Join Apple Hill Farm as they celebrate National Alpaca Farm Days September 28 and 29! For $5 a person (ages 4 and up), all guests will be able to take a self-guided walk around the orchard to see alpacas, goats, donkeys, and llamas. Tour guides will be on hand to answer questions. All visitors to the farm will pay the $5 admission to visit for the weekend.
For those who want to learn more and see all the residents on the farm, Apple Hill Farm will offer their regular guided walking tours at 11 am and 2 pm on both Saturday and Sunday. Tours are $12 for adults, $7 for children ages 4 through 10, and free for children 3 and under.
Apple Hill Farm is excited to join with alpaca farms all across America as they welcome visitors of all ages to meet the alpacas and learn about the alpaca lifestyle. Even if you aren’t interested in raising alpacas, National Alpaca Farm Days is a great way to spend the day out in the fresh air with the entire family.
Magnificent mountain views, wooded footpaths, and landscaped gardens provide the ultimate picturesque setting for Apple Hill Farm’s animals and visitors. Apple Hill Farm is home to alpacas, goats, donkeys, chickens, dogs and more. Don’t forget their extensive supply of alpaca yarn in their farm store! Can’t make it out these dates? They’re open to visitors all year long!
Spring has come to the mountains and one after another the plants have bloomed. The crocus started early, followed by daffodils, soon after that were the apple trees and this week the rhododendron have taken front stage. Yellow azaleas are just beginning to show while the lilacs prepare to bloom. After a long slow winter, spring seems too fast. I want each bloom to stay longer.
For us at the farm is also the time of mothering. We have 2-week old chicks peeping in the barn. Already their feathers are starting to come in, creating new designs and colors. Sugie, an angora goat, gave birth earlier this week to a gorgeous grey and white male, Nugget. This is her last, as she’s at the age where it is kindest to let her retire. For the first time, she needed help during the birth. For a few days we helped give Nugget a strong start by milking her and bottle feeding him. He is now nursing from Sugie all on his own. Boy, are we grateful!
Meanwhile, we are anxiously checking and waiting on our other pregnant goats (Lucy, Wendy, and Gretel) to give birth. All three are young and experienced Nannies. And if that is not enough to send us all into a fit of baby goat bliss, Bonnie, our Great Pyrenees, is due with puppies in the next week. There is nothing cuter than fluffy white puppies.
It is an honor and continued source amazement to be a part of the birth of animals. It never ceases to take my breath away. Life creating new life in its own time and way. Our newly hatched eggs took only 21 days to incubate, Bonnie will be pregnant for just 8 weeks before she gives birth and the goats gestate for 5 months before their kids are born.
In the midst of this season, I am very aware of time. As the waiting for labor stretches the minutes long, the parade of blooms speed up the days and in the moments of witnessing birth, time stands still. Life is full of wonder.
Wishing you a happy spring and Mother’s Day, Lee Rankin
Writer, founder of Apple Hill Farm, & unapologetic entrepreneur
PS. If you don’t already follow us on Facebook or Instagram … now is good time to join in. We promise we will fill your feed with cute baby pictures!
Agritourism Works!
Saturday, May 4 we kicked off our class and event season with our Agritourism Works! Workshop. We really enjoyed meeting all of our participants and helping them work through the beginning stages of planning or improving their agritourism farm. Are you interested in opening your farm to visitors?
We will be hosting another workshop this fall!
-A down and dirty look at the nuts and bolts of Agritourism
-A behind-the-scenes tour of Apple Hill Farm
-The 4 Keys to starting and running an Agritourism farm
-Interactive workshop time to create or refine your farm vision
Bees Wrap Food Wrap is our new favorite product!
The natural alternative to plastic wrap for food storage – because good food deserves good care.
Wrap cheese, half a lemon, a crusty loaf of bread, and fruits and vegetables. Cover a bowl, or pack a snack for your next adventure.
Made with organic cotton, beeswax, organic jojoba oil, and tree resin. Bee’s Wrap is washable, reusable and compostable.
Summer Tour & Store Hours (mid-May to mid-October)
Tours at 2 pm Daily, 11 am Saturday Morning
Store open 10 to 4 Monday to Saturday; 12 to 4 on Sunday
Summer Events (through end of July)
May 18: Apple Hill Farm Open House 10am-4pm
Tours on the hour from starting at 11am to 2pm
May 25: Memorial Day Weekend
Saturday, May 25 tours at 11am, 12:30pm & 2pm
Sunday, May 26 tours at 12:30pm & 2 pm.
June 1: Alpaca Shearing Day Open House 10am-1pm
$5 for adults, ages 11 & up. Ages 10 &; under are free.
June 8: Knitting with the Alpacas 10am-12pm
June 15: Photo Tour 9am-11am
July 6: Photo Tour 9am-11am
July 13: Knitting with the Alpacas10am-12pm
July 20: Photo Tour 9am-11am
From Cooking Up A Storm by Jane Lee Rankin
Yield: One 8×8-inch pan
400° Oven
Ingredients:
1 cup of all-purpose flour
2 cups of sugar
2 cups of milk
4 eggs, separated
1/2 cup of butter
1 tablespoon of vanilla extract
1 (12-ounce) package of vanilla wafers
4 large bananas
1/2 cup of sugar
Method for pudding:
Sift the flour and 2 cups sugar into a medium-sized pan.
Add the milk a little at a time, stirring until all the ingredients are well combined.
Beat the egg yolks, add to pan and mix.
Add the butter (in stick form) and cook over low to medium heat, stirring constantly and making sure the mixture does not stick around the edges.
Soon after the butter has melted, the pudding will begin to thicken. Continue to stir over medium heat until it gets to pudding consistency.
Remove from heat and stir in vanilla extract.
Method for meringue:
Beat the egg whites on medium speed until they are very foamy. Beat at high speed, pausing to add the sugar one tablespoon at a time until the mixture forms a peak.
Layer the bottom of an 8×8- inch glass or aluminum pan with some of the vanilla wafers.
Slice 2 bananas thin and layer over the vanilla wafers
Pour half the pudding over the bananas.
Make another layer of vanilla wafers, banana slices, and pudding and line the edge of the pan with the last of the vanilla wafers.
Spoon the meringue on top. Spread to outer edges and form decorative peaks.
Bake on top rack at 400° for about 4 minutes, until the meringue starts to turn golden brown. Watch carefully and rotate the pudding dish halfway through browning.
Join us for a fun and engaging day on our successful Agritourism Farm!
-A down and dirty look at the nuts and bolts of Agritourism
-A behind-the-scenes tour of Apple Hill Farm
-The 4 Keys to starting and running an Agritourism farm
-Interactive workshop time to create or refine your farm vision
This full-day workshop is just $75, lunch included!
The workshop will be from 9:30 am until 4:00 pm on Saturday, May 4, 2019. Joins us early (9 am) for coffee with the alpacas before we get started!
In 2018, Apple Hill Farm lead over 700 tours and welcomed over 6,000 visitors. We are excited to share our expertise with you – whether you already have an active agritourism farm or are just simply dreaming of the possibilities.
Need or want more help after the workshop is over? We also offer consulting to help you with your journey!
For Apple Hill Farm, 2018 was a year full of challenges along with great success. We said tearful goodbyes to a few animals and our hearts were opened again by new ones. Mother nature kept us on our toes through major flooding to the area in May followed by Hurricane Florence in September and Hurricane Michael in October. We struggled through our Christmas Event with snow and rain, punctuated with 2 feet of snow on December 9th. Luckily, Will came home and we used snowshoes to get to the barns and all the animals patiently waited for “room service” and “housekeeping”.
In early January we took Meadow Lilly, an 18-year-old alpaca, to the University of Tennessee along with July Moon as her ‘buddy’. Meadow Lilly came to the farm in 2004 with Billy as a 4-month-old cria at her side. She is also mother to Meadow Linny and Meadow Lark. Though Meadow Lilly’s spirit wanted to survive, her body said no. With July Moon and I at her side, we said goodbye.
In November of 2017, Mr. Pickles, our famous micro Julian pig, had surgery to remove bladder stones. He was one grumpy pig before and after the surgery but recovered nicely. We heaved a big sigh of relief. Then in June of last year, Mr. Pickles took a quick turn for the worse and we headed back to the University of Tennessee. The veterinarians confirmed that once again his bladder was blocked with stones, so we made the difficult decision to say goodbye and end any suffering.
As our loudest personality at the main barn, his loss was a hard one to get over. Snickers, the cat who was his friend and roommate, took it especially hard and disappeared for most of the summer.
There was much good mixed in with the sad. In the spring Gretel, Sylvie, Lucy, Wendy, and Sugie, our Angora goats, gave birth and we welcomed 7 adorable new goat kids to the farm family. Shortly after that, we also added our newest Guardian Angel, Theo, and helped find homes for two of his littermates.
Mid-May marked the true beginning of our summer busy season and we were open and leading tours 7 days a week. Though the weather continued to be wet, people came with raincoats and umbrellas for their tours!
In, August we received a call about a litter of six two-month-old pigs needing rehoming. There were two girls and four boys. We jumped in as the home for the two girls and took on finding homes for the boys (and we were successful!). We named the two girls Laverne and Shirley.
They hadn’t been handled much, so the first night here at the farm, I sat on the stall floor and read to them. Just as I was about to finish reading, I heard a soft meow from the top of the stall wall. It was Snickers! She had come back to be their roommate.
Right before Thanksgiving we had an ice storm and received another call from a friend who raises Zebus. Zebus are miniature cows out of the Brahmin line of cows and are known for their shoulder hump and skin that hangs down under the neck. He had saved a frozen five-week-old calf and wondered if we could help. Within days we were tending to a 4-year-old Zebu we named Zara and her 25-pound calf we named Zeke. We set up a stall in the barn with a source of heat to keep Zeke warm.
Out of concern that Zara didn’t have enough milk, we started bottle feeding with supplemental milk. What started as an aerobic exercise trying to catch him and get him to eat, is now only aerobic on the catch and then a long hamstring stretch as we bend over Zeke holding a bottle.
Zara comes and helps with long licks of her sandpaper tongue…licks for both Zeke and our hands, face, and hair. On warm days, they are going out into the field with the goats and Zeke now weighs almost 40 pounds. Zeke and Zara were the bezt Chriztmaz giftz thiz year!
To top everything off, we also got a lot of unexpected but wonderful press coverage this year! We landed on the pages of Our State magazine in October as part of an article about Banner Elk. This was a highlight of the year for us as it was a goal we have had for years.
In November, we got a call from ESPN before the Sunbelt Championship at Appalachian State and they aired video of the farm during a nationally televised game!! At the request of ESPN, we set up a screen with the game playing live and took a photo of the alpacas watching. It aired in the 3rd quarter of the game as the Apple Hill Farm Game Watch.
And as if that wasn’t enough, a video of our horses, Hannah and Luna, playing in The Big Snow went viral on our Facebook page. It was seen by over 186 thousand people and received 18 thousand reactions. Another exciting milestone for ‘the little farm that could’ at the top of the mountain and the end of the gravel road
We closed the year filled with love and gratitude for our sweet animals, our amazing farm team and you -our family of fans. Apple Hill Farm is the connection between the animals, the team, and you. We look forward to another year of sharing this beautiful mountaintop farm filled with captivating animals through tours and events here on the farm as well as through our pictures and videos on social media.
From our family to yours, we wish you a happy 2019.
Let’s stay in touch, Lee Rankin
Writer, founder of Apple Hill Farm, & unapologetic entrepreneur
The holiday season can be so overwhelming – family gatherings, last minute gift shopping, and hectic work schedules. It’s easy to feel disconnected from your family and friends in the midst of this season. Take a break from the Holiday Hurry and get back in touch with what’s real by taking a tour of our farm.
Join us for a tour of our working alpaca farm where you can meet our alpacas, llamas, goats, donkeys, chickens, and more! After your tour, stop by our farm store to warm up with some homemade hot chocolate while you browse our farm store. You can even pick up a hand-tied wreath or locally grown tabletop tree.
Our farm store is open Wednesday through Sunday from 10 am to 4 pm for all your gift shopping needs. The Apple Hill Farm Store has been turned into a one-of-a-kind Christmas store with a wide selection of alpaca yarn, socks, scarves, blankets, and teddy bears, as well as a unique collection of locally made gifts and Christmas items for the people on your list.
Friday, November 16 through Sunday, December 9, we will be offering tours of our farm on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays from 10 am to 4 pm. The tours leave about every half hour.
We are also offering our regular public tour at 2 pm on Wednesdays and Thursdays, for those of you who can’t come by on the weekend. We do not have cookies, hot chocolate, and cider available on Wednesday and Thursday. We are closed Thanksgiving day.
Tours are $12 for adults and $7 for children ages 4 – 10. Children 3 and under are free! The tour is a guided walking tour of the farm and is about 45 minutes in length.
We are also partnering with our neighbors, Spirit Ride Therapeutic Riding Center, to bring our farm friends Pony Rides on Saturday, November 24 and Saturday, December 1! These pony rides are just $10, and all the proceeds go to help Spirit Ride continue to provide children with special needs the opportunity to learn, grow and strive to become their ideal selves through equine related therapeutic and educational activities.
Please fill out the form below and Lee will be in touch.
