Happy Thursday, Buncombe County!
💡 Buncombe Fact: Black Mountain was not always Black Mountain. The settlement went by Grey Eagle until the railroad came through and named its station for the mountains in 1879. When the town incorporated in 1893, it took the station’s name instead of its own.
In today’s edition:
The Greek Festival turns forty in Montford
Whiskey history by the glass, tonight in Black Mountain
Rising Appalachia marks two years since Helene at Pisgah
Eliada’s corn maze opens for the season
Hot jazz by the river in Olivette
Leftover PGA TOUR food becomes 8,000 meals
The knife maker at the end of a long driveway
Let’s get to it.
— Sean Kolina
🇬🇷 The Greek Festival Turns 40
Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church has opened its gates in Montford for the Asheville Greek Festival since 1986, and this year marks forty years of it. The food is the reason most people come, cooked by the church’s yia-yias, and the smart move is to eat early before the lines build. Hellenic dance troupes perform through both days, starting at 4:30 on Friday and noon on Saturday, and cooking demos run at one, three and five.
The part most people miss is inside. Church tours leave at noon, three and six each day, short talks on Byzantine icons run at two and four, and Saturday’s 5pm Vespers is open to anyone. Tickets are sold at the gate only. Montford street parking goes fast, so try the satellite lot at Montford North Star Academy on Montford Avenue (Friday evening and all day Saturday), about fifteen minutes on foot. Leave the dog at home; it is a pet-free event.
📍 Where: Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church, 227 Cumberland Ave., Montford
📅 When: Friday, September 25th – Saturday, September 26th | 11am – 9pm
💲 Price: $5 at the gate | Kids 12 and under free
🥃 Whiskey History by the Glass
If you want something to do tonight, this is it. The Highlands in the Valley is an hour on the Scottish Highlands in the Swannanoa Valley, told at Oak & Grist with a glass in your hand. Dr. Dan Pierce walks through the history of whiskey distilling in the Appalachians while the distillery pours a flight of its single malts, and the Swannanoa Valley Museum & History Center is the partner behind it. It wraps at seven, which leaves plenty of evening for dinner in town afterward. Museum members pay $30 instead of $49.
📍 Where: Oak & Grist Distilling Co., 1556 Grovestone Rd., Black Mountain
📅 When: Thursday, September 24th | 6pm – 7pm
💲 Price: $49 | $30 for museum members | Lecture and whiskey flight included
🪕 Two Years On, Rising Appalachia at Pisgah
Sunday is two years since Helene came through, and Pisgah Brewing is spending the weekend with two outdoor shows from Rising Appalachia. Sisters Leah Song and Chloe Smith built the band on Southern folk, close harmonies and songs collected from Ireland to Colombia, and they have played everywhere from Red Rocks to NPR’s Tiny Desk. Saturday night is the full evening bill, with Street Creature Puppet Collective, Castanea, Numatik and Jade Sanchez. Sunday is billed as a family matinee, with Creature Puppet Collective, Sparrow Smith and The Resonant Rogues, and kids under twelve get in free both days. It is a good way to mark the anniversary: outside, with neighbors, and with three food trucks on hand.
📍 Where: Pisgah Brewing Outdoor Stage, 2948 US Hwy. 70, Black Mountain
📅 When: Saturday, September 26th | Doors 6pm, show 7pm
📅 When: Sunday, September 27th | Doors 2pm, show 3pm
💲 Price: $40.83 | Kids under 12 free
🌽 Get Lost in Eight Acres of Corn
Eliada’s Corn Maze and Fall Festival opens for the season on Friday, and this is the first weekend to get into the eight acres of rows. Once you find your way out, there are tractor rides, pumpkins, a corn cannon, a spider climber and lawn games, plus food trucks and apple cider slushies. It is a maze, not a haunted attraction, so it works for small kids, and ticket money goes to the work Eliada has been doing with children and families in Asheville since 1903. Wear closed-toe shoes, since the rows can get muddy, and buy tickets ahead on weekends.
📍 Where: Eliada campus, 2 Compton Dr., Asheville
📅 When: Friday, September 25th – Sunday, September 27th | Open weekends through November 1st
💲 Price: $15 | Buy ahead online
🎺 Hot Jazz by the River in Olivette
Sundays on the River brings live music to Olivette’s riverside pavilion on the French Broad in Woodfin, and this week it is Blair Crimmins & the Hookers. Crimmins plays ragtime and 1920s Dixieland out of Atlanta, writing for a New Orleans horn line of trumpet, clarinet and trombone, and he has opened for Preservation Hall Jazz Band and Old Crow Medicine Show. Bring your own chair and your own drinks, and bring the kids, who get in free. Doors open at three, so come early and claim a spot with a view of the water.
📍 Where: Olivette Riverside Pavilion, 1069 Olivette Rd., Woodfin
📅 When: Sunday, September 27th | 4pm – 6pm
💲 Price: $30.52 | Kids free
Around the County
Buncombe is a lot bigger than downtown, so this is where the rest of it lives.
🌳 The golf tournament’s leftovers are feeding the county. Food Connection, the Asheville nonprofit that served as the Biltmore Championship’s official food-rescue partner, recovered more than 8,000 pounds of unused food from the week, whole briskets and salmon included. That works out to more than 8,000 meals, going out across Buncombe and Henderson counties, partly through Food Connection’s free food truck. Read more
🌳 The Botanical Garden is staying put until 2072. UNC Asheville extended the lease on the Asheville Botanical Garden’s 14 acres on campus for another fifty years. The old lease would have run out in 2032, and the garden stays free and open to the public. Read more
🌳 Weaverville’s indoor pickleball is nearly open. Ballcrank Pickleball Club is set to open in early October at 115 Reems Creek Road, the old Balcrank Corporation headquarters, with 12 indoor cushioned courts, six of them with video capture. Take a look
🌳 Blues all weekend in Black Mountain. The Black Mountain Blues Experience fills White Horse Black Mountain Friday through Sunday. Saturday is sold out and Friday nearly so, but Sunday seats, with Southern Avenue closing the weekend, start at $59. Tickets
🌳 Clawtoberfest at Highland on Saturday. Free to walk in, with Lagerhosen and face painting from one to four and Wilson Springs Hotel from five to eight. A dollar from every pour of Clawhammer Oktoberfest goes to the Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy. Event details
One to Know
A quick one every Thursday. Our full small business features run on Tuesdays, so think of this as the short version, and it is never paid and never sponsored.
🔪 Keith Nix Knives, Swannanoa
Keith Nix makes knives in a shop next to his house on Lytle Cove Road, a few minutes outside downtown Black Mountain. Nearly all of it happens there: he cuts and grinds the blade, heat treats it, and finishes the quench in liquid nitrogen, a cryogenic step the big manufacturers rarely bother with. You pick the steel and the handle wood, and some customers bring their own. One had her handle cut from a dogwood limb off her own land.
Buy a knife and he sharpens it free for life, by hand, working through up to eight stones, then measures the edge on a sharpness tester before he gives it back. He sharpens other people’s knives too. Call or text before you go, and trust the directions when they warn that it will look like you are driving out into a big field.
📣 Know a business that belongs here? Hit reply with a name and we’ll check them out!
Other fun notes…
😋 Weekly Appalachian inspired recipe: Homemade Apple Butter — the slow project of apple season, cooked down for hours until it turns dark and spreadable. Make it once and a store jar will never quite do again.
🎵 Who we are listening to: Van Morrison - Into the Mystic — the right song for the first cool evenings of fall, windows down on the way home from wherever this weekend takes you.
💛 Local Nonprofits. Swannanoa Valley Museum & History Center — the Black Mountain 501(c)(3) housed in the town’s 1921 former firehouse, keeping the valley’s history and co-hosting tonight’s whiskey night at Oak & Grist.
🙏 Positive News Around the Globe: A 165-mile bike trail across northern Minnesota is finally finished, thirty years after work on it began. Read Article
✨ Forty years of yia-yias in Montford, eight acres of corn to get lost in, and a knife sharpened free for life. The good things around here tend to take the long way.
🗳️ One quick question, and it genuinely shapes what goes in here:
What actually gets you out of the house on a weekend?
As always, we read every reply and truly appreciate hearing from you. If there’s something you’d like to see more of locally, let us know. Thanks for being part of the Buncombe County Digest community.
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