In 2017, Fonta Flora literally bought the farm. After operating a taproom brewery out of a cozy brick building in Morganton, North Carolina, for four years, Fonta Flora brewed its first batch of beer at Whippoorwill Farm, an eight-acre property the brewery purchased in the nearby hamlet of Nebo (population: roughly 3,500).
“When we started Fonta Flora, it wasn’t on a farm, but it was still more of an agricultural operation than anything else,” says cofounder Todd Steven Boera.
Cofounder Todd Steven Boera. Photo: Ash Patino
Boera’s first homebrewed batches of beer in 2006 incorporated ingredients grown in the gardens at Warren Wilson College, where he was studying agriculture. From Day One, Fonta Flora was incorporating fruit and grain from local farmers. Yet Boera longed for the brewery to have its own farm, in the vein of others such as Jester King and Hill Farmstead.