NARRATOR: High in the Blue Ridge Mountains,
there's new blood hard at work on Turtle Island.
19-year-old North Carolina native
Raleigh Avery has come on board to help
keep the preserve running.
I've always been one to love nature, get out in the woods,
use my hands.
NARRATOR: Raleigh's bringing some mountain
skills to the table.
I know it's going to be different and a whole lot
of work, but I'm looking forward to learning and growing
and having Eustace as a mentor.
NARRATOR: But he's got big shoes to fill
here on Eustace Conway's turf.
EUSTACE: Good boys.
My good friend Preston has helped
me out here for over 30 years.
And after he died, it's been really hard to find good help.
I'm going to need some help taking care of the horses, saw
mill, and just a million little things always need to be done.
Raleigh pays attention.
He's motivated, and hopefully he can do it.
So he knows blacksmithing, and he's helped
me do a little sawmilling.
Raleigh knows a lot of stuff, but he's
got a whole lot more to learn, and I'm
excited about teaching him.
NARRATOR: And Raleigh couldn't have arrived at a better time.
Last winter, Eustace put a payment
on an expansion, 90 acres of forest right next door.
EUSTACE (VOICEOVER): We've got a lot of land we need to cover.
I've got a new piece of land up here.
NARRATOR: Now he needs Raleigh's muscle
to make the land productive and pull enough
logs to raise the loan payment that's due in the spring
or risk losing the investment.
Right now I need some cash, and we're
going to go look at some timber, look at the new tract of land
and sort of assess what we've got here that we can use.
NARRATOR: The goal is to get the new land to pay for itself,
and so far the prospects are good.
When they're straight, they make good timber.
Now see how that forks right at the base there?
I see it.
EUSTACE: And that's leaning.
And some day in some ice storm that's
going to get so heavy that it's going to split and fall.
If we harvest it now, we harvest it on our terms,
you see what I mean?
RALEIGH: Yeah.
I believe we could pay my debt just by taking the cull trees
off of this land right here--
RALEIGH: Wow.
EUSTACE: --just the low-quality trees.
And we can harvest all this, but at the same time
we know we got this preserved.
We can keep it natural and healthy.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
I'm glad you get this stuff.
Well, let's head on up the hollow and see what we've got.
Some nice hemlocks around.
Yeah, some of them are dead already,
but there's a few still living.
Hey, look at this.
My gosh.
RALEIGH: Is that moonshine a still?
EUSTACE: Yeah, I can't have this.
NARRATOR: The discovery of an illegal
still puts Eustace in a bind.
I don't mind a man moonshining if he wants to do it
on his own land, but it's pretty alarming to have somebody,
like, working on my land that's not invited.
NARRATOR: Moonshining is an Appalachian tradition dating
back more than 200 years.
Today it still thrives in the mountains,
but distillers have to go deep off the grid to evade the law.
That's not terribly old.
That hasn't even been rained on.
Well, who could have been doing this?
I have no idea.
I just need to make sure they don't
come back and do it again.
And they need to know they just can't
come over here and make liquor.
RALEIGH: I got an idea to send them a message.
What's that?
Blowing up this moonshine still.
My nature is to salvage it, but I believe
Raleigh's idea of blowing up the still
will certainly send a message to whoever brought it down here.
He's having fun with the idea.
Like, let's just run with it.
Let's do it.
So a bullet explodes it?
RALEIGH: Right.
And we use a high-powered rifle to set this thing off.
Think we'll be able to make that shot from the ridge up there?
EUSTACE: You're shooting.
What do you think?
I got it.
All right.
Oh my goodness.
Well, let's get up there and do it.
Goodbye, still.
There it is right there.
Let's grab that stump.
We can roll it up here to.
That's a good plan.
EUSTACE: One, two.
Don't let him go.
Thank you.
How about it?
[laughter]
Oh my gosh.
You aren't kidding.
That's a bomb.
Raleigh had a pretty good idea sending out a message.
So whoever's coming back to it is going to get the point.
Well, it's starting to get dark, and it's starting to snow,
and we've got quite a few miles to go.
Let's head on back.