[piano intro] [bouncy music] - [Heather] Join us for some North Carolina mountain memories at Biltmore Estate.

- [Woman] This balcony overlooks the servants courtyard.

- It's a stunning entrance.

- [Heather] Cuddle some highland cows in Burnsville.

- Is that one nice?

- Yeah, that's a little girl.

- [Man] She's really sweet.

- [Heather] And here the fascinating legacy of the Wong family in highland brewing.

- Everybody can share a beer and have fun.

- [Man] It doesn't matter where you come from.

- [Heather] It's all on My Home, coming up next.

[lighthearted country music] - [Heather] All across the state, we're uncovering the unique stories that make North Carolina my home.

♪ Come home, come home ♪ [lighthearted country music] [graceful piano music] ♪ - So the lady in the photo is named Hope Miller.

She met her husband while she was living here and they courted on the estate.

[graceful piano music] - When it comes to the highlands of North Carolina, no trip is complete without America's largest home.

[graceful piano music] - Biltmore has a story to tell.

So finding this was just like finding a piece of history.

- And then just to have the further research to find out the his story.

- But there's also a preservation piece that is so important.

- This is actually the first elevator in Asheville and one of the first electric elevators in the United States.

- [Heather] Wow.

Going up.

[graceful piano music] Here we give you a rare look into that magic.

- So the oral history project first began in the 1980s.

People who had worked here in George Vanderbilt's time around the turn of the century as maids and other people who worked in Biltmore house.

The project has evolved to encompass a lot of people who grew up on farms who still have memories of living here.

This is the pet deer who belonged to Raul Austin who was a dental man I spoke with a few years ago and there are other photographs that he shared where Jim is kind of sitting down like a dog and then jumping up to have a treat.

- Jim the deer.

- Yes - This deer is named Jim.

This is a photograph from the Holt family.

This is from a house that was near Deer Park, where the Deer Park restaurant is today and this was their Christmas card.

This is a family that was involved with the dairy and they worked here for a long time and they would host a lot of holiday parties.

Mrs. Miller came on her 92nd birthday with her daughters.

They had this photo taken of themselves in front of Biltmore house and a little while after this was taken, he shipped off to go fight in WWII.

He would carry this photo around in his pocket and you can see the crease lines from where it was folded and he would tell people that this was his house back in North Carolina.

- And what would people say to him?

- I'm not sure.

[laugher] - Yeah, it seems like for a lot of families who worked here as farmers that weekends were a time where they could be together with family and relax and get together with other families who lived here.

Biltmore, among historic house museums, Biltmore is really lucky that we have so much documentation and so much in our archives but there is a lot that does not make it to the written record like how it would have been to live here and the day in the life and the daily routines of families here.

[mysterious music] - I've always wanted to work in a museum and particularly hands on with the collection and so to come into work every day is just like being in a dream.

My name is Lenore Hardin and I'm an associate collections manager at Biltmore.

In these drawers, we have some of the smaller, finer accessories such as jewelry, necklaces.

There's a hair comb.

I think there's a lot of behind the scenes work that goes on that people don't realize when you have over 35,000 objects to care for that that adds up to a lot of time and a lot of attention to detail.

When I first started planning for the storage space, I envisioned it to be like a large, highly organized walk in closet.

- What is special about this one?

- So that is a replica of a brooch that George Vanderbilt had created for his wife, Edith, as a wedding gift in 1898.

We reproduced that.

- [Heather] So this staircase is unique, it's beautiful.

Where are we going?

- [Lenore] So this open stairwell leads to the bachelors wing of the house where the single male guests would've stayed.

This livery coat was discovered during an inventory of a clothing closet.

When I was cataloging, this is the label that I found inside a pocket and as you can see, it says S. Patrick, which was just enough information for me to be able to look it up and find the name in our archives.

Sefton Patrick came to Biltmore house to work for Mrs. Vanderbilt in 1921 and unfortunately, shortly there after, he become ill with tuberculosis.

When Edith found out that he was ill, she started to pay for his medical expenses.

- That had to have felt like such a wonderful moment.

- It was.

- It connects all the dots.

- It was really neat.

- Most people don't get to see this cause its your office.

- [Winnie] That's right.

- [Heather] So it's a pretty special piece at Biltmore.

- [Winnie] She would have been a teenager in early 20s and we believe this was done after a trip that she had taken with her mother to Asia.

It's special to me because it shows the Biltmore was a home that was a place where they were comfortable.

Where they expressed their creative sides.

They really could relax and feel at home.

[bouncy music] - Puppetry is a kind of magic.

It's very related to the world of magic and illusion.

When they first come to life, I kind of find out who they are.

[bouncy music] They sort of have a life of their own that has to do with how their engineered and carved and whatnot.

But yeah, you know bring these characters to life and sort of fall in love with them.

[bouncy music] [somber music] About two years ago, right around the time my mother died, she was a bird watcher and we spent my youth was spent photographing birds and that inspired a whole show about how she inspired me in nature.

She did that for me as a child.

And so, I dreamt about a flock of pelicans.

I could handle the puppet.

It was a fan like structure and I could flex it like this to make then swoop and go down and up and then I saw in the dream, different strings to pull to randomize the wing movement.

I feel like I'm an artist who engineers.

You know, the engineering is definitely a part of the process so that is half the fun and then actually performing it and how it will interact with the audience or fly over the heads of the children and that kind of thing.

I started with marionettes but very quickly become attracted to these rod puppets.

This older 19th century style which is not really done this way anymore.

She's carved out of holly.

The rods to the hands which are operated almost like chopsticks in a way and then I have controls to her head which the side to side and up and down are things that had existed in puppetry before I came up with the additional mechanism to tilt the head and I think that's the most expressive thing she does.

I'm the audience for her.

I'm watching her as if I'm the audience so there's a communication between myself and the puppet.

- [Man] She gives me chills - I know, me too.

I have a crush on her.

[laughter] Yeah, she's lovely.

The first puppets I made were made out of wood and so you had to joint the puppets and think about how they would be manipulated.

I decided I would try working with carving foam rubber.

The animation and the jointing is just built right into the material and once I carve this, it can be very realistic.

I actually learned this technique visiting Jim Hanson's studio when I was applying for work on the movie "The Dark Crystal".

They were using it for incidental things, props and things, but I was interested in just working with the raw foam and not covering it, just painting it.

When I got started, I wasn't very careful with all this mess and I had a dream where I was eating a foam rubber hamburger and the next day I found some of this in my mouth and went "okay I got to clean my act up a little bit here".

Everyone has their own kind of intelligence.

Some are great musicians or linguistic or interpersonal and I'm a visual, spacial person.

My grandfather was a New York business man and he couldn't believe that his grandson would be a puppeteer.

But grandfather used to break my father's crayons as a little boy because there artists in the family but they squelched that and my own father, he was not excited about his son becoming a puppeteer.

I think he finally got it toward the end.

He worked up the New York stock exchange.

I told my friends that my dad sold socks and bonnets.

I take these shows and go over North Carolina but then all over the country.

I'll often go into a library or school and there'll be older kids and they are sitting there like this and like we are not going to like this.

They might initially get into it because of how it's done mechanically.

Then they'll get into the beauty of it.

That's part of the appeal of creating puppets.

It's that they're kind of transformational.

They want the experience to be something of wonder.

And quite often they'll tell me that when you were doing that eagle and flying over me, you like turn invisible.

I love that.

Okay, got to rest When I was getting into this, I thought I was getting into just performing and making a living, but then it become all of these other layers unfolded and I saw what a powerful medium it was.

I'll do a performance for the kids and then we'll go into classroom.

They will learn more about engineering from making something out of cardboard and string and straws and engineering them and using their hands.

I can't remember a lot of those lessons that I learned in math, but when you combine the arts with education, that just sort of deepens that experience.

They'll remember that their whole life.

So I really love teaching puppetry, especially shadow puppetry.

You're working in a 2-dimensional world so the silhouettes have to be created so that they read properly and the little characters are articulated and jointed.

This is just a very simple shadow puppet made out of cardboard and little brass fasteners like so and you want then to have a little bit of movement and animation.

Working with the rods horizontal, perpendicular to the screen like that allows the rods to mostly disappear.

[match striking] A couple of years ago, the Avett Brothers approached me about making a music video for them.

[Bring Your Love to Me plays] I created a this for a song called "Bring Your Love".

The puppets were filmed and then in the computer, the silhouettes were plucked out of the white background so they could be placed against other backgrounds then.

It's a little story that I sort of read into the lyrics.

It's not what they intended at all.

[Bring Your Love to Me continues] But it turned into quite a lovely piece.

The whole things has a real film like quality but they all began just by being filmed on this screen.

[Bring Your Love to Me continues] I think the arts are so important.

We have a cARTwheels grant that take me into underserved counties in schools and there'll be a child who has the creative ability but they sort of discover themselves a new ability that they may not have even known about and I'll see that their genius is their hands and I hope that they really recognize that.

You know, people sometimes ask me "you're a puppet, you're a what?

You're a puppeteer?".

Like who would want, why?

Why would you do that?

And after they see a good show, they know why.

They understand it then.

[touching music] [upbeat music] [cow mooing] - [Farmer] Woo - So I think the reason why people are so captivated by the highland cattle is just they're just majestic beasts.

Beautiful hair style, you know the horns, a bit of a mystery to them.

[energetic music] Got featured in the tabloid.

I mean it was a cute story but - It was just total lies, you know it was like meet the farmers who cuddle their cows, you know.

- And it was all made up.

She's so warm.

Hey, I'm Adam Hopson.

- [Emily] I'm Emily.

- [Adam] And our home is Burnsville, North Carolina.

You're an attention hog.

We raise highland cattle here in Yancey county and Mitchell county and we sell them to hobby farms, centrally all across the United States and internationally.

- [Heather] So do you have a certain call that you do?

- Yeah, the soo cow but louder.

[cow call] [cow call] - I thought that was a pig call, soi.

Is that a pig call?

- It's actually a type a yodel and it came from the Swiss Alps which is the origins of it and it's just kind of mountain tradition.

This area is really good for highlands cause it's so similar to the geography and the topography of Scotland and we have very similar weather here.

We have a very mild summer; pretty mild winter.

We're content to just sit in the pasture with them for hours and just watch them.

I mean, they're just so quiet and easy going and I think that kinda translates to other people.

They kind of live vicariously through our photos and videos and it just bring a peace and calming effect to people.

- She's the sweetest.

- [Adam] This is all Emily does all summer.

[peaceful guitar music] - Can you prop that up just for a second?

- So we first got into highland cattle in 2014.

Adam had lost his job and was just looking for direction.

He'd been praying about what he was supposed to do next.

And I've always wanted one for the pet so I just started looking online.

- Originally we were going to buy two or three and went to look at them and we picked out a few and he's like I'll make you a deal on all of them and we're like what are we going to do with 24 cows, you know, and we ended up getting two big trailer loads of cattle the day that we were finishing out fence up.

And then, so we put them in the pasture and we wake up the next morning and all the cows are gone, every last one of them.

We got them all back in and then re-fixed the fence and I patched it with just old wood pallets and I left it that way just as a reminder to me to keep your fences fixed.

You just fix a fence however you can at the time.

- [Emily] Come on, come.

Let's go.

- We've had, you know, over 3 maybe even 4 hundred head of cattle total in that amount of time.

You're such a baby.

Will you hold her?

And we realized very quickly that we're not going to be able to do beef, like we're way to attached to these animals.

Best friend forever, huh?

[bouncy music] We never had any intentions of like trying to be popular or to grow any kind of internet success or whatever.

It just all happened organically and like we just kind of like hung on and we were like what is going on here.

During that whole period of time was really the first transition of the farm.

We started getting a lot of emails and phone calls and things.

We had kind of started like a Facebook, Instagram page at that time.

We had one photo and I was holding it up with it's legs kind of propped up and had my hands around him and afterwards looking at the picture like man this thing looks like a teddy bear like we need to put this on the internet.

And sure enough, that afternoon we had a viral photo.

It'd be really impossible to tell how many views but it was in the hundreds of millions.

- [Emily] We didn't do it intentionally.

That's just how we interacted with them.

I don't know.

It was always, you know, petting and brushing them.

- So that's kind of when our business took off.

We started to sell a lot of cattle so we got invited to a lot of events.

So we've taken cows many places across the United States.

On the way home, we typically as a treat for the cows we'll take them out to the beach.

It's ends up being a treat more for the beach goers then the cows themselves.

And there's just so much negativity out there and it's just nice to be able to share a little bit of hope and a little bit of light to people, you know, just even through a fuzzy little cute cow.

It's not about making money.

It's just, I don't know, it's about loving what we do.

I don't think we'll ever be rich from doing what we're doing.

It's enjoyable.

It's an enjoyable way to live and I mean, it makes me happy and I think its the same with Emily.

- Yeah.

[upbeat music] - We were the first legal brewing operation in Asheville, North Carolina since prohibition.

[upbeat music] I hear being called godfather beer a lot from people.

I think it's kind of stuck.

The Scots Irish settled this area initially and in honor of those settlers, original settlers, we named it Highland.

[upbeat guitar music] My name is Oscar Wong.

My title is, sometimes, is flounder.

- I'm Leah Ashburn and I'm president of Highland Brewing.

There's a lot of beer in the market and I think that, you know, dad's sort of American dream story of coming from Jamaica and getting an education here and starting two businesses and then it going second generation to a female.

That's so American.

That can't happen anywhere else.

- I had an opportunity to get into the brewing business.

I got going as a hobby for many years.

Not making any money and it took about eight years to break even, but as now and then, quality and consistency were key.

[lively music] - So when you're x-raying a beer, what are you looking for?

- Well, it's really fill level is number one.

Does it have a cap?

The very first beer that we made is an English amber style ale.

We made in 1994.

It has morphed over the years.

Now it's today's gallic ale which is our biggest selling and most popular beer.

- This is where we're cooking the beer.

We've got raw materials and the entire brewing process is done in this area and kegging.

We'll do about 45,000 barrels of beer this year.

- 45,000 barrels, that seems like a lot of barrels of beers to count on the wall.

- It's a very long song Working with dad is really special to me.

It's, you know, been his kid but working as peers, as adults is a completely different experience.

Dad and I talked many times a year for so many years about how I was feeling about Highland.

- The trick was how do I talk her into it without pushing.

I've learned, way back when, she's like her mother that way, if I push hard it makes it worse so let it ride.

[joyful music] I'm here every day because I enjoy being here.

When you consider that I'm older than all the parents of our staff, it's like having a whole bunch of kids.

This whole business is real for young people.

I enjoy hanging around with them because I see a vitality, a modernism.

- Talking about vitality and there's some team members that we have that are so full of life and ideas and really kind of reinvigorated Highland and what Highland is capable of.

[lighthearted music] That Highland is more than brewery to so many people.

That was just, that just kind of blew me away.

I feel like I have these huge shoes to fill.

It's been a really big deal to kind of follow in his footsteps and learn that I have to do that my own way.

- Obviously everything familial is really endearing, but Leah's her own like independent leader which is kind of coolest part.

- So I'm quite proud of her and I feel like sometimes I, wow my little poke.

- Wow I knew it.

I knew he was going to say poke.

That was my nickname when I was a baby.

I appreciate the trust that he's put in me and but I also appreciate his input and I still want that so I'm so glad you're still here every day.

I will not let him retire.

Not that he would anyway, but its been a special time.

Not many people get to experience this.

[upbeat music] - [Heather] Next time on My Home, it's all made in North Carolina.

Join us as we travel across North Carolina and meet the people who's hands and hearts create some of the most amazing craftsmanship and design.

- Is it unique for someone just to make a snare?

Like he does?

- [Man] Out of the whole drum set, probably the snare is used the most.

- [Heather] It's all on My Home.

[hopeful music] ♪ ♪