Vote AVL is a nonpartisan movement to increase voter turnout in the Asheville Area. The site features voter resources including registration info, a calendar of important dates, and information on candidates at the local, state and national levels. Businesses can take the pledge to provide information and resources to their employees, so that they can use their voice to make their vote count. Learn more at voteavl.org.

Important Dates:

Friday, October 9th – Voter Registration deadline (online or postmarked by)

Thursday, October 15th – Early Voting begins, including same-day registration

Tuesday, October 27th – Deadline to request an Absentee Ballot (received by)

Saturday, October 31st – Early Voting Ends

Tuesday, November 3rd – Election Day and Absentee Ballot deadline (received by)

Cover Crops: Try Winter Rye!
Have you considered fall cover crops and been overwhelmed by the possibilities? Does it seem just too complicated, too many choices? My choice is winter rye—the grain, not annual rye grass—which has been my fall/winter cover crop for 40 years in different types of gardens and soils.

Why Winter Rye?
Here are my top reasons:

• I can plant it any time after I clear my summer garden beds through mid-November.
• It grows all winter—it may not show much top growth, but any time the ground isn’t frozen, roots are growing.
• It has a deep, fibrous root system to pull up nutrients from the lower soil profile, preserve nitrogen in the topsoil layer, and improve tilth of heavy clay soils.
• It’s a beautiful green carpet during the browns of winter, but it is an annual that dies after setting seed in spring, facilitating management in no-till gardens.
• Rye is somewhat allelopathic—it produces chemicals that interfere with other plant seeds  germinating and growing—which helps with early spring weed control.
• For more information:

  NCSU – Winter Annual Cover Crops
  UVM Fact Sheet – Winter Rye: A Reliable Cover Crop
  MSU – Use Rye This Fall to Put Your Garden to Bed for Winter
  UMass – Cover Crop Growing Tips
  UFL – Allelopathy: How Plants Suppress Other Plants

This is the last call to bid. Big Brothers Big Sisters of WNC in
Henderson County encourages the public to participate now. Bidding closes 7pm Thursday,
October 8.
Funds are being raised to support unique one-on-one mentoring programs. 81 items include an
array of trips, experiences, art, personal services and more at www.bbbswnc.org.

The BOOsters are happy little friendly ghosts sold throughout the month of October in area banks, restaurants, cleaners, convenience stores, and many other businesses. For only $1.00, anyone can purchase a BOOster, place his or her name or business card on it and have it displayed. This is a great way to decorate area businesses for the holiday while providing fun, friendly competition, and funds to help continue the outreach of the Eblen Charities.

Eblen Charitable Group Pumpkin Sales: Much like the BOOster sales, these bright paper pumpkins are sold for $1.00 during the month of October in area schools and Ingles Markets. This program sponsored by Outback Steakhouse, Ingle’s Markets, Pepsi, and Clear Channel radio stations benefits the programs of the Eblen Charities  and helps provide a community program to the area schools with the premise of children helping children. Schools also have the opportunity to win prizes and equipment for their school. The school with the most over all sales is awarded the Frank Lewis Memorial Award, named in memory of our long time friend and Buncombe County educator, Frank Lewis.

This year’s winner will be drawn on Tuesday, December 1^st, and can choose any 2020 Volvo or Subaru from Hunter Automotive Group in Fletcher, North Carolina with an MSRP up to $50,000!

Though we were unable to have students on campus and present live performances this summer, we continued to support their education needs during the pandemic, providing masterclasses, lectures, streaming performances and more, available at no charge.

Buncombe County has opened the 2020-2021 application cycle of the Community Recreation Grants program. The grants are part of other countywide initiatives that help make Buncombe County a place everyone from infants to retirees has the opportunity to be strong, healthy, and successful. The program is intended to help community nonprofits make immediate improvements and jump-start long-term progress that align with the Buncombe 2025 plan. Grants range in amounts from $500-$6,000, depending on the number of qualifying applicants.

Eligibility

Eligible entities include Buncombe County nonprofits focused on providing equitable access to recreational, fitness, cultural, and wellness activities to the public at no- or low-cost. These funds are intended to be a leveraging tool that promote partnerships between the County and area nonprofits and are not a donation, funding stream, or sponsorship opportunity. Programs applying for funding should align with the Buncombe 2025 plan’s focus areas, as well as embody the spirt of Buncombe County Recreation Services’ mission: Connect Communities. Preserve Culture. Change Lives.

Projects funded in the past have included creative placemaking, increasing safe connections to a wider range of play and wellness activities for underserved residents, supporting access to experiences that preserve regional and international cultures, improvements to public athletic fields and fitness courses, expanding environmental education, building food security through community gardens, and establishing multigenerational outdoor spaces for neighbors to connect with each other and foster community pride.

Want to apply?

Application, guidelines, and a list of 2019-2020 recipients are available online. Questions should be directed to [email protected].

The grant application deadline is 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 16, 2020. Late applications will not be accepted. The Community Recreation Grant Committee will notify all applicants via email no later than Friday, Nov. 15, 2020.

Beginning Sunday, September 27, and continuing throughout the month of October, the front lawn of Grace Church will once again be filled with pumpkins! And as in years past, proceeds from pumpkin sales will benefit our friends with Consider Haiti.

Annually, the Pumpkin Patch is Consider Haiti’s biggest fundraiser. A year ago, we netted $10,000 that supported programs in community health, sustainable nutrition, clean water and medical care. Consider Haiti’s single most urgent goal is promoting the health and welfare of Haitian children. This year, they will impact the lives of more than 2,000 children and their families. Through the Pumpkin Patch, Grace Church has an opportunity to raise both funds and awareness for the work Consider Haiti is doing, even in the midst of a pandemic. We hope we have made participating as safe and risk-free as possible for you. And we thank you in advance for your on-going support.

For the safety of our volunteer sellers, we have developed a method of no-touch electronic payment that will hopefully eliminate a lot of cash transactions that involved handling money. Wheelbarrows will be on hand for shoppers to load their own pumpkin selections. The idea is to handle money and pumpkins as little as possible. Wipes, masks and disinfectant will be available for use as needed within the Patch

​​​​​

​One Network of Trails. One Hundred Counties.

​The Great Trails State Plan will draw upon existing plans and new recommendations to identify a network of shared-use paths and trails that connect​​​ every county in North Carolina, with a focus on connections between population centers and North Carolina State Parks.

The primary outcome of this planning process is to develop a statewide trail map coupled with an action-oriented network plan and 5-year implementation strategy.

The Great Trails State Plan is being led by the N.C. Department of Transportation’s Integrated Mobility Division, in coordination with the NCDOT Transportation Planning Division and North Carolina State Parks.​​​

Help us Win $100,000 for Urban Forestry Give during A Community Thrives’ fundraising window through October 16th and GreenWorks could receive a grant of up to $100,000! Your $10 donation will make an incredible difference! Asheville GreenWorks will continue to adapt and grow with the challenges of 2020, and beyond. We hope to give away and plant more trees to the community, collect more litter and recyclables, and engage and educate more volunteers. Your support encourages us to work harder for a better Buncombe County. If you are unable to give at this time, follow us on Facebook and Instagram and share this information with your family and friends.

Create, share, and discover with Buncombe County Public Library’s newest resource, Biblioboard.

BiblioBoard Library is an easy-to-use platform of high-quality digital content. Biblioboard offers books, articles, documents, images, audios, and videos. BiblioBoard Library is host to content from traditional publishers, indie authors, cultural institutions, and local thought leaders. Users can access BiblioBoard Library through the library’s website or on the device of their choice.

Some features of Biblioboard:

• No waitlists or holds
• Streaming audio and video are available on a wide variety of topics
• Check out curated collections of the best indie authors.
• Available for desktop, iOS, and Android devices

Local authors can submit their work for inclusion in the library catalog or publish books with Press Books. You can submit and share your work locally or nationally.

Vulnerable North Carolinians can request free PPE as they head to the polls.

The Oscar-nominated and Emmy-winning documentary RBG, directed by award-winning filmmakers Betsy West and Julie Cohen, chronicles the inspiring and personal story of Ginsburg’s rise to the nation’s highest court while becoming an unexpected pop culture icon. “From her Supreme Court chambers to her exercise room, what a privilege and a joy it was for us to train our cameras on RBG, and capture the story of this feisty, determined, brilliant woman who used her talents to make our world a better place,” said West and Cohen.

“What makes it memorable is its portrait of a woman with an exceptional intellect, to be sure, but also a lifelong capacity for staggering amounts of minutely detailed, unswervingly purposeful work.” – Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal

“The movie’s touch is light and its spirit buoyant, but there is no mistaking its seriousness or its passion. Those qualities resonate powerfully in the dissents that may prove to be Justice Ginsburg’s most enduring legacy, and RBG is, above all, a tribute to her voice.” – A.O. Scott, The New York Times

In addition to owning the film, you’ll also have access to a long-form Q&A with the directors from earlier this summer.

Vote AVL is a nonpartisan movement to increase voter turnout in the Asheville Area. The site features voter resources including registration info, a calendar of important dates, and information on candidates at the local, state and national levels. Businesses can take the pledge to provide information and resources to their employees, so that they can use their voice to make their vote count. Learn more at voteavl.org.

Important Dates:

Friday, October 9th – Voter Registration deadline (online or postmarked by)

Thursday, October 15th – Early Voting begins, including same-day registration

Tuesday, October 27th – Deadline to request an Absentee Ballot (received by)

Saturday, October 31st – Early Voting Ends

Tuesday, November 3rd – Election Day and Absentee Ballot deadline (received by)

Cover Crops: Try Winter Rye!
Have you considered fall cover crops and been overwhelmed by the possibilities? Does it seem just too complicated, too many choices? My choice is winter rye—the grain, not annual rye grass—which has been my fall/winter cover crop for 40 years in different types of gardens and soils.

Why Winter Rye?
Here are my top reasons:

• I can plant it any time after I clear my summer garden beds through mid-November.
• It grows all winter—it may not show much top growth, but any time the ground isn’t frozen, roots are growing.
• It has a deep, fibrous root system to pull up nutrients from the lower soil profile, preserve nitrogen in the topsoil layer, and improve tilth of heavy clay soils.
• It’s a beautiful green carpet during the browns of winter, but it is an annual that dies after setting seed in spring, facilitating management in no-till gardens.
• Rye is somewhat allelopathic—it produces chemicals that interfere with other plant seeds  germinating and growing—which helps with early spring weed control.
• For more information:

  NCSU – Winter Annual Cover Crops
  UVM Fact Sheet – Winter Rye: A Reliable Cover Crop
  MSU – Use Rye This Fall to Put Your Garden to Bed for Winter
  UMass – Cover Crop Growing Tips
  UFL – Allelopathy: How Plants Suppress Other Plants