Who We Are
Bradley (aka Quasi), Asher, Logan, BJ, Aaron, Rosa Lee, Kevin
Our niche is fun and illuminating gatherings on intergenerational land. Gatherings that matter.
Our goal, by the end of 2033, 10 years from the time of this writing, when the patriarch and matriarch are 83 and 81, respectively, we will have created a sought after place – supporting three generations – with gatherings that matter.
Who do we want to attract? The people we want to gather want to have an experience, and value the fact that our place is family-owned and wholesome.
Riparian Way, the farm by the river, is home to three generations of the Harden Jones family. We want to use this 21 plus acres of flat, arable land on the Swannanoa River to uplift our family and the community for the long term, expressing our gifts and bettering the world.
We are on the banks of the Swannanoa, a river that begins in the Seven Sisters mountains above the town of Black Mountain. Our farm is in the unincorporated community of Swannanoa, in Buncombe County, east of Asheville and west of the town of Black Mountain The Swannanoa flows into the French Broad near the Biltmore in Asheville. The French Broad flows into the Tennessee near Knoxville, Tn, and the Tennessee flows into the Mississippi, which flows into the Gulf. This land was Mississippian land, the people who were ancestors of the Cherokee, but they had left around 300 years ago to move over near to the Katuah boundary in far western North Carolina. There is archaeological evidence of Mississippian settlements just across our small river on the land of Warren Wilson College. Neither David the archaeologist from Warren Wilson, who led the excavations over there, nor the tribe knows why they left. We are the second white family on this land; we bought it from the last of the Davidsons, who were among the first European Americans to live on this land, starting in the 1830s.