Considering move to Asheville, NC

Hi Permies!

I've reached one of those strange and beautiful life stages where I feel the need for a fresh start.

The general Asheville area is at the top of my list for potential new homes, and I'm specifically looking for eco-friendly and sustainable building projects to work on. I've read extensively about permaculture, but have shamefully little hands-on experience. I'd like to fix that. I'm open to any projects where I would have ample opportunity to learn, and I'm especially interested in ideas for integrating permaculture into more urban environments.

If anyone has any leads or projects they would like help with, please let me know!

Good luck with the brave and new move ... I passed a few of those milestones and didn't make the changes I'd thought about, lets say it was not a good idea. Next time we're moving, NC comes very close to ticking all our boxes too, but being from the UK its too big a move, what with all our animals, and gear that I've spent years gathering.
We are looking hard at SW France and are waiting eagerly for the right place to show itself to us.
Good luck and good health

I love Asheville; my brother-in-law and his fiance live there, and we visit them a couple of times a year.

My problem with Asheville is that it is SO expensive. Everything is more expensive there -from food to gas to housing. The yuppies started moving in about 5 or 10 years ago and started driving out all the hippies and artists and permies. If you want to live there, expect to pay at least $700 a month for any place decent. If you want to buy, $100k won't go very far, even in the country. A friend of ours just headed up that way to start an organic farm. They have 8 people involved, are an hour from the city, and still pay $1000 a month on the note.

Asheville is great; just beware of the downsides.

The upside to all of those yuppies moving in is that they may be willing to pay the higher prices for organic veggies and free range eggs. The established, older rural folks in that area are unlikely to pay those prices.

True, but if you can't afford to farm there, what good will it do you?
There are plenty of people willing to pay those prices in Nashville, for instance, and land an hour outside of Nashville is still $2200 an acre -not $22000!

Why not consider the upstate of South Carolina? You'll get a longer growing season; short mild winters ; lower cost of living and in Greenville you'd be only 45 minutes from Asheville.

For more than the past few weeks we've been having temps in the 70's and 80's. February was mostly in the high sixties and seventies with a couple days in the 50's.

The entire asheville region, up to and including counties west to the Cherokee reservation and rural mountain regions have been steadily increasing the cost and price of living/moving. Its long been a vacation spot for out-of-staters and summer cabin occupants. Im in central NC and am looking towards the western mountain areas in SE KY, TN, WV or SW VA, NW SC.... VA is strongly getting my vote... cheaper taxes on most things, and a certain stretch NW along the I-77 interstate offers some great tracts of beautiful land.