Calendar of Events

Every Saturday in July the park stays open late, until 9:00 p.m., so you can make more time for family memories. Enjoy evening train and stage shows, rides at dusk, and fun throughout the park.

This tour goes exploring through our 80 acres of working farmland. Head to the top of UFO hill for a spectacular view, walk alongside the creek through forest, see the grazing animals on pasture, and learn about regenerative agriculture. You will get an overview of our farm history but a more in-depth look at our farming practices. We will be traversing over rough terrain, so suitable hiking attire is suggested.

Every Saturday in July the park stays open late, until 9:00 p.m., so you can make more time for family memories. Enjoy evening train and stage shows, rides at dusk, and fun throughout the park.

Every Saturday in July the park stays open late, until 9:00 p.m., so you can make more time for family memories. Enjoy evening train and stage shows, rides at dusk, and fun throughout the park.

Beginner’s workshop lesson at 7:30 P.M., then 8-11 P.M. Contra Dance with Country Waltzing at the break and the final dance. This is a partner dance but it’s not necessary to come with a partner. We have different live bands and callers.

Discover the beauty of the Appalachia’s both wild and rural. Your day begins with the expansive views of Chimney Rock State Park where your group is welcome to enjoy one of the many leisure or intensive hiking trails on the property. Lunch at the award-winning Old Rock Cafe is included with this package to enjoy at your leisure after 11am. At 2pm, join the park’s animal educators for the Animal Encounter, an interactive experience where you can touch, feel, and learn about the wildlife at the park. After meeting the animals of the wild, your group will drive an easy 20 minutes North up 74A for the evening portion of your day trip.

Starting at 4pm, your evening encounter begins with an in-depth tour of the farm’s history and agricultural model along with a meet-and-greet of our farm animals. Choose our standard top-tier tour or upgrade to a horseback ride for an intimate farm experience. Immediately following the tour, your group will be treated to a plated Farm-to-Fork meal prepared by our expert catering chef including an adult beverage of your choice. Finish the day with engaging conversations and gorgeous long-range views as the sun sets.

Every Saturday in July the park stays open late, until 9:00 p.m., so you can make more time for family memories. Enjoy evening train and stage shows, rides at dusk, and fun throughout the park.

This tour goes exploring through our 80 acres of working farmland. Head to the top of UFO hill for a spectacular view, walk alongside the creek through forest, see the grazing animals on pasture, and learn about regenerative agriculture. You will get an overview of our farm history but a more in-depth look at our farming practices. We will be traversing over rough terrain, so suitable hiking attire is suggested.

The Asheville-Buncombe Aeromodelers R/C Flying Club in cooperation with Buncombe County Recreation Services present the annual Flying Model Demo & Exhibit.

Weather permitting, there will be:
– Flying demonstrations, possibly including:
– Electric Ducted Fan (EDF) Jets
– Helicopters
– Quad Racers
– Ultra Aerobatic (3D) Planes
– Warbirds
– Vintage Aircraft
– Try your hand at flying with an instructor
– First Person View (FPV) video monitor

If the weather is bad, we will still have:
– Static displays with opportunities for questions and answers
– Information about the flying club
– A raffle for your chance to win a ready to fly (RTF) XK X520 VTOL provided by Motion RC. There is no cost for the tickets, but you must be present to win.

Beginner’s workshop lesson at 7:30 P.M., then 8-11 P.M. Contra Dance with Country Waltzing at the break and the final dance. This is a partner dance but it’s not necessary to come with a partner. We have different live bands and callers.

The Asheville GreenWorks nursery is in need of some TLC. After multiple break-ins, vandalism, and theft of tools like weedeaters and chainsaws, we need your help more than ever.

For this workday, we are asking you to bring your weed eaters, if you can, and help clear out the brush in the nursery and hoop house. Don’t have a weed eater? That’s okay! In addition, we will do some hand weeding and other maintenance.

If getting in a good sweat and some hard work isn’t enough incentive, we’ll be sending you home with a native tree of your choosing. At the end of the workday, harvest some apples from the orchard and leave with a tree as well.

Wear work clothes to get dirty and close-toed shoes. Sunscreen, water, and hat are always a good idea. We will also provide some beverages.

All other tools and gear will be provided by GreenWorks.

Join WNC Magazine senior editor and Friends of the North Carolina Room board member Jon Elliston as he recaps his yearlong written series with a multimedia presentation in the Lord Auditorium at Pack Memorial Library.

Learn more about:

**Asheville’s Fascist: William Dudley Pelley’s obscure but infamous Silver Shirt movement lives on in his paper trail

**Swannanoa’s Superspy: Carl Duckett’s unlikely journey from small-town roots to top CIA official

**Rosman’s Spy Base: When the National Security Agency set up a mountain espionage station, it was a hard secret to keep

**Senator Sam Ervin’s Secret Wars: He stuck to the Constitution through clashes with McCarthy, the Army, CIA, and Nixon

**School Under Scrutiny: The FBI’s files on Black Mountain College tell a little-known story of art, politics, and surveillance

My name is Meagan Lucas and I am a Hendersonville-based writer. I’m having a book launch for my debut novel, Songbirds and Stray Dogs, at the new Malaprop’s Pop-Up in downtown Hendersonville.

In Songbirds and Stray Dogs, 21 year old Beaufort waitress, Jolene, has spent the majority of her life living in the shadow of the pain her mother caused, and trying to prove herself worthy of her Aunt’s stingy love. Unintentionally pregnant and abandoned again, Jolene tries to outrun her shame in the mountains of Western North Carolina. Penniless, alone, and chased by demons from her past, she is forced to confront her mother’s legacy, and her own fear. Song Birds and Stray Dogs is a Southern story, born of sweet tea and the Bible Belt, chow-chow and cornbread, shot guns and porch rocking. But it is also a universal story of escaping the burden of your past and finding yourself at home in a strange land.

This comedy is often viewed as Shaw’s wittiest play! This is a borderline farce that will stimulate serious thinking about the nature of both romance and war. What is Raina to do when she finds that an enemy soldier has taken refuge in her room? What will her fiancée say? The plot, of course, thickens! Directed by Jim Reid and performed as Readers Theatre as a part of The Autumn Players’ Readers Theatre Showcase Series.

Discover the beauty of the Appalachia’s both wild and rural. Your day begins with the expansive views of Chimney Rock State Park where your group is welcome to enjoy one of the many leisure or intensive hiking trails on the property. Lunch at the award-winning Old Rock Cafe is included with this package to enjoy at your leisure after 11am. At 2pm, join the park’s animal educators for the Animal Encounter, an interactive experience where you can touch, feel, and learn about the wildlife at the park. After meeting the animals of the wild, your group will drive an easy 20 minutes North up 74A for the evening portion of your day trip.

Starting at 4pm, your evening encounter begins with an in-depth tour of the farm’s history and agricultural model along with a meet-and-greet of our farm animals. Choose our standard top-tier tour or upgrade to a horseback ride for an intimate farm experience. Immediately following the tour, your group will be treated to a plated Farm-to-Fork meal prepared by our expert catering chef including an adult beverage of your choice. Finish the day with engaging conversations and gorgeous long-range views as the sun sets.

This comedy is often viewed as Shaw’s wittiest play! This is a borderline farce that will stimulate serious thinking about the nature of both romance and war. What is Raina to do when she finds that an enemy soldier has taken refuge in her room? What will her fiancée say? The plot, of course, thickens! Directed by Jim Reid and performed as Readers Theatre as a part of The Autumn Players’ Readers Theatre Showcase Series.

This comedy is often viewed as Shaw’s wittiest play! This is a borderline farce that will stimulate serious thinking about the nature of both romance and war. What is Raina to do when she finds that an enemy soldier has taken refuge in her room? What will her fiancée say? The plot, of course, thickens! Directed by Jim Reid and performed as Readers Theatre as a part of The Autumn Players’ Readers Theatre Showcase Series.

Attention all knights, pages, jesters, jousters, kings, queens, princesses and princes! Get your costumes ready, and come out and have some fun on September 7th! Boys, girls, moms, dads, come one, come all to the First Annual Renaissance Fair at the Farm. We have all sorts of fun demonstrations planned, such as fencing, sword fighting, and juggling. Other activities to be announced, including a costume contest!

Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of 20th-century abstract painting—not as muses but as artists. These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future.

| A mystery novel set in Yonah, N.C.

Friday Night- 6:30-8:30pm, Full Retreat (9/13 and 9/14)- 9:30am-5:30pm

Based his new book, Drinking from the River of Light, this Mark Nepo workshop will center on the lifelong process of listening, reflecting, and expressing, and on how bearing witness to the truth of living reveals the mysteries of life.

As no one can live without inhaling and exhaling, no one can live without feeling and expressing. The life of expression is how the heart breathes and how our spirit grows in the life that carries it. The life of feeling, dialogue, and writing, whatever form they take—poetry, story, memoir, or reflection—open us to a personal form of expression, a necessary conversation with the Universe that helps us move through obstacles and transitions. As meditation is an ancient art that deepens our relationship to how we breathe, writing and storytelling are ancient arts that deepen our relationship to all that matters. And just as the reward for practicing meditation is not that we’ll become great breathers but that we’ll become clear vessels of life-force, the reward for practicing a personal form of expression is not that we’ll become great writers or great storytellers but that such practice will help us be more resilient and wake closer to life.

In this Mark Nepo workshop, Mark will open a heart space through which participants can discover their own rhythms of expression. Through poetry, stories, and metaphors, Through reflection, journaling, and dialogue, each participant will have the chance to practice listening and expressing. We are constantly being shaped by life into finer instruments of care and expression. The deeper we go, the more attuned we become, and the more we join with everything around us. This workshop will help you to inhabit a personal form of expression, by which you can strengthen your connections and find your way.

Topics in this Mark Nepo workshop include “The Chord in Our Heart,” “What It Means to See,” “Bearing Witness,” “Unraveling the Self,” “Giving and Getting Attention,” “Breaking Surface,” “Understanding Practice,” and “Fitting Things Together.”

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for forty years. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, he has published fourteen books and recorded eight audio projects. Recent work includes: Reduced to Joy (2013), Seven Thousand Ways to Listen which won the 2012 Books for a Better Life Award, Staying Awake (2012), Holding Nothing Back (2012), As Far As the Heart Can See (2011), Finding Inner Courage (2011),and Surviving Has Made Me Crazy (2007), as well as audio books of The Book of Awakening, Finding Inner Courage, and As Far As the Heart Can See (2011). As a cancer survivor, Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship.

The semi-annual event is open to all children ages 15 and under and is sponsored by Buncombe County Recreation Services.

Fishing begins at 8:30 a.m. and ends promptly at 11:30 a.m.

Register online now through September 12 at midnight. On-site registration will also be available at 8:00 a.m. the day of the tournament. Your registration fee covers fishing bait, snacks, and a hot dog lunch at the conclusion of the tournament. No fishing license is required for children under 16 years of age.

This is a catch and release event. Lake Julian Park will supply a bucket for each competitor’s catch. After the fish has been weighed and measured, it will be released back into the lake. Participants bring their own pole.

Fishing is allowed anyplace inside the Lake Julian Park boundaries. No boat fishing is allowed. All children must be accompanied by at least one adult.

Children will be grouped into one of five age categories and prizes awarded in each category. Prizes will be given for the biggest fish, the smallest fish, and the most fish caught. In addition, all competitors in every age group will have an opportunity to show off their casting skills. Casting poles and targets are provided and children can demonstrate their ability anytime during the tournament. There are prizes for the winners of the casting competition, too!

For years, the Sierra Club has worked with Asheville Greenworks (which provides all the equipment) to be on the French Broad River in Asheville (or perhaps the Swannanoa River) picking up trash by canoe. Kayakers can bring their own craft.

We’ll gather under the last evening skies of summer to observe the night sky and its wonders. Local astronomer Stephan Martin will give a tour of the stars and constellations of the summer sky while discussing some of their myths and the astronomical phenomena happening at this time. We may even see a few Taurid meteors cross our skies! All ages are welcome and no background in astronomy or science is required.