Blackberry Farm, Walland, Tennessee

Field work: This 9,200-acre estate in the Great Smoky Mountains is the Cadillac of farm stays. The on-site FarmStead culinary center preserves American agrarian traditions by employing full-time master gardeners, beekeepers, butchers, cheese-makers, and preservationists. You can visit them at work in the 18th-century Amish barn, which also houses an 8,000-square-foot wine cellar and the farm's elegant tasting dinners. Day-long cooking classes might touch on bacon making or butter churning, while gardening courses cover the history, heritage, and use of heirloom seeds. Frequent guest chefs—Alain Ducasse and Patricia Wells have cooked here—host classes and tastings.

Farm table: The Barn, Blackberry Farm's graceful restaurant, has pioneered what the proprietors have dubbed "Foothills cuisine," drawing on locavore values and Southern culinary traditions to create dishes from the bounty of the heirloom gardens, bakery, butcher, salumeria, and creamery. Tasting menus, served on antique linens beneath the vaulted wood ceiling, might include dishes such as seared North Carolina mountain trout dressed in shiitake purée served with crawfish hash or wood-roasted guinea hen over rice grits and spring onions with pea tendrils.

Bedtime: Each of the 62 rooms, split between cottages throughout the property, offers a different aesthetic: one a contemporary aerie of oatmeal and cream with sepia photos anchoring a modern fireplace; another a Ralph Lauren–esque hunting lodge, all roughly hewn timbers, weathered leather, and handsome plaid throws.

Blackberry Farm
1471 West Millers Cove Road
Walland, Tennessee
Tel: 865 984 8166
From $795 per night, including three meals, snacks, and nonalcoholic beverages for two people; or from $345, lodging only

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