David Ray is the Executive Director of Blue Ridge Conservancy, a Boone-based land trust working to permanently protect natural resources across seven counties in the High Country of North Carolina. With a law degree from the University of Georgia and over two decades in conservation work, David made the leap from environmental law to land protection—a career shift that finally aligned his work with his values.

In this episode, we talk with David about what land conservation actually means and why it matters—from protecting wildlife corridors and water quality to preserving scenic views and creating public access to nature. We get into the mechanics of conservation easements, how land trusts operate in perpetuity, and the complex logistics behind major projects like the Middle Fork Greenway and the Northern Peaks State Trail.

David walks us through some of Blue Ridge Conservancy's biggest wins: the decades-long effort to finally protect Howard Knob and open the Knob Boulders and Nature Park, the expansion of trail systems connecting Boone to Blowing Rock and beyond, and ongoing work to safeguard land around Grandfather Mountain. We also discuss the rare amphibolite geology that makes the High Country's mountain ranges ecologically unique, the community support that makes forever conservation possible, and what it takes to raise millions in private funding to close on critical land deals.

It's a detailed look at the infrastructure, strategy, and long-term thinking behind saving the places we love in the mountains of North Carolina.

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🔗 Blue Ridge Conservancy (https://blueridgeconservancy.org)

🌐 Real Boone Studios (https://www.realboone.com/)

📸 Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/realboonestudios)

💬 [email protected] (mailto:[email protected])

Watauga County Schools has nine schools, and Dr. Leslie Alexander knows every one of them. She's the superintendent here in Boone, NC — an App State alum who came up through the classroom as a high school English teacher, spent nine years as a principal, and took the top job in the High Country of North Carolina in 2023 because it was the only opening she wanted. In this episode she talks about her rural Kentucky childhood and what it taught her about what school should be, the long road from teacher to principal to central office, visiting every school in the district before she ever had the job, leading a mountain system through Hurricane Helene, and the decisions families never see her make — from snow days to facilities planning decades out.

In Boone, NC, nobody checks the weather app — they check Ray’s Weather. Dr. Ray Russell is the founder of RaysWeather.Com, the most trusted forecast in the High Country of North Carolina, and he's entirely self-taught. He spent three decades teaching computer science at Appalachian State University while a backyard weather station and a few snow forecasts posted to his faculty page quietly grew into a regional institution. Today it's read daily by families, schools, businesses, and emergency crews across northwest North Carolina.

Gray Shipley of Shipley Farms joins us to talk about why real food has gotten so hard to find — and so hard to eat. Gray runs sales, marketing, and finance for his family's fifth-generation cattle operation in Vilas, just outside Boone, NC, where the Shipleys have raised pasture-raised, hormone-free beef since 1872.

We get into the state of the American food system, what changes when you eat food raised the way it used to be raised, and the real infrastructure behind running a farm as a business — from processing and distribution to keeping a 150-year legacy financially viable in the High Country of North Carolina today.

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🔗 ⁠⁠Shipley Farms

🌐 ⁠⁠Real Boone Studios⁠⁠

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Eric Woolridge is the President of Destination by Design, a Boone-based planning and design firm that helps small towns across the U.S. plan, build, and market themselves as destination-quality communities. With over 20 years of experience and work across 150+ local government jurisdictions, Eric and his team blend land use planning, civil engineering, landscape architecture, and place branding into one shop.

In this episode, we talk with Eric about what it actually takes to transform a small town — how tourism tax dollars get prioritized and deployed for projects like greenways, mountain bike parks, and downtown revitalization. We get into the business of running a firm like Destination by Design, the gap between a town's potential and its execution, and what the High Country of North Carolina gets right (and could do better) when it comes to planning for growth.

🔗 ⁠⁠DBD

🌐 ⁠⁠Real Boone Studios⁠⁠

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Amy Lowrey is the owner of Tiny Hands Pottery, a handcrafted ceramics studio based in Boone, NC. Amy calls herself an accidental potter — she spent her adult life in the nonprofit world, building homes in Mexico, traveling to 40+ countries, and helping underserved students access college funding. Then in 2015 she took a pottery class, fell completely in love, and eventually made the leap to full-time artist.

In this episode, we talk with Amy about that pivot — what it takes to walk away from a life of service work and bet on yourself as a creative. We get into the realities of building a handmade goods business from scratch: selling wholesale, doing shows, teaching lessons, and finding your people. Amy shares what she's learned about making things with intention and why she believes beauty and creativity have the power to light the world up.

🔗 ⁠⁠Tiny Hands Pottery

🌐 ⁠⁠Real Boone Studios⁠⁠

📸 ⁠⁠Instagram ⁠⁠

💬 ⁠⁠[email protected]

Singer/songwriter John Lucas has built the kind of career most musicians only imagine—over 40 million Spotify streams, songs licensed by Google, MTV, and Freeform, and a loyal following grown over more than a dozen years. Now putting down roots in Boone, NC, he joins us in the High Country of North Carolina for a honest conversation about what success in music actually looks like from the inside.

We get into the numbers most artists won't say out loud—what Spotify really pays per stream—along with the rise of AI-generated music and what it means for working songwriters. And underneath it all, the more personal question: how John feels about the music he's made, and what it's like to keep creating when the industry keeps changing the rules. It's a candid look at art, money, and meaning from one of Boone's most accomplished creatives.

🔗 ⁠⁠John Lucas⁠

🌐 ⁠⁠Real Boone Studios⁠⁠

📸 ⁠⁠Instagram ⁠⁠

💬 ⁠⁠[email protected]

Carrington Doolittle Pertalion is a Certified Nurse Midwife at AppHealthCare in Boone, NC, and has been caring for women across the High Country of North Carolina for more than 25 years. In this episode, Carrington walks us through her unlikely path to midwifery — dropping out of high school at 16, working in commercial fishing, and finally discovering her calling the day her daughter was delivered by a nurse midwife. She talks about going back to school, the risk of opening her own private practice straight out of midwifery school in 2002, and what it means to come full circle back to public health at AppHealthCare, where her very first nursing job in Boone began. We get into what most people misunderstand about midwifery, why healthcare should be about the person in front of you rather than the clock on the wall, and what 25 years of caring for women in the same community actually feels like.

🌐 ⁠⁠Real Boone Studios⁠⁠

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Coy Baker, Founder and CEO of Baker Forge & Tool, joins us to talk about building one of America's leading Damascus steel manufacturers in Boone, NC. Coy started his blacksmithing journey in the mountains of Western North Carolina in 2016, engineered his own 25-ton hydraulic forging press, and in 2020 developed a method for fusion welding copper to carbon steel — the breakthrough behind the brand's signature CopperMai and BronzeMai laminated steels.

In this episode we cover manufacturing in the High Country of North Carolina, what it takes to run a family-owned operation alongside his brother Jay (Shop Manager) and father Bruce (CFO), the innovation behind proprietary steels like Mosaic Damascus and Stainless SanMai, and how Baker Forge supplies knife makers, artisans, and major knife companies from a single shop on Waterstone Drive — with steel shipping to Asia, Australia, Europe, and across North America.

🔗 ⁠Baker Forge

🌐 ⁠⁠Real Boone Studios⁠⁠

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Description: Jacob and Melina Daniels are the husband-and-wife co-owners of Common Good Co., an artisan gallery and fine art space on King Street in Boone, NC. In this episode, you'll hear how two App State art students went from selling their work at traveling markets to owning and restoring a 100-year-old historic building in the heart of downtown — and what it actually took to build something from nothing. Expect a candid conversation about creative entrepreneurship, the risks of betting on your craft, and what it means to create a space that serves both artists and the community.