Real Estate & Lifestyle Posts in WNC

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 30, 2026

A Mayor's Dare and Six Hundred Hungry Neighbors

The line forming at the Joe Cunningham Pavilion on the evening of June 27 had a simple problem to solve, and Landrum Mayor Bob Briggs put it plainly. "This is a great opportunity to enjoy all the wonderful products and food from the Market's vendors," he said. "If you leave here hungry, it's certainly your fault."

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 30, 2026

A grower near Burnsville once drove south of Hendersonville to pick up roughly 20 tomato seeds. That was the entire surviving supply of a variety she had come to love, and without that trip it might have disappeared for good.

That variety is the Barnes Mountain Pink, a slicer tomato that grows well in the cool, damp pockets of the Western North Carolina mountains. Its story, along with the story of a West Virginia classic called the Mortgage Lifter, says a lot about why heirloom tomatoes still matter here. These are not just pretty fruit at a market table. They carry living history forward one saved seed at a time, kept by people who decided a flavor was worth protecting.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 29, 2026

The highest mountain east of the Mississippi River is a little over an hour's drive from downtown Asheville, and you can reach the top of it on a paved path in flip-flops if you want to. Mount Mitchell tops out at 6,684 feet in Buncombe County, just off the Blue Ridge Parkway near milepost 355, and it anchors a full day of touring in the region.

The route is simple. Start with brunch in Biltmore Village, drive north on the Parkway with stops at Craggy Gardens and Mount Mitchell, then loop back to Asheville for dinner. The whole thing covers a little over two hours of driving, almost all of it with the kind of long-range views people move here for.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 29, 2026

A new ice cream shop in Flat Rock is leaning into the fact that this is Bee City USA. Hey Chickadee, on Greenville Highway in the old Hubbaloo building along Little Rainbow Row, is serving a trademarked Honey Creemee, a soft-serve made with local honey and local milk. Owners Will and Meagan Hayes dreamed it up after a trip to Vermont left them hooked on that state's maple version.

Flat Rock sits in Henderson County, just a few miles south of Hendersonville along US 25, which is about 25 miles and a half-hour south of Asheville on Interstate 26. It is a small place with a lot of food and culture, and this summer it is getting a little sweeter.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 29, 2026

A Dozen Crafters and a Thousand Dollars

In 1976, a small band of mountain crafters looked at $1,000 of leftover U.S. Bicentennial grant money and decided to start something. That decision became Dogwood Crafters, and fifty years later it is still standing in Dillsboro, still run by the people who make the work it sells.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 29, 2026

A deeper, almost ruby-pink rosé might look like the last thing you want on a hot Asheville afternoon, but the wine pros on Charlotte Street in Asheville would tell you to give it a second look. Gina Trippi, co-owner of Metro Wines at 169 Charlotte Street, has been making the case that the pale pink pour everyone reaches for isn't the whole story. The shop sits in Buncombe County just north of downtown, a five-minute drive up Charlotte Street from the heart of the city.

The short version is this. The color of a rosé has nothing to do with sweetness and very little to do with price. It comes from how long the grape juice sits with the skins, a process called maceration, and from how thick those skins are to begin with. A pale Provençal-style rosé barely touches the skins. A Tavel rosé macerates closer to 48 hours, which is where that deeper color comes from.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 29, 2026

A close cousin to molasses is getting its own demonstration in a theater parking lot in Waynesville this summer. The folks at Hidden Valley Farm will walk shoppers through how they make sorghum at the Haywood Historic Farmers Market on Saturday, July 4. It is the first stop in a new monthly series.

The market sets up Saturday mornings in the HART Theatre lot at 250 Pigeon Street in Haywood County. Waynesville sits just off US-23/74, about a 30-minute drive west of Asheville, which makes it an easy morning trip whether you live here or are still dreaming about it.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 29, 2026

For over twenty-five years, a restored 1916 schoolhouse in one of the most remote corners of Graham County has filled up on Saturday nights with the sound of banjos, fiddles, and tight mountain harmonies. That tradition is back again this summer. An Appalachian Evening at the Stecoah Valley Cultural Arts Center kicked off on June 27 with the Kruger Brothers and runs every Saturday night through August 29, ten weeks of live music in a building that has been a gathering place for the valley for more than a century.

If you have never made the drive out to Stecoah, this is the season to do it. The series is one of the longest-running music traditions in this part of the mountains, and the lineup this year is one of the deepest it has put together in a while.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 29, 2026

A video sent to a local news station this June showed nearly 20 kayakers lined up to surf a wave on the French Broad River in Woodfin. That sounds like a celebration, and in a way it is. The problem is that the wave they were riding sits inside an active construction site, and the people building it would very much like everyone to wait a few more months.

The wave is called Taylor's Wave, and it is one of the larger outdoor projects to come to this part of the mountains in years. It is a human-made standing wave engineered into the riverbed, the first feature of its kind in the region. Phase I is finished, water is flowing over the structure, and a real surfable wave is already forming. For paddlers who have watched this project crawl forward for the better part of a decade, that is a hard thing to resist.

By Jon Tharp, Broker  ·  June 29, 2026

A local developer paid the Town of Franklin $70,000 for water service to a building that never got built. Then the town gave it back.

The Franklin town council made that decision this spring, and it has been quietly making the rounds among business owners across Macon County. And for good reason. The town had no policy requiring a refund. It could have kept the money and pointed to the absence of any rule as justification. Instead, the council chose to do the harder, fairer thing.