For farmers and agriculture businesses across Western North Carolina, spring is the time to plan and plant for the green season ahead, but uncertainty cultivated by the COVID-19 crisis is complicating that process, often in devastating ways. 

So, probably like most of y’all out there, I’ve spent a lot of time during the continuing quarantine combing through the details of my life, physically and emotionally, whether I intended to or not. 

Way back, way back, like three or four weeks ago, our little company was on track for its best year ever.

Our print newspaper was going strong and we had just added a new, energetic and driven sales professional. Our digital footprint was growing faster than we had expected, and our staff was brimming with new ideas to help local businesses get their message out via several online platforms. Our niche publishing sector had grown significantly in the last 12 months, adding two annual magazines and the four-time-per-year Blue Ridge Motorcycling Magazine to our portfolio.

Can we all admit that this quarantine is getting a little weirder every week? The rules for what we can and cannot do in order to defeat the coronavirus have become so specific that many of us are staging strange little rebellions at home by completely obliterating the rules that were once so much a part of the fabric of our daily lives that we took them for granted.

Webster Enterprises has long used the production of medical supplies as a vehicle for its main mission, vocational rehabilitation for people with disabilities and disadvantages. 

When Mandy Wildman opened up her own bridal shop on Hazelwood Avenue in February, she had no idea her new business venture would take an immediate hit when COVID-19 brought the wedding industry to a standstill.

County governments are in the midst of planning for their 2020-21 fiscal budgets that have to be approved by the end of June, but the COVID-19 Pandemic is going to throw a wrench in their ability to project revenues for the remainder of the year.

During a special-called session April 9, the Cherokee Tribal Council unanimously passed a resolution designed to help small businesses operating on the Qualla Boundary survive the COVID-19 crisis. 

Proactive testing by the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians has revealed community transmission of COVID-19 in Jackson County.

“The immune system is complex and different for every person. Each person’s immune system is unique to them because it is based on the genes one inherits.”