On Saturday morning we drove three and a half hours to Jill Wagner’s farm. It was pouring rain when we first arrived, and I rode the hay wagon to the farm festival sans umbrella, so I was thoroughly soaked. Although I think everyone was soaked by the end.
It was so fun to see Adam! Jill Wagner is his best friend and lets him live on her farm when she needs extra help. She needed help setting up the party so he had been in town for a while. Adam helped Jill’s husband plant every single grape vine and set up all of the posts and twine. Incredible. It was the best view picking grapes and looking out onto the Smokies beyond the valley. At the base of Jill’s farm are the bean farms of Bush’s Baked Beans, and the crops are beautiful. The bean crops look almost blue!
After we picked grapes and checked out the vendors, the party ended and Adam gave us all a tour on an ATV. Ammon’s favorite part was that Adam let Ammon put his hand on the wheel and sort of steer! After that we headed home. We ate around 9pm at Bottiwalla’s and then collapsed immediately at the hotel. Clarissa was so tired she didn’t even eat actually. I think the kids were full of grapes!
This is the building next to our Home2 Hilton. It did not do well during the hurricane last year. It’s worth noting that this exact time last year was when Hurricane Helene hit. We were scheduled to stay in Asheville at this same hotel for Adam’s grape picking event. I still wanted to go, but Lily insisted we stay home. Lily proved to be prophetic on all counts.This year Jill Wagner’s event also had some weather to deal with. When we met Jill, she told us about a book she is reading that talks about how God has a sense of humor, and how much of the Old Testament can be viewed through that lens. She felt like God was playing a joke on her by making the weather so bad for her event two years in a row. There was a lot of rain, but it didn’t ruin the event at all, and there were still plenty of moments when the rain let up.Adam was working the booth for the new company he works for, Atwater, hence his Atwater shirt. He’s a VP at the company and helping to promote their product. The company is growing very well. Also, we met Adam’s wonderful boyfriend, Cache. Cache was also in the stand with Adam wearing an Atwater shirt and helping to sell product. I had a great time talking with Cache. He used to be in construction, but always loved computers, so he found his way to being an integrations manager at Workday. He feels restless with his desk job, but he gets by with a lot of time at the gym, and hoping the one day they will let him work 4 ten hour days so he can have three days off. He and Adam are very sweet together and I can tell they have a really good thing going together. Also, Adam told us that he is going to be a father! He and a close friend in California have been trying a long time to have a baby, and now she is pregnant! Adam is very excited to be a father, and that will be the 20th grandchild for Chris and Vicky. Amazing!
Below are pictures of the grape-picking:
Clarissa loved this leaf that disintegrated, but still looked like a leafNot hard to see why they call these the Smokey MountainsAmmon and Clarissa were checking out the hook-shaped tendrils on the new shoots that help the vines attach and climbThe ice cream from the Happy Dog Creamery was incredible.Adam stays in this CabinAdam referenced Kolindros since he now has a vineyard and farm he takes care of (and Kolindros is a farming community our Greek ancestors came from)And here is a picture of Kolindros!Jill was beyond kind when she spoke to us. She gave each of us a hug or a hand shake and asked each of our names. Adam was very kind as he told Jill about the kid’s talents and she was excited about Lydia’s harp playing and Ammon’s desire to go to the School of the Arts. She said she applied there and didn’t get in. We told Jill we had been watching Handcrafted America and she said she loved doing that show so much because it gave her some really fun adventures before having kids and needing to be more settled down. Jill is usually in sweet shows like that or Hallmark channel shows, but she recently started a show called “Lioness” which she acts in and is the executive director of. She created that role because she’s always wanted to play a tough-woman role. That is definitely the case in Lioness where she plays a hard-core marine. That is also why her hair has been shortened. She was beyond gracious and it was so fun to meet here. She told us with a lot of energy that she met Adam 25 years ago, and that he has meant so much to her, and he has blessed her immensely and that everyone loves him. Also, at the farm, and in Adam’s life generally, everyone except family calls him Darais. So turns out when I was referencing Adam to people I talked to on the farm, people likely didn’t know who I was talking about, LOL.
Adam hosted us so warmly at the farm. We felt so grateful for our adventure, and we had an amazing time!
