his neighbors are up in arms about a bridge. I wrote about that bridge controversy nine years ago, and at that time my argument did not focus on the monetary cost of rehabilitating a bridge versus building a new one. Everyone had money back then, and building around the mountains was booming. No, I worried about the cultural and symbolic value of the old bridge to the community it served.

Today we can include the fiscal argument. If it is cheaper to rehab the old bridge and give the community what it wants, then just do it. It makes sense on every level.

Anyway, here’s a portion of that column from 2002 that Woodward asked us to re-print prior to the April 25 public hearing that could decide the fate of the bridge:

Bridges have a unique symbolism in literature and in real life. At their best they provide a thread of connectedness, while at other times they highlight the distance and depth of opposing views.

In Macon County, the McCoy Bridge crossing the Little Tennessee River just off N.C. 28 is bearing the burden of exposing how government and communities can sometimes work against each other. In this case, the individual entities involved don’t harbor ill will toward the other. The real underlying problem is that the government units — the county and the state — don’t have the kind of planning in place to adequately deal with the situation that has arisen.

When that occurs, the government entities and the private citizens must share in the blame. Whether you believe it or not, in this country private citizens still determine what kind of government leaders they will have, and therefore share in whatever decisions are made. As we learn to grapple with the modern challenges of growth, sprawl and protecting the environment, this little bridge may provide an example of how to work together to meet common goals.

The McCoy Bridge is a one-lane vehicular truss bridge, the last one in Macon County. Vehicles traveling in opposite directions between the highway and Rose Creek Road must wait for cars coming across the bridge before they can pass. There is no room for zooming, two-way traffic moving at dangerous speeds. Residents in the Oak Grove community of northern Macon County want it to remain that way.

… The bridge serves a rural community a few miles outside of Franklin. As it is, massive, sprawling development on the opposite side of the river — and across the bridge — would be difficult. Many of those who might see the development potential of that mountain real estate would refrain because access is limited by the bridge. It serves as a kind of barrier, not natural, of course, but one that was built in 1939.

The state Department of Transportation, however, has determined that the bridge needs work. Engineers have deemed it functionally obsolete and unable to handle future traffic demands. Its structural integrity is suspect, they say.

…. There is also a very significant cultural and historical side to this issue. Throughout these mountains we are building roads and opening up rural areas for development instead of tackling the more difficult issue of protecting these lands and containing development in areas where infrastructure already exists. The DOT is right that the bridge is probably in dire need of some engineering work. A Ford Excursion certainly puts more stress on an old bridge than a 1945 Dodge did.

The trouble is that the DOT mandate to keep roads and bridges safe also enables them to carry more traffic, makes them wider, and makes them safer for higher speeds. Those attributes, though, are not necessarily good things for the community that uses the road — or the bridge in this case — that is being “improved.” And what we must remember is that the bridge was built to serve the community.

It’s easy to guess what will happen in this unique area of Macon County in the future if local and state leaders — along with private citizens — don’t wrestle with issues like this and get on the same page. Roads will be widened and curves will be straightened. Houses will be built. Schools will be needed in the outlying areas, solid waste will have to hauled somewhere, septic tanks or sewer lines, along with other infrastructure, will need to be built. Taxes will go up to meet these needs. The rural countryside five miles outside of Franklin will become just another suburb. A one-lane truss bridge will not be able to handle the traffic.

The McCoy Bridge dilemma serves as an example of the challenges facing these mountains. Residents who value our rural countryside have to make sure they put the leaders in place who have the same values, not those who will pave over paradise instead of working for a better alternative. Time is running out.

That warning from 2002 didn’t foresee the housing bubble burst and the ensuing recession. The dizzying pace of construction in the mountains has ground to a halt. So now we do have time to take stock of what’s important and work to save it. And we have to be more careful with every tax dollar that is spent.

In this case, we stand with the Woodward and the residents who live in this community — rehab the historic bridge and make it a showpiece instead of building a concrete slab spanning the Little Tennessee river.

(Scott McLeod can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Public hearing

The N.C. Department of Transportation will hold a public hearing on Monday, April 25, regarding alternatives for replacing the McCoy Bridge. The hearing will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. at the Cowee Elementary School gymnasium. It will be a question-and-answer session with transportation officials. Maps displaying the bridge replacement alternatives will be available prior to the public hearing from 5 to 6 p.m.

Tonight’s menu calls for salad from the garden, which reminded me to jot down a method for growing lettuce that, being very lazy busy lately, I’ve grown quite fond of doing.

Lettuce doesn’t need coddling, or careful spacing of the seed, or much of anything at all for that matter. Those expensive bags of mixed salad you buy at the farmers market or in produce sections of grocery stores? You can easily and inexpensively grow the stuff at home.

Here’s how you to grow your own Mesclun mix:

Broadcast lettuce seed thickly over a prepared garden bed. Broadcasting means strewing or scattering. A properly prepared bed is one free of rocks, amended with compost or, short of that, amended with organic fertilizer. The soil should have been limed to sweeten the soil, ideally some four months previously. The state extension service people will fuss at me about this — they do so like to recommend soil testing, probably in part because of the job insurance such testing entails — but don’t wait for results to come back from the laboratory if you haven’t tested and limed yet. I can pretty much guarantee that in Western North Carolina, home to acid soil, you need lime if you haven’t limed before. So get a bag of the stuff and, using a light hand, dust the top of the bed. It won’t hurt the seed, and this way rain will drive the lime down to where it can do the most good.  

Your seed should be leaf lettuce such as Black-Seeded Simpson, not a heading lettuce. Though having said that I hasten to be contradictory by adding Buttercrunch lettuce — which is a Bibb type — works particularly well when broadcasted.

After you’ve gotten the seed down, stir it around a bit using the back of a rake. This presses the seeds into the soil and helps with germination. Don’t try to cover every seed, that’s unnecessary; in fact, some lettuces (the white-seeded types) need light for even germination. By stirring the seed you are simply trying to make some contact between said seed and the soil.

Keep the bed moistened if the weather turns dry. This is very important because, using this method, the seed is more or less on the surface of the ground and subsequently will dry out very quickly. The lettuce generally germinates in about a week this time of year.

One wonderful side benefit to using my method if you, too, are really lazy very busy is that by broadcasting thickly, weeds are crowded out.

When the lettuce leaves have grown a few inches tall, take scissors and whack them off, a couple of inches from the ground: tah dah, you have salad. The lettuce will re-grow; you will take a pair of scissors and whack the leaves off again, fertilizing every couple of weeks (liquid fertilizer, such as compost tea or a fish emulsion). Over and over you cut, shearing the bed, at least you can do this until the weather turns really hot and the lettuce bolts or turns bitter.

You can help slow bolting by putting shade-cloth over top and watering frequently, but don’t bother until temperatures stay consistently in the 80s. Interestingly, once your lettuce starts tasting bitter, try rinsing it in warm water: for some reason, that helps more than cold water.

I’ve also found Slobolt, a leaf lettuce readily available through various seed companies, lives up to its name. I seed Slobolt in late spring to help tide me through the hot summer when Black-Seeded Simpson and Buttercrunch are a distant spring memory. I also have a hot-weather mix that I’ve grown for market I’ll write about another day. It has no actual lettuce (which is a cool-weather crop, and germination rates drop accordingly as temperatures rise), but instead relies on baby kales, collards and so on.

Other items that go into my salad mix this time of year: baby beet leaves, particularly the variety unappetizingly called bull’s blood beets. This type has lovely dark purple leaves and really dresses up a salad, but any young beet leaves will do. I also add claytonia, or Miner’s lettuce, a West Coast native that has a wonderful buttery taste; lamb’s quarters, a pernicious weed in our soil but a nice salad addition; sorrel; Asian greens such as tatsoi and mizuna; and Arugula.

Don’t forget to clip some dill or other herbs into the salad. I also enjoy adding edible flowers, such as violets or nasturtiums, for both beauty and gustatory pleasure.

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Raspberries, like any fruit we plant, represent an act of faith.

As others are doing this time of year, this past weekend I dutifully dug little holes, added amendments and planted a long row of sad little sticks, carefully watering them in. Three or so years from now, perhaps sooner, I’m confident that I’ll be harvesting mounds of delicious red raspberries from these sticks.

Now that’s belief in the future, displayed on a dizzying number of levels: I’ll be here, the raspberries will produce, and all the work in between today and then has magically occurred. The garden fairies during the intervening years have been hard at work staking, weedeating, watering, amending, cutting out old canes, perhaps netting the plants from greedy birds, which I’m quite sure were salivating in nearby trees even as I laboriously dug and planted in the field below.

I’m suddenly reminded of one of the many Henry Mitchell writing jewels sprinkled throughout his columns on gardening. “Cats, by the way,” he astutely noticed when discussing raspberries, “are no answer to anybody’s bird problem, since then you would have cats.”

Don’t, please, now fire off a letter to the editor in defense of cats, because this is a sore point with me. I’m currently helping to feed no fewer than five of them — which I’m still at a complete loss to explain how such a feat occurred — because that’s way into creepy cat lady territory, where I swore I’d never go. Only Jack the barn cat, by any stretch of the imagination, can be considered to be earning his way in this world, in that he occasionally awakens from his naps long enough to swat casually at a mouse or two before heading back to slumber in the hay bales. The other four cats exist simply thanks to my largesse, which they’ve yet to show any gratitude or appreciation for, despite great expense and no small expenditure of labor on my part.

In my raspberry fantasies indulged in over the weekend, I envisioned harvests of such abundance I’ll probably be able — no, forced — to open a pick-your-own raspberry farm. Here lies every farmer’s secret fantasy: a farm (and to farm) with no labor.

Hah. Back to reality.

Raspberries, as with all things in life, respond in corresponding measures to the love lavished upon them. They will survive in poor soil, and fight their way through weeds and a dearth of moisture, to spit out a seedy berry or two. But give them lots of attention — rich soil, adequate moisture, plenty of room to grow — and the return is raspberries by the bowls full, nay, by the pails full.

One of the most elaborate raspberry plantings I’ve heard of is recounted in a book titled Ten Acres Enough, first published in 1864, by Edmond Morris. This was a man serious about his raspberries.

Morris was a city slicker who dreamed of the country life. After turning 40, he moved to New Jersey (which isn’t as weird as it sounds, because New Jersey at the time lived up to its moniker, “the garden state,”) with his family, and commenced to farming.

In addition to blackberries and strawberries, Morris planted raspberries, and lots of them — 5,656 plants, or nearly two-acres worth, all within his new peach tree orchard. It took him three days, but he was well satisfied with the results:

“I am sure the growth of my raspberries was owing, in a great degree, to the deep ploughing the land had received. The soil they delight in is one combining richness, depth and moisture. It is only from such that a full crop may be expected every season. The roots must have abundance of elbow-room to run down and suck up moisture from the abundant reservoir which exists below.

“Deep ploughing will save them from the effects of dry weather, which otherwise will blast the grower’s hopes, giving him a small berry, shriveled up from want of moisture, instead of one of ample size, rich, and juicy. Hence irrigation has been known to double the size of raspberries, as well as doubling the growth of the canes in a single season. Mulching also is a capital thing.”

Good advice, then and now.

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

By Mark Jamison • Guest Columnist

A fellow once asked me, about a car I was selling, “What’s the least you would take for that car?” I thought for a second and replied, “What’s the most you’d give for it?”

In that exchange was the essence of the market. Buyers want to pay the least they can and sellers want the most they can get and the idea of the market is to find a place where their interests intersect.

In the case of the car we both had information we could go on to determine a fairly narrow range of value for the car. There are published reports of what similar vehicles sell for and there are other bits of information that gave both of us a range in which a realistic price ought to exist. What was left was to consider our individual needs, how much he might want the car versus how badly I needed to sell it.

The parameters of the transaction though were determined by this thing we call a market which is nothing but a confluence of information, need and desire. The market gives the buyer and the seller some assurance that there is a reasonable range of price that can be arrived at by applying the available information to the available supply and demand.

I’ve had several conversations recently with people seeking to buy or sell property here in Jackson County. A question seems to keep coming up, what is anything actually worth? I have a friend who is looking to buy a few acres on which to build a house. He’s found a piece of land that seems suitable and is to his liking. He wants to offer a fair price but because of the failure of the market he has no idea of how to determine what that might be. I happen to know the seller in this transaction, and he too would like to arrive at a fair price but has little means of judging what that might be. Because neither trusts the market, neither is willing to complete the transaction.

There are many factors that have contributed to the failure of the market for land here in Jackson County. Prices had reached speculative levels before the overall crash. Many of our normal pricing mechanisms like government valuations reflect these prices, which are clearly no longer valid. Then too we had a number of development companies that to varying degrees had engaged in a game of catching the rising bubble. They offered plans and schemes that probably never would have succeeded but were at the least based on the fiction of ever-rising prices.

These plans and schemes were specifically designed to be attractive to a class of buyers who felt particularly wealthy due to inflated stock, capital, and property markets. These were people who were living an illusion, their wealth was neither liquid nor solid yet their willingness to spend on things like second homes reflected a confidence that simply was not justified.

Protecting the land

While the great property bubble was building there were many here in Jackson County who were concerned about the unfolding events. Thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive land were being slated for development. It seemed that the plans for these developments gave little attention to either environmental consequences or for that matter more prosaic concerns like the ability of local infrastructure to absorb and service the additional development. In addition, the idea of turning Jackson County into a wealthy enclave of gated developments was far from attractive and highly unsettling to people, both natives and those who had relocated here.

Somewhere between the golden goose of high-end gated development on every available parcel and absolute preservation there was likely to be a middle ground. Many of those who supported the development of land use regulations saw those regulations as a means to ensure that development bore the burdens and responsibilities of its impacts as a consequence of reaping profit. Many recognized that some, moderate development offered good solid middle-class jobs in the trades for many long time Jackson County residents. The failure of the boon times was that it overwhelmed the county’s capacity to absorb it. Many of the plans were unrealistic, financed in highly speculative ways and far too nebulous in terms of their care for existing communities and sensitive environments. In addition, many of the developers ignored local economies and local tradesmen in favor of carpetbaggers and firms designed to work quick, cheap and fast as a means of deriving maximum profit to the exclusion of all other considerations.

The crash put an end to all of that. And while many of the speculators, the developers, real estate hucksters, attorneys and financiers who fueled the boom lost heavily, some of those hurt worst were local individuals and communities who were left with high property valuations, higher taxes and a moribund economy.

We’ve moved from a highly inflated market fueled by speculation and untenable assumptions to no market, a sense that no one knows quite what anything should be worth and everyone seems hesitant to engage in even basic economic activity. The uncertainty affects the retirement plans of some, the job prospects of others, and even the fundamental assumptions on which much of the county’s budget is based.

Fixing a damaged market

The problem, it would seem, is that there is a great deal of inventory available (although much of it is compromised by various legal entanglements). Some very large areas that had been slated for high-end development are locked into a legal limbo.

Some of the land most impacted is also some of the most environmentally sensitive. Some of it currently has half done, poorly done infrastructure that threatens a tremendous mess. For examples, one only has to look at the reporting on some of the more informed local blogs. And perhaps even worse is that many of the 7,000-plus lots that were essentially exempted from the land-use regulations exist within these developments.

So, we have an essentially non-functioning market in Jackson County, a damaged economy, and a huge inventory of damaged and legally encumbered land.

I wonder, though, if there isn’t a possible solution that might serve everyone’s interests to some degree or another. The overall public interest might best be served if some of the most sensitive land that was slated for development and is now compromised by legal, financial or environmental complications was transferred into the public trust either through conservation easement or transfer into state or federal parks or game lands.

The first argument one might expect to hear about such a proposal is that the county could not afford to lose the prospective tax base. That same argument was made 40 years ago when much of the land that is now Bear Lake Reserve (or was, since some has since been sold) was offered into the public trust. In retrospect, we can see the loss of opportunity and the costs that development has imposed.

The fact is that a sizable reduction in inventory would actually give the market some basic parameters against which to re-establish itself. The future loss of supposed tax base, certainly no sure thing given recent events, would likely be offset by the faster recovery of local property markets and the associated increase in economic activity.

There are those who might argue that at present the terrain looks quite nice thank you. Development has been halted and the assaults on the environment and our communities have ceased. I would reply that at best that is only temporary and that we have all the elements for another bubble in place, although I would concede that it is an event likely not to occur for perhaps 10 years.

Still, there is a tremendous amount of money, both corporate and private equity, sitting on the sidelines at the moment. The hesitancy of that money to move might just as likely be attributed to wiliness as fear. Someone somewhere is waiting to pick up distressed assets at a bargain and the question isn’t if, it may be when. The ensuing consolidation may actually be worse. There is some indication that parts of the trophy market are, if not recovering, at least evolving. One should remember that those in the top 2 percent of income have actually done quite well of late.

We may have an example of a more savvy investor here in Jackson County. J.P. Kennedy, a software developer for the oil services industry, may be one of the largest single landholders in Jackson County. He sold much of what became Bear Lake to Centex and bought back some of that when Centex failed. It also appears he has been involved at various levels with the Legasus properties.

Mr. Kennedy or some entity that is as equally well resourced may be in a position to consolidate thousands of acres for development. Given the current attitudes of those in power at state and local levels it is likely that government might find itself willing to be accommodating to the desires of ostensibly powerful interests. And for all the good the ordinances did, their creation left avenues large enough to drive a very large bulldozer through for those who might be so inclined.

Unlikely partners?

What’s to be done? Well there might just be an opportunity available provided those with power and those with expertise can come together in some fairly creative way. A couple of banks and a private equity company or two own some pretty worthless paper on several thousand acres. There are any number of lot owners who purchased lots in developments that will never exist. There are claims, counterclaims and foreclosures, tax liens and likely any other number of legal hurdles that might make immediate development of any of this land impossible.

If local, state and federal agencies — along with conservation and preservation organizations — were to put their heads together, it occurs to me that between existing tax credits and incentives, easement possibilities, and possibly even mitigation credits, that a reasonable proposal might be created that would allow the banks and private firms holding what amounts to useless paper to clear their balance sheets fairly quickly. Actually, those developers and investors that didn’t go under might like to participate, since the elimination of inventory and the likely restoration of the market that would follow would be in their interests as well.

We live in an unsettled time. Governments at all levels are cutting programs and expenses. Investors are timid and markets are stymied. The times are difficult, but difficult times often uncover unique opportunities.

(Mark Jamison lives in Webster and can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)

Maybe I’m just self-absorbed, but I swear that when I’m interested in something, it often seems as if the whole world suddenly has become interested in the very same thing.

Given this, it didn’t seem terribly odd that the husband of a former newspaper colleague of mine has developed an intense passion for sheep, as have I. Steve Tabor and I crossed paths at Cagle’s Animal Auction in Waynesville this past weekend. He was there to sell some goat kids; I was there to pick up some replacement hens after losing eight or nine fine layers to a supposed guard dog.

The guard dog, a 150-pound or so Anatolian/Great Pyrenees cross with an adorable personality but a propensity to play dead with chickens (he plays, they get dead), has found a new home in Barbers Orchard in Haywood County with two children and two adults to dote upon him, and where nary a chicken can be found.

Before the chicken and goat parts of the auction, Steve and I fell into a lengthy conversation about the myriad virtues of sheep.

Not just any sheep, however — Katahdin sheep, an American breeding original. Steve, whose farm straddles the Macon-Swain county lines (I worked years ago with his wife, Teresa, at The Franklin Press), has extensive experience raising Boer meat goats. The ease and hardiness of Katahdins have made a convert of him, however, and he’s increasingly phasing out Boer goats in favor of sheep.

Katahdins, Steve told me, have proven almost unbelievably self-reliant. The ewes will go up on the mountain in January and February and drop a perfectly formed, healthy lamb or two, with no trouble and little fuss, wandering back one fine day with little lamb(s) in tow. Unlike his Boers, Katahdins are proving resistant to parasites and they rarely need their hooves trimmed.  I’ll add they have excellent heat tolerance; the tails don’t need docking and, best of all in these days of low wool prices and widespread lack of general sheep shearing know-how, Katahdins are hair sheep — they never need shearing. Additionally, Katahdins require minimal, or no, shelter.

A fellow in Maine developed the Katahdin breed. In accounts of his work posted on Katahdin Hair Sheep International’s website and the animal science department at Oklahoma State University’s website, the man Steve and I can thank for these wonderful sheep is the late Michael Piel, an amateur geneticist and livestock enthusiast.

Initially, Piel wanted to raise sheep to graze power lines, but developed more expansive ideas about using them for land management. In 1956-1957, he saw photographs in a National Geographic magazine of West African hair sheep, and had some imported to Maine (there’s where the heat tolerance most likely came from — West Africa, that is, not Maine).  

Piel began playing with crosses, using a variety of breed combinations. He selected for hair coat, meat-type conformation, fertility and flocking instinct. Piel picked out the best ewes and named them after Mount Katahdin in Maine. For years, he continued tinkering with his breeding program, improving the size, among other things, by using some sheep from Whales.

A Vermont couple named Paul and Margaret Jepson get an important mention in the story of Katahdins. The Jepsons bought some sheep from Piel in the mid-1970s, adding St. Croix hair sheep into the mix.

As the years passed, Katahdins enjoyed increasing popularity, and are now frequently spotted here in Western North Carolina.

I’m helping tend a few Katahdins in Sylva with dreams of finding some pastureland soon to expand the flock. In my experience (which is limited) and Steve’s (rely on him more on this subject, as his knowledge of Katahdins is more extensive), this breed of sheep is simply terrific on our mountain pastures.

The recommendation I’ve seen, by the way, is three-to-five head per acre. But, if you are willing to feed, you probably could push that recommendation some — though once you feed, if this is a for-profit enterprise, you’re going to start flipping income into outgo pretty quickly.

I give mine a bit of feed, even this time of year, because this serves as an enticement and makes them easier to handle. Because the pasture here is poor, I’m still putting down hay each day. Steve, who has a better setup for sheep, isn’t forced to feed hay now that his pastures have greened up. I think he said he uses a small amount of feed simply to ensure some control.

I also put out a mineral block for the sheep. A note of caution: Make sure, if you have goats, the sheep can’t get to goat-specific minerals — sheep accumulate copper in their livers, which can be toxic for them. On the other hand, if you feed goats sheep-specific minerals only, you set them up, in turn, for possible copper deficiencies.

All aflame now for Katahdins after reading this far, and you want to join in noticing them as you motor about the countryside? Look for sheep that appear kind of patchy, at least this time of year, because the Katahdins are shedding excess hair following the winter.

(Quintin Ellison can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..)