Friday, May 17 (Evening’s music)

6 p.m. — The Blue Grass Cutters (bluegrass)

6:45 p.m. — Sawmill Creek Porch Band (old-time fiddle)

7:30 p.m. — The Trantham Family (mountain music)

8:30 p.m. — the Dixie Darlins (clogging)

Saturday, May 18

(Kid’s Day/Farm and Craft Exhibitions and Demonstrations/Music)

10 a.m. — Banjo demo-workshop with Frank Lee

11 a.m. — Mountain dulcimer demo-workshop with Lois Hornbostel

Noon — The Darnell Family and Clint Hurley (bluegrass, gospel)

1 p.m. — Laura Boosinger (traditional singer and banjo)

2 p.m. — Cody Shuler and Friends (mandolin)

3 p.m. — Marshall Ballew (blues)

4 p.m. — Lois Hornbostel (dulcimer)

5 p.m. — Baen Sidhe/The Banshees (Celtic)

6 p.m. — Frank Lee (old-time)

7 p.m. — Kenneth Bloom (world music)

8 p.m. — Carolina Gator Gumbo (cajun)

9 p.m. — Annie Mae Shore & The Yodeling Ramblers (country-western)

Sunday, May 19

Noon to 4 p.m. — Informal mountain music jam (main stage)

Down at the “office” at the loading docks of Darnell Farms on Thomas Valley Road in Whittier — a crossroads and meeting place for the community — all the talk today is about the strawberry crop and the upcoming “Strawberry Jam” that’s to take place May 17-19.

In a barn-like upstairs room furnished with a large woodstove, a picnic table, scattered chairs, a piano, a stand-up bass, a guitar amp, a fax machine, a telephone, a microwave oven under a large portrait of Robert E. Lee, and a kitchen sink next to a soda machine, farmer Jeff Darnell is holding court.

“That killer freeze we had at the end of March — when it got down to 17 degrees — almost wiped us out,” he says. “Some of the local strawberry growers here in the mountains lost their crops that night. We were up all night long trying to flood the fields with water — icing over the strawberry beds in order to save our crop. In the end, we were able to save it, but it was like a war zone out there, with everybody in the family and on the crew going as hard as we could go to keep one step ahead of the frost. We had pipes bustin’, sprinkler heads freezing, tractors stuck in the mud ... working against the clock and the cold, and all being done in the dark. At one point, I had to blind-weld a water pipe with my eyes closed. It was like a B-movie action flick out there! The hardest part was trying to stay calm and keep my wits about me in the midst of the battle — which goes against my nature.

“And, then, the next day one of the crew turned over my new John Deere tractor. But this is all part of the farming life. I must love all this adversity. Why else would I be out here putting myself and my family through all this?” he says, laughing. “It’s certainly not for the money. I must love it.”

After Jeff’s dramatic recreation of his story, neighbor and fellow farmer William Shelton joins us at the picnic table.

“We’re growing Chandler strawberries,” he said. “These berries are very tasty and the yield is good. But we get our strawberry stock from California. The strawberry blooms come in March, which is good for California growers but is too early for North Carolina crops. What we need is a strawberry that is bred especially for our climate, so we won’t be out in the fields at night, like we were this year, trying to save our crop!

“California has a corner on the market, and so all the ag science is done with them in mind. Here in our state, all the laboratory money goes into tobacco and other things. What really kills us is that California can get both the early and the late market because they can pick for six months while we only pick for two months. Because of this they can sell cheaper and therefore control the market, while we are forced to sell our berries fresh and locally. And on top of all this, we have to pay California royalties for using their varietals!

“So, you can see why it’s a hit-or-miss proposition for strawberry farmers here in Western North Carolina. If the weather cooperates and everything goes perfectly, we can sell our berries vine-ripened and fresh here in the region. Our strawberries have not been embalmed. They’re not the frozen chain-store berries that have been picked early and shipped all the way across the country.”

All this shop talk is a prelude to conversation that will eventually focus on the upcoming “Strawberry Jam” — a festival conceived of and started by Jeff Darnell to celebrate the local strawberry harvest, mountain farming in general and mountain farmers in particular.

“The Strawberry Jam is a celebration of our mountain farming heritage,” says Darnell. “We do it to promote the strawberries and to sell strawberries, it’s true, but we also want to share our culture and community with others. There is a long heritage of strawberries here in the mountains. The Cherokee and the other native peoples before them have a history with strawberries. So it goes back a long way. There is a strawberry legend in James Mooney’s book on the Cherokee. William Bartram talks in his book Travels (1791) about the fragrance of strawberries as he entered these mountains in the spring of 1773, how he and his fellow travelers lived, almost exclusively, on strawberries and venison, and how the wild strawberries were so thick that they stained the horses’ hooves red.

“In order to maintain a bit of Bartram’s mountains, we’ve come up with the ‘Strawberry Jam’ idea. We love music around here, so we’ve made a play on words with the word ‘jam’ — as in musicians playing together, but also as in ‘jam’ that is canned and used as something sweet to cover cornbread or breakfast biscuits. So, for three days in May, we’ve created our own mini-Woodstock over on Old Highway 19 at Governor’s Island. We’ve got two music stages with continuous music, produce and crafts stands, food and beverage booths, arts and crafts displays (including potters, quilters and guitar makers), special children’s events, agricultural exhibits and hands-on demonstrations (such as how to milk a cow, how to plow with a plow-horse, pick your own strawberries, hydroponic farming) and historical presentations about the region. We’ve got James Shuler’s draft horses from over in Bryson City, and we’ll have demonstrations in pulling plows, cutting hay, lumberjack contests and other examples of the flavor of the old mountain people and their farming techniques from the past. All this going on right along with the music. And we have a huge variety of music this year — everything from the old-timey music to the Yodelin’ Ramblers and the Sawmill Creek String Band to Celtic and world music.

“Our motto for the Strawberry Jam is ‘farm, family and fun.’ It’s a wholesome family/community festival with no alcohol and drugs. Thirty years ago farming sustained our people in these mountains. We want to tie into that heritage of agriculture — which is one reason we’ve chosen to hold the festival over on the Old Mitchell Farm. We want to preserve that good bottomland and keep it in farming. If we’re not growing something or doing something on the land, it will be sold, developed, and there goes the neighborhood. There goes our way of life. Replaced by another drag strip, another strip mall.”

“We want to attract people from all over the mountains and beyond,” said William Shelton, the co-producer of this year’s Strawberry Jam Festival. “We want to promote the quality crops that come from our region and to educate folks by using the stage as a forum for public lectures and discussions on agriculture and the preservation of culture and the environment — dealing with the more modern problems, needs and essences of till farming, hydroponic farming, nursery and landscaping practices, tree recognition and appreciation, and talks by county agriculture extension agents, as well as to have a good time. Our strawberry festival in May and the tomato festival we put on the first Sunday in September to celebrate the tomato harvest are community ventures and not driven by a profit motive, but rather to help consolidate our community by providing a means for people to get together and to get to know one another, talk, work and play for a few days as a regional family.

“All this, we hope, will help spread the idea of local economy. This is going to have to happen if our way of life is going to continue. But right now, we’re focused on the strawberries. We’re already picking some of the early berries. By the 17th of May we should be right in the heart of the harvest,” said Shelton.

While William was talking, the phone rang and Jeff got up and answered it. It was a call from Houston, a man asking about this year’s Strawberry Jam. Turns out, he wanted to know the dates of the festival, as he had attended last year and wanted to plan his whole family vacation around the dates of this May’s event. Jeff was all lit up like a Roman candle when he came back from the phone — excited about the fact that there were people who would be coming from such great distances based on their experience of the previous year’s event.

“It’s like Woodstock,” he said, sitting down at the table. “But our Woodstock aims to get people high on strawberries. It’s a counter-cultural event,” he says, smiling. “Counter-culture in the sense that it’s counter to Pigeon Forge and the golf courses in Highlands, and culture in that it honors the older generations and the old mountain culture. My mama was a piano teacher and taught me how to play the piano, but she would have never guessed it would all lead to this.”

Looking at me, Jeff went on ... “I may have started this festival, but we — the farming families here in Jackson County — do it as a team. William, here, and I work as partners in this, and we’re trying to bring in more farmers, as principals, to organize this thing each year. Us mountain boys all have similar backgrounds and a love of the land. This is what we share in common. The selling off of the good farm land here in Jackson County began when I was a boy. And so I saw what was coming. Now, all of us from family farming backgrounds are trying to hold on to the little bit we’ve still got. The way I see it, we’ve got to work together or we’re all going to go under as family farmers.” While the afternoon passes and feed salesmen, family members, farm hands, neighbors, and New York distributors come and go, talk goes on about the business of farming, politics, and the weather — always the weather. Here in Whittier, the Darnell loading dock office has replaced the old community barber shop as the nexus where business is done, ideas exchanged and tall tales and gossip scattered.

In the midst of all of this, the 2002 Strawberry Jam is being planned — sponsors (Darnell Farms, Shelton Farms, Cochran Farms, Randy Cabe and R&R Landscaping, James Shuler and New Country Divide Tack & Feed, Smoky Mountain Farming & Forest Association, Smoky Mountain Farm Supply, Lucky’s Real Tomatoes, Swain County Workhorse Association, The Swain County Tourist Development Authority) contacted, music acts booked, crafts and food vendor booths assigned, volunteers confirmed, publicity flyers and posters designed, and the strawberry crop tended.

“I can already taste that strawberry shortcake!” Darnell jokes. And, after spending an afternoon hanging out with these strawberry farmers over in the rich Tuckaseegee River bottoms in Whittier, so can I. For more information about the Strawberry Jam, call Darnell Farms at 828.497.2376 or email: dgrasshop@aol.com