The Mountain Farm Museum is indeed a collection of 19th century relics, but there’s nothing stuffy about this open air museum. Its location — in a lush green valley on the banks of the Oconaluftee River — is literally in the shadow of the Great Smoky Mountains. In summer, the Museum is a working farm, with crops such as squash, corn and tomatoes cultivated in the garden and live farm animals grazing in the fields.

Just as it was a century ago, fall is a busy time on the farm as the summer’s crops are preserved for the winter. And on Saturday, September 20, you can see it all, with live demonstrations of soap making, hearth cooking, hominy, apple butter and cider, plus a working cane mill and wood-fired cooker used for the making of sorghum syrup. The event is the annual Mountain Life Festival, a one day event from 10 am – 4 pm.

The Davis House — All the historic log structures in the Mountain Farm Museum were gathered from throughout the Smoky Mountains when the museum was constructed in the 1950s. The main farmhouse (above) was originally built by John E. Davis and his two oldest sons in the Indian Creek – Thomas Divide area north of Bryson City. The log house was built from chestnut wood before the chestnut blight decimated the American Chestnut in our forests during the 1930s and early 1940s.

The Mountain Farm Museum is located adjacent to the Oconaluftee Visitor Center on US 441 north of Cherokee and just inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. The Museum is open daily from sunrise to sunset, year around.