Kendall Hale, her husband Steve Norris, and two children, moved to Asheville in the early nineties from Boston, Massachusetts. Two years later they purchased an old tobacco farm watered by an underground spring on Sharon Rd in Fairview. For many years Sharon Spring functioned as a small family farm with goats, chickens, cows, guinea hens, honey bees and a large vegetable garden.
In New England, pond/lake swimming was part of their tradition. So to make the frogs at Sharon Spring happy, they constructed a pond in the lower pasture for their family and friends who also skate in the winter, if the ice is solid and frogs are hibernating.
A couple of decades later, older and wiser, in the growing season they still feast on organic vegetables/herbs, blueberries, raspberries, mulberries, and wild black berries. Honey bees are now wild, but their cat, dog, and gold fish are pretty tame.
For over 30 years Kendall and Steve heated their home with both wood and sun. In the early 1980’s, Steve built the first passive solar house in Boston’s inner city. At last in 2020, both their house and Sharon Spring Guest Cabin are now heated with solar panels! Good Bye fossil fuels!
If you are an eco-tourist, environmentalist, or just plain curious, these former City Slickers can share hysterical stories of their early ‘homesteading’ and are happy to discuss wood stove and solar heating, pasture maintenance, pond construction, gardening, tree planting, honey bees, composting and activism. To learn more, visit Radical Passions.
Sharon Spring Cabin 