Meghan Smith

“I think of foodways as the entire journey from growing food all the way through processing or making and sharing a meal,” says Meghan Smith (she/her). Meghan is a fiber artist, soapmaker, and foodways practitioner, working from the 17-acre Little Branch Farmstead that she runs with her husband in Clay County, North Carolina.

As a child, Meghan initially resisted learning to cook, but she developed an appreciation for local foods when living in Europe as a young adult. When she returned to the United States, cooking with her mother—preparing old family recipes from their German heritage and experimenting with new ingredients—deepened her love of foodways. In 2021, she began apprenticing with her mentor, Donna Gains of High Mountain Meadows Farm, in animal husbandry and goat cheese production. Among the foods she loves to grow and produce, Meghan lists hominy; beekeeping to make raw honey and mead; boiled peanuts; fermented foods like kombucha, sauerkraut, and pickles; and goat and sheep cheeses.

Meaghan is also passionate about seed saving, the practice of gathering seeds from one year’s crops to grow again in the following years. “I believe in seed saving as an act of self-reliance and an acknowledgement of the cyclical nature of growing food,” Meghan says. She focuses on saving seeds for crops that have a long history in Central Appalachia, such as candy roaster winter squash, Perkins Long Pod okra, Tennessee Red Valencia peanuts, and Cherokee purple tomatoes.

Meghan has a Master’s Degree in Folk Studies from Indiana University and has worked as a folklorist at Traditional Arts Indiana and the Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts in Salt Lake City. She now teaches classes in fiber arts, soapmaking, and fermentation at the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, North Carolina.

Meghan will put her Emerging Traditional Artists Program award toward an apprenticeship in butchery. She also hopes to take more classes in cheesemaking, and to develop public programs and educational opportunities to share her knowledge with her community.