Rachel Moore, Author at West Virginia Public Broadcasting

This story originally aired in the Feb. 4, 2024 episode of Inside Appalachia.

When you think of rice, you might not think of Western North Carolina. However, Hmong farmers have been growing rice in the North Carolina mountains for nearly five decades.

Tou and Chue Lee are two of these farmers. They are the owners of Lee’s One Fortune Farm in Morganton, North Carolina. Named for the family legacy Tou and Chue hope to inspire, Lee’s One Fortune Farm aims to make fresh rice, along with Asian fruits and vegetables, accessible to local people.

The Lees grow multiple varieties of rice — sweet sticky, red and purple. They are also working with family members to develop a black shell variety they hope to sell within the next year. Fresh rice is unlike anything that you can find in a conventional supermarket. The sweet sticky rice is fragrant and somewhat chewy, while the red rice has a flavor similar to chestnuts. The purple rice is also nutty and has a deep inky purple color. The sweet sticky rice is one of the Lees’ most popular varieties.

“The sweet sticky rice has a very nice, kind of a honey, sugar cane aroma — a subtle freshness that is hard to explain,” Tou said.

The sweet sticky rice field at Lee’s One Fortune Farm in Morganton, North Carolina.

*Credit: Rachel Moore/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

He likens the rice to a fresh loaf of bread. It may be hard to describe, but once you experience it, you will know what to look for.

Origin Story

While each of the rice varieties that the Lees grow is distinct, the sweet sticky rice has a legendary beginning in North Carolina. It started with a handful of seeds, passed down through a network of Hmong families.

“Someone visited Laos back in the 1980s after they came to the United States,” Tou said. “They were able to visit their families and acquire a few — I mean, not even ounces — worth of seed. I would say no more than maybe 40 to 50 seeds.”

The family planted the seeds in California. Tou said the rice grew, but it did not grow well because it was not suited for the California climate and terrain. So, the growers in California sent some rice seeds to friends in North Carolina — this is how Tou’s family acquired some. They planted the seeds just to see what would happen.

“Lo and behold, the thing germinated and took off and it almost grew as tall as a full grown adult,” Tou said.

The Lees have been growing the sweet sticky rice ever since. Tou said it has completely adapted to Western North Carolina.

“It started off as an heirloom from Laos, but as many years as it’s been here in Western North Carolina, it might as well be considered an heirloom in the Western North Carolina area,” said Tou.

Before and after: sweet sticky rice after it has been harvested and toasted (left), and sweet sticky rice after the hulling process (right).

*Credit: Rachel Moore/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Blending Old And New Techniques

It may be considered an heirloom, but growing rice is still a lot of work. The Lees had to establish their rice field in a low-lying area about a mile from the rest of their farm. It does not grow in a conventional paddy, but the Lees do have to flood the field each year to ensure the rice has enough water, and to provide pest control.

Each year, Tou and Chue Lee flood their rice fields with 8–10 inches of water for pest control.

*Credit: Rachel Moore/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

The Lees find ways to incorporate traditional Hmong practices throughout the growing season. Take seed saving. Each seed has to be hand selected. It is a time-consuming process.

“When the rice starts to mature, we actually go in there with buckets or bags and we walk around and hand select the most plump, the most well-defined rice that’s on the stalk, and we hand harvest those just for seed,” Tou said.

The Lees do implement more modern techniques during the harvesting process — by using a combine harvester, for example — but their hulling process looks similar to what it did when they were growing up in Laos.

Tou Lee and his aunt hull sweet sticky rice that has been harvested. First, the rice is boiled in a pot of water and debris from the field is skimmed off.

*Credit: Rachel Moore/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

On a chilly October afternoon, Tou and Chue, along with Tou’s aunt, Pa Vang Lee, hull the rice. Hulling removes the outer layer of the rice, making it edible. First, Pa Vang scoops rice into a pot of boiling water. This allows the rice to sink and all the debris to float to the top so she can skim it off.

Then, Chue toasts the rice in a large wok over a gas flame. Toasting the rice starts the drying process and helps develop the flavor. The rice finishes drying on large tarps. When it dries, Tou runs it through the huller and it is ready to cook.

Chue Lee toasts rice in a wok to begin drying it before it can be hulled.

*Credit: Rachel Moore/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

A Lasting Legacy

Growing rice may have its challenges, but the Lees believe it is important to keep doing.

When the Lees decided to settle down in Western North Carolina, Tou knew he didn’t want their culture to be hidden away in the background. The Lees bring their culture to the forefront by selling at farmers markets and introducing customers to Hmong foodways.

“The rice is something that brings our families back to remembering what our culture was in the old country and how we want to continue our culture here,” Tou said.

The rice is also an important piece of the Hmong new year, a huge annual celebration that takes place around Thanksgiving. In North Carolina, members of the Hmong community travel up to hundreds of miles to celebrate the holiday. Traditionally, this is when farmers would share their young, green rice with others.

“When the family gathers, you’ve got this fresh, new rice. You cook that and that is a means of making something that the whole family can enjoy together,” Tou said.

Now, the Lees are proud to share their rice with people outside of the Hmong community.

Rice is one of the Lees’ most popular items when they offer it at farmers markets. People line up long before the market opens to stock up. It was not always this easy for the Lees though. Tou said when he and Chue started selling at farmers markets a little over a decade ago, not many people knew what they were offering.

“I knew it was gonna be tough to start out with because people didn’t know what you have, so it’s a tough sell. We knew it would take a long time to develop it, and it did,” Tou said.

So, the Lees found their own ways to adapt. They share recipes and ideas with customers. Recipes like young, sticky green rice with succulent Hmong sausage, stuffed bitter melon or charcoal-roasted Japanese sweet potatoes, make Hmong cuisine accessible.

Tou and Chue Lee serve a meal of young, fresh sticky rice, Hmong sausage, hot sauce and an eggplant dip to guests of the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project Farm Tour at Lee’s One Fortune Farm in September 2023.

*Credit: Rachel Moore/West Virginia Public Broadcasting*

Now, people beyond the Hmong community know how special Lee’s One Fortune Farm is. They respect the rice and they respect the produce, coming back year after year to stock up. Tou and Chue were able to help make rice thrive in North Carolina, and the community has shown they are willing to support it.

“The rice just seems to be in its home,” Tou said.

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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.

The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts and culture.

If you’ve ever driven in a rural area, you may have seen a wooden quilt block hanging on the side of a barn.

Despite the name, barn quilts can be found on just about any building, not just barns. There are more than 300 of the colorfully painted barn quilts sprinkled throughout Western North Carolina — and that number is growing.

When Candace Wingo and her husband moved to Haywood County, North Carolina from Texas a few years ago, Candace knew she wanted a barn quilt to become a fixture of her farm.

“I’ve always wanted a barn quilt,” said Wingo. “I wanted to do something that would honor the Carolinas and being here, so I picked the Carolina Lily.”

Wingo commissioned a local barn quilt designer through the Haywood County Arts Council to create the massive 8 by 8 foot block. Most barn quilts are 4 by 4 feet.

Barn quilts usually riff on an existing quilt pattern. Artists tweak patterns to make the final piece completely unique. The reasons people put up barn quilt blocks are likewise unique. Some designs reference a person’s or place’s history, while others are purely aesthetic.

Putting a barn quilt together is usually a labor of love. In Haywood County, barn quilts are painted by volunteers for the Haywood County Arts Council. In each 4 by 4 foot block, there could be about 40 hours of painting, dozens of layers of paint between all the colors and the work of multiple community members.

The barn quilt concept can be traced to Appalachian Ohio. Quilter Donna Sue Groves put up the first barn quilt in 2001 to honor her mother. If you look hard enough the barn quilts can be found just about anywhere in the U.S. There are official programs in more than 40 states.

Sometimes individuals do paint their own barn quilts, but it’s common for community members to commission the blocks from local artists or art councils, just like Wingo did.

Candace Wingo and her sister Glenda Kilgore helped paint the Wingos’ Carolina Lily barn quilt.

A former designer herself, Wingo knew she wanted to be involved with the process of designing and painting her block. With the help of barn quilts designer Lauren Medford, Wingo’s dreams of having a quilt block grace her red barn came true.

“Lauren was so familiar with it all. She did the research on if the design has been duplicated. She would send me her suggestions and I would tweak it. It was a real fun group effort with her,” Wingo said.

The duo designed the largest quilt block Medford had ever designed. The result was an 8 by 8 foot block featuring an adaptation of the traditional Carolina Lily pattern.

The last panel of the Wingos’ Carolina Lily quilt block is going up.

Wingo’s barn quilt features eight Carolina Lily flowers, four on the outer perimeter and four on the inside. The red flowers have angular petals, made of triangles and trapezoids. Wingo said the design was inspired by her surroundings. She and Medford worked to pull in colors from Wingo’s barn and from the rest of the farm. In it, you’ll find reds, greens, black and white.

It took months to come together, but Wingo knew she was in good hands with Medford. Medford is a Haywood County native, and no stranger to quilt blocks, or quilting.

“My great-grandmother made quilts her entire life,” Medford said. “But my grandmother fell out of the sewing tradition, and my mom didn’t [sew] either.”

When some of Medford’s great-grandmother’s quilts were passed down to her, she decided to take a quilting class and fell in love.

“I made my first quilt, which was very fun. And it is very mathematical and technical, which I enjoy because I like hard lines and graphic aesthetics, so it was kind of a good fit for me,” Medford said.

For Medford, working with unique designs is gratifying, and she appreciates the connection community members often have to the quilt blocks they commission. She remembers one in particular that a woman’s family members commissioned for her.

“Her sister and husband had us make a design based on her cross stitch, and it’s very intricate,” said Medford.

Medford cites other unique barn quilts in the area. A Haywood County dentist, for example, has a quilt block with a repeating rifle pattern outside his office in honor of his family’s rifle-making traditions.

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The rifle quilt block outside of Dr. Michael Gillespie’s dentist practice in Waynesville, North Carolina was designed in honor of his family’s tradition of making Gillespie rifles. At first glance, the quilt pattern seems to be a rose, but if you look more closely brown and black rifles appear.

Lauren Medford / Courtesy

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A closer look at Dr. Gillespie’s rifle-patterned barn quilt.

Lauren Medford / Courtesy

There are others, too. One barn quilt depicts a man under water. It’s called “Dead Man in the Creek.” It was designed to remember the namesake of the Fines Creek Community in Haywood County. The quilt depicts Vinet Fine, who drowned in a nearby creek in the late 1700s.

“Dead Man in the Creek” pays homage to Haywood County history. The barn quilt references the namesake of the Fines Creek Community, Vinet Fine.

The idea behind that barn quilt is morbid, but they have not always told stories in such a literal way.

When barn quilts first started popping up, most of them featured traditional geometric shapes and patterns, like stars. But over the years, people have gotten more expressive with barn quilts. This is something that intrigued volunteer barn quilt painter Linda Lappe.

“[Painting barn quilts] is just being part of the community and the history and the culture,” Lappe said. “A lot of our quilt patterns are very traditional, yet we have people who come in and design for specific quilt blocks.”

Part of the fun of having a barn quilt is that the organizations in charge of local barn quilt block programs create maps and guides, or “trails,” for people to follow in a certain area. Quilt enthusiasts, tourists and whoever wants can drive or walk along the quilt trails to see how people express themselves through the wooden blocks.

You never know what you might stumble upon while following a barn quilt trail. Ultimately, community members can be as creative or traditional as they want when they choose a barn quilt, says Medford.

“It could be like, ‘I just like the color blue, I want a blue star,’ or it could be really meaningful. There’s not really an overarching theme other than that quilt blocks speak to Appalachia and craft and tradition,” said Medford.

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Author: Rachel Moore

Heirloom Rice Thrives In Western North Carolina With Help From Hmong Farmers

Origin Story

Blending Old And New Techniques

A Lasting Legacy

Western North Carolina Barn Quilts Represent Community, History