park staff and neighbors celebrate fall harvest at the mountain farm museum

The annual Mountain Life Festival at the Mountain Farm Museum in Great Smoky Mountains National Park is scheduled for Saturday, September 20.  The event hours are from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and all activities are free and open to the public.
The centerpiece of the event is the traditional sorghum syrup demonstration, which the national park has provided each fall for almost 40 years.  “The syrup is made much the same way it was produced a hundred or more years ago using a horse-powered cane mill and wood-fired cooker,” said Lynda Doucette, Supervisory Park Ranger, Oconaluftee Visitor Center.  The syrup making demonstration is provided by students, staff, and volunteers from Swain County High School through a cooperative agreement with Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Great Smoky Mountains Association.
The association is the national park’s non-profit partner that operates the bookstores in the park’s visitor centers.
Other activities during the day will include hearth cooking, hominy making, apple butter, apple cider, soap making, and traditional toys. Tools, farm implements, and historic photographs from the national park's archives and artifact collection will also be on display.  Music will be provided by Marshall Crowe and the Bluegrass Singers.  Featured participants at this year’s event include the Woodard family from Bryson City, N.C., who will provide the hominy making demonstration; Ila Hatter, well-known naturalist, author and native plants instructor from Stecoah, N.C.; and Ron and Suzanne Joyner from Big Horse Creek Farm in Ashe County, N.C., whose small family-owned orchard and nursery maintains more than 300 varieties of custom-grafted heirloom apple trees.
“During the event, visitors can explore the preserved collection of Southern Appalachian farm buildings assembled here from their original locations throughout the Park,” said Doucette.  “Most of the structures, including a chestnut log farmhouse, date from about 1900, giving a glimpse into the past, and with the demonstrations that are planned, visitors can gain a better understanding of the rural heritage of this country,” she added.
The Mountain Farm Museum is located adjacent to the Park’s Oconaluftee Visitor Center on Newfound Gap Road (US 441), two miles north of Cherokee, N.C.  For more information call the visitor center at (828) 497-1904.