GSMNP Celebrates Fall Harvest with Annual Mountain Life Festival in the Smokies

Every year at mid September the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (GSMNP) hosts the annual Mountain Life Festival at the Mountain Farm Museum adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center near Cherokee North Carolina This year this popular program will be taking place on Saturday, September 19th, from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm.

This Mountain Life Festival helps preserve the legacy of Appalachian folkways and is meant to be a tribute to the people of European heritage who moved after their land was purchased in order to create the Great Smoky Mountains national park. The event is suitable for all ages and the activities are free.

Besides there being artifacts and historic photographs from the national park’s collection on display, this living history event will include demonstrations on old fashioned life skills such as blacksmithing, lye soap making, food preservation, hearth cooking, apple butter making, and chair bottoming. There will be a music jam session too from 1:00 to 3:00 pm.

One of the highlights of the Mountain Life Festival has been taking place for more than 30 years. The sorghum syrup demonstration, shows how with the use of a horse powered cane mill and a wood-fired cooker syrup is made much the same way it was produced a hundred or more years ago.

For the first time ever the Great Smoky Mountains Association (GSMA) which helps support the park is launching the new Mountain Farm Museum audio tour with free handsets available to visitors and members. There audio tour devices will be distributed for use on a first come first serve basis.

The location where the event take place right of Newfound Gap Road US411 has pretty vistas, a small working farm area with numerous historical structures and a hiking trail along the river which si one of the few places in the GSMNP where you can hike with your dog.

The farm area also contains one of the satellite herds of North American Elk in the Smokies introduced into the area in 2001. Since this is Rut season, male elk are especially active and aggressive so you must keep your distance from them for their safety as well as your own.

The Great Smoky Mountings National Park Is Looking For Volunteers in North Carolina

If you love the Great Smoky Mountains national park, you can give back to the park by becoming a volunteer which is a very rewarding experience.

Presently the GSMNP is looking for volunteers to rove in and around the Oconaluftee Mountain Farm Museum, the Oconaluftee River Trail and along a part of Newfound Gap Road/US441 from now until Nov 9th, 2013.

Volunteers should have knowledge about the park and will be providing information to park visitors such as approaching and disturbing wildlife, littering, historical information and places to go in the park. When necessary, a volunteer will need to assist park rangers with traffic management.

Volunteers will also need to provide visitors with information on viewing elk and other wildlife safely, about the elk reintroduction program in the GSMNP and the elk's role in Great Smoky Mountain National Park.

To participate or for more information, contact the Oconaluftee Visitor Center at (828)497-1904. Volunteers will be required to take an orientation and training session on Friday, April 26 from 10:00 am until 3:00 pm at Oconaluftee.

Great Smoky Mountains National Park Mountain Farm Museums "Evening at the Farm" Event

Nestled next to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center which is 2 miles north of Cherokee, NC entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park there will be a variety of cultural demonstrations and storytelling for the "An Evening on the Farm" event taking place today from 5:00-6:30 pm.

The Mountain Farm Museum is a collection of century-old buildings as a log cabin, barns, gardens, a corn crib and more. The Davis/Queen farmhouse will also be open for visitors and hot cider will be served.

It is a beautiful day, the weather will be fantastic for the event, and the fall colors are great around the farm and sounding mountainsides.

While you are there be sure to visit the new Oconaluftee Visitor Center, which was donated, to the park along with displays courtesy of the Great Smoky Mountain association and the Friends of the Smokies.

Mountain Life Festival at the Mountain Farm Museum in Oconaluftee Area of Great Smoky Mountains national park

In the upper elevations of the Great Smoky Mountains national park there is a touch of color and the heat has broken and even in the valleys the heat of summer has been broken so the annual Mountain Life Festival at the Mountain Farm Museum in Oconaluftee is right around the corner.

Come to the farm museum on Saturday September 19th from 10 am to 4 pm and learn why leather britches are not pants, what carding means when it has nothing to do with ID and what it's like to make your own soap while listening to great Appalachian style music - all for free!

While I am sad to see what for me signals for me the end of summer, this is one annual event in the Great Smoky Mountains national park I have not missed for years.

The location of the Farm Museum is perfect in beautiful green valley alongside the Oconaluftee River surrounded by low mountains that will only have a hint of color just a minute inside the park boundary at Cherokee.

Expect the hands of time turn back more than a hundred years and see interesting live demonstrations by park staff and volunteers such as lye soap making, hearth cooking, food preservation, broom making, quilting, blacksmithing, chair bottoming, along with apple butter and apple cider making. You will get to sample warm cider too!

A special edition this year to help celebrate the parks 75th anniversary is a showcase Appalachian folkways along with historic artifacts and photographs from the national park's collection will also be on display to help pay tribute to the former resident who lived where the park now stands.

Corn husk dolls, hominy making, old time toys and other interesting demonstrations about what home life was 100 years ago in the Great Smoky Mountains will be going on around the farm museum.

You can also learn about the more than 40 types of apple tress the Cherokee and the early settlers grew from Ron and Suzanne Joyner from Big Horse Creek Farm in Ashe County, NC. When I interviewed them in the past they were a wealth of knowledge and they presently have a nursery with more than 300 varieties of custom-grafted heirloom apple trees.

In the farm itself, you can watch an almost 40 year old tradition of the Great Smoky Mountains national park: the making of sorghum syrup. The Appalachian early settlers did not have table sugar and they grew their own sorghum and with a horse-powered cane mill and wood-fired cooker made this important food stable.

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 will be feeding the press which is pictured above and making the sorghum syrup.

Through all the celebrating at the Mountain Farm Museum in Oconaluftee, don't miss the musical entertainment by Marshall Crowe and the Bluegrass Singers.

Bedsides the event, take some time to stroll down the Oconaluftee River hiking trail which is one of the 2 trails in the park that allows well behaved leashed dogs and stroll around the farm with its historic buildings and picturesque landscape.

Saturday marks the annual Mountain Life Festival in the Great Smoky Mountains national park

Visitors this Saturday to the Great Smoky Mountains national park should make sure to stop by the Mountain Farm Museum next to the Oconaluftee visitor center where from 10 am to 4 pm the annual Mountain Life Festival will be taking place.

Here at the Farm Museum visitors will be able to see first hand a tradition that has been taking place for almost 40 years here in the Great Smoky Mountains national park - the sorghum syrup demonstration.

Sorghum syrup was a stable food in the diet of those that inhabited the land that became the Great Smoky Mountains national park. Park staff, students and volunteers from Swain County High School will be making sorghum syrup by using a horse-powered cane mill and wood-fired cooker - the same way it was made more than 100 years ago.

Besides the live Appalachian music performed by Marshall Crowe and the Bluegrass Singers, you will get to see live demonstrations traditional toy making, hearth cooking, hominy making, apple butter, apple cider, soap making. There will also be a display of farm implements, historic photographs from the national park's archives and an artifact collection.

The hominy making demonstration will be made by the Woodard family from Bryson City, NC. Also on hand will be well-known naturalist, author and native plants instructor Ila Hatter from Stecoah, NC and Ron and Suzanne Joyner from Big Horse Creek Farm in Ashe County, NC who maintains more than 300 varieties of custom-grafted heirloom apple trees on their family-owned orchard and nursery.

While you are here at the farm museum stroll around and be immersed in the Appalachian history of the park. Go take a walk along the Oconaluftee River Hiking Trail which is easy and level and one of the best handicapped accessible trails in the park.

All of these events are free to the public. To get to the farm museum take Newfound Gap Road (US 441) just 2 miles north of the Cherokee North Carolina entrance to the Great Smoky Mountains national park.