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New generation of doctors prefer stability over autonomy

In an effort to boost recruitment of doctors to the region, hospitals across Western North Carolina are following in the footsteps of a national trend to employ physicians in-house.

Historically, doctors set up independent, private practices.

But doctors are increasingly being squeezed by rising overhead and lower reimbursements for Medicare and Medicaid patients. As a result, doctors are gravitating toward a new model of being employed directly by hospitals. The hospitals keep the revenue generated from the patients, while providing a steady salary to the doctors.

“It allows them to do what they were trained for, the clinical work, and let someone else handle the administrative side,” said Tim Hubbs, CEO of Angel Medical Center in Franklin.

Whether it’s disciplining chronically late employees, shopping malpractice rates or billing insurance companies, “It is nice to say ‘Hey, can you all just handle that?’” Hubbs said.

Sylva-based WestCare is leading the hospitals west of Asheville in the number of physicians employed in-house. WestCare employs 19 physicians across six practices. Angel Medical Center employs 13, while Haywood Regional Medical Center employs five.

WestCare CEO Mark Leonard said the trend reflects a generational preference among younger doctors. He cited a recent survey of medical school grads at Duke University where 74 percent said they would rather be employed upon graduating than go into their own private practice.

“This really reflects a generational shift on the part of new physicians entering into medicine,” Leonard said. “It was incumbent on us to shift and embrace this new way of doing business.”

Leonard said he understands why the new model is attractive to today’s younger doctors, citing the long shifts doctors pull simply to care for their patients.

“When you put on top of that being a business owner and doing the taxes and the personnel issues, that causes the hours to stack up,” Leonard said. “These new physicians coming out say, ‘I just went to medical school and I want to emphasize the clinical side of medicine.”

Haywood CEO Mike Poore added that young doctors aren’t eager to follow the rigorous on-call schedule that had their older peers chained to beepers most of their lives. They want a steady salary and more free time.

Balancing autonomy

The only downfall of the model is a potential loss of autonomy. Doctors can suddenly find themselves answering to a hospital CEO, unlike a private practice model where they answer to no one but their patients.

All three hospital CEOs interviewed for this story said they recognize the concern.

“When I go to my personal physician, I don’t want to be thinking that there is a suit in another room influencing how he is going to care for me, my wife or my children,” Leonard said. “I want his decision to be based on what’s in my best interest as a patient.”

At WestCare, Leonard said he has laid the foundation of trust between physicians and administration and a collaborative decision-making model, which should in turn allay such fears.

“I am not a physician. I did not go to medical school. I am going to rely on and trust the physician’s judgment when it comes to clinical decision-making,” Leonard said.

Hubbs also pledged a hands-off management style when it comes to medical care.

“If a physician says I think we need a CAT scan on this, we are not going to second guess that,” Leonard said.

For Dr. Bruce Lobitz, an ER doctor who joined a team of hospital-employed doctors in the Angel emergency room this year, the possibility of hospital administration intruding on his care of patients was a top concern.

“That was one of my hesitations,” Lobitz said, who has found it not to be the case, however. “Here, there is very little of that.”

While it might give some physicians pause, the positves seem to outweigh the negatives.

“There is some trepidation in the loss of autonomy,” said Dr. Charles Trenthem. “But if you look at the trends nationally, this is what’s happening.”

While the nonprofit hospitals in the mountains have a community minded philosophy, larger for-profit hospitals could take advantage of the employment model.

“They do have a profit model, and they do push the providers at all levels to see that one extra patient, to generate that one extra charge,” said Dr. David Farley, an internist at Angel Medical. “I have not seen that be an issue here.”

Hubbs said there are external controls to ensure hospitals don’t prod physicians to order more costly tests than a patient really needs just to boost revenue. The insurance companies or Medicare who get stuck with the bill would notice an outlier ordering gobs of tests, Hubbs said.

There is one upside for patients: fewer bills. Anyone faced with a hospital stay braces for a litany of separate bills trickling in for lab tests, X-rays, various specialists and the hospital itself. Poore said bundled payments — where the bill for doctors is included with the bill from the hospital — is a model that shows promise.

Hospitals employing a critical mass of in-house doctors will often house them in a joint practice, even if they aren’t in the same specialty. It allows for integrated patient care, providing quick access to charts and reducing the chances of two doctors ordering the same test.

“Really it is kind of a data flow issue that is so clumsy in medicine right now,” Farley said. “If you’re housed in the same unit, you can walk down the hall and say ‘What did you think of Mrs. So-and-so this morning? Should I be concerned about this?’ You don’t have that when you are all scattered around in separate pods around town.”

Making the transition

While urban hospitals have launched a large-scale transition toward employing doctors, rural hospitals are using the model primarily to lure new recruits or to stabilize a faltering practice in a specialty the hospital can’t afford to lose within its medical community, said Dr. David Farley, an internist at Angel Medical.

“In this town, most of the employed physicians are the new recruits,” Farley said. “The existing doctors have remained solo, but I don’t think you can predict that will continue.”

Farley said the new model could be enticing to physicians at different points in their career, like a physician nearing retirement who wants to go part-time and no longer wants to deal with the hassle of managing a private practice.

As the new model develops, the result is a hybrid of traditional private practices and hospital-employed physicians within the community, Leonard said. Leonard largely follows the preferences of the doctor being recruited. If there is an existing private practice in the community the doctor wants to join, the hospital simply plays matchmaker.

When a doctor joins an existing practice, they are often expected to make an upfront investment.

“They buy in to do their fair share,” Poore said.

In Haywood County, both models exist within the same orthopedics office. Western Carolina Orthopedic Specialists has three doctors, two of whom own the private practice, while a third, Dr. Gerald King, is an employee of the hospital.

The hospital pays Western Carolina Orthopedic Specialists a management fee to covers King’s share of overhead, from office space to secretarial staff. The hospital also pays Kings salary.

In exchange, the hospital gets 100 percent of the revenue generated from King’s patients. It also benefits from having an orthopedist in the county who will bring business through the doors of the hospital. The hospital was suffering from a chronic orthopedist shortage that led patients unable to get appointments locally to take their business outside the county.

Haywood Regional Medical Center recently bought out Haywood Women’s Medical Center, the only Ob-Gyn practice in the county. The hospital now owns the practice and the doctors are employees of the hospital.

It was one of the first moves toward hospital-employed physicians in Haywood. The Ob-Gyn practice was a good starting place for several reasons, Poore said.

For one, doctors who deliver babies have some of the highest overhead.

“The malpractice is unbelievably high,” Poore said.

But the service is so crucial, no well-rounded hospital could afford to be without it.

“Our goals was to keep a viable Ob-Gyn practice in Haywood County,” Poore said.

Buying out an existing practice is more complicated than setting up the arrangement from the get-go with new hires. The process took six months and required outside consultants to help arrive at a fair purchase price.

Getting squeezed

The new model is particularly attractive to doctors in a climate of decreasing reimbursement rates for Medicare and Medicaid patients. Doctors take a bigger hit in rural areas, where a higher percentage of patients are likely to be on Medicare or Medicaid. It makes the offer of employment — and the steady salary that goes with it despite the poverty level of patients — an even more important recruiting tool in rural areas, according to Dr. Charles Trenthem, an anesthesiologist and chief of staff at Angel Medical Center.

“If we weren’t employing physicians and subsidizing their practices, the health care in Western North Carolina would suffer,” Trenthem said.

Angel Medical recently got a special “critical access” designation for its hospital that gets it a higher reimbursement rate from Medicare and Medicaid. Physicians employed by the hospital also enjoy the higher reimbursement rate, since billing is done by the hospital itself.

The issue is particularly acute in emergency room settings, where doctors are likely to see a higher number of patients without insurance who have no means to pay their bills.

While ER doctors theoretically treat patients without regard for whether they can pay, it can influence doctors on a subconscious level, said Dr. Bruce Lobitz, an ER doctor at Angel. But as a hospital-employed physician with a steady salary regardless, it makes it easier for doctors to ignore a patient’s ability to pay when providing care.

“I don’t care about the patient’s payer status. The hospital takes care of all that,” Lobitz said.

The hospital is left to absorb the hit, which can be a problem for rural hospitals already operating on a paper-thin margin, Trenthem said. The model also saddles hospitals with the upfront investment of setting up a new doctor and shouldering the risk if patient revenue falls short.

“Costs are being shifted to these smaller hospitals,” Trenthem said.

But given the trend, they had no choice but step up to the plate and adopt the model.

“The days of a physician going out and hanging a shingle are kind of over now,” Trenthem said.

State passes off child support enforcement to counties

Several western counties have been scrambling to create an in-house child support enforcement program after the state announced it would no longer handle the job of tracking down delinquent parents.

Swain, Macon, Cherokee and Graham counties, along with the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, have all been affected by the unanticipated drop by the state and are creating programs to handle child support enforcement locally.

Swain County commissioners adopted a plan at their meeting this week after struggling with how best to handle the unfunded mandate, something the cash-strapped county can hardly afford.

The state will save about $4 million each year by cutting the program, which now serves 28 out of 100 counties in North Carolina. The rest of the counties, including Haywood and Jackson, already handle the program in-house.

For a successful takeover, the affected counties must learn how to set child support payments and how to punish deadbeat parents who don’t pay by withholding wages, revoking driver’s licenses, and even sending them to jail. Agents will also be responsible for establishing paternity in some cases.

Agents who work for the tribe will be able to deduct child support payments from the per capita checks all tribe members regularly receive.

Bob Cochran, the director of Jackson County’s Department of Social Services, said the program is a good investment for the community since it strengthens families, affects children’s development and brings some of them out of poverty.

The state DSS has a transition team acting as a liaison to help counties absorb the completely new service.

Plans for these counties’ pick-up of the program must be in place by Jan. 1, with an official takeover slated for July 2010.

A federal reimbursement would cover 66 percent of staff salaries, while performance incentives could help further offset the cost of the new program.

Child support enforcement programs in Haywood and Jackson counties, as well as the state office in Bryson City, have regularly ranked among the top five programs in the state.

 

Swain’s dilemma

Swain County faced three options for taking over the child support enforcement program: housing it under county DSS, costing about $28,000; creating a new department, costing about $57,000, or contracting everything out, costing more than $100,000, according to County Manager Kevin King.

In the face of a budget crisis, Swain naturally went with the cheapest option, which did include an estimated $8,000 raise for DSS Director Tammy Cagle.

About a month ago, the county commissioners denied Cagle the $8,800 raise she requested on a 3-2 vote. Cagle later told King that she was unwilling to take on the extra workload without being properly compensated. King claimed the county could not force Cagle to do the job without the raise since she answers to the DSS board and not the county.

At their meeting this week, commissioners reversed that decision and approved a raise after all. To help get the raise passed, King embedded the program in an overarching budget amendment that would save the county about $493,000.

County Commissioner David Monteith said he felt caught in the middle, since he wanted to vote for the rest of the items in the budget amendment but did not support the idea of giving Cagle a raise.

“You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t,” said Monteith, adding that the raise comes at a time when other employees have had to take mandatory furloughs.

County Commissioner Genevieve Lindsay pointed out that even with the raise, the DSS plan would cost a lot less than the other two options. Both Lindsay and Chairman Glenn Jones said something had to be done regardless, so it was best to go with the least expensive option. The motion for the budget amendment, including the child support enforcement program, passed unanimously.

 

Challenges ahead

According to Jane Kimsey, director of social services for Macon County, not much will change for the parents who use the child support enforcement program with the county’s takeover. They would continue to come to the same location for the service, since two state agents were already based at the DSS office.

Chief Justice Bill Boyum with the Eastern Band said that all tribal child support cases will come through tribal court as they had in the past. The tribe is planning for a child support program that will function like other counties’ programs. It will link up to the same computer system that is used statewide.

Some funding for the new program will come from a grant from the Modoc tribe of Oklahoma.

Shannon Cowan, supervisor for the Bryson City office, said there would be an undeniable impact on clientele with the state’s handover. Most of her new employees take two years to really grasp the program and figure out which parents regularly miss their payments.

“It’s not something where a new person could walk in the door and go to work,” said Cowan.

Counties that are likely to offer less money and cannot always accept state employees’ accrued benefits may have trouble luring agents who might move on to other state jobs.

According to Cowan, most of the employees at the Bryson City office have worked there for about 15 years. Cowan said as a state employee, she never expected to lose her job.

“Certainly, we’re all devastated and worried,” said Cowan. “We really don’t know what our future holds.”

Christi Hooper, child support lead agent for Jackson County said it would take “extensive training” just to become familiar with the computer software used across the state.

“The philosophy behind it, the legality, all that is quite complex and then you have to throw in a computer system with 450 screens. It’s big,” said Hooper.

WNC juggles perceptions and realities of rockslide blockade

The main message that local and state authorities are frenetically broadcasting to the world is that Western North Carolina is still open for business even though a major rockslide will likely shut down a portion of Interstate 40 near the Tennessee border for at least four months.

Governor Beverly Perdue echoed that message last Wednesday after declaring the rockslide an emergency, thereby qualifying the state to receive federal money for the cleanup.

“We are open and very, very safe,” said Perdue, who rushed to the rockslide site after returning from a two-week cultural and trade mission to China and Japan. “If you want to see beauty and glory, you come right now.”

Perdue anticipates that the federal government will cover 100 percent of the cleanup cost, as it typically does after a natural disaster. In addition, Perdue hopes to launch a short-term co-op marketing campaign, funded by federal, state and local money, to publicize alternate routes into WNC.

Perdue toured the rockslide site on Wednesday (Oct. 28), along with Secretary of Transportation Gene Conti and Deputy Commerce Secretary Dale Carroll, and N.C. Reps. Phil Haire and Ray Rapp.

Perdue remarked that the 150-foot tall and 200- to 300-foot wide rockslide looked much bigger in person.

“Those boulders are enormous,” said Perdue.

The N.C. Department of Transportation estimates that it will take about four months to open the 20-mile section of I-40 now closed to thru-traffic.

The department has hired Phillips & Jordan of Knoxville, and rock stabilization specialist Jonad Contractors of Champion, N.Y., to perform the work.

So far, contractors have installed a pulley system and moved two drills into place on the face of the mountain slope. They have drilled holes in the rock to set explosives and planned to begin blasting on Tuesday afternoon.

While the biggest challenge lies in stabilizing the precarious rock precipice still looming over the highway, crews will also continue to break up the largest boulders lying in the road for a couple of weeks. At that point, they will have a much better estimate of when I-40 will be able to reopen.

The N.C. DOT has set up a Web site dedicated to updates on the cleanup efforts with a map of alternate routes, all directly accessible off the home page. The agency will also post daily updates to its Twitter account.

Ted Phillips, owner of Phillips & Jordan, emphasized the need to work safely and steadily using a top-down approach to clear the rocks.

“You can’t work down below and undermine yourself,” said Phillips. “You can’t remove it until you get it in the condition to remove it.”

While Phillips said it would take a small crew a “real long time” to clean up the rockslide, Phillips said his company has previously handled a lot worse.

“In my scope, it’s not a big job,” Phillips said.

 

Measuring perceptions

Local and state officials have begun working on a marketing campaign that will publicize the fact that much of WNC is still accessible.

Starting this week, the state Department of Commerce will survey 1,000 prospective travelers in Atlanta, Charlotte, Columbia, S.C., Knoxville, Raleigh, Winston-Salem and Greensboro to determine awareness of the rockslide, ask about impact on travel plans and test marketing strategies.

Smoky Mountain Host, a tourism organization the represents seven counties west of Asheville, will utilize its hefty database, with 40,000 e-mail addresses of past visitors to the area, to do similar target research.

David Huskins, managing director of Smoky Mountain Host, said N.C. DOT needs to make sure to market alternate routes and let the public know they can still reach points west of Asheville.

Ron Leatherwood, a board member of the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce and former DOT board member, encourages locals to patronize the businesses that are most likely to be affected by the I-40 closure, especially the gas stations, motels and restaurants clustered at exits 20 and 24.

Local and state authorities who were around for the last major rockslide on I-40 in 1997 said they were better trained to handle the crisis this time around. Lynn Minges with the State Department of Commerce said as soon as the agency found out about the rockslide, it got on the phone to rally its troops.

The completion of I-26 also helped route trucks away from the two-lane roads they had to resort to during the last rockslide. In addition, the advent of the Internet, with its perpetually updated social media sites, has made connecting with prospective travelers much easier.

Minges estimates that about $150,000 was spent on advertising alternate routes and promoting travel to Western North Carolina last time around.

Tracing the roots of WNC’s signature style

Love it or hate it, mountain vernacular architecture has stubbornly planted its roots in Western North Carolina and shows no signs of abandoning the area.

The style that favors steep pitched roofs, native stonework, timber frame gables and earth-tone colors has manifested itself in homes, schools, police and fire departments, and even chains like Wal-Mart and Wendy’s.

Part of the popularity is fueled simply by aesthetic preference, but in some cases, developers were goaded into adopting the style by towns striving for architectural unity.

Local governments are certainly not exempting themselves from the trend. Testaments to their penchant for the style include Waynesville’s new fire station and town hall, the Lake Junaluska Welcome Center, Jackson County’s new senior center and Cherokee’s new $140 million school.

Like chalets dominate our notion of Switzerland, and sand-colored stucco defines the Southwest, mountain vernacular architecture has grown to become a quintessential look for Western North Carolina.

Though architects agree the style hearkens back to WNC’s early days, they clash on what exactly led to its extensive revival.

 

Where’d it come from?

Plain old common sense gave shape to the mountain-style architecture that cropped up here more than a century ago.

Pitched roofs channeled off rain and snow, while timber beams were hewed from the woods around them and stones were churned up and tossed aside when plowing fields.

“Native stone is what people from past generations would go out and pick up,” said Randy Cunningham, an architect with Waynesville-based Mountain Design.

“They had it. It was at hand. It was free,” said Mib Medford, who sits on the Waynesville community appearance commission. “Availability is what brought it on.”

Mountain-style architecture is probably an original colonial invention, according to Sylva-based architect O’Dell Thompson. It’s neither inspired by Native American techniques nor European architectural traditions, which uses stone a lot more heavily, Thompson said.

Whatever the reason for its initial adoption by WNC settlers, the style has won over a crowd of architects, business owners and residents over the last 20 years.

Now, it’s become nearly impossible to go anywhere without running into stacked stones inspired by the foundations of old farmhouses or timber frames that recall exposed rafters in barns.

“It’s running rampant, that kind of look. It’s everywhere,” said Scott Donald, an architect with Padgett & Freeman Architects who has designed many mountain-style buildings in Cherokee.

Local architects have multiple theories for why that is.

Luis Quevedo at Waynesville-based LQ Design Options, stressed that there was no sudden explosion of mountain-style architecture here. It evolved over time.

Quevedo said it could have been influenced by architecture in the Rocky Mountain region.

“There’s a lot of influence that comes from out West,” said Quevedo, adding that the contemporary version of the style has been popular in the West for a lot longer.

The main difference between the two regions, he said, is that the Southern Appalachian region often incorporates a native barn look.

Thompson agreed, stating that WNC’s mountain architecture isn’t fundamentally different from the kind found in states like Colorado, Idaho, and Montana, which took their cue from the Alps. But the Smoky Mountain brand of mountain architecture is simpler and more understated than all of the above, said Thompson.

According to Donald, the credit for the mountain look historically lies with the East, not the other way around.

“We’d already set the standards here in the East before it went West,” said Donald.

Donald said it’s possible that people who flocked to national parks during vacations caught inspiration from the lodges there. They returned, wanting to craft a similar look for their own homes.

In Thompson’s view, outsiders moving into the area about 20 years ago were primarily responsible for reviving the rustic look.

“When people started discovering the mountains as a place to retire to, they started wanting homes that felt like they belonged,” said Thompson.

Though many architects are fans of mountain-style architecture, not all agree with its proliferation. For example, Donald doesn’t find the style appropriate for the Haywood County jail or Wal-Mart.

“If you just slap a gable onto the front of a Wal-Mart, I don’t think that’s appropriate,” said Donald. “If you’re going to do it, do it. Don’t just do a piece of it. It suggests something it’s not.”

Architects say there’s definitely a right way and a wrong way to create the look.

Quevedo is not exactly a fan of what he calls the “cookie-cutter log homes” he sees in Maggie Valley. He said he prefers a more authentic rustic style.

 

The green connection

Part of the driving force behind that rustic style is the green movement, which encourages using local, sustainable products wherever possible. Many are drawn to the idea of harvesting natural materials to create a mountain look.

Quevedo said he has often used native stone, heavy timber, and even logs as columns or handrails.

Architects can create a very basic mountain look or take it to the extreme, by using tree bark for siding, for example.

“You think of tree bark, that’s what protects the tree for hundreds of years, why not put it on the side of the house?” said Donald.

Natural materials, or at least the natural look, are inseparable from mountain-style architecture, which Donald calls the complete opposite of the “smooth high-tech commercial look.”

Some who opt for the style hunt down and recycle parts from old buildings, for example, to lend a more authentic, traditional appearance for their new construction. Architects have been especially inspired by barn wood.

Local companies have sprung up to cater to their tastes, specializing in buying old barns and extracting materials to use as flooring, siding, railings and columns in new homes, Quevedo said.

Ironically, a lot of stone used to recreate an indigenous look comes from outside the region, according to Cunningham.

No matter the appeal, there are undeniable downsides to using recycled material. Maintenance and cost are two major sticking points.

“Recycled wood and recycled materials are not cheap,” said Quevedo. “You end up spending top dollar sometimes.”

Those who choose to use recycled wood must make sure it is treated properly, and even after everything has been installed, the time to do routine maintenance will come around a lot quicker than if new materials had been used.

Developers must take great care to make sure the building is waterproof, while dwellers must replace mortar between the rocks every 30 to 40 years, Donald said.

Though the actual buildings obviously won’t last forever, most architects seem to shoot for a look that never grows old. Again and again, they said they were concerned with creating something that wasn’t solely “trendy.”

“In my opinion, when you lock into a style, then you’ve locked into something that will go out of style,” said Thompson. “It’s more important for it to be timeless.”

Preserving craft and livelihood: Successful Quilt Trails of WNC coming soon to Haywood, Macon

By Julia Merchant • Contributing Writer

Take a drive through the countryside of Western North Carolina, and you’ll likely notice brightly colored squares adorning the sides of barns and other rustic structures. Look closer, and they’ll tell you a story about that place.

“Turkey tracks,” for instance, hangs on the side of a barn where a flock of turkeys come for their morning meal. “Bard of Avon” graces the side of the Parkway Playhouse in Burnsville. Nearby, “Monkey wrench” pays tribute to a local resident well-known for his fix-it abilities.

The blocks are actually quilt patterns, carefully selected to honor the history behind the structures and homesteads they grace. It’s all part of the Quilt Trails of Western North Carolina project, and soon, it will expand to include Macon and Jackson counties, the first west of Asheville to take part. In the six counties where the project currently exists, it’s grown to involve the entire community in preserving both local history and the heritage craft of quilting. But it’s also become much more — an important economic development tool for all of Western North Carolina.

“It’s a community history project, basically,” says Barbara Webster, executive director of Quilt Trails of WNC. “We are capturing the stories of the land, the people, and the buildings with this project, and in so doing, we are building community and creating economic development for the area.”

First introduced to WNC in 2006, the Quilt Trails project has grown to include 158 quilt blocks hanging on barns and businesses in Mitchell, Yancey, Ashe, Madison, Watauga and Avery counties. Each features a different quilting pattern that is representative of its location. Volunteers build and paint the blocks, and write stories that reflect the heritage of each place. Building a block can take anywhere from three weeks for a simple pattern to nine months for a more complicated one.

Webster, who resides in Mitchell County, has seen her county become a model of success. Along with Yancey, Mitchell boasts the highest concentration of quilt blocks in the entire nation, a feat accomplished in just three short years. The project has achieved an amazing amount of community buy-in.

“The entire community has embraced it,” Webster says.

Kids from the local high school art department paint blocks alongside senior citizens. Volunteers take pictures and write stories about each block. A history teacher takes kids out to photograph the blocks in order to learn about the history of the county. A calculus class uses them to learn about symmetry.

Webster believes tying a story to each block, an aspect of the project unique to Mitchell and Yancey counties, played a large role in sparking community interest. On the application form for a quilt block, there’s a space for the applicant to describe their family history or something interesting about the building or land.

“We use that information to hunt for the prefect quilt block that will trigger their story,” Webster explains. “That’s what made such a big difference in our county — when people saw they could capture their family story this way.”

 

Tourism booster

Along with local history, the Quilt Trails project is preserving something on a larger scale — the region’s economy. In an area that has struggled to cope with the loss of industry in recent years, the Quilt Trails project has become a key component in the growth of a newer, tourism-based economy.

“It’s amazing what’s happened here because of the quilt blocks,” says Webster. “People are coming from all over the place to see them.”

A recent Wall Street Journal article that profiled Quilt Trails of WNC drew a flood of tourists, “from Maine to Mexico,” Webster says. The visitors are sure to keep coming — the project was selected by the state Department of Tourism as one of 10 state tourist attractions that will appear in a series of radio spots broadcast throughout the Southeast.

“It’s a wonderful example of taking cultural heritage and turning it into a contemporary experience,” says Handmade In America executive director Geraldine Plato of why the project works. “It appeals to a lot of different people. They can get in a car, drive around, read the quilts, and maybe learn something else about the town.”

Webster estimates that one group of 15 people coming to see the blocks contributes an average of $3,000 to the county in one day.

The economic impact ripples throughout the community, thanks largely to the collaborative nature of the project. It seems everyone’s involved — local artists, for instance, are employed to craft pins that resemble the quilt squares, and local businesses sell copies of the one that hangs on their storefront. Maps of the quilt block trails also point visitors to local attractions, like a nearby organic farm.

“We realized fast this could be an economic development engine for the county,” says Webster. “We’ve purposefully gone in that direction, and it’s worked.”

Though Quilt Trails of WNC is currently only in six counties, it’s benefited the region as a whole.

“We’ve used this as a way to market the entire western part of the state as a tourist destination,” says Webster.

As the project expands, Webster hopes counties will work together to promote each other. Say there’s a quilter’s convention in Haywood County — guests could take a daytrip to see the quilt blocks in Yancey County, for instance.

“We could put these packages together and involve multiple counties,” says Webster. “There’s a huge opportunity here.”

Plato thinks Quilt Trails of WNC has tapped into something.

“It’s a beautiful way to pull together the whole region,” Plato says.

 

Coming soon

Soon, quilt squares will be popping up in the far western counties. Volunteers in Macon County are busy painting the first four blocks, one of which will hang in the Chamber of Commerce.

“It’s underway, and hopefully we’ll be able to see the first things going up before winter,” says Linda Harbuck, executive director of the Franklin Chamber of Commerce.

The project seems particularly fitting in Macon County, which boasts a proud quilting tradition. The now-defunct Maco Crafts Cooperative created the World’s Largest Quilt, which hung at the 1982 World’s Fair in Knoxville, as well as the World’s Largest Quilted Wall Hanging.

Harbuck hopes the project will bring a renewed interest in the craft.

“I think it will help preserve tradition, and I think it may bring it back into the light again too,” she says.

The quilt squares, and the stories that accompany them, could also draw a different demographic of visitors to the area.

“It will bring in a new group that might not have necessarily come before,” Harbuck says.

Led by the local Arts Council, Haywood County is also looking to become part of WNC Quilt Trails. Arts Council Director Kay S. Miller says already, the project is sparking interest from a cross-section of community members, both new and native.

“The excitement is coming from people who were born and raised here, not just those who moved to the county,” Miller says. “Hopefully, it will bring together residents in various communities across Haywood County to gain more satisfaction and pride in the heritage we share.”

The first quilt blocks will be hung in Haywood in June 2010. Miller encourages everyone — young or old, artistic or not — to get involved.

“You don’t have to have an art degree to be involved in this project,” Miller says. “Again, that’s the beauty of (it) — schoolchildren and adults alike can participate. There are many phases of the project, and all levels of skill are needed.”

Buy local

Haywood


Sunburst Trout Farm

Makes: Smoked Tomato Jam, trout dip, trout cakes, trout jerky, trout sausage, trout caviar, marinated trout.

Find it at: The Nest on Main Street, Waynesville (Smoked Tomato Jam); Ingles (trout dip); or order online at www.sunbursttrout.com.

Bethel Eden Farm

Makes: Corn meal, jam or preserves, soap, cider, honey, salad dressing, tomato sauce, flour, pesto, teas, dried fruits, juice, sorghum molasses.

Find it at: Waynesville Tailgate Market; Haywood County Historic Farmers Market.

Lingering Thymes

Makes: Vinegar, teas, soap, jam, preserves.

Find it at: Haywood’s Historic Farmers Market.

Ten Acre Garden

Makes: Jam, preserves.

Find it at: Waynesville Tailgate Market; Haywood Historic Farmers Market.

Chef Ricardo Fernandez and Wild Cat Ridge Farm

Makes: Tomato sauce.

Find it at: Lomo Grill in Waynesville.


Jackson


Brenda Bumgarner

Makes: Goat’s milk lotion and soap.

Find it at: Jackson County Farmer’s Market or 828.586.9611

Avant Garden

Makes: Pesto, jam or preserves, corn meal, pickles.

Find it at: Jackson County Farmer’s Market.

Dark Cove Farm

Makes: Soap, honey, beeswax, goat cheese, candles.

Find it at: www.darkcove.com.


Swain


Springmont Foods

Makes: Vinaigrette Classique, a traditional French vinaigrette

Find it at: Haywood Historic Farmer’s Market, Waynesville

Millie’s Incredible Edibles

Makes: Jams and jellies from local fruits,

including blackberry, rhubarb, peach and apple butter, as well as exotic jams with purchased fruits

Find it at: Cottage Craftsman, Bryson City

Kathy Calabrese

Makes: Kathy’s Products, a collection of salves, ointments and lip balms

Find it at: The Medicine Man in Cherokee; The Herb Shop in Cherokee; Jackson County Farmers Market in Sylva

Sacred Circle Farm

Makes: Floral wreaths, salves, Christmas Wreaths

Find it at: www.sacredcircle.com.

Balltown Bee Farm

Makes: Beeswax, honey, grits, corn meal

Find it at: Jackson County Farmers Market; Country Home Cooperative in Franklin.

Macon


Spring Ridge Creamery

Makes: butter, milk, buttermilk, cottage cheese, cheddar cheese, flavored cheeses, ice cream, eggnog (during holidays only).

Find it at: On site, located on U.S. 441 about 10 miles south of Franklin near the Georgia state line. 828.369.2958

Nantahala Herb Co.

Makes: Teas, soap, salves.

Find it at: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Deal Family Farm

Makes: Sorghum molasses, jam, preserves, honey, cider, syrup, Christmas wreaths.

Find it at: Fruit stand, 4402 Murphy Road, Franklin.

Otter Creek Trout Farm

Makes: Herbs, salves, soap.

Find it at: On farm. 828.321.9810.

Value-added products up the ante for homegrown goodness

Across Western North Carolina, an increasing number of people are discovering new and creative ways to use the bounty of produce and farm goods raised in the mountains. From jams to sauces to salves, homegrown chefs and artisans are turning a profit with their creations, which are known as value-added products.

“They are called value added because, after the work of raising products, such as fruit, the farmer or an artisan invests more time and effort to create another, more complex product, such as jam,” explains Rose McLarney, marketing and communications coordinator for the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project.

Because of the time put into creating a value-added product, farmers and producers can reap higher profits from everyday crops. George Ivey, director of the Buy Haywood program, aimed at supporting local farmers, uses the example of a tomato, a common mountain crop.

“If you just sell the raw product, it has the basic value of a tomato,” Ivey says. “But if you can turn that tomato into something else, you get paid for the labor and expertise of providing added value to the product.”

Value-added products provide a boost in business for mountain farmers. The products help create demand for local farm produce. That was one of the theories behind Buy Haywood’s value-added tomato recipe contest. Contestants created innovative products using locally grown tomatoes, giving farmers a new market for selling their produce.

Value-added items also make it possible to enjoy locally grown food throughout the year by preserving seasonal produce, in turn increasing awareness of local food.

The Smoky Mountain News spoke with four people who have found creative uses for locally grown produce through their value-added products.

 

Dairy farm trades in middle man for ice cream

When Jim Moore found his bottom line increasingly squeezed by middle men to the point of bankrupting his small dairy, he realized his farming dream would soon be over unless he took drastic measures.

“We were losing money every month,” said Moore, a dairy farmer in Macon County.

Moore had to find a way to market his milk directly to the consumer and cut out the middlemen stealing his profit. Besides, it didn’t seem fair.

“They pick up the milk, they charge you for picking it up, they sell it, then give you what they think is a reasonable amount,” Moore said. “They have no risk. All they do is market the milk.”

So in the early 1990s, Moore began reshaping his dairy to sell milk directly to the consumer, bringing the pasteurization and bottling in house. While he was at it, he thought “why not make ice cream, too?”

“I thought maybe they would like an ice cream if they came by to get the milk,” Moore said. “It took me a while to realize they would come to buy the ice cream, and might get a little milk while they were here.”

Indeed, on a recent Monday morning in June, customers began streaming in to the Spring Ridge Creamery ice cream counter in Otto as soon as its doors opened at 10:30 a.m. — and not just to stock up on cheese, butter and milk. No one, it seemed, could escape without a cone of ice cream in their hand despite being nowhere near the lunch hour.

It’s been that way since Moore opened the shop in the summer of 1998. His daughter’s hand was swollen by mid-day from gouging her scooper into the frozen buckets over and over. When a friend come through the door at lunch, Moore asked him to cover for his daughter behind the counter so she could venture to town for a wrist-brace.

Today, the dairy sells 500 gallons of ice cream a month on average out the front door of its shop, one scoop at a time. He employees three part-time workers and a part-time farm hand.

Moore makes all the ice cream himself, boasting more flavors than Baskin Robbins. When Moore bought a small dairy farm in Macon County in the 1980s, he never imagined his days would be spent churning butter, pressing cheese and concocting new ice cream flavors.

When Moore was growing up in Macon County, there were 45 dairies. By 1990, there were only seven. Today, he is one of just a handful in the far western region. Moore can see why.

“I don’t know how these other dairies are making it,” Moore said. “Feed costs have gone up through the roof. They are having to sell their milk below cost.”

Other small dairy farms facing similar plights have looked to Moore for inspiration.

“People come in and see this and say, ‘Boy this is the answer for us,’” Moore said. “But you’ve got to really want to do it. You might be getting out of the frying pan and into the fire.”

A dairy farm is a 24-7 occupation. Making cheese and ice cream has to be squeezed in around it.

Moore was lucky he made the leap when he did. He was able to amass the equipment he needed cheaply, watching for used items to come on sale. He had to have equipment to pasteurize, homogenize and bottle the milk. He needed walk-in coolers and walk-in freezers, not to mention the kitchen equipment like a butter churn and ice cream maker. The concept of an on-the-farm ice cream operation was still novel, and there was little demand for used equipment, allowing him to pick it up cheaply.

It was a risk nonetheless to rack up more debt when he still owed on his farm.

“It was one of those things where you had to have a lot of confidence in yourself that what you would be doing would pay for what you were adding,” Moore said.

Moore was lucky on another front: the location of his farm right on U.S. 441, a major tourism corridor into the mountains from Atlanta. During his daydreaming phase, Moore sat by the road doing traffic counts and realized just what a gold mine all those cars could be.

The dairy has become a requisite stop for tourists and second-home owners pouring into the mountains, as well as a final destination to stock up on specialty cheese before heading back home.

Moore got a good offer on his farm several years ago and almost sold it.

“But I’m glad we didn’t,” Moore said. Fans of ice cream no doubt agree.

Moore not only kept the farm, but worked with the Land Trust for the Little Tennessee to place it in a conservation easement so that it would always stay a farm, even when he’s gone. Like any true farmer, his love of the land comes first.

“I’ll have to work until I drop pretty much,” Moore said. But he can’t complain.

“Most farmers, if you can put food on the table and roof over their head, that’s all they want,” Moore said. “If you see somebody who is really satisfied, that means more than wealth or income.”

 

Chef turns local approach into recipe for success

As the owner of the Lomo Grill in Waynesville, Chef Ricardo Fernandez has spent 16 years putting his farm-to-table philosophy to practice. Fernandez grows much of the produce for the restaurant on his family-owned Wildcat Ridge farm. So when he got the chance to expand his mission of eating locally and helping community farmers, he jumped at it.

Fernandez entered his restaurant’s famous sauce in a local recipe contest which stipulated the use of Haywood County-grown tomatoes in each entry. Fernandez’s Mediterranean and “Mucho Macho” sauces grabbed second and third place respectively — and since then, demand for the product has skyrocketed.

Fernandez’s three tomato sauces — the Mediterranean, with olives, capers, and roasted garlic; the spicey Mucho Macho, made with 16 varieties of slow-roasted red peppers; and the Tomato and Basil, can now be found in 17 Earthfare locations across the Southeast, as well as a small number of Whole Foods retailers and the Greenlife grocery store in Asheville.

Fernandez is involved in every step of the process, from making the sauces in his Lomo Grill kitchen to hawking the products at tasting booths at various food retailers.

“We crush and blanch the tomatoes, and process the product, at our restaurant,” Fernandez says.

It’s a complicated process, Fernandez says, one that can be both timely and costly when it comes to getting the right certifications. All for-profit canning operations in the state must comply with strict USDA regulations. Canners must attend pickling school, and must monitor things like the acidity and pH levels of the tomatoes.

“There are a lot of health issues to take into consideration,” says Fernandez.

Besides the process of actually canning the sauces, Fernandez had to develop a business plan, a label, and a marketing strategy. That involved him reaching out to food retailers directly by himself. On a recent weekend Fernandez traveled to Greenville, Knoxville and Johnson City, stopping by a different store in each city to give samples of his sauces.

Fernandez’s product has found a niche, which is part of the reason it’s been so successful. It’s one of the only locally-made tomato sauces in the region. Plus, it appeals to an audience looking for healthier, fresher foods. The sauce is low sodium, gluten free, with no fillers or preservatives. It doesn’t use sugar or tomato paste, and it’s 100 percent vegan.

“People are amazed — it’s hard to find flavor so fresh,” Fernandez says.

In January, Fernandez will travel to a San Francisco food trade show to introduce the Haywood-grown sauce to the West coast. As the product’s reach expands, the competition gets tougher — but so far, the sauces have held their own. Since Fernandez started selling the product in October of 2008, he’s sold nearly 8,500 jars.

“The toughest part is who you’re competing with,” Fernandez says. “For us, the possibility of being on the shelves and competing with the best has a lot of merit and rewards.”

But to Fernandez, perhaps the best reward is helping to keep Haywood County tomato growers in business. He hopes his contribution is part of a growing trend.

“Sustainable agriculture needs to stay in business,” says Fernandez. “I’m glad the local community is helping.”

 

Trout farm adds tomato jam to repertoire

Sunburst Trout Farm in Haywood County is the region’s long-standing champion when it comes to value-added products.

The trout farm has rolled out an entire line of specialty gourmet foods based on its fresh rainbow trout, from smoked trout dip and trout cakes to trout sausage and trout jerky. The upper echelons of the food world can’t seem to heap enough praise on Sunburst Trout Farm for its innovative and elegant twists on the simple fish, whether it’s the Food Network or Manhattan’s top chefs.

The family-run farm’s latest addition capitalizes on a different home-grown product, however: the tomato. Sunburst was lured into creating its now-famous Smoked Tomato Jam when it heard about a value-added contest put on by Buy Haywood, a program aimed at creating new markets for Haywood County farmers.

The Smoked Tomato Jam indeed gave a boost to local farmers churning out tomatoes in the fertile river valley just downstream of the trout farm. The trout farm’s chef, Charlie Hudson, bought boxes and boxes of tomatoes from local farmers when they were in season, juiced them and froze the juice, allowing him to make tomato jam all winter.

“I am actually on my last bucket of juice,” Hudson said.

Hudson created the Smoked Tomato Jam recipe himself and won first in the contest. He reduces the juice, adds his secret ingredients and flavorings, and reduces it some more until it reaches a jam texture. Each jar of jam has the equivalent of one giant, homegrown, vine-ripened tomato. It’s a classic example a value-added product. The jam sells for $6 a jar, compared to the price that the original tomato would reap.

Hudson recently took his tomato jam — along with Sunburst’s other trout products — on the road to the International Boston Seafood Show and got a rave review from the “food sensory analyst” judging the entries.

“She said it starts out with the sweet and sour and finishes off with the smoke and that you are still getting tomato flavor throughout and all that is rolled up into one. That is super technical but it was what I was trying to do,” Hudson said.

More simply put, “Most people who taste it love it,” he said.

 

Herbalist finds value in the peskiest of plants

When people ask to see the garden Kathy Calabrese harvests her herbs from to make salves and ointments, she chuckles. It’s not exactly the neatly labeled and organized rows many people envision. Instead, her Whittier garden is something most people wouldn’t take a second glance at.

“People have this image of a lovely little English type garden, and it’s like, ‘you know folks, I’m harvesting weeds,’” she laughs.

From chickweed to plantain to dandelion, Calabrese’s garden is made up of weeds that can be found in any yard.

“The weeds that grow in our yards, the stuff we step on every day, people don’t really know a lot about them,” she says. “It’s amazing what kind of healing properties they have.”

Calabrese turns common weeds with medicinal properties into a line of salves, tinctures and lip balm. She’s been making her products since about 2000, and started out making salves largely by chance. A friend of hers had picked up a big load of beeswax, and accidentally dropped a 10-pound bundle of it as he was pulling out of Calabrese’s driveway. Calabrese decided to use up the bundle by making salve as Christmas presents for her friends and family — and the rest is history.

Calabrese keeps her recipe very simple. To make salve, she harvests a weed, chops it up, and puts it to soak in some olive oil. After a couple of weeks, she strains the herb out of the olive oil and is left with an infused olive oil. She combines it with beeswax to make a salve, or more beeswax to make her top-selling lip balm.

The salves and tinctures (a small amount of herb dropped into water and then drunk) that Calabrese makes are effective for everything from alleviating headaches to calming anxious nerves to aiding sleep. Some of the ointments even combat cancer. Calabrese has also recently forayed into making natural herbal insect repellent and poison ivy spray.

Calabrese is constantly tweaking her products based on the feedback she receives. Often, customers come in praising what a salve has done for them.

“A lot of times, people say it does work,” Calabrese says. However, “one thing that works for other people may not work for you.” Basically, unlike some conventional medicine, herbal remedies aren’t a one-size fits all approach.

Calabrese works with a variety of different herbs — pretty much whatever her garden decides to grow her.

“I see what my garden grows me,” Calabrese says. “It’s a real co-creative process. It’s not just me making the decisions, it’s me working with nature’s bounty.”

For Calabrese, the process of creating her products is a holistic experience.

“It’s this whole body experience of reconnection with the natural world, and reconnection with what’s all around us,” she says. “I’m tapping into something that’s bigger than our everyday life.”

Persistent WCU grads find work in tough economy

It’s slim pickin’s out there, as Western Carolina University students are finding out. This past weekend, more than 1,100 graduates walked across the stage and into the most unforgiving job market in decades.

The competition is stiff. Fewer companies are hiring — the college reported a 30 percent decline this year in the number of career fairs held for students, said WCU Career Services Director Mardy Ashe. The downturn has hit every field, even traditionally stable ones like healthcare, where recruitment of students is down 16 percent.

New grads are competing with much more experienced workers who have been thrust back into the job market. Alumni contacts to the Career Services office have increased dramatically, as more people in the workforce lose their positions, Ashe said.

Ashe commonly hears students say that they feel finding a job won’t be tough for them, even though they know the market is a challenge right now.

“Many of them are very naïve about what to expect after graduation,” Ashe said. “On the other hand, some of them are also planning. They’re looking at alternatives.”

With resourcefulness and flexibility, some students have been successful. Here’s how a few WCU grads landed a job in this tough economy.

 

Compromise

For Amanda Tomlinson, a finance and accounting double major, scoring a job meant doing something she hadn’t planned on. Tomlinson initially wanted to work for a bank — financial planning is her specific interest — but kept hitting a wall.

“I started applying three months ago, and probably applied for 40 positions,” Tomlinson said.

Tomlinson scoured online job search engines like Monster, CareerBuilder, and even Craigslist, to no avail. Without experience in her field, most employers wouldn’t even grant her an interview.

“Businesses sent back replies saying, ‘You’re not qualified,’” said Tomlinson. “But my biggest problem is that they didn’t let me get to the actual interview. I’m a pretty driven person — I double majored and finished in three years. But applying online, they just shut you out of the system.”

Tomlinson got turned down for even the most basic gigs, including a bank teller position.

“They sent me a one line response that said, ‘You’re not qualified,’” she said. “It was really upsetting. With the knowledge I’ve gotten from WCU, I’m qualified, but nobody wants to give me the opportunity. It was very, very tough.”

With no luck in her desired field, Tomlinson began to look elsewhere. The approach worked. She was hired as a clerical assistant for a building materials company. She’ll be handling paperwork as the company gets contracts for jobs funded by the federal stimulus package.

“It’s not really something I wanted to do, but it is something,” Tomlinson says. “I’m going to be out of school, and I have to pay bills.”

Ashe gives Tomlinson big kudos for her persistence, which played a role in her success.

“The more things you send out, the greater the likelihood you’ll be lucky,” Ashe said. “I would be persistent in this kind of economy until they tell you to stop.”

But Ashe says she would be cautious relying too much on job search engines, which, as Tomlinson discovered, don’t always yield results.

“The job search engines are not as successful as students think they’ll be,” Ashe said. “You’re competing with millions of people who’ve got the same things you’ve got.”

Having geographic flexibility is also helpful, Ashe said. Tomlinson narrowed her search to Western North Carolina, since she wanted to stay close to her boyfriend, a football player at WCU.

“Students and alumni with the most problems are those who are inflexible geographically,” Ashe says. “Consider other parts of the state, or even the Southeast.”

 

Shifting plans

Geographic flexibility was key in helping Cara Ward, a theater major, land a prestigious graduate school assistantship.

“I was originally aiming for Florida. That’s where I’d like to end up,” Ward said. “I found things there, but the opportunities were better in other places.”

Those places included Wayne State University in Detroit — Ward’s hometown, and the last place she figured she would end up.

“I swore I would never return to Michigan after I left,” Ward chuckles. “But when they offer you something like that, you don’t say no,” referring to the graduate assistantship she landed at Wayne State.

Going straight to graduate school after college wasn’t in Ward’s original plans either, but she couldn’t let the opportunity pass her by.

“My original plan was after graduation I would get a job, work for a couple of years and make sure this is what I wanted to do, and then apply for grad school,” said Ward. “But I figured I might as well do it.”

Ward also has a summer job lined up at Stagedoor Manor, a theatrical summer camp for kids serious about breaking into the industry. She’s working as a costume designer, and will design six shows over the course of the summer.

How did Ward manage to find such great gigs? Some serious networking. She came across both opportunities at the Southeastern Theater Conference, where she was able to impress potential employers face to face and hand them her portfolio of design work in person.

“Networking is more than essential to theater students especially,” Ward said. “At the conference, I made connections with other people throughout the country and the world and had my portfolio reviewed by all of them.”

In the current economy, networking is the best way to find a job, Ashe affirms, and racking your brain for who you know. Any connection is worth trying, she says, including friends of family, family of friends, former employers, and faculty members.

 

Free labor, big payoff

It’s not always fun to work for free, but in recent WCU graduate Stephanie Drum’s case, the end reward was well worth it.

This past spring, Drum held a part-time, unpaid internship five days a week at Lake Junaluska in Haywood County. The Lake doesn’t generally take on interns in the spring, but since Drum agreed to work for free, they agreed to let her come on. Drum, who concentrated in professional writing, gained a wealth of experience in her field, creating walking tour and visitor guides as well as web content.

Then, as luck would have it, a temporary communications specialist position opened up at Lake Junaluska. The department didn’t have to look far for a qualified candidate, since Drum had been learning the ins and outs of the business for months. Lake Junaluska officials offered her the position.

For Drum, the internship provided a direct path into her desired field.

“I think I would have had a very hard time if I hadn’t interned,” she said. “I’m glad they make us do it.”

Indeed, the communications and English departments at WCU require students to do an internship as part of their coursework. But mandatory or not, Drum says every student should try to do one.

“If they get offered the chance to take an internship, even if it’s not required, they really should,” Drum said. “It will pay in the end.”

Ashe says finding an internship is one of the smartest moves a student can make when it comes to scoring a job, because employers “want to see directly related experience.”

Now Drum has professional experience in her field, which will come in handy when her job ends in July. Still, Drum isn’t limiting her job search to just one field. She knows the market’s tough, and she’s willing to be flexible.

“I’m kind of worried about getting a job in my field. If I can’t do that, I’m pretty sure I could find a seasonal job,” she says. Drum may even return to the summer gig she’s held for a few years during college — working at Wal-Mart.

Local farmers markets

Haywood

Waynesville Tailgate Market

8 a.m. to noon Wednesdays and Saturdays at American Legion parking lot near downtown Waynesville. Haywood County grown vegetables, fruits, cut flowers, honey and nursery stock.

Haywood’s Historic Farmers Market

8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesdays and Saturdays in HART parking lot off U.S. 276 in Waynesville. Produce, plants, baked goods, cheese, meat, fish and more.

Haywood Fairgrounds Farmers Market

7 a.m. to 2 p.m. first Saturday of the month at the Haywood County Fairgrounds (second Saturday in July). Fresh veggies, fruits, plants and more. In conjunction with monthly flea market.

 

Jackson

Jackson County Farmers Market

9 a.m. to noon Saturdays in the municipal parking lot next to Bridge Park in downtown Sylva. Home-grown vegetable seedlings, native plants, flowers, herbs, vegetables, fruits, honey, jams, jellies, soaps, lotions, baskets, crafts and art.

 

Swain

Swain County Tailgate Market

9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays starting June 6 in front of Swain County Administration Building in Bryson City. Organic and sustainable growers of produce, plants, herbs and honey; art including jewelry, quilts, pottery, photographs and more.

 

Qualla Boundary

Cherokee Friday Farmers Tailgate Market

10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Fridays in downtown Cherokee on Acquoni Road one mile from U.S. 19. Fresh produce from local farmers and gardeners; look for organics and heirlooms.

 

Macon

Franklin Tailgate Market

8 a.m. to noon Saturdays starting June 6 in parking lot on Palmer Street (backside of Main Street across from Drake Enterprises). Homegrown fruits, vegetables, herbs, cut flowers, plants, eggs, locally made cheese, trout, and honey.

Rickman Store Market

3 to 7 p.m. Fridays at old T.M. Rickman Store located on Cowee Creek Road next to Cowee Elementary School. Vegetables, plants, flowers, organic eggs, baked goods and more, as well as local arts and crafts.

You, too, can bike to work

Whether it’s for fitness, for fun or to save the planet, there’s plenty of reasons to bike to work. There’s also plenty of excuses not to.

This week, The Smoky Mountain News sought out two people who make biking to work part of their lifestyle and asked them how they do it. Turns out, they have a perfectly good solution to excuses laid on by the rest of us — and some extra benefits we hadn’t thought of.

 

Long-distance commute

Odell Thompson is one of the few bike commuters with long-distance fans.

While sitting in his architect’s office in downtown Sylva last Friday, an email popped up from his parents in Texas who caught a glimpse of Thompson riding into work that morning on a web cam trained on Main Street.

“We saw your yellow bike go by on the web cam,” they wrote.

When Thompson started biking to work almost five years ago, it changed his life in ways he didn’t expect. Initially his impetus was exercise. Thompson’s bike ride from Cullowhee to Sylva takes about 30 minutes, compared to a 10-minute drive. But the extra time on this bike three days a week is what he should be spending on exercise anyway. Thompson likes to think of it as killing two birds with one stone.

“I am getting to work and getting home, and by the way I am getting an hour of exercise a day,” said Thompson, 49.

But what surprised Thompson was how much it added to his outlook on life.

“Riding to work gives me a good way to clear my mind before the day starts. At the end of the day when I need to decompress, riding home gives me the period of time and physical exertion to leave work at work and take care of myself mentally,” Thompson said.

Thompson doesn’t mind riding in the rain or in the cold of winter. It’s all about the right clothing, be it rain gear or warm layers. He carries his work clothes in a satchel on his bike and changes at the office. On hot days, he freshens up by taking a washcloth to his face and neck.

A common excuse among non-bikers is that they need their car during the course of the workday. While it is indeed a deal killer for some, Thompson knows ahead of time what days he has appointments out of the office and what days will be spent at his own desk, and therefore schedules his rides accordingly.

While it’s impossible not to worry about cars when riding a bike, Thompson takes several precautions to reduce the risks.

“My bicycle is very visible. I have yellow bags and yellow fenders and flashing lights all over it. I feel like I am visible enough and the cars will see me, but you are always aware,” Thompson said.

As an added perk, Thompson likes the fact he’s not using fossil fuels, especially last summer when a gas shortage led to long lines and high prices.

“I would pedal by and just look at everyone in line at the gas station and smile,” Thompson said.

Thompson believes he is doing his part for a more sustainable society.

“We need to adjust our thinking about everybody being able to drive everywhere in their own little hermetically sealed capsule, in particular here in the mountains because there is not a lot of flat land to build new roads,” he said.

Thompson said while saving the planet is a worthy cause, exercise remains his top motive.

Thompson’s final piece of advice: commit yourself for at least a month before throwing in the towel.

“The first time your butt will be sore and you will say, ‘I don’t want to do that anymore. That sucks.’ But if you do it religiously two times a week for a month, after that you are hooked,” Thompson said.

 

“Mast Transit” style

When the Mast General Store launched its “Mast Transit” program last year, offering a bonus of $4 a day to employees who biked to work, the timing couldn’t have been better for Jay Schoon.

Schoon, who works in the outfitters department of the Mast Store in Waynesville, was already contemplating a “bike to work” New Year’s Resolution.

He had a dilemma, however. He lived about 20 miles away from work in the rural Fines Creek countryside. The distance wasn’t an issue, nor a killer climb along the way. Schoon’s problem was the narrow country road with no shoulder during the first part of his ride.

Until a solution dawned on him. Why not drive half way, park his car at a roadside truck stop and bike the rest?

“I was being stubborn about living too far away,” Schoon said. “It just dawned on me I could drive part way.”

Mast compromised and gives Schoon $3 a day instead of $4 since he is still using his car some.

He actually applies the $3 to a life insurance policy that he probably would cut from his monthly budget otherwise.

“It pays for my life insurance in case I do get run over.” said Schoon, who’s 39.

As an added precaution, Schoon has a rearview mirror on his sunglasses to keep an eye on cars behind him.

He also stumbled upon a lovely shortcut that departs from the road and follows a newly created greenway from Lake Junaluska into downtown, making the majority of his ride very pleasant and car free.

“I love my bike ride,” Schoon said.

Schoon would recommend the drive-part-way, bike-part-way solution to anyone facing a similar stumbling block.

“Find a killer route, even if it is not on your way,” he said.

Schoon doesn’t wear special bike attire. Working at an outfitters store, a fleece sweatshirt and hiking pants are accepted work apparel, and ideal for pedaling in to work as well. Schoon is a self-described “lifestyle biker.” He’d always ridden his bike as a preferred mode of transportation — including on his first date with the woman who’s now his wife — and didn’t like giving it up just because he moved to the rural countryside far from town.

The time on his bike in the morning and afternoon has made a world of difference in his life.

“I was missing something. Part of my lifestyle was not quite right,” said Schoon.

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