Stop by and learn about composting at home. See five different composting methods on display, including a single bin unit, a tumbling composter, a wood pallet bin, a classic 3-bin system and an example of vermiculture on demo day.

Join entomologist Matt Bertone, NC State Director, Plant Disease and Insect Clinic as he shares his expertise and teaches us how to encourage the many beneficial organisms in our gardens and landscapes. Some of these lesser-known organisms have vital roles in healthy garden ecosystems, providing organic waste reduction and natural pest control services.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

POETRY & STORYTELLING OPEN MIC NIGHT

Following a performance of Da Classroom Ain’t Enuf

Are you a poet or storyteller? We’d love to hear your work! Come out on Friday, June 16th, at 10pm, following the performance of Da Classroom Ain’t Enuf. We are offering up to 5 minute slots per person and you can sign up that night.

Don’t want to perform but would love to come watch? Please do! Audience tickets are pay what you can, first come, first serve. If you see the performance of Da Classroom Ain’t Enuf that night, you can stay for the Poetry Open Mic for free.

Come help us celebrate the uniquely human gifts of writing, performing and sharing this work in community!

Pay What You Can **Note: Attendees of the June 16th performance of Da Classroom Ain’t Enuf can stay for free!

Master Gardener volunteers will be available to answers your gardening questions and address your related concerns. Feel free to bring plant or insect samples for identification and/or problem resolution. Soil test kits and information about in-person programs and activities at The Learning Garden and the Gardening in the Mountains seminars will be available. Please stop by to learn more!

The Learning Garden is certified by Asheville Greenworks as a Pollinator Habitat. Plantings for pollinators thrive in several of the individual gardens, including the Pollinator Garden, the Sun and Shade Garden, the Four Seasons Garden and Cottage Gardens. This presentation will offer ideas and a plant list for creating your own Pollinator Garden. Portions of this program may be held outside; please dress appropriately for the weather. Presentation is free, but attendance is limited and registration is required.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

. Master Gardener volunteers will be available to answers your gardening questions and address your related concerns. Feel free to bring plant or insect samples for identification and/or problem resolution. Soil test kits and information about in-person programs and activities at The Learning Garden and the Gardening in the Mountains seminars will be available. Please stop by to learn more!

Stop by and learn about composting at home. See five different composting methods on display, including a single bin unit, a tumbling composter, a wood pallet bin, a classic 3-bin system and an example of vermiculture on demo day..

Stop by and learn about composting at home. See five different composting methods on display, including a single bin unit, a tumbling composter, a wood pallet bin, a classic 3-bin system and an example of vermiculture on demo day.

ON-LINE PRESENTATION: Learn how properly planting trees and shrubs helps them establish early and contributes to long and healthy lives. Questions about soils and amendments, hole size and depth, back fill and whether to stake and wrap the trunk can be site specific and are not always easily answered.
Join Horticulture Specialist and Associate Professor Barbara Fair as she demonstrates proper planting techniques for trees and shrubs and how to recognize problems that may develop years later when trees are not planted correctly. The presentation is free; registration is required.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Join Extension Master Gardener volunteers Pat Strang and Joyce Tromba to learn about growing and collecting 2 types of indigo for your dye gardens, and enjoy a hands-on experience with 2 methods of dying silk scarves with fresh indigo. Time permitting, information will be provided about creating an organic indigo dye vat.
Portions of this program may be held outside; please dress appropriately for the weather.
Presentation is free, a $10 donation is requested. Cash only.
Attendance is limited and registration is required.

Learn about the 2 types of indigo for your dye gardens and 2 methods of dying silk scarves with fresh indigo.

Presenters: Pat Strang and Joyce Tromba, Extension Master GardenerSM Volunteers

In this class, you will learn about growing 2 types of indigo for your dye gardens. Additionally you will have hands-on experience collecting the plant material and learning 2 methods of dying silk scarves with fresh indigo. If there is time, there will be information on creating an organic indigo dye vat.

$10 donation requested. Cash only

This class will be in the garden, please dress appropriately..

Registration: Seating is limited and registration is required.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Farm Beginnings® is training the next generation of farmers in the many skills required to start and expand a successful farm business: passion, clear goals, production experience, financial and marketing know-how, and more.

Farm Beginnings® will help you build these skills through one year of farmer-led training, mentoring, and networking. We support individuals in clarifying their goals and strengths, developing agricultural skills, and growing profitable, equitable, and ecologically sound farm businesses.

Guided by our commitment to social justice, our programming is led by farmers and mentors active in food, farming, or social justice. By empowering people with skills, knowledge, and access to resources, together we can build a more diverse, equitable food system that enriches the environment and creates a thriving food and farming community.

We use a holistic management frame, farmer-led classroom sessions, on-farm tours, mentoring, and an extensive farmer network. The topics of equity and justice in the food systems are woven into the curriculum, including examples of realistic approaches within the scope of your business models.

The 200+ hr, year-long program consists of:

• Training on holistic management, farm business, marketing & financial planning

• Sessions taught by regional, experienced Farmers

• One-year WNC CRAFT Farmer Network Membership

• Completing and presenting an individualized farm plan

• Access to Field Days with regional partners

• Entry to ASAP’s Business of Farming Conference

• Entry to OGS’s Spring Conference

• 15 hr mentorship with an experienced Farmer Mentor

View a sample of the full course schedule here.

Farm Beginnings® is training the next generation of farmers in the many skills required to start and expand a successful farm business: passion, clear goals, production experience, financial and marketing know-how, and more.

Farm Beginnings® will help you build these skills through one year of farmer-led training, mentoring, and networking. We support individuals in clarifying their goals and strengths, developing agricultural skills, and growing profitable, equitable, and ecologically sound farm businesses.

Guided by our commitment to social justice, our programming is led by farmers and mentors active in food, farming, or social justice. By empowering people with skills, knowledge, and access to resources, together we can build a more diverse, equitable food system that enriches the environment and creates a thriving food and farming community.

We use a holistic management frame, farmer-led classroom sessions, on-farm tours, mentoring, and an extensive farmer network. The topics of equity and justice in the food systems are woven into the curriculum, including examples of realistic approaches within the scope of your business models.

The 200+ hr, year-long program consists of:

• Training on holistic management, farm business, marketing & financial planning

• Sessions taught by regional, experienced Farmers

• One-year WNC CRAFT Farmer Network Membership

• Completing and presenting an individualized farm plan

• Access to Field Days with regional partners

• Entry to ASAP’s Business of Farming Conference

• Entry to OGS’s Spring Conference

• 15 hr mentorship with an experienced Farmer Mentor

View a sample of the full course schedule here.

Farm Beginnings® is training the next generation of farmers in the many skills required to start and expand a successful farm business: passion, clear goals, production experience, financial and marketing know-how, and more.

Farm Beginnings® will help you build these skills through one year of farmer-led training, mentoring, and networking. We support individuals in clarifying their goals and strengths, developing agricultural skills, and growing profitable, equitable, and ecologically sound farm businesses.

Guided by our commitment to social justice, our programming is led by farmers and mentors active in food, farming, or social justice. By empowering people with skills, knowledge, and access to resources, together we can build a more diverse, equitable food system that enriches the environment and creates a thriving food and farming community.

We use a holistic management frame, farmer-led classroom sessions, on-farm tours, mentoring, and an extensive farmer network. The topics of equity and justice in the food systems are woven into the curriculum, including examples of realistic approaches within the scope of your business models.

The 200+ hr, year-long program consists of:

• Training on holistic management, farm business, marketing & financial planning

• Sessions taught by regional, experienced Farmers

• One-year WNC CRAFT Farmer Network Membership

• Completing and presenting an individualized farm plan

• Access to Field Days with regional partners

• Entry to ASAP’s Business of Farming Conference

• Entry to OGS’s Spring Conference

• 15 hr mentorship with an experienced Farmer Mentor

View a sample of the full course schedule here.

Disbudding is the first step of pruning dahlias. Join Extension Master Gardener Dave Bush to learn all the steps of pruning in order to get the best blooms from your plants. Dave will also introduce the American Dahlia Society’s classification system.
Portions of this program may be held outside; please dress appropriately for the weather.
Attendance is limited and registration is required.

Poetry Open Mic Hendo is the all-new sister event of Poetry Open Mic Asheville, the
longest-running open mic in Western North Carolina, this weekly event welcomes all people and all forms of creative expression at
Hendersonville’s only Kava lounge.

Join us for our monthly poetry reading series coordinated by Mildred Barya. This month, we welcome Jenny Bates, David Dixon, Kathy Cantley Ackerman, and Thomas Alan Holmes

This is a hybrid event with limited in-store seating and the option to attend online. The event is free but registration is required for both in-person and virtual attendance. 

Please click here to register for the VIRTUAL event. The link required to attend will be emailed to registrants prior to the event.

Please click here to register for the IN-PERSON event. Note the important event details on the RSVP form.

All featured books will be available for purchase at the event. This event also includes a book signing.

If you would like a signed book but can’t attend in person, you may order a signed copy online below. To order Kathy Cantley Ackerman’s Repeat After Me, please call the store at (828) 254-6734.

If you would like to have your book personalized, please order online or call the store at least two hours before the start of the event. When ordering online, use the comments field to provide a name for personalization, e.g. “To Paul.” NOTE: We do our best to get books personalized when requested but personalization is not guaranteed.

If you decide to attend and to purchase books, we ask that you purchase from Malaprop’s. When you do this you make it possible for us to continue hosting author events and you keep more dollars in our community. You may also support our work by purchasing a gift card or making a donation of any amount below. Thank you!

Jenny Bates is a member of Winston-Salem Writers, NC Poetry Society, and NC Writers Network. Where the Deer Sleep is Bates’ third book with Hermit Feathers Press following Slip (2020) and Visitations (2019). She’s published in numerous journals including Pinesong, Flying South, Wild Goose Poetry Review, and Old Mountain Press. Born and raised in Michigan, she now resides in the foothills of North Carolina.

Where the Deer Sleep is an inspiring call to reverence and wonder. To a place where “directions are not geographical.” To a time life can “go back to being a good dog.” To the church of cats and crows, stars and thunder, patience and grace – where the ordinary is divine. And miracle. I believe Jenny when she tells us she sits with toads – and listens. These poems make no pretense of being the High-Priestess of anything. Instead, they stand quietly by the entrance, bulletin in hand – inviting us in. You will be glad you did.

—

David Dixon is a physician, poet, and musician who lives and practices in Mount Airy. He is the medical director of Surry Medical Ministries, a free clinic in the area. He has played in several regional bands and remains active in local music. His written work has appeared in Rock & Sling, The Northern Virginia Review, Connecticut River Review, FlyingSouth, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. He is the author of The Scattering of Saints (Hermit Feathers Press, 2022).

David Dixon whirls readers through languages of faith, illness, love, loss; lives of apostles, pets, poets, and trees. These poems are a search for what remains and what illuminates when all the lights go out and we’re left to find our way home in the dark, hoping there is a home. Dixon troubles us with all the pesky questions: how to die? how to live? How to bind? Every poem a sign. Each line a constellation.

—

Kathy Cantley Ackerman was born in coal country West Virginia, grew up in Ohio, and has lived in the Carolinas nearly 40 years.  She has published three poetry chapbooks and three full-length collections, most recently Repeat after Me. Her 2019 collection, A Quarrel of Atoms, received the Lena Shull Book Award from the North Carolina Poetry Society. Ackerman serves as Dean of Arts and Sciences at Isothermal Community College in Spindale and lives on a loblolly farm in Polk County.

How hard it is to keep what lives alive. Kathy Ackerman brings it all to life: love, loss and the fear of loss, revelations about what’s become essential and what no longer is. These poems are ordinary days like the ones we all must hack a path through, but when we look back and consider the way we’ve come an unexpected clarity fills us. Everything ordinary is extraordinary. Repeat after me: so it is with love that lasts, tender and perennial / tender and vulnerable.

—

Thomas Alan Holmes, a member of the East Tennessee State University faculty, teaches American literature with specialties in Appalachian and Black American literature. His creative and scholarly work has appeared in such journals as Valparaiso Poetry Review, Appalachian Journal, The North American Review, and Still: The Journal. Iris Press published In the Backhoe’s Shadow, Holmes’ first poetry collection, in 2022.

In the Backhoe’s Shadow celebrates the bonds of family in a time of rapid change. The poems display extraordinarily precise, photographic details of work and memory, childhood games and pets, sad country songs. Some are poems of dailiness and humor, and the legacy of a certain time and place. Holmes is a gifted storyteller of the struggle with contemporary uncertainties, of deep kinship, of love.

—

Mildred Kiconco Barya is a writer and poet. She has written short-stories and essays for various publications, features and travel articles for newspapers. Her first collection of poetry titled: Men Love Chocolates But They Don’t Say won the National Award for poetry publication 2002. She is also the author of the poetry collections The Price of Memory and Give Me Room to Move My Feet. Barya is Assistant professor of Creative Writing and World Literature at University of North Carolina-Asheville. Learn more at http://mildredbarya.com/.

Farm Beginnings® is training the next generation of farmers in the many skills required to start and expand a successful farm business: passion, clear goals, production experience, financial and marketing know-how, and more.

Farm Beginnings® will help you build these skills through one year of farmer-led training, mentoring, and networking. We support individuals in clarifying their goals and strengths, developing agricultural skills, and growing profitable, equitable, and ecologically sound farm businesses.

Guided by our commitment to social justice, our programming is led by farmers and mentors active in food, farming, or social justice. By empowering people with skills, knowledge, and access to resources, together we can build a more diverse, equitable food system that enriches the environment and creates a thriving food and farming community.

We use a holistic management frame, farmer-led classroom sessions, on-farm tours, mentoring, and an extensive farmer network. The topics of equity and justice in the food systems are woven into the curriculum, including examples of realistic approaches within the scope of your business models.

The 200+ hr, year-long program consists of:

• Training on holistic management, farm business, marketing & financial planning

• Sessions taught by regional, experienced Farmers

• One-year WNC CRAFT Farmer Network Membership

• Completing and presenting an individualized farm plan

• Access to Field Days with regional partners

• Entry to ASAP’s Business of Farming Conference

• Entry to OGS’s Spring Conference

• 15 hr mentorship with an experienced Farmer Mentor

View a sample of the full course schedule here.

Farm Beginnings® is training the next generation of farmers in the many skills required to start and expand a successful farm business: passion, clear goals, production experience, financial and marketing know-how, and more.

Farm Beginnings® will help you build these skills through one year of farmer-led training, mentoring, and networking. We support individuals in clarifying their goals and strengths, developing agricultural skills, and growing profitable, equitable, and ecologically sound farm businesses.

Guided by our commitment to social justice, our programming is led by farmers and mentors active in food, farming, or social justice. By empowering people with skills, knowledge, and access to resources, together we can build a more diverse, equitable food system that enriches the environment and creates a thriving food and farming community.

We use a holistic management frame, farmer-led classroom sessions, on-farm tours, mentoring, and an extensive farmer network. The topics of equity and justice in the food systems are woven into the curriculum, including examples of realistic approaches within the scope of your business models.

The 200+ hr, year-long program consists of:

• Training on holistic management, farm business, marketing & financial planning

• Sessions taught by regional, experienced Farmers

• One-year WNC CRAFT Farmer Network Membership

• Completing and presenting an individualized farm plan

• Access to Field Days with regional partners

• Entry to ASAP’s Business of Farming Conference

• Entry to OGS’s Spring Conference

• 15 hr mentorship with an experienced Farmer Mentor

View a sample of the full course schedule here.

Farm Beginnings® is training the next generation of farmers in the many skills required to start and expand a successful farm business: passion, clear goals, production experience, financial and marketing know-how, and more.

Farm Beginnings® will help you build these skills through one year of farmer-led training, mentoring, and networking. We support individuals in clarifying their goals and strengths, developing agricultural skills, and growing profitable, equitable, and ecologically sound farm businesses.

Guided by our commitment to social justice, our programming is led by farmers and mentors active in food, farming, or social justice. By empowering people with skills, knowledge, and access to resources, together we can build a more diverse, equitable food system that enriches the environment and creates a thriving food and farming community.

We use a holistic management frame, farmer-led classroom sessions, on-farm tours, mentoring, and an extensive farmer network. The topics of equity and justice in the food systems are woven into the curriculum, including examples of realistic approaches within the scope of your business models.

The 200+ hr, year-long program consists of:

• Training on holistic management, farm business, marketing & financial planning

• Sessions taught by regional, experienced Farmers

• One-year WNC CRAFT Farmer Network Membership

• Completing and presenting an individualized farm plan

• Access to Field Days with regional partners

• Entry to ASAP’s Business of Farming Conference

• Entry to OGS’s Spring Conference

• 15 hr mentorship with an experienced Farmer Mentor

View a sample of the full course schedule here.

Farm Beginnings® is training the next generation of farmers in the many skills required to start and expand a successful farm business: passion, clear goals, production experience, financial and marketing know-how, and more.

Farm Beginnings® will help you build these skills through one year of farmer-led training, mentoring, and networking. We support individuals in clarifying their goals and strengths, developing agricultural skills, and growing profitable, equitable, and ecologically sound farm businesses.

Guided by our commitment to social justice, our programming is led by farmers and mentors active in food, farming, or social justice. By empowering people with skills, knowledge, and access to resources, together we can build a more diverse, equitable food system that enriches the environment and creates a thriving food and farming community.

We use a holistic management frame, farmer-led classroom sessions, on-farm tours, mentoring, and an extensive farmer network. The topics of equity and justice in the food systems are woven into the curriculum, including examples of realistic approaches within the scope of your business models.

The 200+ hr, year-long program consists of:

• Training on holistic management, farm business, marketing & financial planning

• Sessions taught by regional, experienced Farmers

• One-year WNC CRAFT Farmer Network Membership

• Completing and presenting an individualized farm plan

• Access to Field Days with regional partners

• Entry to ASAP’s Business of Farming Conference

• Entry to OGS’s Spring Conference

• 15 hr mentorship with an experienced Farmer Mentor

View a sample of the full course schedule here.