“We walked in the woods, we fished, we roasted s’mores. I’m not sure it gets better than that,” writes Peyton Manning of an early trip to Blackberry Farm with his young family inside the pages of Blackberry Fifty, a gorgeously assembled history of the internationally recognized East Tennessee hotel. Across the new book’s 476 pages, Manning and more than one hundred others—artists, musicians, farmers, celebrated chefs, business leaders, and Beall family members—tell Blackberry’s story. And as individual remembrances come together to form a larger narrative, tracing Blackberry’s journey from a small, six-room inn to a world-class destination, themes of connection and community emerge as the heart of this family tale.
Ahead of the book’s release on October 27, we caught up with Blackberry Farm proprietor Mary Celeste Beall to discuss the difficult task of capturing fifty years of Blackberry on the page and to reflect on some of her own favorite memories, including quiet family moments, pinch-me musical performances, and unforgettable meals.
You and the Blackberry team have honored the resort’s fiftieth anniversary in a myriad of ways this year, including a blowout weekend celebration at the Farm this spring. Why was this new book such an important piece of the anniversary puzzle?
Blackberry is truly a family business. It was started by my in-laws in 1976, and they really were visionaries (and still are), but they had an interesting road getting Blackberry started, and we’ve never really told all those stories. This gave us that chance. And then, of course, there are all the ways my late husband Sam impacted Blackberry. Fifty just felt like it was the perfect time to share. What’s so special about the book to me, and I think what our readers are going to love, is that it really is about the place and the people because at the end of the day, that’s what Blackberry is: It’s this beautiful place in the Smoky Mountains, but it’s also our team, our guests, our homeowners—and how all of them enjoy Blackberry in different ways.
You mentioned your in-laws’ early days at Blackberry when it was just a six-room inn smack in the middle of nowhere East Tennessee. What are some things readers might be surprised to learn about those days?
When they first moved here, the main house was covered in vines. It was dilapidated. I think reading their stories and the early history gives you a lot of insight into just how brave and bold they were. I mean, there were hardly any direct flights to Knoxville. Deliverance, the movie, certainly didn’t do us any favors. It didn’t matter. They were committed to making it work despite the challenges. It’s really a story about dreams.
Dreaming does seem to be a throughline of the Blackberry story. What do you think has been the family’s secret to turning even the wildest of dreams into reality?
I truly started with my in-laws. Sandy and Kreis are dreamers, yes, but they’re also doers and risk takers. They are not afraid to follow their passion. It’s something Sam inherited as well. He knew he wanted to do this when he was in high school, and they believed in him, supporting him when he took over as proprietor at just twenty-six.
A big part of the Blackberry dream seems to be finding new and meaningful ways to allow guests to connect—to each other and to this place through good food and great wine, music, and a shared appreciation for the Smoky Mountain landscape. The new book touches on those themes, and I wondered if you might share some of your favorite moments of connection through the years. Let’s start with the land.
With so many ways to get outside, it’s incredibly hard to narrow a favorite, but for me, it’s just walking the trails and footpaths here, seeing the sheep in the fields, where one pasture leads to another and another. There’s something so calming and restorative and grounding about the simplicity of it—of walking quietly and enjoying the scenery.
The culinary bounty of the East Tennessee landscape is a big part of the Blackberry experience. Can you possibly pick a most memorable meal?
Again, it’s impossible to choose one meal, but I’d say one of my most memorable dinners here was with the Southern Foodways Alliance, one of our first years hosting, when Sam decided we were going to have a special dinner for the chefs and vendors at the Yallarhammer Pavilion on Friday evening during the event. I remember telling him, “Okay, well, we’ve never had dinner there in the winter. I think it could be really cold.” Yallarhammer is an outdoor pavilion overlooking the pond and mountains beyond. Sure enough, I think it was in the thirties that night, but we brought out a bunch of heat lamps and had a roaring fire. I ended up in a seat right next to the fire and sweated through all the layers I’d worn in preparation. In the end, it didn’t matter, though; everyone had so much fun.
Emmylou Harris, Brandi Carlile, Dave Matthews, Leon Bridges, John Prine, and Kacey Musgraves have all graced the various stages at Blackberry, from the Yallarhammer Pavilion to the Barn to Bramble Hall. When did music become central to the Blackberry equation? And what’s one of your favorite musical memories?
We started with these singer-songwriter nights at Yallarhammer. Then when we opened the Barn in 2007, we started taking music to the next level. And now, of course, we have Bramble Hall, where we host anywhere from three to six concerts a year.
Picking a favorite performance is also like picking a favorite child. I can’t. But Chris Thile, who wrote the introduction to the book, is one of the artists that we’ve gotten to know incredibly well over the years. After his sets, there were so many times when he would just sit by the fire with his mandolin and play for hours, which is a dangerous thing because suddenly it’s three in the morning and we’re still hanging by the fire. But we got to watch him fall in love with his wife, get married, have a child.
There’s a very human element to Blackberry’s story—familial-type connections, from the returning guests to visiting performers to the on-staff servers, chefs, cooks, farmers, brewers, accountants, housekeeping team members, and so many others.
Oh yes. We have over 1,200 team members between the Farm, the Mountain, and High Hampton, and there’s no way Blackberry could be what it is without the passion, the expertise, and the commitment of our team. One of the things that made me comfortable about stepping in when Sam passed away was that we had these veteran team members who had been here ten to fifteen years. Now, ten years later some of those people have been here twenty, twenty-five, even thirty years, and it’s been incredible to see how many people have stepped up and how they contributed and grown—how we’ve all grown.
Elizabeth Hutchison Hicklin is a Garden & Gun contributing editor and a full-time freelance writer covering hospitality and travel, arts and culture, and design. An obsessive reader and a wannabe baker, she recently left Nashville to return home to Charleston, South Carolina, where she lives with her husband, their twins, and an irrepressible golden retriever.