Blackberry Farm
Forty-two hundred acres of working farm against a national park, grown from one family's house.
Blackberry Farm holds about forty-two hundred acres in the foothills of the Great Smoky Mountains at Walland, Tennessee, and one account places it against the national park's boundary. The ground is farmed rather than landscaped: the estate employs its own butcher, cheesemaker and beekeeper alongside gardeners and a preserver, and the kitchens run on what the land produces. Sixty-two or sixty-eight rooms, cottages and houses are spread across hills, ponds and woodland, which puts the load on the ground at roughly sixty acres to a key — among the lightest in this register.
The house began as a home twice over. David and Florida Lasier, from Chicago, built it in the late 1930s and named the farm after the blackberry bushes on it. Kreis and Sandy Beall bought it in 1976 as their own place and began taking guests; they added sixteen hundred and eighty-eight acres in 1979 and opened formally in 1990 with twenty-nine rooms. The Beall family still owns it. In 2007 they and partners bought a separate fifty-two hundred acres in the same mountains, which opened in 2019 as Blackberry Mountain — a second estate, not an extension of this one.
A farm that is actually farmed. The acreage is not scenery kept at a distance from the rooms; it produces what the guests eat. That makes the land a working holding first and a setting second.
Assembled, and then doubled next door. Sixteen hundred acres were added three years after the purchase, and a separate fifty-two hundred bought later. The family has kept buying land in the same hills for half a century.
Who it is not for
Blackberry Farm is wrong for travellers who want the sea: this is Appalachian farmland and forest. It is wrong for anyone who wants a town at the gate, since Walland is small and Knoxville is half an hour away. It is wrong for guests who want to eat elsewhere, because meals are included and the kitchens are the point. For an American estate held against public land in the desert, Amangiri keeps six hundred acres in Utah.
Sources
- Operator history - a 4,200-acre estate in the Great Smoky Mountains at Walland, Tennessee; the land first settled as a home by David and Florida Lasier in the late 1930s; bought by Kreis and Sandy Beall in 1976; 1,688 acres added in 1979; opened to the public in 1990 with twenty-nine rooms; owned by the Beall family
- Operator and press record - in 2007 the Beall family and partners bought 5,200 acres in the same mountains, opened in 2019 as Blackberry Mountain; the farm employs its own butcher, cheesemaker and beekeeper
Verification
- Official source
- Not yet checked
- Sources disagree
- accommodation is published as sixty-two and as sixty-eight rooms, cottages and houses. One account places the estate on the boundary of Great Smoky Mountains National Park; the operator does not state it.
- Property confirmation
- Pending
- Last verified
- —
Booking
Private Resorts arranges each stay on request, quoting the rates available for the resort and dates. No benefit should be assumed unless it is confirmed in writing for the individual reservation.
Request a proposalClassified by The Resort Collection House · The Register · Edition 2026 · LHL-E-357
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