Blackberry Farm Marks Its 50th Anniversary as "The Blackberry Year" in 2026

Blackberry Farm is marking 2026 as what the resort is calling the Blackberry Year, its 50th anniversary since Sandy and Kreis Beall purchased the property on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains in 1976. What began as a family farm has grown into one of the country's defining Relais & Châteaux addresses, a member since 1994 and one of the earliest American resorts to build its entire identity around a working farm.

That identity has a name inside the resort's own walls: Foothills Cuisine, the term the Beall family coined for cooking built around the farm's own creamery, gardens, and livestock. The Barn at Blackberry Farm, led by Chef Cassidee Dabney, remains the resort's culinary flagship, while The Dogwood in the Main House offers a more intimate second dining room.

The anniversary follows a strong run of recent recognition, including a spot on Condé Nast Traveler's 2025 Gold List. Guests spread across Historic Rooms, Estate Rooms, and a range of cottage suites including Carriage House, Holly Glade, and Singing Brook, with The Wellhouse Spa, fly-fishing, and the farm's own cheesemaking classes rounding out a stay built around the same land the Bealls bought half a century ago.

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