Amber Weaver, the city of Asheville’s chief sustainability officer, is working ahead of time. She’s working with the year 2035 in mind, when the Buncombe County landfill will be at capacity, and toward 2050, when the city has promised to reduce its carbon footprint by 80 percent. However, with new hotels on the horizon and […]
Despite the gray skies and blustery mountain winds that cloaked the day on Saturday, Sept. 26, the city’s first Venture Local Fair put the vibrant colors of Asheville’s local business community on display.
The massive earthquake that rattled Nepal in April left entire villages flattened and hundreds of thousand of people homeless. But here in Asheville, a team of natural builders believe they can help by teaching locals how to build superadobe domes.
Artists in Asheville are turning to the earth beneath their own feet to fuel their artistic expression. They are alchemists who can blend clay with egg whites and crushed stone to make paint, and they are advocates for the land with which they interact.
What we often cull, throw away or compost can be the building blocks for new recipes, offering an infusion of flavor to many meals to come. And something deeper happens when we repurpose our scraps: a change of perspective.
Recent relaxing of city restrictions mean Asheville is “chickening” like never before. But many would be chicken-keeepers don’t realize the birds stop producing eggs early in their life, yet still require care and attention to survive. As the interest in backyard chicken keeping raises so do the number of abandoned and neglected animals.
From the Get It! Guide: John, a self-described “poster child for carnivores,” may seem like an odd match for Ann, a devoted vegan. But Ann’s beliefs inspired a change in John’s lifestyle — one that John says saved his life.
Cherokee is a community in flux. Decadeslong high poverty and unemployment rates are beginning to decline, but access to healthy food remains limited and cultural values seem to be changing. “It’s Western civilization versus our traditional Cherokee ways,” say community leaders. But community efforts are using gardens to reconnect the Cherokee people to local food, health and a collective heritage defined by knowledge of the earth.
From the Get It! Guide: A close look at the trash collected in Asheville was shocking — 26 percent of our waste is compostable matter, 18 percent is recyclable and 56 percent is true waste, fit only for the landfill. With the city alone producing over 22,000 tons of trash a year, what is the cost of all that waste. And what is it going to take for us to reduce it?
From the Get It! Guide: Ever doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world? Well, according to Bee City USA founder Phyllis Stiles, the evidence of our power to change our environment for the better is literally (buzzing) all around us.
Apitherapy — or bee therapy — is considered more anecdotal than scientific by much of the medical community. But local practitioners say bees can have a dramatic effect on healing — from the treatment of arthritis to recovery from trauma.
Judy Major aims to create a nonprofit community birth center in Asheville, close to a hospital but free-standing, a place where certified nurse midwives can offer care to all women in the community who want an out-of-hospital birth experience.
As the sun dipped behind a mountain ridge on Sunday, Nov. 2, the Asheville Friends Meeting House began to fill with people, with conversation and with the smell of roasted roots and herbs; savory lentils; sweet, cooked dates and homemade macaroni. Every dish in the room, however, had one thing in common: All were completely free of animal products.
For the Alayo Dance Company of San Francisco, C.A., choreography is used to communicate an Afro-Cuban narrative. Alayo’s work is especially dynamic because it draws from many styles and techniques, blending Afro-Cuban folkloric, modern and popular/contemporary Cuban dance into one.
The root cause of many chronic health issues, says local acupunturist and herbalist Jessica Godino, boils down to stress (and far too much of it at that).
Can you imagine Asheville’s sustainable future? Forty years from now, walking down the streets, what do you see? What are you wearing? What are you eating? What do you hear? What do you smell? What might Asheville’s most positive potential feel like? Can you imagine it?
At the 10th annual Southeast Wise Women Herbal Conference, held from Oct. 10th through Oct. 12 on the beautiful grounds of Lake Eden in Black Mountain, 1,100 women gathered to study and celebrate. The conference is a three-day fall immersion, where women from across the country come together to study herbal medicine.
At the farm-to-table Feast hosted on Monday, Sept. 29, a hundred guests gathered at The Hub in West Asheville. Feast, inspired and organized by Rebecca Friedman, owner of Farmer’s Daughter Catering, was an invite-only occasion designed to propel the local, organic-food movement forward.
Not only do seeds carry the genetic makeup of their parent plants — traits carefully selected by farmers throughout human history — they are also powerfully symbolic, representing regional food security, self-sufficiency, cultural heritage and independence. But in order to pass down a seed to the next generation, it must be sown and it must be saved.
Money will buy you nothing at the Asheville Food Swap. The goal and mission of the food swap, as stated on the group’s website, is to “create an outlet for sharing surplus homemade or homegrown food while offering an alternative to store-bought items, helping swappers eat locally, sustainable and affordably.
