Hello Mary!
Black Mountain is an awesome place! I lived in Asheville for 5 years, but have spent a good bit of time in Black Mountain. I live in Charlotte right now, but would be happy to swing by when I am up that way. As someone pointed out you have Earth Haven right in the same town, which represents one of the strongest intentional communities in the US and also is a think tank in terms of permaculture. In terms of permaculture in NC Earth Haven is an amazing resource. The only think about our climate here is the humidity, it can be awful at times and it does get hot here too. The other thing you will need to content with is our local red clay.
Red Clay at first seems difficult to work with, but it is high in nutrient and minerals because they are negatively charged particles and attract important elements. The down side to it is that water infiltration is really difficult and ability to hard pan so easily if it dries out when exposed. If you do an initial till, just realize that it will make clods and then they dry out into hard balls if you don't amend it heavily right away.
The other note is that clay particles have an enormous amount of surface area. In a table spoon of clay, you have the surface area equivalent of a football field... Literally. What does this mean? When you amend soils you can put in a dump truck of
compost into a large bed and it barley looks any different. It almost looks like your compost just disappears. The name of the game is to get as much mass in between those clay particles as possible. I typically try to kick start things with a ton of compost and Peat Moss (or coconut coir for a more sustainable option). From there I will do cover crops and crop and drop along the way. I will broad fork as needed to make sure there isn't any hard pan and to improve water infiltration.
So when you get here and start to set up your beds, don't be sparring with the compost, go all in.
