Steadin' out in W. NC

Hello to all.  Proud dad of 3 here out in the mountains of W.NC.  We've been building our homestead little by little going on 8 yrs now.  Focused on a diverse amount of fruit trees, nut trees, veggies,  outdoor mushroom production, chinese herb gardens, not-chinese herb gardens , tea., eggs (chickens + ducks), bluegill ponds and dairy sheep.   We don't follow any system dogmatically but most influenced by silvopasturing concepts.  Year by year the system gets a little more resilient and regenerating with less $ inputs .. although there's definitely still some external inputs.      There's already so much great homesteading content out there but feel like everyone has at least a few unique variations worth sharing.  Hope to share what we can.   God bless all.  

"Better is a dinner of herbs where love is than a fattened ox and hatred with it. " Proverbs 15:17

~ George

Welcome to permies!

Your place sounds great!  Got any pictures to share?  Acreage?

hi george! where in the wnc mountains are you? i’m outside of marshall in madison co. sounds like you’ve got some good stuff going on!

Thanks for everyone's welcomes.  I didn't realize that people had responded to the post. Getting use to permies. It seems pretty active in here which is great.    

@greg  it's real nice around marshall,  i'm out on the other side by bat cave, NC if you know that.
@gray adding some pictures is a good idea.  Our property here is only 3 acres!  But it's a nice mix of 1/2 woodland 1/2 pasture(ish).  It's hilly but soil and water quality is amazing. Even working it for > 7 years there are still many spots under-utilized.  

Welcome! We're also in WNC. Really cool place to homestead or just live in general. I would love to know if any particular vegetable varieties or fruit trees that have done exceptionally well for you. For us, it would be greasy beans and North Georgia candy roaster squash. Also pleasantly surprised with goumi berry. Ramps, cucumbers, mushrooms, and garlic always seem to do amazing for us as well. We got some cool stuff from Joe Hollis several years back as well, not all of it grew, but he was on to something with Chinese herbs and our climatic conditions being similar.

I pondered growing goumu before.  Good to know it's growing well for you.   We end up getting a ton of rain every year so moisture related diseases and moisture loving pests are usually the biggest issue.     Learned the hard way how important varieties are on fruit trees.    We have quite a few hazelnut trees that all produce very well.   The "mars" variety of grape seems to grow well.  "neptune" tomatoe also resisting disease well.    For beans "jacob's cattle" always produces well.   "595" peas resist mildew the longest.    most japanese turnips grow great.   We push a lot of stuff to it's limit here - tea, apricots, yuzu,etc

Joe Hollis is amazing, got my wild chrysanthemum starts from him way back.   We grow a lot of "jie geng" (balloon flower) for herb here.  A few other herbs in less quantity seem to be growing well here. We've had a lot of success with oyster mushrooms, especially golden, on tulip poplar which is in abundance.  Nice to meet you.