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SandhillHometown Strong focuses on lifting the voices of small town NC, and connecting the resources that help us all make North Carolina a great place to live. Walking became much more common over the last year, and once the days becoming cooler, you have the opportunity to explore and learn more about rural art and artists in North Carolina. Don’t know where to start? Start here! These are the murals to visit while at Hometown Strong Sandhill Communities.

Image: The entrance to Frontier Warren and “Job’s Tears” by Jereann King Johnson.Warrenton, NC is the seat of Warren County and at the 2010 census had a population of 862. The Hometown Strong and Hello NC team visited a few weeks ago to learn more about this town, its quilters, and the patchwork of rich history that defines its community.

Over the past months, trails in North Carolina have seen higher use, a product of safety-seeking measures prompted by Covid-19. For Elkin, this highlighted what many in the town already knew; that our natural resources are true assets that can bring joy and satisfaction and even turn around a small town’s economic future.

There’s a new mural up in Morganton, North Carolina! The 13 by 58 foot piece is part of a 3-year initiative to highlight cultural and ecological diversity in the town and surrounding Burke County. The project brings together the combined efforts of the Foothills Conservancy, the North Carolina Museum of Art, and TOSS, a Morganton-based arts non-profit.

Image from the Western North Carolina Agricultural Center.While North Carolina certainly has some spectacular places of national and even international interest (Wright Brothers Memorial, Asheville, historic markings of the Civil War and an original colony), there are other spots around the state that are fascinating to visit. We take a glimpse into the rural mountains and the N.C. Mountain State Fair in Fletcher, in Henderson County.

More species of plants can be found in the mountains of North Carolina than any other area of similar size in North America. At large, the state itself fosters a multitude of native plants, many of which offer medicinal or nutritional properties. Alex Meander and his partner Stacey run Ardea Homestead in Cleveland County, North Carolina. There, they dedicate themselves to the practice of permaculture, a set of design principles that are focused on aligning human activity with observed patterns and resilient features in local ecosystems.

Image: Unidentified Rural School, Showing Children and Health Officers, ca. 1919. Image from the State Archives of North Carolina.Rural communities are wonderful places to live and work, which is why approximately 57 million people — one in five Americans — call them home. These rural communities also have unique healthcare needs. National Rural Health Day falls on the third Thursday in November each year and recognizes the efforts of those serving the health needs of an estimated 57 million people across the nation.

Where do you look for new North Carolina music? Durham, Raleigh, Asheville, and Charlotte are well known for their scenes, but smaller towns are also producing big sounds. Shelby is one of them, and Aftan Smith, who goes by the creative moniker AftanCi, is a driving force behind it’s creative sound. Her work draws from many genres, and from Shelby’s own musical lineage.

Image: Pickle industry in Mount Olive, NC, June 1947. From the Department of Conservation and Development, Travel Information Division Photograph Collection, State Archives of North Carolina.Crunchy, tangy, delectable. It’s hard to resist a good pickle. And chances are, you’ve spied a famous homegrown NC variety at the supermarket. Mount Olive, North Carolina is famous for its version of the preserved snack.

Image: The New River Gorge Bridge.George Santucci doesn’t worry anymore about the variety of spellings applied to his name in Ashe County, which he has called home for 25 years now after migrating from Long Island, New York. But he has lost most of his New York accent, and he’s a much-admired fellow in his adopted home, where he serves as the president of the New River Conservancy, charged with protecting America’s oldest river, said to be the second oldest in the world.“Once you get North of 350 million years,” Santucci says, “It’s a little iffy.”