The News record v *yfr^ ? SERVING THE PEOPLE OF MADISON COUNTY On th* Intldm . . . ? There's plenty of news about farming these days . . . turn to Page 2 78th Year, No. 15 PUBLISHED WEEKLY IN THE COUNTY SEAT AT MARSHALL, N.C. THURSDAY, April 12, 1979 15' Per Copy Beer Sale? Forks Of Ivy Folks Hot -v i FUTURE GROWER of tomatoes is Tracy Miller who works with his toy earth grader at the edge of a field where his parents are setting up 40 greenhouses to get a price break on tomatoes by growing them earlier and later than the normal Haywood County Residents of the Forks of Ivy community, disturbed that a beer and wine package store may soon open ii^ a dry county took the matter to a late meeting of the Madison County Commissioners Friday night. A delegation of seven persons, led by Jimmy Lee Buckner, told the com missioners that it was the county's responsibility to determine whether or not the store in question, Peabody's Discount Center, was in Madison County. "Because that is the issue," he said. "If the store is in Madison County, then it's illegal and Sheriff (E.Y.) Ponder said he'd put a padlock-on it. If it is located in Buncombe County, as the State ABC Board believed when it issued them the beverage permit, then that's another matter. "But," Buckner said, "as residents of Madison County, we deserve to know where the line is." The county line, Buckner explained before the meeting with the commissioners, has always been a big question in terms of the four-unit building that houses three apartments and the beverage center. "Nobody, not even Sheriff Ponder, knows exactly where the line is," Buckner said. "But a small portion of the property is in Buncombe County. But the major portion of the property is in Madison County, where it is illegal to sell beer or wine." Buckner, an electrician whose shop is next door to the building in question, said that the property had always been considered in Madison County until 1973, when the owners of it, for no known reason, requested Buncombe County to put it on Buncombe's tax rolls. This was done, Buckner ?aid. "But our tax supervisor (Ernest Snelson) told me that he went to the tax office in Buncombe and had it tran sferred back to Madison. So now it's back on the Madison County tax roll and he said they would be collecting taxes on it." The main reason, said Buckner. that the citizens are trying to stop the center from ever opening its doors is because it sits in plain view of the Forks of Ivy Baptist Church, of which Buckner and nearly all of the concerned citizens are members. The commissioners, after hearing from Buckner's delegation, agreed to take the matter under advisement and to, in some way, determine just exactly where the county line runs. The owners of the discount center, Edward Kilpatrick and Robert Sofield Jr., could not be reached for comment. ToitUl tOGs/ A Longer Season Indoors By WALLY PAGE Fain Miller is getting ready a extend the Haywood bounty tomato season... early ind late ? with greenhouses. While their young son, rracy, grades the sandy soil Marby with his toy bulldozer, Pain Miller and his wife, Sara, are erecting half-circles if white rpds in the Pigeon River West Fork Valley to Duild 40 greenhouses for tomatoes. Motorists traveling High way 276 near the river bridge ?n look across the field and ?ee the novel white arcs iprouting from the soil. By June, the Millers hope to be picking tomatoes there. Fraught with summertime tomato prices on a glutted market, Miller is planning to start selling his six weeks before other Haywood growers can offer their field grown fruit. And after the Field-grown tomato season has ended, he'll have tomatoes to sell until November if his plans work out. Miller has grown open field tomatoes for years. He even grew them over in Tennessee to start marketing a crop as early as July 10 ? two or three weeks before Haywood fruit starts to go to market. "This year I thought I'd stay home and give this a try," he says, looking off through a maze of white hoops soon to support plastic covering. "I like to try something new. Our forefathers had to do that, you know." "If this works out, I'd like to see enough other growers grow tomatoes 'under glass' to open the county co-op a month early." Miller is a vice president of the Haywood County Tomato Growers Cooperative on the Old Asheville Road just outside Waynesville. In season, Haywood tomatoes are graded and shipped from there throughout the East and into Canada. The Millers are erecting 40 plastic greenhouses 14-80 feet each. They'll put 1V4 acres "under Gl glass." Tomatoes will be planted in the next few days and be grown in the ground and on stakes just as the field-grown crop is. The plastic skin on the greenhouses will keep the sun's heat in the soil. Doors are big enough at the end of each greenhouse to let small tractors work the crop. There'll be no artificial heat or ventilation to use costly energy. Miller points out. "Feel that breeze," he says, lifting his hand into the cooling air moving through the valley. The greenhouse lengths are oriented to let the natural breeze blow through than when the sun grows hot. The greenhouses are relatively simple affairs. Twenty-six-foot fiberglass rods are attached to mobile home anchors at their ends. The anchors go 30 inches into the earth to hold the rods in arched shape. Hundred-foot wide plastic sheeting will be stretched over the top of the arches. "Greenhouses always did excite me," Miller says. "I can hardly wait to get the plants growing in here. Then we'll see what happens." Mrs . Wallin Wins Top Award