A UT fan checks out the antiques at Ramsey House Country Market

Fall for me just wouldn’t be the same without a trip to Ramsey House for the annual Country Market.  And since last fall came and went without the annual celebration, I was feeling a bit of withdrawal.  The Country Market celebrates so many things I love about East Tennessee: colorful fall flowers, homemade cobblers, homey crafts of spinning and quilting, and primitive antiques on burlap-covered tables.  It’s fall at its finest, and I was glad I had the morning to myself to meander the fields and talk to the people who make it happen.

Ramsey House, built in 1797.

The focus, of course, is on preservation.  Ramsey House was built in 1797 by Knoxville’s first builder, Thomas Hope, for Francis Alexander Ramsey, one of the founding trustees of Blount College, now the University of Tennessee.  With its signature red trim, this gray stone home boasts some of the prettiest exterior and interior decorative art in East Tennessee.  The Association for the Preservation of Tennessee Antiquities purchased the house and the 101 acres upon which it stands in 1952.

Col. Ramsey (a.k.a. Jerry Griffey) welcomes guests to the Country Market.

It was fitting, of course, that Col. Ramsey (who closely resembles Jerry Griffey, owner of Gentry-Griffey Funeral Home) would greet guests to the property on this pleasant, but rather warm, first day of fall!

Log house to the right of the main house

I parked my car in the field and headed straight for the antiques and crafts booths set up in tents on the grassy expanse between the Visitor Center and Ramsey House hoping I’d see some familiar faces and a few new vendors, too!

Barbara McDonald who specializes in antique quilts had several quality pieces on display as well as bowls, pottery, and a child’s rope-tied bed.

Barbara McDonald — Dealer of antique quilts

I was drawn to this table of red and white mostly kitchen items displayed on a graphic antique quilt in Joe Wolfenbarger’s booth.  Joe owns both Gertie’s Commissary and Whistle Stop Antiques in Cumberland Gap, so we chatted about the influx of tourists to his area now that the leaves are getting ready for their big fall flourish.

Joe Wolfenbarger’s display of red and white items and antique quilt

Hugh and Barbara Webb have been painting and setting up at craft shows for almost 45 years now.

Barbara and Hugh Webb of Knoxville — artists and long-time exhibitors

I own several pins and driftwood pieces, but I couldn’t resist the almost stony face of this yellow tabby!

Barbara Webb’s hand-painted wooden cat

She’s known for drawings of old Knoxville homes as well as paintings of animals. But there was a surprise this time — tiny little birds Barbara fashioned from leftover building materials.

Little birds from The Webb’s Works

Albert and Sandra Davis of Clinton put out collections of thimbles and buttons.  But sometimes Albert just demonstrates how comfortable his old lawn chairs can be!

Ahhhhh. The joy of old lawn furniture!

Roger Farneth of Louisville brought his hand-carved canes and walking sticks as well as his best asset and the “brains of this outfit”:  his wife Madilyn.  Roger agreed to come out into the sunshine to hold his “food chain” walking stick bearing a snake coiled to attack!

Roger and Madilyn Farneth of Louisville brought hand-carved canes and walking sticks along with jams, jellies, noodles, peanut butter, pickles, and chow chow.

Under the name of Paw Paws Woodturnings, Joe White of Friendsville hand-turns bowls and vases of must-touch woods that I dearly love.  Black cloth contrasted the grains and colorations of the various types of wood.

Joe White hand-turns bowls of wood that beg to be touched!

Craftspeople set up a bit closer to Ramsey House eagerly shared their love of what they make from what they find.

One of the outbuildings on the Ramsey House property

Gloria Felter of Oak Ridge had come upon a stash of scraps last January and set about to make a Log Cabin lap quilt with a tiny inset piece featuring – would you believe? – Elvis!

Gloria Felter uses a hoop for the hand-quilting process.

Linda Avery and Lalena Stewart take pride in making authentic quilts under the name Tennessee Quiltworks.  They’ll be back for the October 20th Second Annual Quilt Show right here at Ramsey House —  a sight to behold, they said, since so many quilts hang gracefully on clothes lines for viewing on the grounds. (Put that one on your calendar!)

Lalena Stewart and Linda Avery of Tennessee Quiltworks

Nancy, a spinner since 2007, gave a demonstration using the vermillion piece she was spinning of cotswold and mohair. Nancy is an advocate for Pick Tennessee Products, noting that the wool comes from sheep in Tennessee.

Spinning cotswold and mohair to make yarn for a shawl.

A drying rack of lovely yarns hanging in the sunshine.

Right behind her was Mark who researches and faithfully replicates powder horns with turned wood tops.  It’s not easy, I gathered. Mark described how he heats up the irregularly shaped horn and molds it on a wooden form prior to fitting it with the top.  Many, many steps, but worth it when you see the beauty of true craftmanship.

Mark holds powder horns that he shapes using heat and a wooden cone.

Inside the Visitor Center were appraisers offering their services for a mere $5.00 donation.  Darryl Mackley, who owns Mackley and Company in Knoxville, and Selma Burgin stood ready to evaluate jewelry.

Darryl Mackley and Selma Burgin, jewelry appraisers

Joe Rosson, News-Sentinel columnist who answers readers’ questions each week, was on hand to appraise antiques.  We talked a bit about the state of antique collecting and wondered if the next generation feels as strongly as we do about keeping family pieces in the family.  We didn’t have any answers, but we did do some head shaking and even more wondering!

Joe Rosson, columnist and appraiser, waits for his next customer.

Autographing her books was Dr. Lin Stepp, who writes modern fiction set in the Smoky Mountains with each book set in a different locale: The Foster Girls — Wear’s Valley; Tell Me About Orchard Hollow — Townsend; For Six Good Reasons — Greenbrier, and Delia’s Place — Gatlinburg. Her book covers feature paintings by celebrated artist, Jim Gray, and Dolly Parton has given her stamp of approval to someone she says “believes in all the things that I do.”

Delia’s Place, a modern-day novel set in Gatlinburg, by Lin Stepp.

Lin’s husband J. L. has a book coming out Spring 2013 outlining easy hikes anyone can enjoy:  The Afternoon Hiker: A Guide to Casual Miles in the Great Smoky Mountains. Click here to read more about their publications. Click here for Lin’s books on Amazon.

J. L. and Lin Stepp autograph books outside the Visitor’s Center.

In another area, flowers and farm goods beckoned.  Carefully arranged mums, cuttings of Sweet Annie, paper-wrapped bouquets of dried lavender, and white and orange pumpkins artfully positioned on hay bales added a fall touch to the Ramsey House booth.

Pumpkins, cornshocks, and mums for a lovely fall setting.

Sylvia looks over the osage orange for sale in the Ramsey House booth.

Stuart and Martha of Strong Stock Farm brought their signature grass-fed beef to their artfully arranged booth flanked by white-blooming hydrangeas and fall foliage.

Stuart and Martha talked to me about where they market their grass-fed beef.

In the children’s booth, little Kendall waited patiently for Mickey, the volunteer tattoo artist, to peel off the stencil and reveal a much-anticipated glittery heart.

Kendall waits for step two of her glitter tattoo!

And in the background, I heard the bluegrass stains of an old-time string band, Boogertown Gap.

Musicians from Boogertown Gap

By this time, I had worked up an appetite for either the beans and cornbread or the bar-b-que served by Janet Oakes, Charlotte Brown, and Miriam Anderson, three Ramsey House board members.  I chose the bar-b-que smoked by John Wallace whose wife Connie is also on the board.

Janet Oakes, Charlotte Brown, and Miriam Anderson serve bar-b-que for lunch.

Smoked and pulled bar-b-que by John Wallace was my choice for lunch!

You’d think that would be enough, but not so.  Two men had piled the goodness of dough and the richness of peaches into a black kettle that sat simmering over hot coals for almost half a day.  When I got there, they scooped out the steaming goodness into a cup, topped it with homemade ice cream, and watched me smile!

Dessert was a big scoop of peach cobbler right from the black cast iron pot!

Full and oh-so-happy, I joined Dr. Charles Faulkner for my last act of the day — a tour of Ramsey House!

Dr. Faulkner chats with another visitor about the architecture of Ramsey House.

Fall festivals in East Tennessee showcase the very best in area crafts, food, and the heritage of a land we love.  But you don’t have to wait until next year’s Country Market to visit Ramsey House.  It’s open year round Wednesday through Saturday.

Hoping Ramsey House has a Country Market every year!

You can have that Country Market experience every time you walk across the grounds or peer into the rooms or sit a spell on a bench and just imagine what life was like back then.

It was good then . . . and it’s still good now.

Lovely view of Ramsey House with begonias in bloom.

Ramsey House

2614 Thorngrove Pike

Knoxville, TN 37914

865.546.0745

info@ramseyhouse.org

Leave me a comment about a fall festival you’ve attended or you’ve got on your to-do list. Or just let me know what your favorite part of a country market is for you!  Thanks for reading!

It doesn’t seem like Cooper’s has changed much since it was Burrows’s Service Station — a combination grocery and gas station with family living quarters on the second floor. Theron Burrows built it in 1937 when U. S. Hwy. 521 was finished from Georgetown to Manning, adding this motto: We serve the needs of the neighborhood. I bet they did because they still do. Burrows’s sold farm fresh produce (as we call it today) as well as staple goods, fresh meat, hardware, farm supplies, even automotive parts.

After Burrows died, his son-in-law George Cooper bought the business, and now second- and third-generation employees run the business for second- and third-generation customers! They’re also kind enough (employees and customers) to talk to us pass-through beach folks who ask lots of questions about foods we don’t recognize.

For us, Cooper’s is kind of an educational experience, peeling back time to a way-back-when experience of a wood-floor, packed-to-the-ceiling, sit-a-spell place where service is just as important as the goods you buy out of a case.

We try to listen in on conversations, like this one between a man and his “little ‘un” on what you do with ham chunks.  Afterwards, of course, we had to have a bag of ‘em to season beans and field peas.

You can also get what my Mom used to call rat trap cheese but most of the grocery stores in Knoxville label it hoop cheese.  No matter what you call it, we love it.  We’ve even been known to unwrap the white paper wrapping while driving down the highway, pinch off a chunk o’ cheese, and eat it with plain ol’ saltine crackers!  Red neck hors d’oeuvres, I suppose!

Mama called it Rat Trap Cheese, but I guess it’s just Hoop Cheese to us city folks!

We always purchase a couple of pounds of thick bacon and some hand-made fresh sausage. Sometimes we cut the sausage into chunks for Low Country Boil, but mostly we just grill the links, cut them into small rounds, and dip ‘em into spicy mustard for a pre-dinner treat. (Especially if everyone’s gathered round the kitchen waiting for a big pot of boiled shrimp to come off the stove!)

It just wouldn’t be a beach trip, though, if we didn’t have at least one or two slices of country ham — “lightly salted and peppered just right,” according to the business card of current owner Russell Cooper. We watched as Jay Woodard grabbed hold of a big ham and commenced to put the business end of a saw to it.  Made it even more special that it was sliced fresh and wrapped in that white paper just for us.

Jay Woodard hand slices Cooper’s country ham.

Now, I must admit, there are some things that I just don’t eat.  Haven’t gotten my nerve up, I guess.  When I asked one of the guys back behind the counter what this loaf lookin’ thing was, he answered souse. And as proud as he could be, he said it was made with pig parts like shoulder, ears, feet, knuckles . . .  Maybe some day, but not yet, I said to myself.

Not for me . . . souse!

Mr. Cooper said his sons help out in the store, especially on Saturdays when so many of us “foreigners” travel to and fro.  Like William here who is weighing and pricing that country ham Mr. Woodard just cut.

At the check-out, Russell Cooper himself bags your purchases and tallies your bill.  He even asks you if you want some boiled peanuts or a slice of mighty fine pound cake for the road.

Russell Cooper, owner of Cooper’s Country Store

Well, of course we did, knowing we would regret it later if we didn’t succumb to the goodness at hand.

Bags of boiled South Carolina peanuts snug up to slices of homemade pound cake. In back, a tub full of cracklin’s.

We did, however, pass on the cast iron pots, t-shirts, and other non-pork goods.  We’ll be back again next year, and there’s no tellin’ what we’ll need the next time around!

Can’t get to Cooper’s Country Store?  Mr. Cooper says he ships all over the country — ham chunks . . . country ham . . . sausage . . . well maybe some souse, too, if you’ve a mind to eat that stuff!

If you’re driving down U. S. Hwy. 521, look for the Cooper’s Country Store signs or just put Salters, South Carolina, in your GPS.  It’s somewhere between Andrews and Manning, but you can’t miss it!

Cooper’s Country Store

6945 U. S. Hwy. 521

Salters, SC 29590

843.387.5772

Click here for more comments about Cooper’s (I didn’t know they sold fried chicken skins ’til I read this!) on the South Carolina Information Highway (SCIWAY) page.

Click here to “Like” Cooper’s Country Store on Facebook.

And please check back.  I’ve got several more great beach reads from our travels to share with you!

Now that I’ve seen the website for Curate and read about this rave-about place for fine dining, I don’t know how I could have almost walked past without even knowing about this unique new restaurant.

It was all quite accidental. My husband and I were meandering down Biltmore Avenue (Asheville, NC) in search of art galleries when we spied a pig in a window!  And then an interesting name — Curate – with the pronunciation prominently displayed! I said, Let’s go in there for just a minute – OK? - to see if we want to eat here tonight.

And that’s when we saw Tyler (immediately, he introduced himself) carving Jamon Iberico!

Tyler began telling us about this delicacy —  acorn fattened Spanish ham — and other menu items we could order from the restaurant  he so obviously loves!

The finest Spanish ham served at Curate

He said Chef Katie Button (Cornell graduate, master’s from L’Ecole Centrale in Paris) abandoned her major (chemical and biomolecular engineering), followed her passion for cooking, and eventually became a service manager at Ferran Adria’s famous restaurant in Spain –  El Bulli! With the support of her parents and fiancé, she opened this now award-winning restaurant in Asheville — naming it Curate, meaning “cure yourself.” You can come here and allow others to take care of you so that you, in turn, feel cared for.  And it works.  On all levels.

On the window at Curate

We immediately asked for a reservation only to be told that they were booked nights in advance.  We could take a chance at getting seated at the bar — which is where we landed that very night –  a front row seat watching masterful preparations in the open kitchen and listening to the banter between servers and customers!

Open kitchen at Curate as seen from the bar.

It’s a tapas bar — you order and share small plates. Brown paper menus greet you, accompanied by a sleeve of silverware and list of nuestros vinos (their selected Spanish wines).

Menu, silverware, and wine list

We made friends with people on either side.  The couple to our right were sharing Ensalada de Tomate Yatun – a Kumato tomato salad with preserved Spanish Bonito del Norte tuna and black olives, topped with greens from Jolley Farms! Wow!

Kumato tomato salad with Bonito tuna and Jolley Farms greens

Mary Hill, to our left, suggested we start with what we came for: the Tabla de Jamon — a selection of three cured hams.

A Curate customer who knew what to order!

And yes, we could tell the difference once we tasted each one that this affable server, Daniel, presented.  From left to right: Jamon Serrano Fermin (dry cured Spanish ham); Jamon Iberico Fermin (cured ham from black-footed Iberico pigs); and the one that brought us in as Tyler was shaving it at the counter — Jamon Iberico de Bellota (the top shoulder cut from acorn fattened free-range pigs).

Daniel knows ham – and how to talk to curious customers!

While we waited for our other plates, I snapped a picture of Tabla Dequesos (Spanish cheeses) ready to serve.

Two platters of Spanish cheeses

And that’s when I sighted my favorite “junker,” Mike Wolfe of American Pickers, one of the shows I watch on the History Channel! It was all I could do to leave him alone to enjoy his dinner at Curate without being hounded by a gushy fan! I resorted to snapping this picture from across the room.

Celebrity Sighting: Mike Wolfe from American Pickers!

He’s not the only famous person who’s visited Curate.  You can read about Anthony Bourdain’s fall 2011 visit reported by the Asheville Citizen Times here.

Meanwhile, our small plates arrived, and I was able to focus on presentation AND interesting taste!

First, Berenjenas la Taberna (fried eggplant drizzled in Wild Mountain Apiaries honey) — fork tender with just a hint of sweetness . . .

Fried eggplant drizzled in Wild Mountain Apiaries honey!

followed by Setas al Jerez (mushrooms sauteed in olive oil with a hint of sherry) . . .

Selected mushrooms sauteed in olive oil!

and finally, according to the menu, the “number one tapa in Asheville”: Gambas al Ajillo (sauteed shrimp and sliced garlic)!

Sauteed shrimp and sliced garlic!

We had no room for Esparragos Blancos (white asparagus tossed in a lemon tarragon vinaigrette), but watching the preparation of this dish qualified as entertainment — several steps with a voila! ending.

Artful presentation: white asparagus tossed in lemon tarragon vinaigrette!

Carefully, chefs prepared desserts like these artfully drizzled beauties that we saw from our stools at the bar. (It’s fun looking over chef shoulders!)

Preparing fine desserts

Beautiful  topping!

And, then . . . tah-dah! Tyler surprised us by showing off one of their most intensely prepared desserts — an almost-transparent Buenuelo to top anything we’d ever seen! By now, we were friends, you know, and he wanted to show us everything in this classy eatery!

We’re definitely not among the first to be enamoured of Curate‘s cuisine and service. This relatively new-to-Asheville restaurant has won the Best of WNC Top Chef Award and mention in Southern Living magazine as a go-to destination!

Top Chef Award for Katie Button in the Best of WNC

But for BIG TASTE on small plates, ya gotta go there yourself!

Eating Spanish tapas just may cure yourself!

Curate

11 Biltmore Avenue

Asheville, NC 28801

828.239.2946

www.curatetapasbar.com

<a href=”http://www.urbanspoon.com/r/82/1577446/restaurant/Curate-Asheville”><img alt=”Cúrate on Urbanspoon” src=”http://www.urbanspoon.com/b/link/1577446/minilink.gif” style=”border:none;padding:0px;width:130px;height:36px” /></a>

If you want to read about another Asheville restaurant we loved, check out Tupelo’s a Honey at http://ohtheplaceswesee.com/2012/05/30/tupelos-a-honey/