Ashley Hackshaw, Author at Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo

Things I Found on the Fontana Lake Bed

March 27, 2017 by Ashley Hackshaw

I’ve discovered I’m more of a fair weather detectorist. I haven’t wanted to go out much with my new metal detector in the cold but thankfully it’s warmed up recently. I ventured out to one of my favorite places this time of year…the Fontana Lake bed. It’s almost dry this time a year because the water has been let out of the dam, just the river runs through the very bottom channel of the lake. An old road and a few bridges become visible:

I like how quiet it is down there and I usually only run into one or two fisherman. They all like to ask if I’ve found anything good…like rings or coins. I usually get an odd look when I show them something I find extra exciting like a vintage gerber baby food cap or a marble. I found both of those things on the morning I went last week:

I also found pottery, old pennies, an arrowhead, coal from the old railroad among other things. I could stay out there for hours and time gets away from me. My phone went off with only thirty minutes until school pickup and I realized I still had to walk a mile back and make it to school. In the middle of nowhere I found a huge metal pipe in the ground….just a few inches under. My first thought, because I’ve watched the Detectorists series, was that it was probably a bomb. Whatever it was I quickly abandoned it. I also found this perfect stone heart:

For every neat little object I come across on the lake bed there are at least a dozen beer cans I’ve dug up first. I do plan to survey the new farmhouse soon. I started to the other day but I get kind of lazy and don’t even try to dig if my metal detector says the object is more than 6″ below the surface. I only carry a small garden shovel with me and 2 to 4 inches is my method right now. Then I can go back later to the same places and look for deeper stuff when if I ever become more serious.

Someone recently asked why I scavenge and keep little trinkets and trash. I think I like to find things that most people would never even notice or care about and find a way to put a story to them:

Like the slag left behind from the railroad bed that used to run along the lake…most people think it’s just rock. I don’t know how many people even know that the railroad used to run along the lake. I learned from a fisherman who said he was a rock hound and I asked him to identify a bunch of rocks I’d found. I think slag rocks look just like a meteorites…and I’m always hoping one will be. The fisherman said he found a meteorite years ago so there’s enough hope for while.

Or like the marble. Simply finding a tiny glass marble on a 17-mile-long lake bed is pretty amazing I think. I was digging up a beer can and there it was about four inches under the dirt.

I could go on and on about every object I found. So did I find anything good? Yes. A lot….but most people probably wouldn’t be impressed. I’m not really looking for treasure….just odd objects. Maybe I’m more of a trash collector in a way. Here’s what I found last fall while on a walk when the water level had just been reduced:

If you click the photo it will open up a new window with a larger version. Have you ever seen such an odd collection of things found on a lakebed? I think that’s what fascinates me the most. Rubber ducky + camera lens + piece of picture frame + boot heel + so many other random objects just sends my imagination into overdrive. And then I think of all the billions or trillions of objects under lake beds and fields and wonder how so many things get lost and discarded. If I could have any superpower it would be to instantly see the path an object has taken over it’s life…I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

More found object collections can be found here.

More about the lake bed here.

Spring at the Biltmore Estate

March 23, 2017 by Ashley Hackshaw

Sienna’s spring break is two weeks and a little earlier than most schools. This year we decided to spend the night at the Biltmore Village Hotel and invite our friends Amy Jo and Laiken along. The first day was rainy and stormy which didn’t phase us a bit because we spent most of the afternoon in the Conservatory. The flowers were already amazing:

The girls played some imaginary spy game for a while with walkie-talkies they had made from Lego blocks. All was going well until a Lego somehow ended up behind one of the grates. With a little ingenuity and luck the girls were able to find a stick behind the grate as well (it would be impossible to find a stick out in the open because the Biltmore is always so well-manicured) and they pulled the Lego out without too much drama:

The Orchid Room is always enough to occupy me for a while. Every plant looks like it’s straight out of Alice in Wonderland:

I love how they are using the old terra cotta pots as planters. Interesting fact….these pots are made in Impruneta, Italy. They are formed freehand and the detail is added using the same 19th century molds used for Vanderbilt:

Even though it was drizzling the girls wanted to explore the terrace. You can see all the way to Mount Pisgah from this point. There used to be a swimming pool on the terrace that Mrs. Vanderbilt had installed in the 1930’s. It was filled in sometime in the 1990’s.

I actually got a pose:

The trellis below the terrace:

The tulips were just started to emerge in the gardens when we were there.

“This year crews will plant 56,000 tulips; 14,000 daffodils; and 1,000 hyacinths for a total of 71,000 spring blooming bulbs in the Walled Garden. -from Preparing Biltmore’s Gardens for Cooler Weather

(Click here to see what the tulips looked like in 1930 and what the walled garden looked like back in 1895.)

The daffodils were definitely in full bloom:

One of my favorite stories about the Biltmore is how Chauncey Beadle, the Biltmore Superintendent, used to send young Cornelia Vanderbilt packages of pressed flowers when she was traveling abroad with her parents. Cornelia had her own flower garden as a young girl and it’s so thoughtful that he kept her in the loop.

We stayed at the Village Hotel. The girls had so much fun with their dolls. They played board games in the lobby and checked out the little coffee shop. We had a great view of the fountain courtyard and the girls found watching the maintenance man cleaning the money out of the water epic. We ate dinner at Cedric’s Tavern where our favorite thing to order is the ham and cheese fondue appetizer.

The next morning we woke up early and went to the house. I hadn’t done the audio tour in a few years so we decided to take our time and do that. They have a kids version of the audio that keeps them interested for the two hours it takes to go through the enormous house. The day before we had spent time at the blacksmith and he told us that one of these hanging lights in the winter garden had to be recreated a few years ago. It took almost a year to remake it. We thought maybe we had figured out which one it was by the tint of the glass but the iron work must have been flawless:

Every time I go I notice something new that I didn’t notice before. Like the ceiling of the breakfast room:

This is part of a huge painting by Cornelia Vanderbilt and her husband in the basement of the Biltmore. It took three weeks in 1925 for them to paint it with folklore scenes for their New Years Eve party. I love that it was left all these years. (Read more about the basement here.)

The Biltmore is one of my favorite places on earth and I go at least once a month. I love learning everything I can about the fascinating people that lived there. Right now there’s a literary themed exhibit and they are showcasing what George Vanderbilt liked to read and some of the books in his collection. On display is Mr. Vanderbilt’s copy of Peter Pan, a first American edition! He was one of the best read men in the country.

When we were finishing up our last tour I saw two ladies peering into the Billiard Room and talking with Sienna. As I got closer I could hear them asking Sienna questions and Sienna was answering them with the confidence of a historical expert. I’m raising a little Biltmore buff ya’ll.

If you’ve ever visited the Biltmore you have to read the Lady on the Hill. I learned so much about the house through the years:

Lady on the Hill: How Biltmore Estate Became an American Icon by Howard E. Covington Jr.

Biltmore Estate (Images of America: North Carolina) by Ellen Erwin Rickman

The Old Farmhouse Renovation – Inside Demolition

March 19, 2017 by Ashley Hackshaw

I can’t believe the progress on the farmhouse so far…I think that’s what happens when you are so excited about a project that sleeping and eating start to get in the way. Demolition for the farmhouse renovation was finished up yesterday. It looks so good already. Those two windows in the middle of the house are where a sitting room is between the downstairs bathroom and master bedroom. We are going to add french doors there that lead to a screened in porch with stairs down to the yard:

Here are Jaime and Brett checking the foundation under the downstairs master bathroom. From here they could tell that a sidewalk had also been poured on top of an older river rock walk on the outside of the wall:

Conference room / master bath. I can’t understand a word they say through those respirators…it’s like they have a secret language. There used to be an old claw foot cast iron tub right where they are standing but Mr. Plott told me that his mother replaced it with a shower in the 1960’s. (Showers are more convenient.) But I wonder where that tub is now. In a trash dump? Melted down into something else? Filled with potting soils and flowers somewhere? Refinished and in someone else’s house? I guess we’ll never know….but I wish I had a nifty tracing app for old objects just to see the paths they’ve taken.

When the shower was removed yesterday the guys found a very small piece of the original baseboard and baseboard cap still attached behind it:

Looking at the house for the first time I think the stairwell caught everyone’s eye. It’s still in great condition and hasn’t changed at all:

There are three bedrooms on the second floor and a small office. This is the upstairs landing that leads to all the bedrooms:

If you don’t own a 21″ Stanley Wonder Bar your toolbox isn’t complete…it pulls out nails with zero effort. Behind this wall is where the guys found all the space to add an upstairs bathroom. It can be a Jack-and-Jill…with a door from the hallway and a door from the upstairs master. The wood and coal stoves had a chimney that went through that space but last week we shortened the chimney so the brick is only visible in the kitchen since it isn’t functional anymore.

Brett and I were laughing going through these photos of he and Jaime working….they all almost look the same because they are usually in perfect unison removing nails or hammering or doing whatever they do while working. Removing nails from what will be a small den upstairs:

A small bedroom upstairs:

It’s like Christmas in March…here’s a video of the guys pulling up the carpet in the small office. Wood floors have been hidden underneath old carpeting for years. This is a small room upstairs that Cecil Plott had made into his railroad office. He had a small desk and lots of papers…and a little shelf outside the window that must have held a bird feeder. His son Tom told us that his dad also owned a pickup truck that was the railroad’s “express delivery” service. That meant if something came in on the train to Bryson City that needed express delivery Cecil would load it into his railroad pickup and deliver it personally asap. I’d love to know what some of those deliveries were.

A post shared by Sixty-One Park (@sixtyonepark) on Mar 18, 2017 at 9:11am PDT

Here’s the upstairs after demo. It’s so open! Next step will be reframing for stability and new electrical and plumbing. To the right is where the new bathroom will be. During demo they found a dead squirrel that looks like it was frozen in time…I mean it literally looked like it had been a taxidermy subject. I wanted to keep it. Everyone said no. Maybe this afternoon will be metal detector day just to get my mind off of the petrified squirrel.

Love these old windows in the upstairs nook. They need to be replaced but we will use them in something else maybe a piece of furniture. The gable to the right is just hiding the old courthouse on Main Street.

This is the back of the farmhouse from the old shed/coop/outbuilding. There’s enough room in the back for a guest cottage to make this a great extended family rental. I already can’t wait to decorate it for Christmas and the Polar Express. The backyard needs a fire pit and pea gravel and corn hole and lots of landscaping. Did I mention we can see the farmhouse from our house and vice versa?

I can’t believe we’ve only owned the Sixty-One Park farmhouse for 10 days. It only went on the market February 24th. March 4th was the inspection and we closed on March 9th. Demo started on March 10th. The guys are hard workers….working even after they’ve worked their regular jobs too. As they were standing in the dirt floor kitchen yesterday discussing how to jack up the house and pour a new foundation I said, “I’ve been thinking about what kind of dishes would look great in here.” I’m sure they thought I was jumping the gun a little…but those dishes are going to look great in this farmhouse ya’ll. Priorities.

We want to put a metal roof on the house just like we put on ours. I’d love your input….would you do a light gray, charcoal, dark taupe, green or red roof? Or just traditional galvanized metal? Personally I like the light gray….and then I guess we’d have to do white gutters. The original (or earliest we know) metal shingles were red, and then painted green at some point in time.

I’ll be posting photos of the restoration and history as we go, but to see the progress real time and for updates on when we might actually start taking reservations check our the Sixty-One Park Facebook Page and Instagram page!