Farm Share Newsletter, 7/29

Notes from the Field

Well, this week marks the first sighting of deer in this field in 72 years. When I
first moved in I was really worried about deer, but was assured by my neighbor Jack that he'd never seen any deer around here. And I still haven't, as the deer sighting happened this morning at 5:30am when Jack was out drinking his morning coffee. He said he would have called me if he'd had my number as he thought I'd have gotten a kick out of it...at 5:30 in the morning I don't get a kick out of much (especially not a deer in my field), so it's probably best that he was unable to reach me.

So why this sudden appearance of deer? I think it's related to another recent sighting, that of logging trucks. Truck after truck loaded with hundred-year-old trees coming down the road on the far side of the field, carrying out trees to make way for, that's right you guessed it...Tiger's fairway! All that habitat disturbance is likely having an effect on the deer and other communitites on the mountain, sending them down my way.

As yet it doesn't look like the deer have made any impact on the field, and I don't expect them to immediately. Deer love tender new greens, the first shoots on pea plants, the new growth on beans. When they first move into an area this is what I would expect them to go for, not the established leaves of a winter squash plant. I'll keep my eyes peeled, but for now I think they are just going to be curious passerbys, and good companions to Billy, the goat.


In Your Share
Edamame! Pull the pods off the stems, drop into salted boiling water for 5 minutes. Serve with salt and/or soy sauce, pop the beans out of the shells and eat like popcorn! Also go great in bean salad.
Green Beans
Tomatoes - Red Celebrities, Yellow Taxis and Sungolds
Summer Squash Medley
Cucumbers
Onions
Greens - Kale, Swiss Chard, Lettuce Mix. Choose one, two or all three.
Herbs available: Rosemary, Parsley, Basil
Duck Eggs, $3/half dozen
Coffee - I'll be making a new order soon, so if you have a request let me know! You can check out the available varieties here: Dynamite Roasting Online Store

Recipe - Baked Stuffed Tomatoes
*This would also work well with the summer squash, especially the patty pans given their shape.

Make a stuffing of bread crumbs, chopped garlic, lots of chopped fresh herbs (basil, thyme, marjoram, oregano, parsley) and some cheese (parmesan or goat cheese).

Core the tomatoes, cut them in half horizontally and remove the seeds. Season the insides with salt and pepper and fill the cavities with the bread crumb mixture, pressing it in well and mounding it on top.

Fit the tomatoes snugly in a shallow dish and drizzle with olive oil. Bake at 375F for 30 minutes or so, until nicely browned.

Why Garden?

I don't follow many blogs, but one that I do glance at every once in a while is DigginFood, written by a gardener in Seattle. Recently she posted the question "Why do you garden?," to which over 120 people responded.

I will admit that I sometimes get bitter about my chosen work, especially lately when it's hot and the days are long and the work seems to never end. So being reminded of all the reasons why this is worth doing is really nice. There was one response in particular that resonated with me:

"Gardening helps me practice waiting (and appreciating the small changes that happen everyday with the waiting) and forgiving myself for accidentally killing my peppers.

I garden to make me a better person."

For me, gardening is so much more about becoming human than anything else, to the point that it makes it sometimes very scary. If I accidently kill most of my peppers (which I did), does this make me a bad person? My whole self feels hung on this venture, it is everything to me. Its success is my success and the prospect of its failure is the thing that drives me to work far past when I would like to have stopped.

Obviously I'm missing some of the greater lessons of becoming human that are a part of that response above, that little bit about patience and forgiveness, to which I would also add faith. I am much more than this work. Truly believing that I think is the key to continuing this work, as otherwise I will work myself to the bone pursuing something outside that can only be found inside.

Expecting the Unexpected

I have the best neighbors. Tonight there is a frost advisory for Buncombe County - I've pulled out all the plastic, 5 gallon buckets and trash bags I can get my hands on to cover precious tomatoes, eggplants and peppers. One of my neighbors is praying for me, the other gives me 110 proof Kentucky bourbon.

The field now looks like, I don't know, a bunch of random buckets and trash bags strewn around. All day I've been very blase about this supposed frost, but as the sun started going down a sense of urgency settled in. So we'll see. I won't be sleeping tonight regardless because I was sampling locally roasted coffees this afternoon at Dynamite Roasting.

You just never know - early May we were up in the 80s and a bunch of the bok choy bolted, late May it's down in the 30s and the tomatoes might freeze. But I've got my kalua-colada (that's kaluah with bourbon, pineapple juice and coconut something or other), and sweet potatoes with greens on the stove so I can't complain.

This Little Piggy Goes to Market

Market season has fully started! The Wednesday West Asheville Market has been going since mid April and the Black Mountain Tailgate Market began today at its new location - the First Baptist Church at 130 Montreat Road, a great spot for a market.

Harvesting is slowly beginning on my farm; for market so far I've had Sunflower Shoots, Red Russian Kale, Spring Onions and Baby Leeks. They are all so cute, full of springtime vigor.


Spring Onions


Baby Leeks

I also pulled up five French Breakfast radishes yesterday! These I am saving as a Mother's Day present for my mama (who else?!). But there are more, lots more, to come.

Inch by Inch, Row by Row

There's been a constant little cloud over my head of late - the worry over seeds. They are such tiny little things, it's hard to maintain faith that they will ever come up at all. And sometimes they don't; the earlier drama of the beet seeds is being repeated with other seeds sown of late, even radishes, typically an easy germinater. Not all seeds grow, as was once pointed out to me by the 9-year old daughter of the farmer I worked for in Texas. So true. Some seeds don't grow just because they don't, but other seeds don't grow because some condition isn't quite right.

What's going on?! Well, there's lots of things, but most importantly, and really the only thing that matters, is organic matter. The soil at the upper end of the field where I'm working is fairly heavy, with a high percentage of clay. With the fluctuation in weather from wet to dry it has formed a significant crust on the top of the soil, prohibiting seeds from popping through. This crust also keeps moisture and oxygen from seeping in. In the long term the only thing that can be done is to add more organic matter to the soil which helps it maintain good structure, rather than melting into a crust when it rains. For the immediate needs of the seeds in the ground though I've tried raking at this crust, and irrigating to soften it. This seems to be helping, but I think these efforts came too late.

At this point I've decided it's time to let the majority of those seeds go, and re-seed. It's disappointing, as this means some crops will be later to mature than I'd like, but not putting more seeds in the ground is a dumb reason not to have a good harvest, so I will just carry on and do better with each round of seeds. After talking this issue through with several farmer friends and my housemates, I've come to a better method utilizing extra greenhouse plastic as a cover for the newly seeded beds.

The plastic will help maintain warm, humid conditions until the seeds germinate, at which point I'll remove it and lay it on the next round of seeds. I only have about 90 feet worth of plastic, so I have to stagger my plantings, moving the plastic row by row as I go. I used the plastic last week with some radishes and beets and had excellent results. The radishes are up in a lovely little green line and even the beets have popped up in just six days! Amazing what a little water and warmth can do.

This morning I set to the task of carrots, my favorite, which are especially finicky. They like to be evenly and consistently moist, in a loose, deeply prepared soil. I dug up about 40 feet, mulched it, ran over it with the tiller to make a finer seed bed, raked it into a raised bed, made 3 furrows, sprinkled in the carrot seeds, laid down irrigation lines and then covered it all with a sheet of greenhouse plastic (all the while under the watchful eye of the utility workers fixing the electrical lines at the edge of my field).

The day ended with the realization that the tractor I had borrowed had been stolen! After talking with Jack my neighbor (whose favorite topic is lamenting over stolen things and how the neighborhood has gone downhill) and the sheriff, I called the owner of the tractor to find out exactly the model of the tractor....only to find out that he had come to get it just this morning. Thank goodness. Why I didn't think to call him first I don't know. Had to call the sheriff back, "Hello this is the lady that called a few minutes ago reporting a stolen tractor. Just wanted to let you know everything's fine, it wasn't stolen." A heart-racing but comical experience all in all.

How many good ol' boys does it take to change a light bulb?

Today was a tractor day. Casey kindly loaned me the tractor from the Buncombe Community School again, and so I took the opportunity to till the unplanted part of the field where the grass had begun to take hold again.

Louise came by when she saw me out on the tractor, she said she'd never seen a girl drive a tractor before. "That's my kind of youngun," she said.

After driving the first pass with the tiller I spread lime with the help of my mom and my friend Sarah. We filled the tractor's loader bucket with lime, I then drove the tractor back and forth across the field while my mom and Sarah raked the lime out of the bucket.

Just as Sarah and I were finishing the final pass, Duley drove up on his Massey Ferguson tractor, dwarfing me on the little BCS tractor. My neighbor Jack walked up - he had seen me struggle with the tractor over the past two days so when he ran into Duley at the bar last night he had asked him to come by and help me. Thank you?

Certainly I was struggling, and others could do it faster, but I was honestly enjoying the struggle. I had learned how to get rocks out of the tiller tines, how to take tiller tines apart, and how to reprime the fuel lines after running out of gas (there's a lot you can learn on YouTube).

But there in the field, with Jack so well-meaning/persistent and Duley already there on his tractor I agreed that Duley should do the final pass with the tiller to incorporate the lime. I was honestly glad to get off the tractor as I'd been there most of the day, but at the same time felt a little defeated.

So I went in the house with Sarah to get a drink of water. I came back out to find Duley and Jack hunched under the tiller (a position I found myself in often over the last two days) pulling at a garden hose that Duley had just run over. A Miller Light was balanced on the tiller. And then suddenly it was as if someone had called a Good Ol' Boy Convention in my field - out of nowhere appears a man with a large white beard named Dean, a neighbor from up the road. Then a small man called 'Freckles' comes over, beer in hand, complaining how his " missus" had thrown him out of the house.

All proceeded to push, pull, and poke at the garden hose. Jack went back to his house to get a giant set of bolt cutters. Eventually the tiller was freed, the hose now in many pieces. The spray nozzle was thankfully spared. Duley finished up the tilling and now I'm out 60 bucks for tractor work I didn't really need.

So how many good ol' boys does it take? Well, I'd say at least four. The real question is, who's going to bring the beer?

It Takes a Village

The start-up stories of farms are of extreme interest to me right now. And I think should be of interest to the larger public as well - if we're really interested in buying locally then we need a lot more farms. I'm interested in the specifics - exactly which tool did you use? who did you sell to? how did you find land? how did you get your farming education? how did you structure your business? and where did the money come from?

Maybe one day I will write a book compiling farm start-up stories. But until then, here's a glimpse into the specifics of mine...

Land:
I am renting my land (with house) from a family friend, an opportunity which was brought to my attention by my mother while I was living down in Texas. The property is about 2 acres total, with about a half acre of cultivatable land. It's been farmed on and off for the past 70 years (at least) and has a small stream and great soil.

Money:
To pay my regular bills I have housemates and I have a part-time job; I work for the Town of Black Mountain as School Garden Educator 15-20 hours a week. Thus the farm can operate as a separate entity entirely and is not expected to support me...yet.

To finance initial startup I am offering a farm share program for the season - members pay $375 up front for 15 weeks of vegetables this summer. I currently have 5 members signed up and will accept 5 more. This money, together with $1,125 from personal savings and family support, will get me through initial startup costs to the start of the market season.

Marketing:
The farm share program is my main marketing outlet, in addition to that I am a member of Foothills Family Farms, a cooperative of small family farms and will sell at tailgate markets through them. I will also be selling to the Blue Ridge Food Ventures winter CSA.

Equipment:
It's a tight budget, and thus I live somewhat of a scavenger lifestyle. Craigslist is my best friend. Last night I rushed in to town to pick up a bathtub off the side of the road (when cleaned up it will make an excellent wash tub!). My farm van (a purple plymouth grand voyager - her name is Jean, short for Aubergine, the fastest little eggplant in the west!) is on extended loan from my aunt and uncle and is missing the driver side window (which is fine, unless it's a rainy day and I need to make a left turn). I have a walk behind tiller and various hand tools that are all second-hand aquisitions as well. I have a wheel plow on loan from my neighbor Sherman. I have a refrigerator that I got off craigslist for 25 bucks which is a story in itself. I traded future vegetables for a deep freezer. And that's pretty much it for equipment. To do large tractor work I either borrow the tractor from the Buncombe Community School (where I also rent greenhouse space) or contract with Mr. Wilson.

Labor:
Me. Friends. Family. Housemates. Neighbors. Enthusiastic Farm Share members. This summer I hope to hire someone part-time, but until then I am relying on the enthusiasm and muscle of volunteers (send me an email if you want to help out!).

Education:
Most recently and most importantly I interned for 8 months on a 20 acre organic CSA farm in Austin, Texas - Johnson's Backyard Garden. Before that I had worked on farms only recreationally, and had gardened on my own and in community gardens. I studied Environmental Studies in college, which gave me a general understanding of sustainable agriculture but did not teach me specifics and techniques, that has come through hands-on experience.

I take advantage of every conference or workshop that I can - the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group conference, the Organic Growers School, the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project's marketing conference for farmers. I've joined the CRAFT Farmer Training Initiative program which will feature monthly on-farm workshops for farmers. And being a member of Foothills Family Farms has introduced me to a whole new group of mentors. I visit as many farms as I possibly can and ask lots of questions, in the field and in the office. Really this farming venture is all about education - I see this as my graduate education, my field is my thesis.

Community:
Hands-down the most important piece of my business plan is the community that I live in. Having grown up in this area I benefit from a multitude of relationships which form a web of community support for my farm. It's difficult too though, accepting things from people - even necessary items that are given in love - brings with it a feeling of indebtedness and dependency. Soon I will at least have veggies to send home with volunteers, a little something to give back!

So, there's more than you ever wanted to know about my farm (can you tell it's still raining outside?).

Some recent photos...



That's the BCS tractor - I was incorporating soil ammendments. What fun! Made me feel like a *real* farmer, if only for just a moment.


Snow on Red Russian Kale




Snowy Day in the field

Patience

I planted beet seeds about two weeks ago, before the first round of rains. I have been watching over them, waiting for signs of life. I have generated several theories as to their fate - that they were damaged by lime, that they were drowned by the rain, that I completely misplanted them. It's a continual nightmare of mine, that things just won't grow, and the beets seemed to prove this to be true.

My mom told me about how my Great-Grandpa Hoadley would plant beet seeds, then get impatient with them and plant more seeds in the same spot thinking the first round was not going to germinate, only to have both sets of seeds finally germinate. I saw this too at Hands of the Earth farm in Austin; peas were sowed in after beet seeds assuming that the beets had failed, only to have beets start popping up everywhere after the peas started germinating.

I think this is the lesson of spring. Perhaps even the lesson of farming. You must wait. Patiently.

This past week has been so wet - we got 2 1/2 more inches of rain. I felt like I was going to burst out of my skin with impatience to plant and do some tractor work (I'd borrowed a tractor just the day before the rain started). During those rainy days I did get my first round of summer crops seeded into the greenhouse, but I really wanted to be putting things out into the field. Now the rain has stopped, but the field is still far too wet to mess in, and needs at least another day or two of rest in the sun.

I walked out there today to check on things, the ground looked stable but with each step I sank into several inches of mud. I teetered through the narrow walkways, stopped to squat by the beets, and stared, training my eyes in on tiny, red stalks. The first beets came up today (thank goodness!), 16 days after I planted them. When I came back into the house I noticed a little message on the windowsill - one of those tabs from a bag of tea with a quote on it, left behind I believe by my friend Liz. It said: "Our patience will achieve more than our force." Easier said than done.

Neighbors

On Sunday I was out raking around the compost pile. Louise, my neighbor who is 80 and grew up on a farm near Boone, stopped by to tell me I was working too hard. She gently scolded me, calling me "baby doll," "little child," and "little Carolyn," as she always refers to me. Later when I had come back in the house there was a knock on the door - it was Louise with some potato soup, fresh off the stove.

Jack is another neighbor; he and his wife Lulu live on the lot contiguous to mine. Jack was born in the house they live in, and his parents worked at the Beacon Mill just up the road (a blanket factory, now demolished, and the reason that all these houses are here in the first place). Lulu was born and raised just 5 miles up the road in Black Mountain. She helped plant the pine trees growing outside of the primary school where I work when she was in Kindergarten. Those pine trees are HUGE. Jack and Lulu met in high school - they were in the first class at Owen High School, the first year that the Swannanoa and Black Mountain high schools were combined into one. Jack farmed my field for at least 8 years up until 3 years ago when the property changed hands. His family, the Wards, was neighbors with the family that originally owned this house, the Moodys, for 70 years.

On the other side of the field is Jeanie. She was also born in the house that she lives in, though she and her family make their life in Florida now. They've just been living in the house and getting it ready to sell since the passing of Jeanie's mom, Loula May, last year. Their yard is quite a menagerie - several dogs and cats, a goat named Billy, and 2 chickens (who are for all intents and purposes wild, they were abandoned 2 years ago by their original owners, now they live mostly in the woods but are fed often by Jeanie).

My other contiguous neighbor, from the treeline to the ridge, is the Cliffs of Swannanoa. From my window you can see the No Trespassing signs tacked onto trees in a young forest - a forest that has regrown since being clearcut during the Beacon era. A forest that Jack, Jeanie and their children know like the back of their hand. Many of the special spots they remember there are gone, dynamited to make way for roads, tunnels, golf courses and multi-million dollar houses. And now they and their children are trespassers on land that shaped them and their community.

My driveway is used as a through-fare by neighbors as it sort of connects Central Ave to Fountain Way. Thus I am very often face-to-face with my neighbors, whether I'd like to be at the time or not. In fact, Jack's dog Trouble refuses to exit their yard but through the gate that leads into my yard. Neighbors stop by to check up on me, to see what's growing, to tell me stories about their childhood working on their family's farm. Jack points out areas of the field that need extra lime, shows me where he grew his beans, corn and tomatoes. My neighbors are happy with what I am doing, happy to see the land used again. Though I think they might also think I'm a little crazy, especially when they pass by on their way to church on Sunday morning to see me out in the field raking up horse manure.

Rain!

Last Sunday the leeks made it out of the fridge and into the field! A momentous day, the first planting. 1800 leeks were set out with help from some friends and my parents. A few days later the rain started (and is continuing), but not before red onion sets and beet seeds were also tucked into the ground. And so it begins...

Over the next two weeks I'll be planting out carrots, more beets, various greens, radishes and hakurei turnips - tender, delicious, crunchy, salad turnips. I'll also be starting summer crops in the greenhouse - tomatoes, peppers and eggplants in particular.

As much as there is to be done in the field, there's an equal amount of work to be done in the office. One office accomplishment of the past week was my new website - check it out!

All of this planting, and everything else I'm doing, couldn't happen without the large community network that I am so grateful to be a part of. My family, my friends, my neighbors, and fellow farmers from around WNC have been, and will continue to be, crucial in getting this farm going.

Next week there will be an addition to this community; I have a new housemate moving in on Wednesday! Kelan is her name, and she will be joined in April by her husband Link. They are both interested in helping out on the farm when they can, but mostly I am excited to have a little community within the house.

Here's a couple photos of the accomplishments of the past couple weeks:



Here Ian, Kathryn and Erin put up plastic on the 'Sprout House.' It's not totally done, but it is usable. I will be growing sunflower sprouts in here, a nutty, crunchy, nutritious green that can be produced year-round.



The first seed to sprout on the farm! I'm running several trials of sunflower sprouts to find the best way to grow them in this structure.




And here's what the field looks like on this rainy Saturday - leeks and onions to the left, then on the right is my next row marked off ready for seeds.

Composting the Best of the Valley

The past two weeks have seen me driving up and down US70, bringing back various materials for a grand windrow compost pile.

These materials include:

- Manure from the Bilmore Estate equestrian program

- Spent grains from the Pisgah Brewery. I just picked these up this morning, they were still steaming and smelled delicious!

- Coffee grounds from the Dynamite Roastery. These also smell delicious.

- Tea bags from an organic tea house.

- Cocoa hulls from a chocolate producer right here in little ol' Swannanoa! These smell the best of all.

Given a few months and a few churns with a rototiller, this will be the basis for farm fertility.


There's the load of manure, with my boyfriend Boris (he does all the heavy lifting).

And so, now here it is March 4th and I am waiting for the snow to melt and the soil to dry out so that I can get it prepared for planting. Onion and Leek plants crowd my fridge waiting (patiently?) for the day (maybe this weekend?!) when they will be tucked into the field.

How long can a leek survive in the fridge anyway? This is a question of great interest to me, given that they've now been in there (dare I admit it?) since Valentine's day. The information that came with them said they're good for 3 weeks...until March 7th that is. So this led me to the Leek Experiment:

I "planted" half the leeks in potting soil. The other half are still in the fridge - don't put all your leeks in one basket as they say.


After only two days, they've started standing up! I take that as an excellent sign.

Starting Seeds

This past week was a very busy one for the farm - the first of many busy weeks. On Friday I drove up to Spring Creek in Madison County to the venerable Let it Grow Organic Gardens, where Frank is graciously fostering my wee vegetables. Driving up his driveway, as I have done many times, I felt completely overcome. The first time I drove up that driveway was two februaries ago, with my friend Ginger. During that visit we helped Frank start seeds. Last February saw me driving up that driveway again, with Ginger, on a mission to kill a chicken. And this year I drove up alone, for the first time, to start the seeds for my own farm.

I don't remember exactly when the grilled cheese tradition began, but an important part of a visit to Frank's (or any trip involving some combination of Ginger, Frank and myself) is a grilled cheese sandwhich. The greasy kind with white bread and american cheese available at any diner of questionable sanitation. And so at the end of the day, Frank and I went to Grits (a diner that does not fall in the questionable sanitation category, this is the good kind where old school basketball jerseys and quilts cover the walls) and had our fill of grilled cheese, french fries, and of course, too much pie (strawberry rhubarb and coconut cream).

And that was just Friday! Here's some other important things that happened:

- I got official brochures for my Farm Share program, many thanks to Peter Boggs and American Speedy Printing!!

- I met with fellow farmers in the Foothills Family Farms Coop and am now an excited new member

- With help from my parents, the process of enclosing my south facing porch for sprout production has begun...

- My field has been turn plowed, and now smells of lovely dirt


That little bit of warm that came last week is reminding me that spring will come, and there is so much to be done. How exciting.

The bush hogging of the field is now complete, and it makes it look so much bigger! Yes I have my work cut out for me, as Mr. Wilson (the man I've contracted to do tractor work) was quick to point out. How exciting.

Another exciting thing - this weekend I will be attending the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group's annual conference! I'll be heading down early to take part in a day and a half long workshop with Alex Hitt of Peregrine Farms in Chapel Hill on Financial and Business Planning for Farmers. I'm going to the conference on a new farmer scholarship, and thanks to Couchsurfing.com I have secured a free place to stay.

It's been really cold so Mr. Wilson hasn't been able to come back to turn-plow. Hopefully next week...

January is the time for farming

It's cold and there are snow flurries, but this is the time when the real work of farming happens. Planning. In this past week I've gotten settled into my new place and have started getting to know my farm.

My neighbors have been quick to introduce themselves and check up on me, and they have all been delighted to hear of my plans. I've been making connections with local suppliers as well - Mr. Berry of Berry's Farm and Garden Supply just down the road is going to be my new best friend.

Today I had a guy come to give me a quote on mowing my field and turning the soil (in between which I will add a good deal of manure); he'll be back to mow when the cold weather breaks.

I've been looking into how to enclose my south-facing patio with plastic to make a greenhouse. This is where I will grow sunflower and pea shoots.

And on the business end of things, I've made a first draft of my business plan, and a brochure for my farm share program. If you, or someone you know, would like to participate (or would like more information) in the farm share program as a shareholder for the 2009 season, let me know!!