Tag: Feature

The Great Wagon Road Odyssey

THE GREAT WAGON ROAD ODYSSEY

A pilgrimage half a century in the making

By Jim Dodson

Not long ago, during a breakfast talk in a retirement community about my forthcoming book on the Great Wagon Road, I was asked by a woman, “So, looking back, what would you say was the most surprising thing about your journey?”

“Everything,” I answered.

The audience laughed.

The first surprise, I explained, was that it took me more than half a century to find and follow America’s most fabled lost Colonial road that reportedly brought more than 100,000 European settlers to the Southern wilderness during the 18th century. As I point out in the book’s prologue, I first heard about the GWR from my father during a road trip with my older brother in December 1966 to shoot mistletoe out of the ancient white oaks that grew around his great-grandfather’s long-abandoned homeplace off Buckhorn Road, near the Colonial-era town of Hillsborough.

The first of many surprises was the discovery that my father’s grandmother, a natural healer along Buckhorn Road named Emma Tate Dodson, was possibly an American Indian who had been rescued and adopted as an infant by George Washington Tate, my double-great-grandfather, on one of his “Gospel” rides to establish a Methodist church in the western counties of the state.

A second surprise came during the drive home when the old man pulled over by the Haw River to show my brother and me a set of stones submerged in the shallows of the river — purportedly the remains of G.W. Tate’s historic gristmill and furniture shop.

“Boys, long ago, that was your great-great-granddaddy’s gristmill, an important stop on the Great Trading Path that connected to the Great Philadelphia Wagon Road that brought tens of thousands of European settlers to the South in the 18th century, including your Scottish, German and English ancestors.”

This was pure catnip to my lively eighth-grade mind. Owing to a father whose passion for the outdoors was only matched by his love of American history, my brother and I were seasoned explorers of historic Revolutionary and Civil War battlefields.

“Can we go find it?” I said to him.

He smiled. “How about this, Sport. Someday I’ll give you the keys to the Roadmaster, and you can go find the Wagon Road.”

I searched for years but found only the brief occasional mention of the Great Wagon Road in several histories of the South, but nothing about where it ran and what happened along it. The road seemed truly lost to time.

Forty years later, however, the Great Wagon Road found me.

On my first day as writer-in-residence at Hollins University in Virginia in 2006, I took a spin up historic U.S. Highway 11 — the famed Lee-Jackson Highway — and was surprised to come upon a historic roadside marker describing the “Old Carolina Road” that was part of the 18th century’s “Great Philadelphia Wagon Road.”

The sweet hand of providence was clearly at work, for the next day, while browsing shelves at a used bookshop in the Roanoke City Market, I found a well-worn copy of a folksy history called The Great Wagon Road: From Philadelphia to the South, by Williamsburg historian Parke Rouse Jr. I purchased the book (originally published in 1973 and long out of print) and read it in one night, taking notes. I also attempted to track down author Parke Rouse Jr. but discovered he’d been deceased for many years.

Still, the cosmos had cracked open a door, and I began collecting and reading all or parts of every history of America’s Colonial era that I could lay hands on for the next decade, eventually building a personal library of more than 75 books. About that same time, I purchased a 1994 Buick Roadmaster Estate station wagon from an elderly man in Pinehurst, almost identical to the one owned by my late father in the mid-1960s. Pinehurst pals playfully nicknamed it “The Pearl,” which turned out to be among the last true “wagons” built by Detroit before they switched to making SUVs.

I suddenly had my very own wagon. Now all I had to do was find the most traveled road of Colonial America to travel in it.

Eight years later, thanks to the late North Carolina historian Charles Rodenbough and other history-minded folks, I discovered that I wasn’t alone in my quest — that, in fact, a small army of state archivists and local historians, genealogists, “lost road” experts, various museum curators and ordinary history nuts like me had finally cracked the code on the road’s original path from Philly to Georgia.

By the spring of 2017, I and my traveling pal, Mulligan the dog, were ready to roll when another big surprise — an exploding gallbladder and a baby carrot-sized tumor in my gut — required surgery and a four-month recovery.

Finally, on a steamy late August night, I began my journey (minus Mully, alas, owing to her age and one of the hottest summers on record) at Philadelphia’s historic City Tavern, which claims to be the birthplace of American cuisine. As I enjoyed a pint of Ben Franklin’s own spruce beer recipe and nibbled on cinnamon and pecan biscuits from Thomas Jefferson’s own Monticello cookbook, I eavesdropped like a tavern spy from Robert Louis Stevenson on three couples having a rowdy celebration of matrimony and a game of trivia based on American history that kept going off the rails.

At one point, a young woman called out a question in clear frustration: “Where and what year were the Articles of Confederation, the nation’s first constitution, adopted?”

None of her mates answered.

So, I did. “I believe it was York, Pennsylvania, in November 1777.”

Her name was Gina. She gave me a beaming smile and scooted her chair close to mine. “Correct! How did you know that?”

“Because it happened on the Great Wagon Road.”

What ensued was a delightful conversation about a frontier road that shaped the character and commerce of early America, the historic Colonial road that opened the Southern wilderness and became the nation’s first immigrant highway — the “road that made America,” as my friend Tom Sears, an Old Salem expert on Colonial architecture, described it to me.

Gina was thrilled to learn about it and apologized that she’d never heard its name.

I assured her that she wasn’t alone. Most Americans living today have never heard its name spoken, yet it’s believed that one-fourth of all Americans can trace their ancestral roots to the Great Wagon Road in one way or another.

Charmed and fascinated, Gina wondered how long it would take me to travel the road from Philly to Augusta, Georgia.

I mentioned that settlers took anywhere from two months to several years to reach their destinations depending on the weather and unknown factors like disease, getting lost or encountering hostile native peoples or wild animals.

“I plan to travel the entire road in three or four weeks,” I said. “I’ve spent years researching it.”

Silly me. God laughs, to paraphrase the ancient proverb, when men make plans.

A third big surprise came at the end of my third week on the road. I hadn’t even gotten out of Pennsylvania.

On the plus side, I’d met and interviewed so many fascinating people who were passionate keepers of their own Wagon Road stories, I realized I’d just tapped the surface of the trail’s saga.

Instead of writing an updated history of the Great Wagon Road, as originally planned, I borrowed a strategy from my late hero Studs Terkel and decided that the real story of the Wagon Road lay in the voices of the people living along it today, keeping its stories alive — the flamekeepers, if you will, of the “road that made America.” If it took a full year to complete my travels, so be it.

Instead, subtracting 12 months for COVID, it took six years and counting.

My focus on the storytellers proved to be deeply rewarding, introducing me to a broad array of Americans from every walk of life and political persuasion whose vivid and often untold tales about the development of a winding and once forgotten Colonial road (originally an American Indian hunting path that stretched from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas) carried our ancestors into the Golden West and shaped the America we know today, hence the book’s main title: The Road That Made America. Unexpectedly, their voices and stories ultimately restored my faith in a country where democracy — and civic discourse — was supposedly in short supply.

Looking back, this was the nicest surprise of all. For what began simply as an armchair historian’s quest to find and document America’s most famous lost road ended as nothing less than a powerful, emotional pilgrimage for me.

At the journey’s end, while I was heading home through the winter moonlight on a winding highway believed to be the path Lord Cornwallis took while chasing wily Nathanael Greene to the Dan River, I had a final revelation of the road’s impact on me:

. . . a true pilgrimage is said to be one in which the traveler ultimately learns more about himself than the passing landscape.

Perhaps this is true. But for the time being, it’s enough to think about some of the inspiring people and stories that gave me hope in a nation where democracy is said to be hanging by a thread: an old Ben Franklin and a young Daniel Boone, the Susquehanna Muse, real Yorkers, the candlelight of Antietam, a Gettysburg living legend, an awakening at Belle Grove Plantation, Liberty Man, the passion of Adeela Al-Khalili, good old cousin Steve, a lost Confederate found, a snowy birthday in Staunton, and final road trips with Mully.

Without question, my life and appreciation of my country have both been enriched by the people and stories of the Great Wagon Road.

This was the nicest surprise of all.

For the Love of the Game

FOR THE LOVE OF THE GAME

For the Love of the Game

A baseball academy teaches all the fundamentals - especially character

By Ross Howell Jr. • Photographs by Tibor Nemeth

Scott Bankhead, a former Major League Baseball pitcher and founder of the North Carolina Baseball Academy, threw his first pitch for his Little League baseball team in Mount Olive when he was 7 years old.

“I enjoyed everything about the game,” Bankhead says. “I loved throwing the ball. I loved hitting the ball.”

Back then, there weren’t many professional games broadcast on TV during the summer. And there were hardly any special coaching camps.

But Bankhead was encouraged along by his older cousins, who played for a regional American Legion Baseball amateur team.

Bankhead went on to throw a lot more pitches — first, for his elementary school coaches in Reidsville, where his family moved when he was 9, then for the Reidsville Senior High School baseball team, then as a collegiate player at UNC-Chapel Hill, and finally, pitching for the Kansas City Royals, Seattle Mariners, Cincinnati Reds, Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees during a 10-year professional career.

After his retirement, Bankhead felt a real passion to pass along his knowledge and affection for the game and dedicated his post-professional baseball life to mentoring young players, both on and off the field.

Bankhead saw a need for better instruction at all levels of the game. He wanted to provide a resource for players of all ages and ability levels, a place where he could have a positive influence on them as athletes and as individuals.

The result?

NCBA, established by Bankhead in 1998.

Located near the Piedmont Triad International Airport, the academy’s facilities are impressive. The campus comprises 12 acres and provides students with indoor- and outdoor-training areas for both baseball and softball, an instructional center, a weight room, indoor pitching mounds with retractable batting cages, performance stations, an artificial turf running track, and a pro shop for equipment.

Students even have their hitting and pitching stills analyzed by Rapsodo and Blast Motion, the same technology used by all 30 MLB teams and 1,200 colleges.

“The philosophy here is to teach the fundamentals of the game,” Bankhead says. “That’s what we do day-to-day at the facility.” And then adds, “Our goal, first and foremost, is to enable players to do well in school, so they will be able to get into college.”

While state-of-the-art facilities and technology are important, the character, quality and experience of the academy’s instructors are essential.

And NCBA coaches have strong Greensboro ties.

Jeff Guerrie, assistant director of NCBA, moved from Florida to Greensboro during his senior year and played baseball at West Forsyth High School before playing for Greensboro College. He coached at Page High School before joining the academy and combines traditional coaching with his expert use of modern baseball training technology.

A graduate of High Point Central High School, Colin Smith played college baseball at North Carolina Central University, Southeastern Community College and Guilford College. He served as head coach of the Lexington Flying Pigs in the Old North State League and teaches NCBA students at all skill levels.

Shane Schumaker played baseball at UNCG and professionally in independent leagues. He returned to coach at UNCG, and later coached both baseball and softball in California. He was an associate scout for the Atlanta Braves before joining NCBA, where he teaches baseball and softball skills — including softball pitching.

A former baseball player at Grimsley High School, Winston-Salem State University and Guilford College, where he completed his degree, Saunders Joplin works with players of all ages, specializing in hitting, catching, pitching and basic skills.

Devin Ponton also played his college baseball at Guilford College. He is currently the head junior varsity baseball coach at Southwest Guilford High School in High Point. With years of baseball experience and knowledge, he coaches players in any area of the game.

To all these instructors, Bankhead drives home the point that personal attention is key to the academy’s success.

“We treat each player as an individual,” says Bankhead. “We help them learn to enjoy the game and to understand that hard work in baseball can lead to success in other endeavors.”

Players can sign up for one-on-one lessons with a coach by appointment. These sessions are tailored to the player’s specific needs — including hitting, pitching, catching, fielding and basic skills.

Coaches also lead training camps throughout the calendar year that offer instruction, drills and practice routines mirroring professional baseball training methods. The goal is to help players gain knowledge, skills and confidence to take them to a higher level.

Finally, there are the NCBA Golden Spikes teams.

The academy’s Golden Spikes program is recognized as one of North Carolina’s premier player development and college prospect initiatives.

Teams are selected through tryouts and bring together the region’s top talent to compete against some of the strongest teams in the nation.

There is a development program for elementary and middle school age players and a college prospect program for high school age players.

“Since the inception of our team program in 2002,” Bankhead says, “we’ve placed more than 100 players at the college or professional level.”

Producing that number of elite players certainly gives Bankhead bragging rights.

But he’ll tell you that’s not the endgame.

Recently, he was out on the golf course and ran into a former NCBA student he remembered well.

This one had gone on to play college baseball and then earned a medical degree.

“Now, he’s a vascular surgeon,” Bankhead says with a smile.

“Sure, we like to see our students reach the highest levels of professional baseball, if that’s what they want,” he adds. “But we’re also a resource for the future doctors of the world.”

2025 Feature For the Love of the Game

It’s Her Churn

IT'S HER CHURN

It's Her Churn

For Shafna Shamsuddin, cardamom is the spice of life

By Cassie Bustamante

Photographs by Bert VanderVeen

Dessert is just a way to tell the stories,” says Shafna Shamsuddin, creator of her own cardamom-infused and globally-inspired ice cream company, Elaka Treats. Even though she’s inspired by the Indian traditions of her childhood, she’ll tell you with a laugh that her own story doesn’t begin there.

“My story started at Williams-Sonoma,” Shamsuddin admits with an easy smile. Born and raised in United Arab Emirates by Indian immigrant parents, Shamsuddin, as well as her siblings, came to America for college. She began her studies at Purdue University in Indiana, studying psychology and Earth science. From the time she was a child, she had her sights set on becoming a psychologist. However, she was matched with her husband during her undergrad years and relocated with him to Gastonia. In the end, she earned her bachelor’s degree from UNC-Charlotte. From there, her plan was to enroll in a clinical psychology graduate program at Duke University. “But due to personal reasons . . .” she trails off, preferring to look forward instead of into the past.

After a moment, she picks back up. Pressure from her community was overwhelming and first loneliness and then restlessness followed. “Everyone advised that I should focus on my marriage,” she says. “I am not Indian enough for Indians because I am not born and raised there,” she says. “And I am not American either, so, it’s like, where do I belong?” So she put her goals on the back burner, “hoping that one day I could pick it up and go back.” But, little by little, she began throwing herself into all sorts of projects: “plumbing, electrical, carpentry — I’ve done all kinds of stuff.” She found herself often wandering through the glimmering displays of kitchen-and-entertaining merchandise at Williams-Sonoma. “The kitchen tools and gadgets really fascinate me,” she says.

But there was one small appliance in particular that she kept coming back to. “I used to see the Cuisinart ice cream maker and that always caught my eye.” However, she says, the price tag was too much for her wallet. After years of gazing at the machine in wonder, she says, “finally, one day, I was like I am going to make the splurge.”

That small and mighty Cuisinart has long since been retired, but it got Shamsuddin’s wheels churning. Her first endeavor with it was kulfi ice cream, a traditional frozen Indian treat flavored with pistachio, cardamom and saffron. While kulfi is generally a no-churn dessert, Shamsuddin gave it a whirl in her ice cream maker.

But all of that tinkering didn’t ease her homesickness. She started dreaming of the anything-but-frozen unnakai, a sweet treat from back home, “especially where my parents are from in India, from their home state of Kerala.” The labor-intensive dessert, according to Shamsuddin, is made of a mashed plantain that’s been stuffed with coconut, cardamom and cashew nuts, then deep-fried. And while the flavors indeed melt in your mouth, it was the ritual around it, tea time, that she was missing.

“I was really craving having that experience of not just having the treat, but the experience of getting together with people and family and relatives, and just sitting and chatting over tea and tea-time snacks,” she says wistfully. But, she adds, “I felt that it was really sad for me to go through that process and eat it alone.”

Shamsuddin wondered how she could take the unnakai flavors and create a frozen dessert that she could enjoy. An idea hit her: Use plantains as the base. “I knew I had something here,” she says.

She began testing out her confections on friends when she’d host dinner parties. The result? “Everyone loved it.” Shamsuddin found gratification in serving others. And watching people savor her creations filled her cup. “It’s something that gives me a lot of pleasure.”

Plus, she says, the Indian tradition she learned from her own mother is that, when you entertain, you make everything from scratch as a way to celebrate your guests’ presence at your table. As her dinner-party pals spooned in bite after bite, they confirmed what she’d suspected — she was indeed onto something.

By the early-2010s, Shamsuddin and her husband had settled in Greensboro and later that decade welcomed their only son, Zahin. But that desire to make her confections into something bigger kept nagging at her. The only problem was she had no idea how to start a business. And she knew that she’d be on her own in this endeavor.

In Greensboro, Shamsuddin began to find her way. She joined a training group at Club Fitness, but she got much more than she expected out of those gym sessions. Her workout comrades and trainer also became her support system, her social circle and her laboratory, allowing her to test samples on them. “My gym buddies, they were really my everything,” Shamsuddin says.

As luck would have it, her trainer coached another client, Lindsay Bisbee, who had launched the homemade pickle brand Kyōōkz. He connected the two women, and Bisbee, in turn, introduced Shamsuddin to the Piedmont Food Processing Center, aka PFAP. The 10,000-square-foot building in Hillsborough offers commercial kitchen space as well as support for food entrepreneurs.

But the biggest thing Shamsuddin picked up at the gym wasn’t the heavy weights, nor was it the connections. It was confidence. Shamsuddin, who describes herself on LinkedIn as a “Rule Breaker,” learned, she says, “I am physically strong and mentally strong, so what is holding me back? Nothing, I can depend on myself.”

With a new-found belief in herself, Shamsuddin began her production in 2019 at PFAP, where executive director L. Eric Hallman provided her with the guidance she’d desperately needed. “It was Eric who kind of gave me that first big missing piece of the puzzle,” she says, laughing about how basic those missing pieces were — business registration, insurance, scheduling inspections.

Registration meant Shamsuddin needed a business name, which was something she hadn’t even considered. Elaka is what people in the Indian state of Kerala call cardamom. Every confection Shamsuddin offers features the exotic flavor — a warm, aromatic spice known for its peppery and piney palate. So, she decided, why not call her business Elaka Treats? Officially in business at PFAP, Shamsuddin learned how to navigate a commercial kitchen, essential in the ice cream business. After months of back and forth between Greensboro and Hillsborough, often hauling Z with her and hiring a babysitter there, she scheduled her Department of Agriculture inspection for March, and, a week later, was due to officially launch at the 2020 RiverRun International Film Festival, held in Winston-Salem each year. “And then COVID hit, cancels the RiverRun International Film Festival, cancels my inspection,” she says, “and I panicked.” In tears, she called her brother, feeling as if she’d brought the pandemic upon herself. “You think the whole world is going through a pandemic because you decided to run a business?” he asked her. She laughs now at the memory, but, at the time, she answered him with a resounding, “Yes.” After her momentary meltdown, Shamsuddin picked herself up off the floor and trudged onward. “I wasn’t ready to give up. I’d barely started.” While inspections were on pause, Shamsuddin says, “I found out that if I can convince the Department of Agriculture that I am going to do everything per code and my product is safe to consume, then they will give me a letter that says . . . it is OK for us to be in business.” She was able to obtain the approval letter and, like many businesses in 2020, made a new plan.

“I started thinking, How did Coke create a market?” Salesmen originally went door-to-door, coming face-to-face with potential customers, she says. And now? “There isn’t a soul on this planet that if you tell them ‘Coke,’ they don’t know what it is.”

Shamsuddin, donning a mask, began peddling her pints at farmers markets, everywhere from Raleigh to Charlotte, and at The People’s Market in Greensboro. She ran pop-up shops, even setting up where it all began — at Friendly Center’s Williams-Sonoma.

Farmers markets opened doors, allowing Shamsuddin to take steps toward her goal of eventually adopting a business-to-business (B2B) model. At the Chapel Hill Farmers’ Market, Vimala Rajendran, owner of Vimala’s Curryblossom Café, introduced herself — and, soon after, Shamsuddin had her first wholesale account.

Since then, she’s grown to having a dozen wholesale accounts. “It’s been a slow build,” she admits. But that pace has given her room to expand her small but mighty part-time teams. She’s also relocated her operations to the much more conveniently located Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship, where she rents an office and a warehouse-style storage space, and utilizes the shared-use kitchen, which is managed by Out of the Garden Project, for production.

Her menu has grown, too, including a half-dozen collaborations with local brands. She’s added a variety of cream-based flavors as well as vegan options and says that every flavor has its own story. Z’s lemonade, a flavor her son requested on his fifth birthday, is popular among the kiddos.

Zucchini orange blossom resulted from the purchase of a giant zucchini. “It was really big, more than my whole family needs,” she says, and it was the last remaining piece of produce a young girl had under her People’s Market tent. With no idea of what to do with it — she just wanted that young vendor to have the satisfaction of a sold-out day — she bought it. Zucchini, which she says “doesn’t have much of a flavor,” is popular in Middle Eastern cuisine, as is orange blossom, which tickles the tongue with hints of honey and citrus. Shamsuddin blended a cream base with the two, plus, naturally, her signature cardamom.

And then there’s the time that she added dates to ice cream. Working on a batch of plantain ice cream, Shamsuddin knocked the last of her plantains onto the floor. In an attempt to save the rest of her ingredients, she grabbed some dates to use in their place. “Sometimes it’s accidental!” she quips.

One day, Shamsuddin would like to see Elaka Treats stocked in national grocers’ freezers. In fact, her desserts are under review at Whole Foods currently and she feels hopeful. “It’s a global brand, that’s what the dream is.” And the cherry on top? That would be to see Elaka pods, self-serving freezers, in every cultural space.

“Initially, Elaka was about me. It was about telling my story,” says Shamsuddin. Over the past six years, it’s grown into something else. It’s about community, belonging “and how, through food, you can see how we’re all connected.”

2025 Feature It's Her Churn

A More Beautiful Greensboro

A MORE BEAUTIFUL GREENSBORO

A More Beautiful Greensboro

The Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs continues planting for the future

By Ross Howell Jr. – Photographs by Lynn Donovan

Gail Hill is proud that the Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs, where she now serves as a trustee, has been active in our community for 95 years. Not a bad run for a local civic group.

But because of changing family structure and lifestyles, Hill is concerned about its future.

Soft-spoken as Hill is, you’d probably never predict that she would have one day become president of the Garden Club of North Carolina.

But she did. And she’s played a key role in the GCGC’s longevity.

“I grew up on a tobacco farm in southern Guilford County,” Hill says.

Her grandmother “could poke a stick in the ground and it would grow,” she tells me. And her father inherited his mother’s green thumb.

“Dad was always out working in the garden, propagating some flower or other he’d started from seed,” she says.

While she enjoyed farm life, Hill spent enough time pulling suckers from tobacco plants to know that she didn’t want to marry a farmer.

So she married a businessman — her husband, Wayne, now retired. They moved around a good bit regionally for his career.

And Hill found herself becoming more involved in garden club leadership.

Back in 2005, Hill — along with the council historian and council secretary — compiled an award-winning history of the Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs to commemorate its 75th anniversary.

She was especially drawn to the history of the council, because her father — the man who’d inherited the green thumb — served in the U.S. Army Air Forces in WWII. He had been stationed where the Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs had been very active — the O.R.D. (Overseas Replacement Depot), where troops trained, awaiting orders to ship out to war.

While Hill was working on the council history, she was also serving as council president pro tem and director of District 5, the South Atlantic Region of the National Garden Clubs — comprising Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.

She was elected president of the Garden Club of North Carolina in 2015.

“I served two terms as president,” Hill says. “It was a lot of work and travel.”

Hill explains that, as president of the state garden club, she was responsible for eight geographical districts. Her duties included personal visits to each of those districts once a year.

Think of it. Our state comprises 100 counties reaching from the mountains to the sea.

“So I saw a lot of North Carolina,” Hill says with a wry smile. “But everywhere you went, the people were so enthusiastic.”

“It was wonderful,” she adds.

But times change.

In 1930, there were 11 neighborhood garden clubs that met together to create a citywide council with the objective of creating “A More Beautiful Greensboro.” While there are several neighborhood garden clubs today, there are just three clubs that participate in council meetings.

Hill believes that even neighborhood garden club memberships have fallen. The traditional model of afternoon meetings during the work week just isn’t practical. In most young families today, both husband and wife are often working, and if the couple have children, they must devote big chunks of time to their kids’ activities as well.

“We encourage young people just starting garden clubs to have meetings at night, have them on weekends,” Hill says.

These days, there are two types of fundraising programs that are the GCGC’s staples.

First, there are the ever-popular spring garden tours.

This May, the council’s “2025 Garden Tour” included home gardens in Irving Park, Fisher Park, Westerwood, Sunset Hills, Starmount Forest and Hamilton Forest, along with a tour of the hospice garden at Beacon Place on Summit Avenue.

“This fall, we’ll be finalizing our plans for the spring 2026 tour,” Hill says.

The second staple is a day of public educational seminars — one program in fall and one in spring — held at the Greensboro Science Center.

In March, the “Spring Gardening Seminar 2025” was held in the Sail Room at the Greensboro Science Center. Presentations included “Edible Landscapes” by Jeanne Aller, Master Gardener; “Flower Designs for Your Lifestyle” by Clark Goodin, owner and floral designer of Plants & Answers in Greensboro; and “Favorite NC Plants” by horticulturist Mike Trivette of Statesville.

Plans for the “Fall Gardening Seminar 2025” are currently underway.

Hill believes that educational opportunities hosted by the council are essential to the future of garden clubs.

“When we have these seminars, we have lots of young people come,” she says. “We can see that they love to plant and they love to grow flowers,” Hill adds. And often, she tells me, she signs up new members.

She reflects for a moment.

“A lot of us older members are just aging out,” Hill says.

“In the spring, my husband and I like to ride down Dogwood Drive to see the blossoms,” she continues. “And I think about the Greensboro Council and the Jaycees.”

Some of those trees were planted in 1954 during “Operation Dogwood,” a joint effort by the GCGC, the Jaycees and neighborhood garden clubs to plant 10,000 dogwoods throughout the city.

“Now the trees are too old,” Hill says. “We need to plant new seedlings.”

Then she smiles.

“The council is a wonderful organization,” Hill says. “It’s done itself proud.”

Greensboro Council of Garden Clubs

The lovely urban environment we take for granted has been shaped by years of dedication and selfless hours of service by generations of GCGC members. Noted here are a few of the markers in a timeline of achievement. Unmentioned are the sustaining funds provided to landmarks like Blandwood and the Greensboro Science Center; gifts to parks, gardens, schools and museums; and scholarships and community programs for young gardeners and gardeners who are young at heart.

1930 GCGC founded, Mrs. Charles (Anne) Hagan named president

1930-1932 First civic planting, Japanese cherry trees on E. Bessemer Avenue

1934-1935 Assisted development of Latham Park

1942 Called for “adequately housed farm produce market,” 12,000 people petition city

1943-1944 Gift to Red Cross for blood plasma at O.R.D. (overseas replacement depot)

1945 Planted 8,000 pansies on O.R.D. hospital grounds

1950 First home and garden tour

1954 “Operation Dogwood,” 10,000 dogwood seedlings planted in neighborhoods

1955 Planted 12 acres, Lindley Park Anniversary Garden (now Greensboro Arboretum)

1960 Planted Coliseum Memorial Court and purchased fountain

1967 Began sustained funding for City Beautiful (now Greensboro Beautiful)

1968 One of the founding sponsors of Greensboro Beautiful

1971 First Christmas tree display at Friendly Center auditorium

1971-1972 500 rose bushes planted in Anniversary Garden

1974 Major gift for creation of Bicentennial Garden

1980 Purchased sundial for Bicentennial Garden

1983 Major gift to Greensboro Beautiful for arboretum landscaping plans

2001 Construction and landscaping completed for GCGC building, Lawndale Drive

From “The Greenboro Council of Garden Clubs, Inc. History 1930-2005,” Gail Hill, president and Inez Ryals, historian.

2025 A More Beautiful Greensboro Feature

Long Gone Avalon

LONG GONE AVALON

Long Gone Avalon

A what-if of what once was

By David Claude Bailey

In 1977 while I was working at the Winston-Salem Journal as a cub reporter, Ola Maie Foushee sent a signed, self-published book to my dad: Avalon, a Pictorial and Sentimental Journey. The book joyfully heralded the happy, idyllic days of the now-abandoned mill town 2 miles from Mayodan. And there, on page 14 of the introduction, was my father: “Claude Bailey, a little boy next door, was my constant companion. We . . . made mud pies from dirt we mixed with water.” But sometimes there were no hand pumps or mud puddles to get water from, and my dad, Claude Colonelue Bailey, being a resourceful lad, had an idea. Ola Maie recalls, “When I needed water in a hurry, I considered him my most convenient source.” But not without consequences. “My father looked out the window just as Claude performed his favor,” she says, “And I was called home and given a good switching.” Ola Maie made no mention of my dad’s punishment, although, remembering my grandfather, Walter Fletcher Bailey, a no-nonsense, stern overseer at the cotton mill and a pillar in the Moravian Church, I suspect my father ate standing up for a few days.

The picture Ola Maie painted of Avalon, as she emphasizes in the title, is sentimental — to a fault. “Avalon was truly a fairyland,” she writes. “Spread over an apron-like bluff on 100.33 acres of rising land, it overlooked the winding Mayo River, the Norfolk and Western railroad, and the new cotton mill — its raison d’être.”

Ola Maie fondly remembers free-range children and chickens roaming up and down the streets among the 62 newly built houses, many of which had picket fences with roses and morning glories climbing them. She shares her memories of Easter egg hunts at the company-built Moravian Church, Sunday afternoons with the Avalon baseball team at play, summer picnics where watermelons cooled under the tables as cakes, pies and country ham biscuits spread out on tablecloths, boys swinging from grapevines into the river while couples courted along its banks. She tells of families cooking meals over the hearth in their company mill houses (provided at a rent significantly lower than in Mayodan or Madison), of out-of-towners coming to visit in the 11-room company hotel, of bowling and roller skating upstairs at the country store, and of town folk square dancing as old-time music echoed off the four-story-high cotton mill. At its peak, 400–500 people lived in the village.

I remember my family and relatives poring over Ola Maie’s book, finding a photo of dad looking like a young 5-year-old ruffian; another of my granddad grimly posing as a foreman on the factory floor with the workers he oversaw; and a picture of the Bailey house, where my dad was born, sitting proudly next to the hotel. Although my father’s fame as Avalon’s most infamous mud-pie maker was short-lived, it inevitably came up at Bailey family reunions.

Avalon Mills was incorporated in 1899 by tobacco tycoons R.J. Reynolds and B.N. Duke. Leading the charge was a relatively young upstart, Colonel Francis Fries, who, by the age of 45, had already helped establish the Roanoke & Southern Railway, of which he was the first president, as well as Mayo Mill in Mayodan. When Avalon Mills went into operation in 1900, it was not only a “modern,” state-of-the-art operation, but the largest textile mill in the state. By 1910, the mill employed 250 workers, a quarter of them under the age of 16 and some even younger than 12. To her credit, Ola Maie does not gloss over the issue of child labor in the mill, along with low wages, but I’ll get to that later.

Spoiler alert. On June 15, 1911, 11 years after the mill opened, John Richardson was overseeing some spinning frames on the mill’s fourth floor. It’s worth pointing out that all the mill’s machinery was driven by leather belts that ran all the way down, floor-to-floor, to the mill’s river-driven turbine, so all the floors of the mill were open to one another. It was around 6 p.m., quitting time, when John smelled, and then saw, smoke. A bucket of water he threw on the fire proved to be too little, too late. Layers of machine oil, lint and dust covered almost every surface, and with the wind blowing through open windows, flames soon engulfed the fourth floor. In minutes, the flames spread to lower floors via the leather belt system. Although two teenage brothers ran down the stairs, screaming “FIRE” at the top of their lungs, workers heading for supper and home decided it was a prank. By dusk, all that remained of the mill was a ghostly shell, with a hulking six-story tower looming over the ruins. Miraculously, no one died, although several of the mill’s overseers had to be rescued via fire ladder. A state-of-the-art sprinkling system never activated because a bearing in the 1,000-gallon-a-minute pump failed.

Initially, the mill’s owners talked about rebuilding, but, in the end, families lost both their jobs and their homes. The houses they had once rented were rolled atop logs by horses and mules to Mayodan, where some still stand, including the house my dad was born in. Even the church was disassembled and sold off piece by piece.

“Like bands of gypsies or displaced persons, Avalon families trudged along the road with their possessions,” Ola Maie laments. “None of us wanted to go. We were like one big family.” Many of the workers took jobs at other mills operated by Fries or found work in the plethora of mills that had sprung up along the Piedmont’s rivers. Inexplicably, my grandfather decided to go back to farming tobacco. Why, I’ve always wondered, did Walter Fletcher Bailey, in the prime of life at age 35 with five children, choose to go back to the unpredictable and back-breaking occupation of dirt farming? A foreman in the mill before it burned down and a chairman of the board of the Moravian Church, surely he would have been offered a job. My aunts and uncles had no clue.

I think maybe I do.

As someone who covered business working for O.Henry’s sister pub, Business North Carolina, I have, by choice and occupation, become something of a student of what mill life was like in the South. An excellent website, Avalon: Documenting the Rise and Fall of a Cotton Mill Village, provided me with a keener insight into the town and mill. But my eyes were really opened when I read Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Cotton Mill World, UNC Press’ landmark compilation of oral histories gathered from mill workers all across the state. BNC’s publisher at the time, David Kinney, whose mom worked in a mill, required every new hire to read the book. While many remembered a community that was, in fact, like a family, it was definitely a dysfunctional family, with an often overbearing and often heartless “father.” While former workers, like Ola Maie, waxed nostalgic about church and baseball teams and close-knit neighborhoods and picnics, mill workers interviewed for Like a Family were quick to paint a picture of life in the mill as harsh, dangerous and monotonous.

The hours at Avalon were from 6 a.m. in the morning until 6 at night, five days a week, plus nine more hours on Saturday. Lint and dust filled the air, and the atmosphere inside the mill was often almost unbearably hot and humid. The pace of work was unrelenting and overtime was common. Pay at Avalon reflected what was generally paid statewide in 1911. It ranged from $1 a day to $2.50 a day for the highest paid workers ($37–93 in today’s money). Workers who showed up minutes late could be docked from a quarter day’s work up to a full day. Children, who made up a quarter of the workforce at Avalon, were often tasked, because of their size, to crawl atop the machines or into their inner working to fix snags and snafus. They were paid $.20–.30 cents a day ($7.31–11.27). Unskilled women were paid the second-lowest wages, $.30–.75 ($11.27–28.18). So wages ranged from about $44 for a six-day week to $558 a week for the highest paid employees.

Admittedly, housing was provided at a very reasonable rate, but if you lost your job, you lost your home, encouraging workers to go with the flow. Injuries, like losing a finger, hand or arm, often meant both unemployment and homelessness. The houses, though newly built, were 600 square feet, with some accommodating four families. Plumbing was outdoors, of course, and the houses didn’t have electricity, though the mill did. Cooking happened over hearths, with no cook stoves.

Of course, life on a farm in that era was, arguably, even more grueling — harsh, dangerous and unpredictable. Crops failed and prices went unpredictably up and down. The hours were just as long as, if not longer than, in the mill, and you worked outdoors in the blazing summer sun or freezing winter weather, unlike mill work. And anyone who’s ever worked on a farm will tell you that child-labor laws don’t extend to farm families.

My father and my aunts and uncles painted a sometimes grim picture of life on the farm, but they also had warm and loving memories of rural living. I found it interesting that none of the five boys turned to mill work, with all of them distinguishing themselves by following other successful careers. My granddad was his own boss and with, eventually (God bless my grandmother), nine children, he had a captive workforce. He didn’t get rich, but made a good living and, from my memory, they sure ate well, with country ham, fried chicken and biscuits aplenty.

Over the years and little by little, I came to appreciate why — I imagine — my grandfather decided to go back to farming.

If my father had worked in the Avalon mill as a child, I’m certain he would have told me, along with the many stories he spun about the mischief he and his brothers got up to on the farm, all about mill work. And maybe the course of history, in Avalon at least, might have been altered if he had. What if, on that fateful day, he had worked on the fourth floor and had been standing by with his “most convenient source” of water?

2025 Feature Long Gone Avalon

Among the Wildflowers

AMONG THE WILDFLOWERS

Among the Wildflowers

A 1950s Sunset Hills charmer blooms anew

By Cassie Bustamante • Photographs by Betsy Blake

Making your way toward downtown Greensboro along Friendly Avenue, a burst of fiery red and vibrant purple might catch your eye as you pass through Sunset Hills. Wildflowers — poppies and Larkspur, to be exact — bloom along the fence line of a 1950s rancher. The seeds were sown just last year, although this particular house has been a colorful source of comment for years. In fact, if you drove by five years ago, its teal-and-purple exterior would have surely grabbed your attention.

Formerly, the single-family house was a duplex, says Rachel Azam, who currently shares the home with her husband, Najib, their 3-year-old daughter, Zaara, and her 18-year-old stepson, Khalil, who attends the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics and will head to UNC-Chapel Hill in the fall. And let’s not forget Sophie, the family’s blue-eyed Aussie, a glutton for belly rubs. Originally from Pleasant Garden, Rachel recalls often cutting through Sunset Hills when she was a child. “I grew up watching this house change color,” she muses.

In August 2020 at the height of the pandemic, the once likely Charlotte Hornets-inspired home was sold, flipped into a fresh, gray-and-white, clean slate, and put on the market right after the New Year holiday. Almost immediately, the Azams put in an offer.

Rachel, barefoot, stands in her bright, white kitchen, wearing relaxed, barrel jeans and a cropped white T-shirt. Her chocolate-brown eyes peer out from underneath a Duke baseball cap, her thick, brown hair hitting just below her shoulders. A warm, homemade breakfast quiche, fresh from the oven, fills the home with a toasted, buttery, come-hither smell. A bowl of oranges sits on the island counter next to a vase filled with fresh flowers in oranges and pinks. “We have a dance party in here every morning per Zaara’s request,” says Rachel.

As if on cue, Zaara twirls into the room, dark curls bouncing, and shouts, “Play ‘Cruel Summer!’” Rachel notes that most mornings it’s Broadway tunes, Wicked or Taylor Swift.

“T. Swift don’t miss,” quips Najib with a glint in his own brown eyes. He’s on his way to the Research Triangle, where he works in risk control for UBS, an investment banking company, but not before giving his wife and daughter each a kiss. “Bye, Zaari!” he says as Zaara demands a second hug from Daddy.

While the couple originally met as high schoolers training to be counselors at North Carolina for Community and Justice’s Anytown camp, they didn’t really get to know each other until much later. Najib, who grew up in nearby Jamestown, attended undergrad at UNC-Charlotte and went on to earn his law degree from UNC. Rachel graduated from UNCG with a B.S. in nursing. Mutual friends brought them together eventually. Nick, Najib’s best friend from college, is the older brother of Rachel’s own childhood best friend, Sarah. But Rachel remembered Najib, who is a couple years older than her, from those teen years at camp because his name was unusual. And he’s told her, she says, “I definitely remember you, wink wink.”

In the fall of 2018, the couple first exchanged vows right here in Greensboro. “We are a multicultural household,” says Rachel. Najib is Arabic and his family hails from Bangladesh, “so we had our big Bengali ceremony and reception in October 2018.” Less than a year later, in June 2019, the couple, with photographer Ellie McKinney and their loved ones, hopped the Atlantic Ocean and held an Irish ring ceremony, honoring Rachel’s heritage, in the seaside town of Galway, Ireland.

While still in their honeymoon phase in November 2019, Rachel took a new position working in pediatric endocrinology, specifically in diabetes, within the Duke University healthcare system. The work was particularly meaningful to her. At age 11 while studying dance at the UNC School of the Arts, she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. Although she returned home after the diagnosis, dancing has always held a special place in her heart. Granted, the job meant a big commute from their Charlotte condo, but Rachel loved the work.

Soon after starting her new position, the medical world was turned on its head when the COVID pandemic descended upon America in March 2020. Rachel began working a hybrid model, often doing telehealth appointments with patients and caregivers. Thankfully, she says, the technology has come a long way from when she was a child living with diabetes. Now, remote monitoring is available. “My senior year of high school was when I got my first insulin pump. It was life changing.”

Suddenly, in 2020, both Rachel and Najib — like most of the world — found themselves at home much more often and in need of an outlet, and, she quips, “You can only do so many at–home workouts.” Rachel, who’d arranged her own wedding flowers both stateside and in Ireland, found joy in floral design. Still in Charlotte, she’d visit her local farmstand and would come home with “buckets of blooms.” A seed was planted and, before she knew it, grew into Flower Barre, a bespoke floral design company named with a nod to what she calls her first love, dance.

To get a change of scenery, the Azams ended up taking an extended stay at Najib’s parents’ Jamestown home, often wandering through Greensboro neighborhoods as a diversion. Though they’d seen themselves as never returning to the area they grew up in, the more they walked, the more they thought, “We could live in this area.”

And when the adorable 1,600-square-foot house situated on the corner of East Greenway and Friendly popped up on Redfin, they wasted no time. That offer they submitted was readily accepted.

As it turns out, the timing was impeccable. Just a week after going under contract, the couple found out they were expecting. Naturally, the first room they tackled was Zaara’s nursery, which has since transitioned into her “big-girl” room. The walls are a soft, ballet-slipper pink, the windows are flanked by tonal pink, floor-length drapes, and the bedding features blooms in rosy pinks and golden yellows with stems of sage green, lady bugs scattered here and there. On her corner bookcase, overflowing with board books, a vase holds a bouquet of dried wildflowers, special to Rachel because they’re from the arrangements she made for Zaara’s first birthday, where the theme was “Wild One.”

While the home was a move-in ready, blank canvas, the landscaping was a clean slate — there wasn’t any. The couple poured their time and energy into their front yard. Rachel’s “jack-of-all-trades” dad, who raises beef cattle on a Pleasant Garden family farm, shared his skills and knowledge. With Najib, he carved out a pea-gravel pathway and installed French drainage.

The couple began planting beds, amping up the home’s curb appeal. Next came the backyard. “It was a bamboo forest,” Rachel quips. She has plans to keep adding here and there, year after year, starting with hydrangeas and echinacea this year.

Inside, they’ve put their personal stamp on their home bit by bit with splashes of color, mostly blue-greens. Rachel says those shades remind her of the ocean; they have a calming effect.

For the kitchen bar area, Rachel selected a blue-and-gold wallpaper featuring whimsical stems of wildflowers. She found sturdy wooden shelves on Etsy. Najib installed both the wallpaper and the shelves. But the nook’s pièce de résistance is framed artwork, swirls of red with splashes of green and purple. “That’s one of Zaara’s first little finger paintings,” says Rachel proudly.

Rachel’s most recent touch to the home interior is a bold and vibrant floral wallpaper hung by the back door. The colors mimic that of Zaara’s bedding, though more saturated and with hints of Rachel’s second-favorite color, magenta. She painted the adjacent door in a dark teal shade, though, she notes, “It’s got some scratchies because of the dog — you know!”

A drop zone already existed near the back door with hooks and cubbies for shoes, but next to it was a blank wall — wasted space in a small home. Rachel reached out to her pal, Emma Millard, who, she’d noticed, was offering design work in addition to working in real estate. The two had met at the first big wedding Rachel had done as a florist, where Emma’s best friend was the bride. Emma and Rachel, both pregnant, bonded quickly and their daughters were born just a month apart.

That once blank wall is now a functional built-in. Emma maximized the limited space, designing cabinetry custom-made by Greg Van Wyk, owner of Foxbury Woodworks in Oak Ridge. Greg installed and painted it — blue-green, naturally.

From here, Zaara can be heard singing along to Moana 2. She dances in front of the TV screen, lost in her own Hawaiian reverie for the moment, but happily takes a beat to show off her modern dollhouse in the corner of the living room, where goldenrod pillows add a warm touch.

Sophie expectantly sits nearby, whimpering for attention, her little bum wiggling in anticipation. Rachel translates: “Hi, I am here, in case you forgot about me. And this is my toy basket.”

In the entry, a painting of a woman wearing a blue-and-white striped dress holding a little girl’s hand as they walk through a field of poppies and larkspurs hangs in a gilded frame. The artist’s initials? “N.A.”

“This is Zaara and I,” says Rachel wistfully. “Najib painted this for me for my birthday.” The family had visited Dogwood Farms, a you-pick flower farm in Belews Creek, and, unbeknownst to her, Najib had snapped a photo to use as his inspiration. Rachel is in awe of how he can use both sides of his brain, though she herself toes the line between science and artistry on a regular basis, too.

As a high schooler, it turns out, Najib took lessons from local artist Anne Kiefaber. During the pandemic, she opened her home studio to budding artists as long as they wore masks. Like Rachel, Najib had needed his own outlet. “So he and Khalil started going together to art class once a week,” says Rachel. Now, almost five years later, he’s still going and currently working on a piece for friends of theirs.

A moss-covered fairy house decorated with purples and oranges sits on a table below the painting. Najib’s friend, Nick, gave Zaara the kit for Christmas. “It’s just too good to put outside,” quips Rachel, “so it’s just part of the home decor!”

“We love fairies, don’t we?” she asks her daughter.

“There are three little girls down the street who had a couple of fairy houses outside in the front yard,” she says. “We couldn’t walk past the house without stopping to play with the fairies.” The little girls took notice and began writing letters to Zaara from the perspective of River Lily, the fairy who lives there. This year, the girls have expanded into an entire fairy village that has little Zaara enchanted.

Back in their own yard, they’re working their own magic. Soon, the poppies and Larkspur along the fence — her cutting garden — will be replaced by new flowers. Last year, she planted heirloom zinnia seeds “and they actually worked!” She was able to supplement purchased stems with blooms from her garden.

Of course, there are a few blooms that hold a special place in Rachel’s heart. She loves vibrant blossoms that lend to her style, which she calls “a little wild and a little funky,” naming Dahlias — “most of them look like an amazing firework — and lisianthus. “I love the poppy,” she says. “They’re quite magical in that they come up and they are super, super tight in their pod and then they just emerge and they have these beautiful flow-y petals and really dynamic shape.”

These days, Rachel buys most of her blooms through a Winston-Salem wholesale company that supports North and South Carolina farmers. Where she expected to face competition, she has been pleasantly surprised. “We all pitch in and are helping each other,” she says. She even rents space occasionally from fellow florist Joneswell Flowers, which happens to be conveniently close to Zaara’s preschool.

And Zaara, whose name means “blossoming flower” in Arabic, loves working at the shop by her mom’s side, plucking green leaves from stems or sweeping up petals. Rachel daydreams of a future where they can work side-by-side as Flower Barre florists. “It may sound silly, but her little creative brain and the way her mind works, it would just be amazing to be able to create with nature as art with her.” The seeds are planted. And now, she waits, she waters and she watches as her own blossoming flower unfurls.

2025 Among the Wildflowers Feature

The Kids Are Alright

THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT

Home

The Kids Are Alright

High school cool kids conquer all, even Carnegie Hall

By Billy Ingram

Photographs by Bert VanderVeen and Becky VanderVeen

Not long ago while attending my high school reunion, discussions with former (resisting using the word “old”) classmates inevitably circled back to how fortunate we were to have had an abundance of high-caliber teachers at Page, back in what is euphemistically referred to as “the day.” There was Jean Newman, an English teacher who instilled in me a love for creative writing. Without her encouragement, you wouldn’t be rolling your grapes over these words right now. Elizabeth Bell’s art class taught fundamental artistic methodologies and rendering techniques that, a decade later, proved crucial for a career in the arts that didn’t exist when I graduated high school. So many influencers . . .

There’s an infamous malapropism uttered on the 2000 campaign trail by the world champion of the slipped lip, George W. Bush: “Rarely is the question asked, is our children learning?” Recalling that quotation a quarter of a century later prompted me to pondering . . . is our kids learning today?

To quell that query, I made an appointment to see Principal Whitney Sluder at Weaver Academy for Performing & Visual Arts and Advanced Technology (granted it’s not your typical high school). Welcoming its first students in 1978, Weaver Academy (originally Weaver Education Center) offers an opportunity for public high schoolers to explore multiple artistic avenues and grow proficient in specialized, in-demand skills that typical schools don’t usually have room or resources to tackle.

“Generally speaking, we are an open campus downtown and I love our location,” Principal Sluder tells me as I’m ushered into her office. “We can walk everywhere. The art scene is very much present downtown, which I love. That’s grown even in the last 15 years since I was here as a student.”

Principal Sluder graciously leads me on a tour of this buzzing hive and, honestly, if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I might not have believed it. I see kids running to class. No one is YouTubing on their iPhones. Every classroom we dropped in on, students are fully engaged, wide-eyed and awake, displaying an obvious yearning for learning. Did I inadvertently overlook a Red Bull concession in the lobby? Turns out, populating a learning environment with young people who actively want to be present, smaller class sizes and teachers just as enthusiastic as the students leads to wondrous results.

Weaver’s curriculum is divided into two distinct disciplines. PVA (Performing and Visual Arts) students attend Weaver for the entire school day, where, in addition to their chosen creative focus, they also study traditional academics like math and science. CTE (Career and Technical Education) attendees are bussed in part-time from their districted high schools to master more conventional skills like culinary arts, carpentry, drafting and diesel technology.

I’m introduced first to Masonry instructor Dean Lamperski, who is busy teaching proper methods for framing homes using cinder blocks. “It’s the biggest thing now in the industry,” he explains about an increasingly popular approach that mitigates damage caused by severe storms. He likens it to construction in Florida, “where you build houses out of block then put whatever exterior material you want on it.”

Rounding the hall, James Adkins is teaching Construction Technology and Carpentry in a cavernous workshop that opens up to the outdoors. Previously a general contractor, Adkins’ teaching toolbox is packed with practical knowhow. “I got into commercial construction, ran my own business for 15 years, then I retired. That did not go well at all.” His wife, a school counselor at the time, suggested he look into teaching “because I was lost. That was 17 years ago and I’ve loved every minute.”

Masonry, carpentry and HVAC students graduate with an NCCER (National Center for Construction Education and Research) certification. “We also do OSHA 10 certification,” Adkins points out. “So they can leave here and go into the GAP [Guilford Apprenticeship Partners] program or go straight into the workforce.” Plus, he says, a lot of his graduates head to Guilford Technical Community College or East Carolina University to study construction management. Of his charges this year, “All of mine are high flyers. Almost all of them have a plan for what they’re going to do next. These last few years, I’ve been very impressed, I could leave them alone and they’ll just keep on working.”

Each year Adkins’ students assemble two tiny houses, one for Tiny House Greensboro and another, funded by GCS CTE, is assembled atop a trailer. These projects involve substantial collaboration between other Weaver curricula. For instance, “Drafting is involved in the design,” Adkins says. “Our trailer is built by Kevin Crutchfield’s Diesel Technology class. It goes over to Collision Repair, where they’ll paint it, and then we frame the house upon it. Heating and Air will do the HVAC units.”

“We used to build an entire house,” Principal Sluder explains as we walk further. “We haven’t done that for quite some time. It’s hard to move a large house — that takes a lot of time and permits. The kids get excited about the tiny houses because everywhere you turn, there’s a TV show about it or they see them in their communities.” Internships over the summer between 11th and 12th grade are made available so that when Weaver students graduate, they can enter a high demand field at a greater rate of pay, thanks to certifications and years of experience already behind them.

Traversing the hallways, Principal Sluder greets each passing student by name, stopping to ask how studies are going before we enter another enormous workspace, this one overseen by Ray Dove. Dove has been teaching Automotive Repair at Weaver for almost two decades. His domain consists of a fully equipped vehicular maintenance facility spilling out onto a garden-sized salvage yard with cars and trucks in various degrees of disassembly.

“We’ve got some cars sitting out here now that, when I’m finished with the instruction,” Dove explains, “and we’ve kind of worn them out, I’ll give them to Mr. Del Vecchio so he can use them in Collision Repair, taking doors off or maybe doing window glass installation.” The automotive program at Weaver is ASE Education Foundation accredited, and these students, too, finish their education earning multiple certifications.

In what serves as an occasional cafeteria, Chef Marion Osborne teaches Culinary Arts and Hospitality in the Guilford County School System’s only fully equipped commercial kitchen for students. After college, Osborne began working in restaurants and hotels with an eye towards becoming a chef, deciding instead that what he really wanted to do was to teach. Chalking blackboards as a Language Arts instructor during the day, he says, “I went to culinary school at night then went back to working in restaurants. Then, through a fluke, this job opened up and I got very lucky.” That was 17 years ago. “There’s not another school I would teach in.”

Osborne grew up in a small coal-mining town in Southwestern Virginia, where, he says, “I was cooking all the time.” His first restaurant position was as a pastry chef “and I got hooked. I worked at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Atlanta with one of the greatest pastry chefs in the world, Jacques Torres.” Here at Weaver, his pupils are baking and broiling for three rigorous hours. “It’s a program designed to train people to work in the restaurant industry — it’s commercial cooking.” Culinary grads can transition to a fine-dining establishment, but, Osborne notes, the more motivated “will go to either Guilford Tech, Johnson & Wales University or the Culinary Institute of America. We’ve had students go to all three because they want that associate’s degree. It sets them up for more success.”

Located above Weaver’s circular lobby, PVA students are abuzz in the theater preparing for the upcoming spring musical, The Prom, adjusting lighting, rehearsing dance numbers and testing digital backdrops where graphics will serve as the set, no need for canvas-and-paint mise-en-scènes.

Growing up in Pennsylvania, Theater department head Keith Taylor maintained a lifelong desire to mentor. “I acted in high school and in college,” he says. “That’s where I caught ‘the bug,’ but I always knew I wanted to work with students.” He taught theater elsewhere for 20 years before his son, who was attending UNCG’s Theatre Education program, steered him towards Weaver. That was 18 years ago. “I love it here. I tell people there’s no place like it really.”

PVA applicants face a more rigorous road to acceptance as opposed to CTE hopefuls, who merely sign up for courses at their districted schools.

“We have a three-part audition,” Taylor explains about sliding into a theater-side slot. “They come with a memorized monologue to show us what they can do.” That is followed by a quasi-cold reading with unfamiliar dialogue. “We call it a lukewarm reading because we send them out of the room with a script and one of our current students. So they get to practice and play with it a little bit.” When applicants return to the room, he quips, “Then I just mess with them. I’m like, ‘Do it like it’s the best day of your life.’ ‘Now do the script like it’s the worst day your life.’ We see if they’ll take direction, make choices and take chances.” The third hurdle is an interview. “We just talk about why you want to be at Weaver and what your life goals are and how do you see theater fitting into it. So it’s a long day.” Many arrive already experienced in local productions. “So we get a lot of kids that come in and have some chops and kind of know what they’re doing. And a lot of them with beautiful singing voices, too. I’m blown away.”

The skills these drama students acquire have practical applications across a number of more conventional disciplines. Carpentry, painting, event sound and lights, front of house, ticket sales, audio recording, and video editing are de rigueur. “When COVID hit, so many folks left the business, especially in tech,” Taylor says. “We always tell our kids you can get jobs in tech, and a lot of students find real jobs in construction. If you can build scenery, they’re hungry for you.”

Over almost two decades, Taylor has witnessed his students attain success in the business. Isaac Powell comes to mind. “He was Tony in West Side Story on Broadway and he’s done a lot of HBO, Netflix. He was in American Horror Story. Grayson Frazier works for Saturday Night Live in hair and makeup and did Aladdin.” Jonathan Cobrda wowed audiences in Frankenstein: A New Musical off-Broadway.

Howie Ledford teaches one of only four music production programs in the state at Weaver. A 2012 grad, sound designer Matt Yocum just this year won his second Grammy (for the Kendrick Lamar Not Like Us video) and scored a second Golden Reel Award. In 2024, he took home an Emmy for Best Sound Editing on HBO’s The Last of Us.

Music alumni Smith Carlson is a Los Angeles based Grammy-winning, multiple platinum-selling songwriter, producer and music engineer known for his work with Lil Jon, Beyoncé and Taylor Swift. “He’s constantly asking, ‘What do you need? What can I give you equipment-wise, money?’” Principal Sluder declares. “We have two Grammy winners, an Emmy winner and a Tony winner. So all we need is an Oscar and we have an EGOT. We’re very proud of that. Students who leave here really do attribute much of their success to their high school experiences and the opportunities they have at a place like this.”

An airy, mirrored rehearsal studio is where Donna Brotherton, conductor of the award-winning Weaver Academy Chorale, leads her young vocalizers in a rendition of “John the Revelator.” Her bona fides are a mile long, including a master’s degree in Music Education. She’s been at Weaver since 2005.

Brotherton’s love of music began as a toddler in Fairfax, Va. “We had a piano and my parents showed me how to play and it just went on from there. Piano lessons, clarinet lessons, violin lessons, voice lessons, singing in shows, in operas, theater classes, everything.” During her high school days, she was first-chair bass clarinet for Virginia’s All-State Band for two years. “Teaching has turned out to be a complete delight in my life, I love it so much.” Seems to be a common thread at Weaver. That and loyalty to purpose.

Last summer, the Weaver Chorale was selected by WorldStrides to be a part of its National Youth Choir for a concert at Carnegie Hall. In addition to being part of that grouping, the Chorale was asked to return to Carnegie Hall to perform a 15-minute solo set of songs the students and teacher selected and prepared. “It was amazing. The kids were ecstatic,” Brotherton says. For most vocalists, that experience is an unattainable dream. “We got to see a Broadway show. We got to do a workshop with one of the musical directors of Wicked. And then our own special solo performance. It was absolutely thrilling — they were in tears.”

“I’ve had a lot of really successful students over the years,” Brotherton says about Weaver’s warblers and tech whizzes. “It’s an honor, and students know about what our graduates are doing and they want to do that, too. It’s a joy every day,” she insists. “I would do this job if they didn’t pay me.” (Given the current trajectory of education funding, be careful what you wish for.)

Sluder herself is an alumni of Weaver’s dance program. “It’s a unique perspective being an administrator here,” says Prinicipal Sluder. Her title was preceded by “Vice” until 2023, and, before that, she was the academy’s dance instructor. “It’s a humbling opportunity every day when I walk through the doors that I don’t take lightly. It really is a pleasure to serve our students and families on a daily basis in a place that really built me.” In moments when she feels overwhelmed by admin distractions, she comes back to her why: “I know what brings me joy and it’s the students.” She may venture into the dance studio to join in a routine or drop in on Brotherton’s class. “She’ll say, ‘OK, we’re going to stop practicing sight reading for a minute and we’re going to sing for Ms. Sluder.’ Sometimes I’ll sing with them and it’s just really special. I get rejuvenated then get right back to it.”

Long after my tour through Weaver, I think back to something Mr. Adkins offhandedly remarked when we were trekking through his carpentry cave: “It’s been challenging, but I’m thinking I’m leaving things better than I found them.” I suspect it’s more significant than that.

One of my guilty pleasures is that 1996 Tinsel Town tearjerker, Mr. Holland’s Opus. The film focuses on a recalcitrant high school music teacher with a dream to conduct the symphony he rather selfishly spent the better part of his adult life composing. In the end, the titular character, portrayed by Richard Dreyfus, finally figures out what teaching is all about, but only after several decades worth of former students surreptitiously take the stage, instruments at the ready to lift his notes above the sheet. He should have realized far earlier that an educator’s true legacy is manifested quietly inside those impressionable creative cortexes he’s helped cultivate, carefully or unconsciously, by way of an enthusiastic commitment to passing along knowledge and wisdom.

On a daily basis, opuses are writ, note-by-note, by Weaver Academy’s staff and educators. Everyone I met is intently invested, personally and professionally, in best possible outcomes, whether they’re played out on the stage, under the hood of a car or by sturdy hands wielding hammers.

2025 Feature The Kids are Alright

Growing Season

GROWING SEASON

Growing Season

Under the Bertrand family, a 42-year-old flower farm continues to flourish

By Dawn DeCwikiel Kane

Photographs by Becky VanderVeen

The Bertrands’ home can be busy, and sometimes a bit cramped and messy, much like that of any other young family.

“This is our life currently,” Carrie Bertrand says, as she walks through the living space she shares with husband Patrick and their children Ayla, 12; Silas, 10, and Ellie, 6.

The family of five, plus three cats and a dog, live in a camper on Maple Grove Flower Farm, which they own and operate. (And let’s not forget the family’s pet frog, who doesn’t enter the camper, but resides in a terrarium in a building next door.)

For now, home is a 2008, 38-foot Cedar Creek Silverback, a heated and cooled fifth-wheel camper. It’s large enough for Ayla and Silas to have separate, small bedrooms, while Ellie’s bed is in another area of the camper. There’s also a primary bedroom.

They hope to soon replace it with a newer, larger living space. But for now, their camper has become not only a home, but a homeschool and home base for their flower farm on Wild Turkey Road in rural Whitsett, 15 minutes east of downtown Greensboro.

Their flowers bloom in 13 commercial-scale greenhouses covering 32,000 square feet of indoor, irrigated growing space. Nearby, on their 7.5 acres of land is a 2,500-square-foot barn built in 1913.

The Bertrands grow ornamental plants in pots, flats and hanging baskets that they sell primarily to garden centers. They grow only chrysanthemums outdoors.

They don’t sell cut flowers, or plants for eating.

No sign announces the spot just yet.

By mid-morning on this March day, Patrick and Carrie have already been out on the farm for a few hours.

“So many people have no idea about this side of agriculture,” Patrick says from a building adjacent to the camper, wiping the sweat from his face while Carrie eats a yogurt-and-granola snack and the kids build a fort.

Patrick, now 47, grew up in Greensboro, the youngest of two sons of radiologist Margaret L. Bertrand and anesthesiologist Scott A. Bertrand. He graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a B.A. in economics. Carrie, 42, grew up in a small town outside Columbus, Ohio. She studied elementary education at Wheeling Jesuit University in West Virginia.

The couple met at the Church on 68 and married there more than 13 years ago.

Carrie taught school. They owned a landscaping business. But Patrick gradually realized that the work would grow increasingly strenuous.

The couple looked for something that would involve the whole family.

“Patrick was gone from sun-up to sundown most days, and we wanted a change from that routine,” Carrie recalls.

That routine indeed has changed. The family lives together — and works together.

The children help. Ayla maintains plants with three high school girls who work part-time. Silas enjoys fixing small machinery with his dad. Ellie is in the kindergarten-grade level and “excited about it all,” her mother says.

After dinner, the Bertrands enjoy typical family fun. Patrick might take Ellie to dance class; twice a week, Carrie drives them to American Ninja Warriors in Thomasville to prepare for competitions or takes Ayla to rock-climbing. Wednesday nights are for church. Tuesday nights are typically free, so they might cuddle in the camper to watch a movie.

Life on Maple Grove Flower Farm begins at 5:30 a.m. Carrie makes breakfast in the camper and teaches their children for three hours or more. She also manages the farm with Patrick, doing greenhouse work and accounting.

Although the camper has a bathroom, the family primarily uses one of two bathrooms in the adjacent building that they call the “head house.” The head house doubles as a family kitchen and a break room for the small staff. And of course, it’s home to the family frog.

In a separate section of the head house, they stage carts of plants that will go into pots.

The flower farm has two growing seasons.

The Bertrands and a handful of employees plant 40-plus varieties of tiny begonias, geraniums, zinnias, salvia, sedum, and other annuals and perennials, and grow them for six to eight weeks. All in all, they plant about 200,000 plugs — tiny plants — for spring sale, Carrie says.

For fall, they plant about 25 varieties of pansies, chrysanthemums, violas, snapdragons and dianthuses — plus poinsettias for the holiday season.

They sell the plants wholesale, primarily to garden centers in the Triad and beyond, from Winston-Salem to Raleigh and into southern Virginia — much like original business owner and grower Greg Welker did before them.

Among their customers are Guilford Garden Center in Greensboro, Saviero’s Tri-County Garden Center in High Point, Southern States in Chapel Hill and Asheboro, A.B. Seed at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market in Colfax, and Logan’s Garden Shop in Raleigh.

“We would love to also be selling directly to some of the landscapers,” Carrie says.

“But we felt there was so much to learn just on what he [Welker] had built already,” she adds. “He had a very successful business and had amazing relationships with the garden centers in the area. We certainly want to do what he has been doing with excellence before trying to add a bunch of new stuff.”

By one recent survey for the U.S. Department of Agriculture, North Carolina ranks 10th among the 50 states in floriculture, both in terms of dollar sales and number of operations.

Their floriculture business has nearly tripled in volume from the landscape business they had previously owned for almost 18 years. “Triple sales, probably triple expenses,” Patrick says.

They feared they would lose a significant customer when New Garden Landscaping & Nursery closed its retail side in December after more than 50 years and focused on its commercial and residential landscaping. But in March, Guilford Garden Center put down roots in a second location, the Lawndale Drive shop where New Garden’s retail and garden center space had once thrived.

Stephanie Jones, who owns Guilford Garden Center with her husband, Elliott, understands what it means to run a small family business. “We have to look after each other,” she says.

Maple Grove Flower Farms’ humble beginnings took root with Greg Welker.

A native of Washington state, Welker started the flower farm in 1983, when he had finished a year-long horticulture program at a botanical garden on Kauai in Hawaii, followed by a year-long program at Ball Seed in Chicago.

His grandfather, Dan Welker, had purchased the land in 1956 and eventually passed it on to Welker’s father, Raymond Welker. Welker used that land to grow the flower farm, naming it for maple trees that stand across the road.

“It was hard work,” Welker says. “But at the end of the day, I got to walk to the greenhouses and see all the beautiful flowers, and I knew that everything I sent was going to make people smile.”

A chance encounter with Patrick blossomed into a sale.

When Welker opened the back of his 26-foot enclosed box truck one fateful day in fall 2022, Patrick’s eyes widened at the sight of vibrantly colorful ornamental flowers in trays of pots on shelved carts.

Patrick admired row after row of planted fall flowers — giant pansies in purples, yellows, whites and burgundy, cabbage and kale in hues of green, white, purple and pink.

“He seemed to have a library of plant material in the back of his truck, beyond what was dropped at our stop,” recalls Patrick, who had closed his landscaping business and was working for another.

After that tailgate meeting, the entire Bertrand family visited Maple Grove Flower Farm.

Patrick and Carrie remember Ayla, from a young age, picking early blooms from azalea bushes at their former home to make floating bouquets or other artwork.

“We didn’t need to sell her on the idea of moving to a flower farm,” Patrick says.

Believing that they would buy the farm, he went to work for Welker in January 2023 as an apprentice.

In May 2023, they sold their cul-de-sac home on Oak Hollow Lake in High Point.

“We would love to say that it was smooth sailing, getting from one place to another,” Carrie says. “But it was a process that tested our patience and our faith.”

They finally got a loan from the Small Business Administration to buy the flower farm, sealing the deal in July 2023.

Welker still worked there two days a week that first fall “to get us into the groove,” Carrie recalls.

He is now 63, retired and living in Chapel Hill.

“He built everything on this property from the ground up, so he knows how to fix everything,” she says. “And Patrick has had to learn, because you can’t call somebody every time you need something fixed when you have an operation like this going on.”

At first, Carrie knew few of the flowers’ names. She could identify a petunia, but didn’t know a pansy from a viola, especially with the variety of flowers that they planted and sold for spring.

She learned fast.

For four to six weeks in the winter cold and the summer heat, they get breaks from farm work, but order plugs for the following season through Ball Seed, from farms in West Virginia, Illinois and New Jersey. Winter brings maintenance work.

That gives them time for family trips.

Cold affects the wallet when propane field heaters need to run.

This past winter, several irrigation lines burst in empty, unheated greenhouses and had to be repaired.

In late January, they began planting for their second spring season.

Within a few days, they filled 6,100 pots with potting soil to have ready for the first shipment of plugs that arrived the following week.

They want flowers to look picture perfect when they sell. They ensure that they are tagged with plant names, and are clean and free of pests. They pinch off each head so that they become fuller — just as customers prepare to buy them.

Mid-March brought the first sales of their second spring season. Patrick delivered flowers in a truck four to five days each week.

Patrick and Carrie talk of the future.

Last December, they converted one of the greenhouses into a winter wonderland.

They hosted events there that featured Santa and Mrs. Claus, a life-size Candyland game, cookie decorating, and hot cocoa.

Carrie hopes to eventually plant sections of flowers where parents can bring their children and both groups can learn.

They envision welcoming school groups for field trips.

They would like to open a small market on the land where they sell leftover items they grow, plus goods and produce from local artisans.

“We want to add some community involvement,” Patrick says.

They hope that at least one of their children someday will run Maple Grove Flower Farm. “Either our daughters or son will have the opportunity if they would like,” Patrick says. “I have a feeling at least one of them will want to continue building the farm, from the flowers to the community outreach.”

Want to schedule a visit to Maple Grove Flower Farm? Email maplegroveflowers@gmail.com, or call or text 336-209-3607.
To learn more, go online to maplegroveflowerfarm.com or to the Facebook page for Maple Grove Flower Farm.

2025 Feature Growing Season

Best Laid Plans

BEST LAID PLANS

Best Laid Plans

Natural burials are making a mark in Greensboro

By Cynthia Adams | Illustrations by Keith Borshak

Late in December, O.Henry colleague David Bailey sent a riveting text from a state park in Alamance County. An avid hiker devoted to natural places, he shares his discoveries, photographing flora, fauna, mossy streams and waterfalls. But that winter’s day, he made a surprising find.

He stumbled across a tin metal box emblazoned with the words “Remains of Mrs. Brown” with the cryptic “by Googe” below.

The discovery set my imagination afire, as I just so happened to be gathering information on natural burials and all the alternatives.

Bailey left the remains undisturbed. He conceded that it could be a prank, meant to trap the curious. (Having once found a pink purse at a gas pump one evening filled with human waste, I could hardly argue.) Mrs. Brown, Bailey remarked dryly, could be a punny metaphor for the same thing.

In any event, moving the box was tantamount to disturbing a gravesite and he decided to let it rest in peace.

But I had a different point of view. Who was Mrs. Brown, I wondered, and why were her remains left carefully, sealed inside a box in the woods?

Was there foul play?

I briefly considered trekking into the woods to search for the confounding box, but it was mere days before Christmas. Perhaps Bailey was right — perhaps this was a memorial honoring Mrs. Brown’s final wish.

I flashed to the natural burial site known as All Souls Natural Burial Ground, which I had recently visited in the fall. It differs from any cemetery you probably know. Yet there is nothing unnatural about All Souls. It simply fulfills the most instinctive of impulses. Rather than embalming and sealing our dead inside coffins — or vases — for perpetuity — All Souls allows the body to rejoin the elements in the quietest of settings.

All Souls occupies 3 acres of wooded terrain in Guilford County. Located on a site adjacent to St. Barnabas Episcopal Church on Jefferson Road, it is among several such sites in North Carolina created in response to an increasing awareness of natural alternatives.

Don’t expect monuments and manicured grass. Instead, engraved, ground-level native stones mark individual sites (each recorded with its GPS coordinates), blending with its surroundings.

Those interred at All Souls are buried in their choice of a simple shroud, a box or a coffin made of biodegradable materials, allowing for the natural decomposition of the body.

Ashes to ashes, as the Book of Common Prayer says. Dust to dust.

Mind you, none of this is new. It was the preferred way of our not-so-distant ancestors.

*****

Deborah Parker, board president and family liaison at All Souls Natural Burial Association, consults with those wishing to learn more about natural burial in a paneled meeting room filled with folding tables and chairs at St. Barnabas. In her six years of volunteering, she has sat here explaining their purpose many times over.

Too often, that conversation occurs at the worst possible time. It is far easier when a conversation about final arrangements for our loved ones takes place before any crisis arises, she points out.

According to Parker, Randall Keeney, the retired vicar at St. Barnabas, did all the background advocacy and work to bring All Souls into being. Symbolically, the cemetery opened on November 2, 2019 — All Souls Day. On April 5, 2021, Frederick Westmoreland Jr. was their first natural burial.

St. Barnabas and All Souls have a symbiotic relationship. “The church owns the graveyard. He [Keeney] did a lot of the groundskeeping when he was here,” she explains. By supporting and participating in natural burials, also known as green burials, Parker and a cadre of volunteers, mostly retirees, now provide the manual and emotional labor of running All Souls.

At this writing, 26 people have been buried there and 80 have pre-purchased burial sites.

Parker, the family liaison, has been present for all but three of those burials.

“The American way of death is changing a lot,”
she says.

Blue-eyed and white-haired, Parker’s peasant top, Apple Watch and wire-rimmed glasses convey strength combined with compassion. I see both placidity and firmness, a quality the Japanese call “Goju,” meaning, hard and soft. With a wry grin, Parker says, “I can cry easily, yet tolerate no BS.”

On the face of it, the concept of a natural burial is age-old and the premise is simple. Many elders today still recall a time when their dead were bathed, dressed and prepared for burial at home. A number of my ancestors lie in family cemeteries once dotting rural farmlands.

The movement toward the natural interment of our dead is a return to the practices that were commonplace until the 1800s before the Civil War era. In the early days of embalming, reports of alcohol, arsenic and even gasoline were used to preserve the bodies for transport. On shipboard, prominent personages were “pickled” in casks of rum rather than buried at sea.

Gradually the process of burial was relegated to funeral homes, with restriction and regulations sprouting up.

Today, natural burial means many things — it may simply refer to interment in a family cemetery. It may also mean legally opting out of commonplace burial methods, such as embalming and even the use of a casket or a vault. At this writing, online estimates for basic funeral costs are between $7–10,000, although my personal experiences have exceeded that. Costs of a plot and monument are additional.

But how challenging is a return to a less institutional way of dealing with our dead? While the appeal of a different approach is undeniable, it raises questions. Is the red tape formidable?

Turns out, it is simpler than imagined. Parker’s face sets with resolve. She has now been doing this work for years. Delving into concepts about death — especially natural burials — has become a raison d’être.

In the room where she meets those in the process of making final arrangements for themselves or a family member are examples of basic casket options, including a cardboard version. Some even invite others to help decorate it — like one would have friends sign their cast.

North Carolina law, in fact, offers a number of options for interment, she stresses. Embalming is not legally required. “To me, it is like putting your body through so much disrespect,” Parker observes.

So, it heartens Parker that the funeral industry itself has become a supportive partner with natural burials and has participated in most that she has experienced, transporting the dead and providing storage until interment is arranged. Her daughter, Meredith Springs, is an Asheville funeral director who also advocates natural burials.

Funeral homes also handle required legalities, including generating death certificates. But none are required to be handled by the funeral home, according to state law. (You might want to check out Evan Moore’s recent “Can You Bury a Relative at Home in Your Backyard” in the Charlotte Observer: charlotteobserver.com/news/local/article277022153.html.)

You can legally apply for and obtain a death certificate outside a funeral home, but, she warns, this is daunting. “One of the hardest things to do,” in Parker’s experience.

Nonetheless, “the American way of death is changing a lot,” she notes.

Parker, who lectures widely for civic groups and events, explains that a prevalent, mistaken belief is that the deceased must be immediately removed from the home by a funeral home.

“You can keep the body at home,” she clarifies. “Which gives family members time to be with them.” According to online sources, that time frame is liberal, with few legal restrictions.

In describing personal experiences with her own family, Parker is most affecting. Her brother, Dale Clinard, was the impetus for her “desire and interest to help others have what they wanted” as he prepared his family for his pending death in 1989. He encouraged his family to become involved with the process.

She described the life lessons he imparted, teaching them “no fear of dying.”

At Dale’s death, the family requested a delayed pick up by the funeral home (permissible, she points out), allowing time to bathe and dress him, and affording time with family and friends who visited throughout the night.

“He had such a loving acceptance of death that it made it a lot easier for us,” she recalls.

“He had flowers sent to my parents the day after he died, thanking them for his life,” Parker says, still moved by the memory.

The experience spurred her to become a hospice volunteer, and led to eventual involvement with natural burial. Each year Parker holds her own workshops in the church’s parish hall to guide others who wish for an intimate, involved experience. If they choose not, so be it, she says.

All Souls, which helps coordinate the necessities of burial, has a single fee. A total of $3,500 includes the site, costs to open and close the grave, and a flat, native stone for engraving. “All we do here is receive the body — we call them ‘loved ones’ — and bury them.”

A shroud (many use a natural fabric sheet or quilt) or casket are funeral home expenses but it is legal to provide your own. For those who don’t purchase a shroud or a casket, Parker has personally swathed the deceased in a cotton sheet at the funeral home.

All Souls does require that caskets be biodegradable, hence made of wood, bamboo or cardboard. Willow and seagrass caskets are also accepted — Parker mentions craftspeople at Moss and Thistle Farm near Asheville who commission wicker caskets, which she describes as “beautiful.”

There are no vaults, nor metal, sealed caskets at All Souls.

(There is also no legal requirement necessitating burial 6 feet under, Parker explains. Graves can permissibly be shallower, approximately 3–3.5 feet deep, as is the case at All Souls.)

Others choose cremation. (All Souls does not accept cremains.)

Ashes can be fashioned into cremation jewelry rather than buried at all.

There are other options. One is a process variously called resomation, water cremation or aquamation. Proponents argue it is a greener option than cremation.

Resomation uses water, potassium hydroxide and steam heat to swiftly and fully dissolve the body. At present there are a few resomation chambers in North Carolina, in Charlotte, Hillsborough and Wilmington. Composting is a lesser-known, more green burial option.

*****

Parker is a sort of culture warrior, advocating for straight talk concerning death as a healthier way of living our lives. She says she stands on the shoulders of many who have worked in the realm of death and dying, including artists. She praises a film, The Last Ecstatic Days, made by an Asheville filmmaker.

Approaching death, the subject, a 36-year-old yogi, said, “I am embodied. I am empowered. I am ecstatic.”

The three words were emblazoned on T-shirts.

She mentions how the very culture surrounding death is changing, thanks to his example and others like former intensive care nurse Julie McFadden.

“She became a hospice nurse and wrote a book called Nothing to Fear. It is fabulous . . . She’s got stories about her personal experiences with people that are dying. So, in that book, she talks about the ‘D’ words: Death. Dying. And dead.”

Before parting, she leafs through pictures of natural burials she has participated in at All Souls. She describes loved ones giving eulogies surrounded by the moving, natural sounds of birdsong and breezes. An occasional deer meanders through. Burial sites are covered with greenery and flowers at the end. Parker finds these funerals beautifully evocative, even when she does not know the deceased.

She walks along the rustic grounds and pathways, pausing to discuss various people buried there.

Parker mentions another film, A Will for the Woods.

“Put it on your list,” she advises as we part. “And be sure you have your plans in order,” she adds, shoulders squared, a pensive smile dimpling her cheeks. The title had struck me as poetic in the moment. Yet I had no idea that it would prove prescient.

*****

On February 13, the day before Valentine’s Day, Bailey phoned with an update on the mysterious case of Mrs. Brown.

Returning to the park, he noted police huddled in the parking lot alongside a park ranger, holding the box he had found in December.

The box was firmly welded shut. “Whoever did this went to a great deal of trouble,” Bailey said, slightly short of breath as the police pried the metal box open.

“Say, do you remember when I told you about discovering it?” he asked.

The police talked in the background as we speculated. Absent foul play, surely, if someone wished for their remains to simply be left in the woods, it must be legal.

Actually, no, the park ranger quickly corrected us. It was illegal to dispose of human remains in public parklands.

This was hardly comparable to a natural burial, I was reminded.

Later, Bailey texted pictures of possible fire ashes mingled with what looked a whole lot like cremains and visible teeth and bone fragment. I studied the photos, hoping this was all done in innocence.

The box, now with the medical examiner’s office, remains a mystery. A report has yet to be issued. Bailey returned to his own writing.

“It’s your story now,” he emailed. But of course, it wasn’t.

It was another’s story. Someone — but who? — and their own particular will for the woods.

2025 Best Laid Plans Feature

Farm Small Think Big

FARM SMALL THINK BIG

Farm Small, Think Big

Innovative niche farmers are making our lives better every day

By Ross Howell Jr.

Hard to think of a better time to talk to farmers than spring, so that’s just what I did. What follows is a small sampling of the many creative and determined small farmers in our area who are growing beautiful, fresh and healthy products for our kitchens and homes, season after season.

Bugle Boy Farm, Summerfield

Named to honor James Gillies, a 14-year-old “bugle boy” killed in a skirmish with British troops in the American Revolution, Bugle Boy Farm is emblematic of a major trend in modern farming.

“Our goal is organic,” says owner Elizabeth McClellan, who purchased the farm with her husband, Gero, in 2012.

Elizabeth is a big fan of Joel Salatin, an internationally known pioneer in “regenerative farming” — using modern agricultural methods to grow organic produce and meats while improving and sustaining the land on which they’re grown.

For years, Bugle Boy Farm has produced organic blueberries, pasture-fed beef and chickens, plus eggs.

But it was Elizabeth’s nephew, Christian Hankins, who suggested a unique niche.

Garlic.

Christian, a veteran who grew up in Rochester, Minn., and played minor league hockey, retired from military service during the pandemic. He had fond memories of his grandparents’ family farm and began to research garlic as a crop. For a couple of years, he grew garlic as a hobby, studying the process of growing and curing.

After becoming a member of the Bugle Boy Farm team, Christian purchased 22 acres of open land, expanding operations.

“The clay soil here tends to hold water,” he says. So he developed a special blend to amend the soil, including cow manure, gypsum, bone meal and lime.

“Curing the garlic is a big issue because of the humidity in our region,” says Christian. Recently the farm added a modern drying facility, with humidity and temperature control, where the bulbs are cured and stored until ready for market.

Bugle Boy Farms grows several varieties, each with distinctive flavors. The farmers also test cooking recipes, pairing specific garlic varieties with particular styles of cooking — Italian, Mexican, Asian and so forth.

Garlic is also available in old-fashioned, handmade braids.

“They’re edible craft,” Christian smiles. “People like to hang them up in their kitchens.”

“Customers really enjoy buying them as gifts,” Elizabeth adds.

Another specialty is scapes.

These are the long, slender flower stems that grow from garlic bulbs in the early spring. Growers remove the scapes to concentrate plant growth in the bulbs, which are harvested in early summer.

“Scapes have a scallion taste,” Elizabeth says. Some local restaurants buy them, and, she tells me, she has a special recipe for making scape butter. “It’s very tasty,” she adds.

A big advantage to buying Bugle Boy Farm garlic is its freshness. Plus, Christian says, “You can use less garlic because the quality is better.”

(For more information, visit bugleboygarlic.com)

Sprinkles Gourmet Mushrooms, High Point

If I ask you to envision an urban farm, I’m pretty sure what comes to mind is not a photographer’s studio.

But that’s what ingenuity and fungi can do for you.

Mushroom farmer Troy Sprinkles lived in Greensboro for decades before moving his professional photography studio to High Point eight years ago — continuing to work with a range of furniture industry clients.

But, during the COVID pandemic four years ago, Troy experienced an epiphany. He picked up a copy of a book about mycelium (the root-like structure of fungus) written by Paul Stamets, best known for the documentary film, Fantastic Fungi.

“It was a life-changing experience,” Troy says. He read all of Stamets’ books and every other reference he could find about fungi and began growing mushrooms in the basement of his house.

One day he thought, “Why not convert my studio into a fungi farm?”

Section-by-section, Troy expanded his “farm” in the 7,000-square-foot building that still also houses his studio.

He concentrates his fungi culture on nine varieties.

“We only grow species that are wood lovers and tree dwellers,” Troy says.

Among those are shiitake, blue oyster and lion’s mane.

“Lion’s mane is a native and is the most prolific,” he says. “In the wild, it usually grows on oak trees. It’s excellent for its medicinal value and for its gourmet flavor.”

Troy purchases his substrate materials from reputable producers in Tennessee and North Carolina.

Everything that goes into his growing rooms must be completely sterilized before being inoculated with mycelium spawn.

“What you’re creating is a perfect environment for mold to grow,” says Troy. And stray mold is a real no-no because it overwhelms the spawn.

His farm is a family operation.

Troy’s wife, Beverly Clary — whom he met when she was an art director at Pace Communications — helped him develop the business. These days, she only works with him in the summer months.

“She’s a full-time elementary school art teacher now, teaching seven classes a day,” Troy smiles.

His 34-year-old son, Zachary, who held different jobs before joining his father, works full-time in the business.

“I say growing things is good for your soul,” Troy says.

(For more information, visit sprinklesshrooms.com)

Rocky Forge Farm, Linwood

When I first heard about this niche farm’s specialty, I headed straight to my dictionary. I’ll save you a trip.

“Wagyu” (wah-gyoo) means “Japanese cow.” More broadly, the term applies to cattle bred in Japan that are noted for the rich marbling of their meat, which makes it more flavorful, tender and moist.

A few years back, when Rocky Forge Farm’s owners, Michael and Jodi Jones, were mostly raising horses and other animals, they were celebrating a special occasion with a dinner of Wagyu ribeye steak.

“That experience ignited a passion,” Michael says. Little by little, they decided to go all in on raising American Wagyu beef cattle.

They purchased a purebred Wagyu bull and purebred black Angus heifers. They cleared additional land and built a 30-by-50-foot shelter.

“The first years were hard,” Michael says. “We had no income.”

That’s because raising Wagyu cattle takes patience and time.

“Our cattle are best when they’re 3 years old,” Michael says. “One we took to the processor recently was nearly 4 years old.” Compare that to the industry standard of 18 months for feedlot cattle raised commercially.

The Joneses are careful practitioners of sustainable agriculture. They grow alfalfa and timothy grass, reseeding pastures in the spring for summer grazing.

“We move our temporary fences every other day, so the fields won’t be overgrazed,” Michael says.

The farm also produces more than 100 round bales of hay that’s stored for winter forage.

Remember, these are all natural methods for raising cattle.

Rocky Forge Farm Wagyu cattle follow the quiet rhythms of herding animals — grazing, going to water and resting.

After years of crossbreeding, Michael and Jodi’s herd is more than 87% pure American Wagyu stock now. And demand for Rocky Forge Farm’s beef continues to grow.

The Joneses are the fifth generation of his family to live in the old Rocky Forge farmhouse. They’re proud of the cattle business they’ve built. They’re proud of the picturesque corner of the Piedmont where they live. And thankful.

“We’re all stewards of the Earth,” says Michael. “None of it goes with us when we go. It has to be passed on to others.”

(For more information, visit rockyforgefarm.com)

PTB Farm, Reidsville

PTB is an acronym for “Pine Trough Branch,” a small stream that shapes the western boundary of Hillary and Worth Kimmel’s farm, purchased by Worth’s grandparents in 1953.

The couple were just acquaintances when they both studied ecological agriculture at Warren Wilson College, where students grow and harvest the food they eat using sustainable agricultural practices. They got to know each other when Hillary was growing vegetables on her family’s farm in Boone and Worth was raising livestock on PTB Farm.

Since the Piedmont offers a good environment for both vegetables and livestock, they joined forces.

“In 2014, we got married and started coming to the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market,” Hilary says. “It’s been really key for us, because it’s a year-round market.”

Now the Kimmels have a 3-year-old daughter, Juniper.

The family grows vegetables, herbs and cut flowers, along with grass-fed beef and pastured pork.

For Worth and Hillary, “soil is the heart of what we do.”

“We learned about that at Warren Wilson,” Worth says. Farming, they were taught, is an element of a sustainable ecosystem creating healthy food.

Since agriculture is such a seasonal business, the Kimmels set up a PTB Farm co-op.

“A CSA (community-supported agriculture) co-op really helps us with cash flow,” Worth explains.

“Ours is a market-style cooperative,” Hillary says. Members pay an annual membership for the farm’s products and receive a 10% discount when they purchase against the balance of their fee.

“Members choose the produce and meats they want, rather than receiving a regular allotment,” Hilary adds. “We have some members who’ve been with us since we started. They feel like family.”

Worth tells me that in their first decade, the farm had big expenses just for infrastructure — wells, water tanks and irrigation for their cattle and plants, portable fencing so the animals could be moved about.

“Now, finally, we have a walk-in cooler,” Worth says, smiling. Very handy when you’re packing up meat and flowers for farmers markets.

To market their products, the Kimmels divide and conquer.

During peak growing season on a Thursday, they pick flowers in the morning and put them in the cooler. On Friday morning, they harvest vegetables and lettuce and arugula. By lunchtime, all the vegetables are washed and their special “PTB salad mix” is finished. Friday afternoon, Hillary makes up her bouquets and Worth packs up the meat in coolers.

Then, on Saturday mornings, Hillary works the Greensboro market and Worth sets up at the Winston-Salem market.

Do they ever alternate?

“For some reason, no,” Worth grins.

“And that’s when Juniper spends time with grandmother!” Hilary laughs.

(For more information, visit ptbfarm.com)

Waseda Farm Flowers, McLeansville

In 2020, Elaine Fryar and her daughter, Crystal Osborne, started growing cut flowers on a half-acre plot located on a 200-acre farm that’s been in the family of Elaine’s husband, Gerald, for more than a century.

Already, the two women have expanded their growing area to three-quarters of an acre, with plans to cultivate a full acre soon.

And, man, they have been keeping Gerald busy.

“We have a cooler now for the flowers,” Crystal says. “We were able to repurpose an old milking parlor from when the farm was a dairy.”

“Yes, Gerald made a nice walk-in cooler for us,” Elaine adds.

Two years ago, her husband completed an even bigger project.

“Gerald repurposed an old tobacco greenhouse for us,” Elaine says. “It measures 30 by 40 feet and has six beds. It was a lot of work for him.”

“There’s still a lot of glass left from the tobacco greenhouse,” Elaine continues. “But Gerald says if I want another flower greenhouse built, I’ll have to get a new husband.” She grins.

The women sell their flowers to other farmers who have their own market sites, to local florists and to a subscribers’ list online.

“And the Greensboro Farmers Curb Market has been fantastic for us,” says Crystal.

Crystal puts together all the bouquets.

She and her mother give a lot of thought to price points. They offer arrangements with names such as “Tiny Tots,” “Mason Minis” and “Nosegays” that come in BBQ sauce jars. They also sell more expensive arrangements in elegant vases or long-stemmed bouquets wrapped in plastic.

At the farm they also offer classes. In December, customers can take a wreath-making class.

“We use our own eucalyptus and purchase Doulas fir, cypress and cedar from local growers,” Crystal says.

In the summer they offer a class called “Petals and Prosecco.” Nothing like a nice bubbly to improve your blossom arranging skills, right?

“Our goal is to have one class each quarter,” Crystal says, noting that they announce advance ticket sales on social media.

There are more activities on the drawing board. This summer, Waseda Farm Flowers will offer its first pick-your-own sunflowers program.

“One day, we hope to have pick-your-own blueberries,” Elaine says. “Eventually, we’ll start keeping bees, to help with the pollination, and the honey, of course.”

“And we’ll be doing special, luxury, pop-up picnics,” Crystal smiles.

Sounds like whatever the future holds for Waseda Farm Flowers, it’ll be a bloomin’ good time.

(For more information, visit waseda-farm-flowers.square.site)

2025 Farm Small Think Big Feature