Minks? the
Very Best!
The* cool air of the Cashiers
plateau is gc»o<l for minks, ami
a mink farm there proilnees
eliampionsliip pelts for an in¬
exhaustible market.
I.cft. some of Ihc mink pens on the WilsOn-Jennings farm near Cashiers. At right. Dick Jennings exhibits some fine pelts
(Photos bv John Parris).
Hi
/
KILL SHARPE
All the radio comedians in the world
put together into one great big laugh
can't take the glamour out of mink
coats. The well-known female passion
for this garment has suffered no no¬
ticeable set-back simply because of
some katzenjamnter doings in Wash¬
ington. The mink, a noisy and vicious
little rodent, seems destined for eager
slaughter until some animal comes
forth with a hide which is softer, warm¬
er. cleaner and more expensive.
At least that’s the way it looks at
the Wilson-Jennings farm at Cashiers,
the largest mink farm in North Caro¬
lina. and one of the largest in the
country. Perhaps few motorists know
that behind the innocent sign, "Lone¬
some Farm" on the Sapphire road lead¬
ing up the hill to Cashiers Valley, are
some hundreds of minks which an
enthusiastic North Carolinian, named
Dick Jennings, is encouraging to mul¬
tiply and cover themselves with the
more desirable types of fur.
This farm is one of three in the Wil¬
son-Jennings chain, the other two be¬
ing in New England. This one has
been in operation for about five years.
Jennings, the son of Richard Jennings,
who owned a large tract of rugged
timberland in the Sapphire country,
part of which was developed as Fair-
field Inn. says that the cool, high al¬
titudes of this section of the state seem
to agree admirably with the valuable
animals. We visited the place during
the mating season, and Jennings and a
corps of assistants were shushing
around the pens, careful not to dis¬
turb any ardor which one mink might,
at the moment, have conceived for an¬
other. It scents that minks are unpre¬
dictable characters and a mink farmer
never knows whether a mink is think¬
ing about his next meal or whether he
has begun to think of the desirability
of entering into family life. For this
reason, mink mating is one of trial and
error with a most uncertain outcome.
However, there is nothing very un¬
certain about the very steady notion
which women have about mink coats,
and the coats which arc sewn from
minks produced in North Carolina are
absolutely the best. The Jennings
Farm annually produces about 1,500
to 2,000 pelts, and when we were
there, there was an expansion program
underway.
The Sapphire and Aleutian minks
are the latest thing in ladies’ coats and
the Sapphire mink produced in North
Carolina led the New York market
in price last season. It is only a
coincidence that the name of the mink
also is the same as the region in which
these prime specimens are being pro¬
duced. The Aleutian, for your infor¬
mation, is a brown with a bluish tinge,
and the Sapphire is a very handsome
blue gray, NVe might be pardoned if
wc say that a Sapphire even looks
( Continued on page 17)
THE STATE. May 24, 1952
9