Happy First Day of Spring! The daffodils are blooming, the air is perfectly lukewarm, and we’re collectively emerging from our winter dens. You rub your eyes and there it is again, like clockwork – nature! – and you just want to roll around in it, do whatever the spring equivalent of a snow angel is in it.
It’s easy to fantasize, on a day such as today, in a time such as now, about absconding headlong into the wilderness. Towards an off-grid escape from the Upside Down, a temporary restraining order against all our manmade nonsense. Somewhere you can hear a creek running, feel small beneath the stars, and pretend that everything is fine.
But even with the world’s greatest, smokiest mountains in our backyard, it can feel daunting to break free from our busy lives – even temporarily. For beginner campers, or those with small children or health issues or other assorted wild cards to contend with, the idea is extra intimidating: what happens if things go sideways and you’re out in the middle of nowhere? What if someone leaves a pot brownie by the campfire and your sister-in-law’s Italian greyhound needs an emergency vet visit at 2 a.m.?
True story (and the dog was fine — thanks, UT!). We were camping at the former Brown Bike Farms, now Low Meadow Farms, a slice of creekside paradise that feels remote but is actually just 15 minutes from downtown. Low Meadow Farms was purchased in 2023 by Aaron and Kat White, a cool, outdoorsy couple who live in Island Home with their two daughters, aged 3 and almost-5.
I tell Aaron and Kat the dog story, which was before their time at Low Meadow yet a timeless anecdote for the perks of urban camping. As Aaron puts it, the campground is great for “first-time campers, people who want to test out a new tent before they take it to the backcountry, parents who have never camped with their children … they get to experience all the fun parts of camping, but if things go bad and they need to bail out, they’re close to civilization.”
Low Meadow Farms is located on a four-acre meadow along Burnett Creek in “Deep South” Knoxville, with 13 primitive camping sites that run between $30-$50 per/night to reserve. Each site has its own picnic table and fire ring, with enough room for tents and RVs, and most sites have trees suitable for hammock camping all along the creek. There’s potable water, firewood for sale, solar showers, a clean port-o-potty, and a bike wash stand all next to the covered communal area.
The sites are spaced well apart, so you won’t have to endure your neighbor’s acoustic guitar rendition of “Wagon Wheel” (or subject them to your own). “It’s a calm, peaceful stay where you can connect with nature – it feels like forest service land,” Aaron says.
Low Meadow Farms is an ideal home base for nature exploration in the area, being a stone’s throw from Ijams Nature Center, Forks of the River WMA and Baker Creek. For mountain bikers, it’s a 0.6-mile ride to the nearest Urban Wilderness trailhead, Mayor’s Hot Tub – from there, you could ride pretty much all day without crossing your own tracks. On June 21 this summer, Low Meadow Farms is hosting a Swift Summer Solstice Campout in partnership with the Old City-based bike nonprofit Two Bikes that will include an 8.4-mile on-road/off-road ride from downtown to the campground.
Other folks stay at Low Meadow Farms when they’re in town for games, concerts, weddings and more for a real city mouse<country mouse experience. Low Meadow is a nice place for a family gathering or granola-vibes birthday party – attendees can reserve a block of spaces and stay the night if they want or head home when the sun goes down.
Kat and Aaron have big dreams for Low Meadow Farms as a working farm, too. Kat, who has both academic and field experience in botany, planted a “food forest” of over 100 baby trees, including a variety of “usual” (e.g. apples, peaches, pears) and “unusual” fruits (e.g. jujube, chinese melonberry, hardy kiwi) and nitrogen fixers (e.g. Kentucky coffee, goumi berry, sea berry) along with an edible hedge (e.g. hazelnut, bush mulberry, fig). Wild asparagus, edible greens and a proliferation of blackberries already existed in the meadow, and guests are welcome to graze them as they ripen. They’ve also been tapping maple trees for syrup.
Across the road from the campground, Kat and Aaron acquired another 36 acres of land from Burnett Benedict Bolin, whose grandfather settled the farm over 100 years ago. Burnett was in her 90s and wanted the estate, which includes a log cabin built in the 1800s, to be loved and well-stewarded in hopes that it wouldn’t be developed. She took a shine to the young family and entrusted them with the land’s future.
Work has begun on a system of single- and double-track trails across the acreage that Kat and Aaron intend to connect to the Urban Wilderness. They’re also building a house for themselves on the property so that they can make Low Meadow Farms not just a home away from home, but their home-home.
Kat says, “We’re out here every day, and every time we’re here we say, ‘We’re so lucky, how did this happen?’ It was just a string of lucky happenstance.”
Know Before You Go: Low Meadow Farms is located at 6530 Burnett Creek Road, Knoxville, TN 37920. Learn more at the website here. You can make campsite reservations from the website OR HipCamp (which named Low Meadow Farms “Best of Tennessee” last year!).
In other urban camping news: Last Thursday brought us an update on The Drop Inn, a 15.7-acre site at 4507 Sevierville Pike on the boundary of the Urban Wilderness’ Marie Myers Park. A lot has changed since IOK last wrote about it in 2022 including new ownership and an elevated development plan. PIER Group LLC, which bought the property last November, received approval from the Knoxville planning commission for a revised special use request to include six campsites, six permanent cabins, 15 tiny mobile cabins, a bathhouse and a sauna. Check out the Compass report here.