Grape Harvest in Asheville, NC!

One of the special memories of my childhood summers in North Carolina is of the Muscadine grapes which grow throughout North and South Carolina but are not much known in the rest of the country. These hardy grapes have a thick skin and many seeds but their uniquely sweet and sour flavor makes them worth the work. As a child I loved the burst of flavor that erupted as one bit through the skin. They signaled to me the end of summer as they appeared in August shortly before we would return north to Connecticut for the beginning of school.

I was delighted last year to discover that the vines growing over the trellis on the back porch of Carolina Bed & Breakfast were muscadine grapes. Unfortunately last year it seemed less than delightful as the whirlwind of buying the inn and getting it ready for the October rush meant that we had no time to harvest them. They fell with regularity onto the porch, needing to be swept up before being stepped on by an unsuspecting guest.

But this year, as the grapes darkened and began to drop, I was ready and harvested a full basket of beautiful grapes. This, of course, begs the question of what to do with them.

When we lived in England we had a walled garden with multiple fruit trees and I learned to make jams, jellies and chutneys from the harvest as there was more than we could possibly eat. So I pulled out my jam pot and got to work sorting out and cleaning the ripe grapes.


In order to make jelly it is necessary to break the skins of the fruit and mash them, then boil them until the juice is rendered. Remember I said the skins were tough? Well it took me quite a while to break up all those grapes but eventually I had a pan full of lovely red grape juice.



Actually more juice than I need: Here you can see nine filled jelly jars, enough juice to fill eighteen more and a big bowl of grapes which are still ripening.

I promise I won't only serve grape jelly at the Carolina but I might send you home from Asheville with a small gift!

A New Sign at the Carolina Bed & Breakfast

The house at 177 Cumberland Avenue, Asheville NC was built in 1901. It has a long history and has passed from being the home of a leading local businessman through a stint as a boarding house and then back to a private home before becoming a bed and breakfast in 1983. As you probably know if you are reading this blog, James and I are the fourth set of innkeepers of the Carolina Bed & Breakfast . While we have restored and refinished much of the house, we have also brightened and modernized some of the furnishings and artwork. The latest of these changes for us was the removal of the original bed and breakfast sign which has sat in front of the inn for 27 years. At least as far as we know this is the original sign. I have certainly never seen any pictures of a different one in the archives we possess. The old sign is pictured here. It is made of wood and the paint has faded significantly. The sign tended to disappear into the house and garden and was hard to see from the road. Earlier this year I retouched the wording which was peeling off

To help us design and build the new sign we turned to David Earl Tomlinson of Dynamic Metal Works. David has designed a number of signs in and around Asheville and we liked the sculptural aspects which he had incorporated into many of them.

The rooms at the Carolina are named after various songbirds, most of which can be seen in our garden. They are one of the unexpected pleasures we discovered after we bought the inn. As a child growing up in Connecticut my mother taught me about many of these birds but black crows gradually moved into our neighborhood and the songbirds disappeared. I was delighted to watch an early robin out of my window this spring and to see cardinals flitting from branch to branch in the trees when I moved here to Asheville. I am telling you this not so much by way of a digression as an explanation of why we chose the hummingbird for our sign. Birds, and in particular the hummingbird, have always been part of the Carolina Bed & Breakfast. Original wallpaper in one of the rooms, (the eponymously named "Hummingbird Room"!) depicts small hummingbirds in flight. The logo on the letterhead we inherited with the inn also incorporates a hummingbird so we have chosen to continue this association, first on our new website and now in our new sign.

David made our new sign out of iron and created a small three dimensional sculpture of a hummingbird to "fly" in the center.

This picture of the sign lying in his truck shows the detail of his work.

It was a hot, hot summer day when he arrived to remove the old sign and put the new one in place so the following pictures are somewhat washed out but the occasion needed to be documented!

James helped David remove the old sign which we have placed in our garden near the path from the parking lot to the back entrance of the inn. It is an important part of the heritage of the bed and breakfast and we knew we would keep it and use it somewhere.

And here is the new sign in place! As I mentioned, it was a brilliantly sunny day and I am by no means a professional photographer so the color does not run true in this photo. It is more of a true fuschia and less pink than this one shows. I will try and get a better shot in the autumn (or you will just have to come by and see for yourself!)

David Webb Jewelry and Asheville, North Carolina

This weekend the Asheville Antiques Fair takes place at the Civic Center at 87 Haywood Street. The event in and of itself is worth going to but for those of you who have visited the Carolina Bed & Breakfast, or are interested in jewelry, there is a special event you may want to go to.

In the 1930's the house at 177 Cumberland Avenue was a boarding house, owned by Mr. and Mrs. George Webb. The picture above is a photo of the house taken while it was still owned by the Webbs. It was sent to me by Angie Kratzer, Great-Great Grand-daughter of the Webbs and Great-Niece of David Webb. Local legend has it that David learned to make jewelery in a WPA course during the Depression. He moved to New York at the age of 17 and by the age of 21 he had his own shop. His designs were worn by Jackie Kennedy, Lana Turner and Gloria Vanderbilt among other and even today stars such as Gwen Stefanie and designers like Tory Burch wear his pieces.

If you are in Asheville and would like to learn more about this native son, I encouraged you to go to Angie's presentation "David Webb: The True Mountain Gem" at the Civic Center, this Friday Night at 5:30PM at the Civic Center

Bele Chere in Asheville, NC

This past weekend saw the 31st Bele Chere Festival in Asheville. More importantly it was the first Bele Chere for James and me at the Carolina Bed & Breakfast.

Bele Chere was envisioned as a means to bring people and business into the downtown area of Asheville. Over the years it has certainly succeeded in that. They estimate that over 300,000 people came to this year's festival. For us that translated into a full inn, although a surprising number of our guests had booked for the weekend without knowing that a festival was going on here. But James and I and our daughter, Abby, managed to find some free time to get downtown and see the sights.

The night before we had walked through eerily empty streets as we went to dinner at Limones. The festival was in the process of being set up and it seemed the only people there were the ones putting up tents and stalls. All of the center streets of downtown were closed to traffic and we strolled down the middle of the avenues. But the next day! It must have been 85 in the shade and yet people were everywhere. The heat didn't seem to have kept anyone away. There were four music stages with bands playing throughout the day. It definitely adds to the atmosphere when music is playing in the background. There were stalls selling just about everything you could think of: art, clothing, food, beer and more. As usual, people watching was a big part of the activity. During the day, it is very much a family event.



As you can see by these pictures of children with face paints and balloons.







Abby was delighted to find fresh lemonade for sale! After we bought a giant size glass we went to stand in the shade and watch the "Ultimate Air Dogs" leap from a platform into a pool of water. You can be sure that everyone watching wished they were a dog and could go swimming too.



Later that night we were able to catch a final act and enjoy the crowd dancing and swaying before walking home through the sultry heat to our front porch.

Southern Highland Craft Guild: Meet the People

This weekend the Southern Highland Craft Guild held its annual crafts fair in Asheville, NC. Even though it was a busy weekend at the Carolina Bed & Breakfast, James and I made an extra effort to get there so we could see what all the "fuss" was about. And I am so glad we did. It was an amazing display of artwork and beautiful crafts of every type. I could show you a lot of pictures and talk about all the different things we saw but instead I am going to introduce you to two of the people we met: Marlow Gates of Friendswood Brooms and Anne Freels of Wingshuck.

Marlow, in case you haven't guessed it, makes brooms. You can be excused for thinking that this is not the most exciting of crafts but you would be wrong. Each broom is handmade and the handles are specially crafted. Marlow can take pretty much anything and turn it into a broom handle. If you look closely at this picture you will see that he has made a broom with a fishing rod for a handle. One wonders whether that is a statement by a long-suffering spouse or a paen by an enthusiastic angler!

When Marlow was a little boy his father worked for NASA on the Apollo Space Missions. One day he saw an advertisement by a broom-maker in the Southern Appalachians who was looking for an apprentice to carry on the craft after he died. Marlow's father was intrigued and went to meet the artist. He loved the craft and life style so much that he returned to his family, quit his job with NASA and moved them all to the Tennessee Mountains. Marlow made his first broom at the age of five and has been making them ever since. He and his wife, Diana, work together on the brooms and he is hoping his sons will continue the family business.

Marlow is pictured in the top photo with James and the hearth broom we bought. It has a pine knot for a handle which has been highly polished to show off the red color created by the fungus which caused the knot. He told us that we could bring him a piece of wood from one of our trees and he would make a handle just for us!

Not far from Marlow and Diana, was the stall of Anne Freels and her business, "Wingshuck". Anne makes dolls out of cornhusks. She made her first doll in High School. Everyone was required to take a course on Appalachian crafts and after she made her first doll, she said, "Can I make another?!".

Each doll takes about three to three and a half hours for her to complete. She dyes all of the husks herself using natural dyes. The body of the doll takes about two hours to put together and then she gets down to details. Her work is amazingly intricate. Dolls hold tiny fruits and flowers, hair is made of everything from flax to llama wool.

We bought these two witches to decorate our tables in October. Each doll comes with a small card giving information about its significance in Appalachian folklore. One of my favorites is the "kitchen witch", poised on a broomstick to be hung in your window, it will keep your cakes from burning, your bread from falling and your household happy.

I wish we had had more time at the fair to talk with more of these interesting and unique people. It's part of what makes Asheville so wonderful!

Staying Cool in Asheville,North Carolina

I'm not going to lie to you, it's hot here in Asheville. Of course because we are in the mountains it's probably not as hot here as it is where you are, but it is hot. The compensation is that while the days have been pretty sultry, our nights are generally a very comfortable mid-to low sixties and most of the guests at the Carolina Bed & Breakfast enjoy sleeping with the windows open and the ceiling fans purring. Outside in the garden, I can hear the tree frogs who started up their evening concerts almost on cue with the beginning of July.

Along with the tree frogs, there are a lot of other people making music outside in the parks and the streets. Friday nights see "Downtown After Five" in which locals come together on a closed off corner of Broadway Avenue (not far from here) and enjoy jazz, blues, rock and more. If you don't feel like moving off the comfortable porch swing at the inn, you can sip a glass of wine and listen from a distance. If you are feeling more energetic, stroll on over to Patton Avenue and join in with the dancers at the Drum Circle.

Saturday evenings in July and August, Pack Square Park comes alive with "Shindig on the Green". As you can see from the picture above, a healthy crowd comes along, bringing lawn chairs and blankets to sit on, listen to the music, and even get up and join in a square dance or two (they call it "street dancing" here.) It's about a twenty minute walk from the Carolina to Pack Square Park but you will be rewarded for the effort by the sights and sounds of Asheville at its liveliest. As you can see from the picture at top, musicians set up their stands and play on any open corner they can find!

One of the things James and I get the biggest kick out of is watching the crowds. People of all types and ages come together for the outdoor events of Asheville. It's a real parade of characters.




And finally, while the fireflies are dying down, the fireworks in Asheville continue. It's not every night or even every weekend but it is unexpectedly often!

Here comes the Glorious 4th!

(Guests enjoying an al fresco breakfast on a sunny summer morning
under the grape arbor on the back porch of the Carolina Bed & Breakfast)

When I was a child (yes, that long ago) we started school in September and didn't finish the year until almost the end of June so I always felt that summer didn't really begin until the Fourth of July. James had a different experience growing up and for him the Fourth signifies the halfway point to the summer (a more bittersweet celebration in my opinion!). We've never been able to come to an agreement on this, probably because the association was ingrained in our childhoods and cannot be untangled from the memories and emotions of the past, so we long ago agreed to disagree on this one. But where-ever you place the Fourth of July in the summer I imagine it holds memories of family and picnics, hot days and fireflies at nightfall and off course parades and fireworks.

Like so many small cities and towns, Asheville will be celebrating in its own special way and I would encourage you to join us! If it is fireworks you are looking for, there will be displays all over Western North Carolina. If you are unable to stay through to the evening of the Fourth we can probably find some early celebrations for you to enjoy. On Friday and Saturday night, over at McCormick Field the Asheville Tourists will be playing the Kanapolis Intimidators (affiliate of the Chicago White Sox). After the intrinsic fireworks of the game there will be a real display. Fans are encouraged to go out and sit on the field to get a really good view. Tickets are limited but there are still a few left. (Click here to book online)

Of course, on the Fourth itself celebrations in Asheville begin at 4 P.M. with music from Asheville's hottest bands, family activities, lots of local foods for sale and a firework display at 9:30. Again if you have to leave before the fun on the fourth, Saturday night is the opening of "Shindig on the Green", a celebration of live music which takes place onstage and off as musicians continue to jam even when they aren't performing.

James and I hope to catch some if not all of the events. Of course we will also be planning some special meals and decorating the Carolina Bed & Breakfast in full on red, white and blue. We have a few rooms left, so come on down!