Category Archives: newsletters '04

8/4/04 Vol. 1 #21

Whew!  We made it to August!  This is when we really begin to think about the end of the season, the coming winters plans and next seasons preparations.  This week marks the three quarter point in our personal marketing season, 21 down, 7 to go.  While the Farmers’ Market goes until Christmas we end our season around the first of October.  This allows us time to prepare and plant for next year and have some quality of life time in the fall.  We used to go all the way to Thanksgiving but beginning five seasons ago we looked hard at the numbers and the effort required to produce those numbers and its effect on us and the next season and decided to call it quits sooner.  It was considered a radical move at the time but now we are very glad that we made the change.  Now we will of course be back for the special pre-Thanksgiving market to distribute the birds and with some just-for-Thanksgiving produce.  In the intervening seven or eight weeks we will have put the farm to bed for the winter, planted most of Betsy’s spring flowers and already done a little traveling!  We wouldn’t have been able to get all of this done under the old system.

No newsletter next week because we will be on our August break.  When we used to go straight thru to Thanksgiving we used to take two weeks off in August to try and rest and regroup for the remainder of the season.  Now that we stop early we just take one week off.  This is timed to coincide with the end of the early tomatoes and before the peppers really get going.  No exotic destinations this time just a little rambling around the area and general lolling around.  The staff gets the week off with pay and we get a week off!

We are looking forward a visit from my brother Jon and family this week.  19 seasons ago Jon came and threw in with us and helped turn the farm towards the course it is on now.  Jon is the one in the family who got the natural “grower” gene from my father, I have had to work at becoming a decent grower all these years, Jon can just go out and grow beautiful crops.  He was here for our first season at the Farmers’ Market (1986) and got us started growing vegetables and cut flowers on the only piece of ground we had left that wasn’t planted to blackberries and raspberries.  Unfortunately for us but fortunately for his wife to be, he moved back to Tennessee the next year.  He will be helping on the farm this Friday and at market on Saturday morning.  Like most Saturdays if you watch our stand closely you can usually spot members of my family behind the table.

Picture of the Week
Summer Crisp lettuce planted under shade cloth to keep it cool.  It should be ready the last week of August.

8/18/04 Vol. 1 #22

Betsy says if that was a vacation then don’t ask her to go again!  Mostly due to the potential of the incoming storms we worked our tails off!  Normally on August break we do a little farm work and then take it easy but between crops that had to be harvested and battening down the hatches we only really felt like we had one slack day.  Oh well only six weeks to go until the Big break.  Until Hurricane Fran in 1996 we didn’t even think about big storms.  It’s the wind that really has us jumping, with all of these greenhouses that are like big sails we have to be conservative when it comes to the forecasts for wind.  Now every two years or so we have a fire drill taking plastic off greenhouses and tying down all of the equipment that normally is just strewn around the farm like five gallon buckets and other light items.  This time the wind didn’t come but as you all know, as of early Saturday morning they were calling for up to 60 miles per hour winds.  Our “Big Tops” are supposed to take up to 70 mph but who wants to try it? So we uncovered them knowing that  the rain would then do such damage to the crops under them (the tomatoes for sure) that we would have a loss there.  This is not a drive the car into the garage kind of job, it takes hours and it can’t be windy so we have to make these calls a day or more in advance.  So we spent the better parts of Thursday and Friday securing things and then parts of Saturday and Sunday untying things.  Now believe me we are glad the storms did not come but it sure didn’t make for a relaxing break!

Other exciting news is that we are headed to Turin, Italy in late October for a first ever international small farmer congress being put on by the Slow Food organization.  We are honored to have been nominated by the local Slow Food group and then to have been accepted to attend along with 500 other producers from the US and a total of 5000 worldwide!  Slow Food is a group that originated in Italy, about 20 years ago, which is dedicated to the preservation and enjoyment of local, handcrafted foods like you find at market.  Every two years they have a huge exposition in Turin displaying and tasting artisanal foods from around the world called the Salone de Gusto.  For the first time ever they are overlapping that event with this congress of small producers called Terra Madre where we will participate in workshops and discussions on sustainable ways of producing great foods.  Incredibly they are paying for all of our expenses except for our plane tickets!   We have asked that they pay for half of our airfare so the local group is having a fund raiser next Wednesday the 25th at Pop’s restaurant in Durham.

Pop’s will donate a portion of the evening’s profits to Slow Food, and the donations will be used to offset the travel costs of two local farmers so that they can attend the Terra Madre conference in Turin, Italy in October. (For more info on Terra Madre, please go to http://slowfoodusa.org/events/terramadre )


We are excited about the possibilities of this trip and hope that we come back with lots of new ideas, maybe the next pepper roaster or something equally fabulous.  We will have more details in future newsletters.

Picture of the Week
Tomatoes, now uncovered, succumbing to foliar disease from too much damp weather.

8/23/04 Vol. 1 #23

Sort of a normal week for us, just what we needed to recover from vacation!  We are beginning the process of putting the farm to bed for the winter that goes on from now until November (I know it is still August but the job has to be started at some point).  The first major act is pulling out the first planting of tomatoes and preparing that ground for a winter cover crop.  Slowly we will be taking out the summer crops and seeding them down until the whole place is a carpet of brilliant green cover crops.  Leeks for Thanksgiving went in the ground along with kale and more radishes.

Speaking of Thanksgiving it is Turkey ordering/reservation time.  As I have told folks all season we like to wait until the birds get old enough so that we have a good idea of how many we will actually have in November before we start putting names on paper.  Even then things can happen and we can lose birds like we did last year, with four weeks to go, when something got in and killed three birds.  There are some changes from last year that you should be aware of.  We had a meeting with our processor last week and due to their higher production numbers we are going to have to have our turkeys processed two weeks before Thanksgiving.  This means we will have to freeze the birds to hold them until you pick them up on Tuesday November 23rd. There is just no way we can hold them safely as fresh/unfrozen birds that long.  We understand if you want a fresh bird and decide to buy one elsewhere.  We can tell you that the frozen turkey that we have been eating all year has been fabulous without any loss of quality.  It may also be more convenient for some who need to travel with their bird such as one person who plans to take one to France!

The second change this year is in the price per pound of the Heritage turkeys.  After crunching the numbers from last years birds we realized that due to the longer growing time, higher initial bird cost and the lower average weights that we needed to raise the price to $4.00 per pound.  The Broadbreasted Whites will continue to be $2.50 per pound.  That still means that a turkey will cost between $30 and $60 depending on the size.  The Heritage birds will run from 7-15 lbs. averaging 10 lbs. and the Broadbreasted birds will run from 15-25 lbs. with an average of about 20 lbs.

This is how to reserve your Thanksgiving bird.  We take reservations on a first-come-first-serve basis, those who had a turkey last year will have the first choice.  We are announcing this first to those of you receiving the newsletter and then we will put a sign up at market in a few weeks if by chance there are any birds left.

Picture of the Week

Our niece and nephew with a Blue Slate

9/1/04 Vol. 1 #24

Yahoo! we finally made it to September!  I thought August would never end, now we just have to get past this damned hurricane season!  I comment often on how, in the 23 years that we have been farming, we have seen every extreme weather record broken- the coldest ever, the hottest ever, the deepest snow, etc.  I have not researched the records but I don’t remember ever having four of the first seven storms come across North Carolina and now Frances will probably impact us in one way or another, it has to be some kind of record.  The 3.2 inches of rain we got from Gaston has things pretty well soaked.  We went down to harvest winter squash yesterday and just about got the tractor stuck in the field and what was left of the tomatoes is pretty ugly now.

We want to thank everyone who came out to (or tried to, as it was sold out) the Slow Food Dinner at Pop’s restaurant last Wednesday to raise money to help cover our part of our airfare to Italy in October.  It was good food even if it was louder than a rock concert in that room!  I have had several people ask how they can make direct donations and it can be done to the local Slow Food chapter.   Betsy and I are a little taken aback by this fund raising stuff, maybe farmer pride, as we are just so used to making our own way.  Thank you all again.

The turkeys have been totally integrated this week, moved to yet another field and now allowed to roam together.  Everyone is getting along fine and the heritage birds don’t seem to notice the new white intruders sidling up next to them on the roosts at night.  The reservation forms and deposits are beginning to come in and about a third have been reserved already.  Those of you who had birds last year I do need to have your information (that is if you want a turkey this year) so that I don’t screw up and not hold the right size turkey for you (my memory is not what it used to be).  I do have a record of what kind and size you had last year if that helps you any.  I also realized that those of you who have never had a locally produced pastured turkey might want a little more info on how they compare to each other to help in making the decision on which bird is the one for you.  Last years experience taught us that all of them were excellent and far superior tasting to any other turkey we had ever eaten.  That being said there are three major differences between the heritage birds and the whites.  First is size, the heritage turkeys will not be any larger than about 15 pounds and the whites will not be any smaller than 15 pounds.  Second, the heritage birds have a higher ratio of dark meat to white meat for those of you dark meat lovers, this is not to say there is not a lot of white meat just not the huge breasts of the whites.  Third, the meat is firmer and more full flavored on both types that what you may have had in the past, with the heritage birds having the chewier (not tough) dark meat and more flavor overall.  I hope this helps, in addition here is a link to three New York Times articles about the heritage birds with the third one a taste comparison of eight birds. http://www.slowfoodusa.org/nytarticle.html

Picture of the Week

Even on a drab day the celosia are incredibly vivid.

9/8/04 Vol. 1 #25

Let’s see how does that go?  Forty days and forty nights…?  Another 3.2 inches of rain in the last couple of days making it hard to get anything done.  I was on the tractor on Monday beginning to get soil prepared for winter cover crops and was chased off by the rain, now it will be another week before it is dry enough.  The gravel that was on the driveways is well on its way down to Jordan Lake, we have at least a half a mile of roads on the farm that will take a few days to pull them back up the hill, some of them look like the Grand Canyon!  It is times like these that we look brilliant for deciding to stop selling the end of September, these are precisely the kind of conditions that make it really hard to produce consistently good fall crops.  Heavy rains that make it hard to get crops started followed by huge disease, weed and insect pressure.  I take my hat off to those at the market who continue on in the fall!  I hope that you all will continue to support them at market knowing they are waging a considerable battle to bring that produce to market.

We did manage to get the winter squash out of the field, washed and in storage, look for them this week.  Not a great yield this year, got them in a little late and then too much powdery mildew disease.  The last of the tomatoes came down this week as well, now the turkeys will move into that field and finish the clean up.  Mowing, mowing, mowing trying to keep up with the grass and taking down the remnants of the summers crops so we can someday get them turned under.

News on the turkey front.  After talking to a large pastured turkey producer in California it looks as if we can keep the turkeys unfrozen/fresh for Thanksgiving.  This whole situation is very frustrating in that you can not get a straight answer from either the NC Department of Agriculture or the USDA as to how long you can keep a turkey at what temperature.  There simply are no official written guidelines or regulations, amazing.  Fortunately we have connections that put us in contact with this producer who also is a processor and knows exactly how to do it properly.  Nothing like hands on experience to clear up a problem!  The last hurdle is to check with our refrigeration guy to make sure that our walk in coolers can be operated at the temperature that we need to keep the birds at.  I will let you know next week if we will have the birds fresh and not frozen.  For those of you who want a frozen bird we can still make that happen too.  About half the birds are reserved now, I will make sure that I bring reservation forms to market for folks to fill out there if they would prefer.

Picture of the Week
The sleepy creek just below our house (which is 100 feet to the left)

9/15/04 Vol. 1 #26

I am gulping down the coffee and typing fast as there is a lot to do this morning.  The impending rain has us picking peppers this morning so we don’t have to do it in Ivan’s rain on Friday.  Of course it drizzled all night so it won’t exactly be a dry experience out in the field.  This is what we have been training for all season.  Early in the year when it’s wet and you look at the staff and say we need to go out and get soaked they can look at you in great disbelief, now they are trained professionals and know that it has to happen and now is better than later in a driving rain.  The other reason that I have a lot to do is that I have to get on a plane this afternoon and fly down to Georgia (I know right into the path of the hurricane) to give a full day workshop to a group of farmers tomorrow.  I usually don’t do this type of engagement in the production season but they were extra persuasive.  I have been having a hard time wrapping my head around the subject (whole farm planning) and that combined with the weather forecast I am less than excited about the whole event.  Let’s hope that the forecast is correct and that they don’t close the Atlanta airport tomorrow night before I get on the plane back home.  If I am not at market on Saturday you will know what happened!

We have managed to get something done this week, the dismantling of the farm for the winter is moving along.  If we had one more dry day we would have had cover crops seeded on one and a quarter acres but it will now have to wait until we dry out from Ivan and maybe get them in before Jean.  It is a many step process to get all of the soil ready for the winter and next year.  We first mow off the remnants of the crop (what the turkeys haven’t eaten), next we have to pull up and coil all of the irrigation lines that may be left.  One pass with the tractor and disk to chop up and incorporate the debris so it can begin to decompose.  A second pass if needed to spread any lime, phosphorus, and potassium mineral amendments (based on soil tests that we previously took and sent to the State labs for analysis).  A third pass with the tractor and the chisel plow to loosen the soil deeper.  A fourth pass with the disk again to incorporate those amendments and finish the job of breaking up the soil.  A fifth pass with the tractor and hilling disks to raise up beds so that in the spring when it is cold and wet the soil will dry out fast so that we can till and get crops planted.  Finally we spread the cover crop seeds, some with the tractor but many by walking the rows with a chest mounted spinner so we can place them exactly where we want them.  Oats and crimson clover where the lettuce will go, rye and hairy vetch where the peppers will go, triticale and clover before the early tomatoes and so on.  This is the only time all year we work soil like this and it takes days to do it right and dry weather to make sure we get the soil just the way it needs to be without doing any damage to it’s structure.  We are about half way done.

Picture of the Week
All of the Zinnias and Tomatoes gone, soil almost ready and turkeys living it up in the Asparagus patch

9/22/04 Vol. 1 #27

First day of fall, how great is that news!?  Twenty 28 weeks ago I sent out the first newsletter and it was just before the first day of spring.  Since then we have been on that wild ride the growing season always gives us, most of it is a blur right now but will actually become clearer as the fall rolls on and we can step back and look at it.  What a difference a week makes, last week we were preparing for Ivan and this week is quintessential clear fall weather.  Soil preparations for the winter and next year are going smoothly and we will get most everything seeded down to cover crops before the next rains come early next week.  Because cover crops are the backbone of our soil fertility program I get a very “focused” in getting them in just right.  The perfect time to get them established is now thru the first of November and it is ideal to catch a rain just after seeding them.

Of course there are other things that we need to get done as well.  The first of next years flowers went in the ground yesterday, yes the next season has already begun for us, from now until mid November we will plant a half an acre of flowers for spring harvest.  There are other “putting the farm to bed for the winter” chores beyond the cover crops.  Maintenance on the sliding tunnels, we move any dirt away from the rails, sweep them down and give all the wood parts a coat of linseed oil (it is all untreated wood because we don’t want the arsenic leaching into the soil where we are growing food).  Taking out the rest of the trellising, pulling up the last drip lines and stowing it all away.  The last big job is to move a quarter acre of “Big Tops” to it’s new field.  That should take about a week in total and I want it done before we go to Italy in less than four weeks, yikes!

There is work to do on the house, work to do on the packing shed, the driveways to drag back up the hill after all the rains and people ask “what do you do in the off season?”  Before we know it, it will be March again and time to start back to market!  As Saturday is our last regular market for the season, this is the last weekly newsletter of the year.  I plan to send one out monthly through the winter just to keep you updated on what we are up to, look for one just after we get back from Italy and then one just before the special Tuesday before Thanksgiving market.  If we don’t get a chance to say it to you either this Saturday or before Thanksgiving, we do greatly appreciate your support of what we do here at the farm!

Picture of the Week
The first 3000 flower plants for next year, Sweet William, Delphinium, Campanula and more!

11/6/04 Vol. 1 #28

Well we’ve been back for ten days but a combination of too many things to deal with and not enough time or energy to overcome the pile until now.  Let’s talk Italy!   We had a great time!!!

The whole trip is still kind of a blur and we are still processing all that we saw and did.  In many ways it was what we expected and then there were the parts that completely overwhelmed us.  The actual Terra Madre event that was the catalyst for us going was amazing and also crazy.  It was like the Olympics and the United Nations all at once, almost 5000 food producers from 128 countries with seven languages being translated at once!  The logistics of such an endeavor are mind boggling and as one would expect a few crumbs fell between the cracks at times.  This lead to the workshops being somewhat challenging (read mostly not great) but the people watching and people meeting made up for that.  The delegates where encouraged to where their traditional dress (which made us North Americans look mighty pasty!).  The African women with their jewelry, the Peruvians with the hats and bright colors, the native Brazilians with the feather headdresses, the Kirghiztani herders with their tall felt hats and more.  Then the impromptu market place that sprung up on the floor heightened the sense that we were not in Kansas!

The Peruvians
The closing ceremonies with Prince Charles!

The most unexpected and by far the best part was where Betsy and I stayed.  We had been told that it might be a farm stay.  To us that most likely meant an organized agritourismo, used to housing foreigners.  After being in transit for 27 hours and mostly awake for 33 straight hours we were dropped off in the dark in front of a classic Italian brick and tile roofed facade.  Greeted by our farm family who spoke no English except for the uncle (Oscar) and we who spoke about six words in Italian.  For five nights we had the best time, learning and laughing and eating the most amazing meals we would have in the country.  With lots of patient help translating from Oscar and his son Diego, pictures we had brought with us, and a large Italian/English dictionary we managed to get the gist of what both sides were saying.  This fourth generation farm produces artisan meat from raising the grain, to feeding it to the special Piedmontese beef and hogs, all the way to selling it in their own butcher shop down stairs.  This was some fabulous meat and salami and we were treated to many great traditional dishes each night as we would sit down to six and seven course meals (molto bene!).  Michele and his wife and son, Kati and Lorenzo, worked long hard days (duro giorni) and had just opened their house and farm to us.  We became friends and hope to see each other again.

Oscar, Alex, Betsy, Diego, Kati, Michele our new Italian family

The inside of their beautiful courtyarded farm

Needless to say as we waved goodbye on the seventh day from home (with not much sleep and too much stimulation) and made our way to the train for the rest of our trip we looked forward to time alone to think about all that had transpired and some much needed rest.  Over the Maritime Alps to Sanremo on the Riviera de Fiori in search of the largest cut flower market outside of Holland.  It was not to be easily found but we managed to get the right bus and walk through it but long after the days business was over.  Next trip!  We did have a nice time walking the streets and climbing the rabbit warren alleys of the old town.  Finally another train ride back to Milan for the night and then the long trail home.  As we were on the shuttle bus back to our car at the airport in Raleigh it seemed hard to believe that we had been on the subway in Milan that same morning.

The Riviera from our hotel room

I would like to say that we came home with many great new things to produce for market but there was just nothing that jumped out at us, there are surely things that we will incorporate into what we do and maybe some of the seeds we brought back will be new treasures!  The experience was one we will never forget and we want to thank all of you who made it possible!

Things here on the farm looked great when we returned, Joann can run the place without us just fine.  The turkeys are all sold and are headed off on Monday to be processed.  Look for a newsletter in two weeks just before the special Thanksgiving market on Tuesday the 23rd from 2:00-6:00pm.  The rest of the vegetables and flowers for Thanksgiving are coming along nicely too.

11/20/04 Vol. 1 #29

Busy, busy, busy!  Both here at the farm and on the road.  Betsy was gone for a week to Florida for the Association of Specialty Cut Flower Growers convention.  She always comes back with a million new ideas and I have to try and sort through them with her.  She was also awarded the Distinguished Service Award, even though she tried not to accept it, no one has worked harder for the Association.  The last week and half has been a blur.  The turkeys went in for processing which is both a lot of work and somber at the same time.  It all went fairly smoothly and they are now in our walk-in cooler awaiting Tuesday’s market. Betsy had to turn around and drive up to Virginia to pick up 12,000 tulip bulbs that she jointly ordered with some fellow growers.  These are now planted in crates so that we can force them early for next spring, look for them in March!

The two of us passed each other as I drove up to Asheville for the Carolina Farm Stewardship Assoc. conference where I presented in three different workshops.  At the banquet the Carrboro Farmers’ Market was awarded the Sustainable Business/Entity Award for the work its done and the leadership the market has given both to local farmers and to other markets across the state.  It is markets like Carrboro and customers like you that give hope to small farmers and the ideas of viable local food systems.  Monday I jumped on a plane to Alabama to give two workshops.  One for the Alabama Sustainable Ag. Network and the other to a group from Auburn Univ. who are setting up an organic research station.  I was really glad to get home after giving five talks in five days!  I’d say the meeting season has started hard and fast.

The end of this week has been back to farm work.  The cold snap last week finally killed the foliage on the tuberoses and the dahlias so that we could dig them for the winter.  We have to dig these tubers because they cannot take the cold temperatures we experience over the winter, then we will replant them next spring.  They have been kind of in the way of getting the rest of the fields put to bed for the winter.  Now that they are out the last of the soil preparation is done and the cover crops are sown!  Yesterday we planted the first 4000 Dutch Iris and the backs of our legs are telling us about it!

Picture of the Month
Look close and see the Brussels Sprouts (left of center) and the Celery on the right