- Next on North Carolina Weekend, join us as we take day trips in and around Greensboro.

We'll explore Glencoe Mill Village, a pottery studio in Burlington and Goat Lady Dairy in Climax.

Coming up next.

- [Announcer] Funding for North Carolina Weekend is provided in part by Visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions from the blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of Barrier Island beaches.

You're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.

[sprightly music] ♪ - Hi, everyone, welcome to North Carolina Weekend.

I'm Deborah Holt Noel, and this week we're taking day trips in and around Greensboro.

Right now I'm at the historic Glencoe Mill Village in Burlington with my daughter, Malia.

Glencoe Mill is a carefully restored textile mill village along the East bank of the Hall River.

Built in 1882, Glencoe Mill was one of the world's major producers of plaid fabrics.

Today it features the Textile Heritage Museum, 38 beautifully restored houses and several original mill buildings.

From here we'll head to another city with a rich history of textiles.

Let's take our first day trip in Greensboro.

- What I love about Greensboro is that you go five minutes in any direction, you're gonna start seeing different architecture, different restaurants, different things to do.

- We're never without something to do on the weekends.

It's a place where you can do about anything you like.

- It's got culture, it's got great food.

It's got, you know, beautiful restaurants, parks but the people, you just don't meet a stranger here in Greensboro.

- Greensboro is a bit unusual in North Carolina history in that we have places that represent three important periods of time in how the state evolved.

The Revolutionary War had an impact on Greensboro with the battleground.

And we have a national military park here to show for that.

- Greensboro got its name from Nathaniel Greene.

This is a monument to Major General Nathaniel Greene, the overall commander of American forces in the South.

He's commanding the army here at Guilford Courthouse on March 15th.

Charles the Earl of Cornwallis is the commander of British forces in the South.

One of the most aggressive combat commanders the British have, he is trying to invade North Carolina as well as pacify North Carolina at this time.

The significance of this battle is that it forces the British or specifically Charles Cornwallis to reconsider what strategy he is using here.

And from here, he starts making one bad decision after another, after another, until he gets captured at Yorktown.

And it's his surrender there that really brings this war to an end.

- In the mid 19th century, Governor Morehead was quite influential in the state.

Blandwood certainly represents that important period in North Carolina's time.

This was the family home of the Morehead family.

The Morehead family is known across the state through their scholarships with UNC.

They had business interests in Charlotte and in Durham.

Morehead City is named after the Morehead family.

And this is where it all came from.

So Blandwood stands today as the earliest standing Italian Tuscan villa in the United States.

And it was really the grandfather of all Italianate architecture in the country.

And then in the mid 20th century, North Carolina was a role model for the civil rights movement.

- 59 years ago, a remarkable action took place right here at the F.W.

Woolworth whites-only lunch counter where African-Americans were first served a meal.

If you'll reflect on conflict throughout the world people often refer to what took place in Greensboro as a reference for nonviolent social movement.

People around the globe, they know Greensboro because of the sit-ins.

- Greensboro has been a powerhouse in the textile industry for more than 100 years.

In fact, our Wrangler brand got its start right here in downtown Greensboro more than 70 years ago.

So I think the name Jeansboro is fitting for a community who really helped kind of launch denim as an international icon.

- Greensboro's known as Jeansboro for a very good reason and that being mainly Cone Mills for the longest time.

They started several plants.

They really put Greensboro on the map and made it essentially the thriving city that it is now.

- It's a building that was built in 1939 and it is adapted and re-used as a new hotel but we couldn't find a building that's built 1939.

So we built the 1939 building we would like to have found and adapted and reused it as a as a hotel, which is a wonderful fantasy.

I love the name Proximity because the original Cone Mills, which is the largest denim manufacturer in the world is based here.

The original name was Proximity Manufacturing Company.

And the idea was the proximity to the cotton fields and the railroad.

It was a good proximity to put that mill.

And it's a happy word.

So many of the innovations that we have here really aren't innovations.

The idea of heating the hot water with the sun is sorta duh.

You know, it's pretty easy to do.

There's 68 items that we did.

It's just a matter of considering these things and employing them.

A lot of energy goes into sort of starting the business but we believe that an equal amount or even more energy ought to go into what happens on a day-to-day basis.

I mean, we just don't believe in setting up a business and then just saying, okay we've checked all the boxes, it's running, see you later.

- Did you know the Glencoe mill was famous for its cotton plaid.

That's right, it was called alamance plaid.

And they have samples of it all throughout the museum.

Right now, let's head back to Greensboro and check out their food and drink scene.

[peppy music] - The nice thing is you don't really have to be in the mood for anything or for anything in particular because they've got a lot of options.

So you grab a drink, hit up some of the local restaurants.

Even having been here for a year we're still discovering new places.

We've never been at a loss.

So we've been very pleasantly surprised by our transition to Greensboro.

- I owned a bail bond company, decided to start getting out of that.

[happy music] Childhood dream to own a candy store.

My dad used to travel the country with us and we'd hit candy stores everywhere.

And one day he basically said, you can have one thing.

And I said, I'm going to own my own candy store and get whatever I want.

Well, here I am, 39 years old and own my own candy store.

We carry fudge, gourmet chocolates, including the truffles, all kinds of chocolate dipped pretzels, over a hundred different types of penny candies, or bulk candy.

We also carry a lot of nostalgic candy you just can't find anymore.

Most people, as soon as they walk through the door they just stop and take a deep breath.

And they're like, it smells amazing in here.

To me, it smells like a giant Tootsie Roll.

And I hear a lot of, the dentist is going to hate you.

And I'm like, no, the dentist is going to love me.

- You have to do something that you enjoy, that you love.

I was born in Lydda in 1940.

Lydda at that at the time was still Palestine.

My family came from the old city of Jerusalem.

My grandfather was a wholesale merchant in the old city.

That store, the back wall of the store was the old city wall.

- We always wanted to open in Greensboro and expand in Greensboro because we're born and raised in the city.

And so downtown was kind of, it really fell in our lap but it was something that we thought was a natural fit as well because downtown was growing.

And we'd like to see downtown like becoming a real blossoming, you know, thriving place.

- Whatever you do with the food has to represent you and your culture.

So you do the best.

Then we make the best hummus, best baba.

The best tabouli.

- Our shwarma, we butcher lamb legs and top sirloin.

We do it ourselves.

My brother's own style.

I think it stands head and shoulders above all the rest.

Definitely recommend it.

- It all depends on the customer, really.

If the customer says, well, can you get me this?

You know, I try my best.

- Ember is a Peruvian-Italian fusion restaurant.

One owner is Albanian and Italian.

He was raised in Italy, and our other owner is Peruvian, born and raised in Peru.

We serve the traditional Peruvian dishes like ceviche and lomo saltado with our beef tenderloin.

We have our pollo la brasa, which is rotisserie chicken done in a wood-fire oven.

The sandwiches we make are done with pizza dough.

The owner came up with the style that he's been doing these pizzas, and it seems to work.

We get a lot of returning customers.

- We're the only distillery, only legal distillery in Guilford County, and certainly in Greensboro.

Fainting goat is sort of a family mascot for us.

The idea that the goat gets very excited and just falls to the ground, feet up in the air.

All the other goats are freaked out but the fainting goat jumps up and is okay.

As a family, we've kind of been there more than once.

So it's just sort of a fun family mascot for us.

Our vodka and gin have just taken off.

Our vodka, Tiny Cat vodka in 2018, the American Spirits Association judged it as the top crafted vodka made in the country.

Came in best in class of any American-made vodka.

So we get about a third of our folks that come from out of town that come to see us.

Friday, Saturdays and Sundays we do tours and tastings.

So you can come in, we walk you through the process, show you how we do it.

We use all North Carolina grain in our product.

Everything's grown on one farm down in Marshville, just outside of Charlotte.

We think about all of our products, even our clear products not as an ingredient first, but how does it taste to just sit and sip on it?

So we approach everything like we would a bourbon.

We start with a product that's that clean and that good.

Then it's going to make a fantastic product in the end.

- We've always wanted to open our brewery in our home town of Greensboro.

We wanted something fun to go do.

When I was younger there wasn't much to do in downtown Greensboro, but now there is a lot more and there's more breweries and more restaurants and bars and stuff, fun things to go do.

And we wanted to be a part of building that for Greensboro.

- We are at Chez Genese, which is a French-inspired bistro in downtown Greensboro.

The name Chez Genese means place of new beginnings in French.

And we have a mission of employing individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

Our owner Catherine has three cousins who are on the autism spectrum, and they were really the inspiration and heartbeat behind the restaurant concept here.

She also studied culinary arts in France for a year and she fell in love with the way that the French take time to prepare their food, to consume their food.

Greensboro is a wonderful city for a restaurant like this.

We pride ourselves on community in Greensboro.

How the people care for one another and spend time to connect with one another.

It's a place where a restaurant like this I think is really welcomed and supported.

- To find out about more things to do in Greensboro, Go to visitgreensboronc.com.

- I'm here with John Guss, the director of the Textile Heritage Museum.

John, what can people see and do on a day trip to Glencoe Mill Village?

- Sure, so when people come into Glencoe, they can go down to the waterfront where there's some great hiking trails.

They can also kayak.

They can enjoy the view over there at the mill dam.

Once they come back up into the village, they can come over to the machine shop where we have a visitor center.

They can also walk the streets and enjoy all the spectacular restoration work of these historic homes.

And then they can come on inside to the Textile Heritage Museum and enjoy all the exhibits and artifacts that we have in there.

If you want to go check it out, we can go on in.

- Yeah, let's go.

- This kind of starts us off with the interpretation of the beginnings of these mills.

Alamance County began with roughly about 10 mills along the Hall River, primarily because the Hall River was the power source.

So here we are in the company store of the Glencoe Mill.

You know, back back during the time that this mill was in operation, this was the store where everybody went to get all their clothing, their tools, even medicines.

They could even come here and make a phone call if they needed to, but it really started bringing our communities together because so many people lived out on farms.

And so this was really the beginnings of people living in neighborhoods, communities - In addition to a historic site, Glencoe Mill Village is also a creative space.

Local artists and musicians often hold exhibitions and concerts here.

And you know, just a few miles down the road is another historic mill and creative space where they handcraft high-end porcelain pottery for restaurants and homes all around the globe.

Let's head for a day trip to Haand Pottery in Burlington.

- We've worked with over 175 restaurants around the world from Middle East, New Zealand, out in Hawai'i, coast to coast, North and South, worked in Canada, worked in Europe, all kind of out of this little warehouse in Burlington that if you drove by it you wouldn't know that that's what's going on.

Hand is a pottery studio based in Burlington, North Carolina, where we hand-make porcelain items for the home and for restaurants.

Mark and I both came into this with a sense that what we did with our lives mattered more than just having a J-O-B.

[machinery whirring] The early days of Haand were pretty... scrappy, maybe destitute.

- Dismal.

- Dismal at times.

We worked, you know, everything was done outside.

I remember we were working under a persimmon tree and the persimmons would be falling out of the tree.

You know, we nearly got struck by lightning that time You know, when you're working underneath constraint and when you have limited resources it doesn't mean that you're limited.

- I'm always blown away by people's willingness to be brave.

And the things that they do, the plates that they make are brave.

In my business, primarily what you see are people trying to be as perfect as they possibly can because they want to hide behind the artifice of perfection rather than to expose their humanity and what they're trying to create.

- These are hand-finished plates.

So not each plate is going to be identical to the next.

Each one looks different and they all stand out from each other.

- I'm sort of thinking of a form for a long time.

I'll just sort of be thinking about the outlines of the piece and I'll make drawings.

And then I make a block of something amd start to kind of carve it out of that.

- What I appreciate about Mark is that he's not concerned about trying to execute the drawing that he started with.

He's comfortable letting that evolve.

The way that something feels in your hand is considered in the designware.

We are in the business of trying to make timeless objects that aren't based on trend and that are intended to be used over lifetime and be heirloom quality.

And you start with that mission.

You need to make the product durable.

Porcelain is a wonderful material for that because it's a very fine clay that when it fires it shrinks significantly, becomes very dense, much denser than most other clays.

And that density is what gives it a lot of strength.

- When they fill the mold with the porcelain slip and then clean it up after it's dried, everybody has sort of their own unique way of of adding to each piece.

That's the beauty of the society and knowing people is that anytime you're talking to someone, that's going to be a different perspective.

Each piece being unique I think sort of captures that.

The casters put a chop mark on the bottom of each piece.

It's a recognition of their role in the process and how important their skill and their craft is to the final piece.

- When you go and spend time with Chris and Mark onsite and talk with them about the various plateware, you know that they have spent countless hours working with folks who think about food 24 hours a day and think about how folks experience it.

- [indistinct] that this bowl has these steep sides.

Those steep sides hold the heat in and it makes the aromas come straight out of the bowl.

These are things that are very specific that are not the generic pasta bowl.

- We've produced over 3000 different things over the last few years, 174 of them are on our website.

There's so many things that we have here that are limited editions, small batch, where you can look at a piece and say, "Oh, I like this piece, but I like this color.

Can you make that for me?"

And you know, the answer is always yes.

A picture or like a video of something doesn't quite share, like the whole story.

You have to be able to pick it up and feel it.

- Haand showroom and studio is at 413 Tucker Street in Burlington.

And it's open to visitors by appointment only.

So give them a call at 336-350-7957.

Haand hopes to resume guided group tours in the second half of 2021.

So check their website for updates and browse their collections online at haand.us.

You know, I just love the bright colors of the historic homes in this area.

You can drive through the historic residential neighborhood and see all of the beautifully restored homes.

That's right.

People live here in this old mill village.

Since our theme this week is day trips from Greensboro, let's head over to Randolph County, where our friends at our state magazine have crafted a beautiful story about Goat Lady Dairy and her famous award-winning cheeses.

[mellow music] - When you change a person's relationship to their food you change them and the world forever.

So people need to know where their food comes from and they need to know how to be sustainable.

That's a big thing for us, local food.

People need to to believe in local food, to spend their money locally.

It all kind of ties in together.

[mellow music] I'm Carrie Bradds.

I'm the owner of Goat Lady Dairy, and we are located in Climax, North Carolina.

Back in '95, I started working for the goat lady.

Her name was Jenny.

Worked for her just doing general cleaning.

And then in '96 I started working as a dishwasher at the dinners.

My husband volunteered me.

He said I was a really good dishwasher.

That's really the truth.

And then when within five years I was full-time and was doing a lot of the the general managing of the cheese area.

In 2012, we went through a really big expansion of the dairy because in order for it to be profitable for the next generation, the Tate's knew that they had to grow.

So in 2012 did a big expansion, 2014, it went for sale and we purchased the business in 2016.

So we've been running it since then.

For us, I think the, the main difference in the cheeses, what sets ours apart, is just our facility in general.

Our main ingredient is milk, and it's very important that people understand that the milk quality starts with the animal in the fields.

So you've got to have healthy, happy animals in order to get good quality milk.

[mellow music] The Providence cheese is a natural run, 100% goat milk cheese.

It is pasteurized.

It was actually an accident.

We were trying to make a different kind of cheese, but this one was really good.

So it's been made for about 12 years, we've been making Providence.

We've tweaked the recipe over the years to be exactly what we want it.

It's aged for a year and it's sold across the US.

[mellow music] - Goat Lady Dairy is at 3531 Jess Hackett Road in Climax.

That's in Randolph County.

They do plan to offer a farm tour in the near future.

To order their delicious cheeses, give them a call at [336] 824-2163.

Or visit them online at goatladydairy.com.

This is Great Bend County Park, just a short walk from Glencoe Mill Village and behind me, the beautiful Hall River.

Just upstream you can put in a kayak and actually paddle all the way to Saxapahaw.

We've had a great time here at Glencoe Mill Village haven't we?

- Sure have.

- And if you'd like to do a day trip from Greensboro, this is a great place to visit.

If you've missed anything in the program today you can always watch us again on PBSNC.org/NCweekend.

Have a great North Carolina weekend everyone.

[bright music] - [Announcer] Funding for North Carolina weekend is provided in part by visit NC, dedicated to highlighting our state's natural scenic beauty, unique history, and diverse cultural attractions from the Blue Ridge and the Great Smoky Mountains across the Piedmont to 300 miles of Barrier Island beaches.

You're invited to experience all the adventure and charm our state has to offer.