By Shanais Pelka, Owner/Founder of Seven Springs Farm in Green Mountain, NC.
A year and a half ago, I purchased a beautiful piece of property, complete with a weathered old farm house, rolling hills and emerald green pastures.
Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself as a real life farmer, and never did I imagine I would be all the way in Green Mountain, in the hills of the Appalachian Mountains.
As I moved onto the property, I jumped in with my eyes closed, all the way into the deep end. I immediately purchased goats, not just a couple goats, but a whole herd. We hatched chickens with our incubator, and ended up with 75 of them before I even realized, and way before we were ready for that! I ended up with a billy goat, a handful of ducks, guinea fowl and even some pigs!
Our little farm was growing. As we began to grow our animal family, it became readily apparent to me how many people wandered upon our property in absolute awe and wonder! We began building a few tiny homes, and even converted an old garage into a tiny cafe. People began to come from all over the state, and from neighboring states.
I realized that what seemed like the hardest work for me, cleaning barns, moving soil, endless projects on the farm, became the perfect vacation for a city dweller, or someone dreaming of a "simpler" life. The work that we did every day didn't seem like work at all to those people wandering onto our farm.
A fellow homesteader steered me toward www.agcarolina.com for information about tourism trends. I was really excited to see that farm and agritourism more than tripled from 2002 to 2017 and that sixty percent of travelers interviewed said they value experiences higher even than material possessions. Wow! I’m really excited to dive into this whole area of tourism and we’ve already scheduled a couple of retreats at Seven Springs Farm.
