Category Archives: the early years

Peregrine Farm News Vol. 18 #14, 4/9/21

What’s been going on!

I indicated a few weeks ago when I was explaining some of the reasons why we were retiring now, that I would talk some about how it is we can actually retire as most farmers can’t unless they sell the farm, which we are not doing.  A large percentage of Americans have no savings much less retirement savings.  Farmers are the same or worse but they do at least have some, or a lot of, assets in their farmland and equipment.  They are sure as hell are not part of any pension system to rely on, short of some Social Security, if they paid into it.

Our parents were very fortunate to have had excellent pensions and health care insurance from working for large institutions but we knew that we would have to take care of ourselves and started early to make sure we could survive any disasters or economic shakeups that would come our way.  If you are under 40 or 50 you probably have already figured this out but- pensions/company retirement plans are a thing of the past!  Even if you currently work for a company that has one I would be very leery of it still being around when you need it.  I am looking at all of you younger folks, especially my farmer friends and self-employed folks, start saving now and as much as you can.

The other fiscal thing we got from our parents was “a Great Depression mentality”, those of you old enough know what this means.  You are frugal because you don’t know when things might get better and it imbues everything you do even when things do get better.  We knew that we would never make much cash money and moving into a tent, buying land and building a farming business from scratch when interest rates were near 20 percent just reinforced the vow of poverty we had taken.  We have never approached the median household income and I am sure that for many years we were technically below the poverty level but farm net incomes and public work net incomes are apples and oranges and too long a discussion for this newsletter.

Despite being cash flow challenged we started to save enough to have six months operating money in the bank and we had everything reasonably insured in case of a disaster, including us with health insurance as farming is the fifth or sixth most dangerous profession and it is the number one reason farms go out of business.

We were scarred by the high interest rates of the early 80’s so worked very hard to not carry any debt except for very large items like land, vehicles and greenhouses and paid them off on time and as fast as we could.  We paid the credit card balance on time every month and deposited the payroll and other business taxes on time too, it is probably one of the other main reasons people go out of business, they don’t deposit their tax withholdings.  We paid for almost all of the infrastructure development with cash, as it came in.  We lived within our means.  Everything is paid off, we have no debt.

We were very frugal, essentially didn’t take a vacation or trip that wasn’t farm related for the first 15 years and started to save what we could for the long run in our mid-thirties, a late start for sure.  We have been very lucky and can point to four important reasons we were able to save much at all.

1. We have been incredibly healthy with no major accidents or injuries and essentially have never missed a day of work, including our staff.

2. We did not have kids, just sayin’

3. We built and did all of the maintenance of the farm ourselves, every nail and plumbing pipe, saving tens of thousands of dollars by not hiring people to do the work.  We now have mechanics work on our vehicles and other equipment but we used to do all of that too.

4. We had very little student debt, a much bigger issue these days for younger people.

We have invested those savings in the stock market in mutual funds and exchange traded funds, very diversified.  I still think the stock markets are rigged for the big guys but if you keep it simple it works for us too.  We have used a fiduciary financial advisor particularly to help with our farm transition planning around Jennie.  She constantly remarks on how little money we live on.

So that is it, it is not rocket science just discipline and playing the long game, not trying to swing for the fences with get rich quick schemes.  Sorry, wish it was more sexy.  There is now an excellent small, short, uncomplicated book that I recommend to everyone, especially younger folks, The Index Card.  Written by a professor and financial writer who once commented that everything you needed to know about personal finance can be written on one index card and its true, the book just expands it a bit.

Picture of the week

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That lush green exuberance of spring

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 18 #9, 3/5/21

What’s been going on!

When the Carrboro Farmers’ Market started it didn’t even open for the season until April and went until sometime in the fall, after six years it set the official opening day as the second to last Saturday in March and closing at Christmas.  It stayed that way for 22 years until 2008 when we moved to a year round schedule.  There had been some members who for a few years had been coming throughout the winter and as the winters continued to be warmer and the growers began to use new techniques it made sense to finally make it official. 

But winter is always variable and difficult as we have been reminded of this winter for sure.  Last spring was supposedly the earliest on record here in the southeast according to the National Phenology Network.  Right now they are saying we are a few days behind normal so compared with last spring that would be at least 2-3 weeks later and that is borne out in what we are harvesting.  Today I will cut the first lettuce and pull the first turnips and radishes, planted on the exact same schedule as last year but harvested nearly 3 weeks later than last spring.  Hopefully now we will begin to catch up a little.

Now they say the pattern is in for a big change with possibly the longest stretch of dry weather in many years.  I can see irrigation is in my future, an so the dance goes on.

Picture of the week

Party in a vase

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 17 #19, 5/27/20

What’s been going on! 

Another damn rainy week!  There is a great stress reducing factor when you can look back over four decades of farming and know that it can always be worse.  In our first season farming we had just planted four acres of blackberries and raspberries, 20,000 feet of row.  We were living in the tent next to the 20’X20’ tractor shed when after a March and April dry period it started to rain in May and didn’t stop the whole month, 15 inches of rain fell in those thirty one days.  Nearly every afternoon there would be a thunderstorm with great downpours.

The result was a biblical scourge of weeds that germinated in the berry rows.  We had turned over soil that hadn’t been farmed in years and unleashed millions of weed seeds that had lain dormant.  We had no equipment to deal with it and had not yet been able to mulch the rows.  After mowing the six foot tall growth in the aisles between the plants, standing on the tractor so I could see down into the mass so as to not mow the young berry bushes, I spent the month of June hand weeding circles around each of the 10,000 plants so as not to lose them followed by weed eating the remaining growth.

We were humbled by the power of nature and only by the shear dent of our stubbornness did we save those plantings and continue on to be successful.  We vowed never again to be caught that way.  So this seven or eight days of rain this month is just another blip in the long history of weather events here at the farm.  Needless to say it has slowed crop growth and nearly decimated the blueberry season but it is what it is.

Picture of the week

img055 - CopyIn this old grainy picture you can see the river that formed every afternoon that May, you can also see the weeds growing in the background

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Peregrine Farm News, Vol. 16 #14, 5/2/19

What’s been going on! 

We had the Advanced Organic Crop Production class from Central Carolina Community College’s Sustainable Ag Program out on Monday, this is the course that I designed and taught for many years until I passed it on this season, another one of those things that l am trying to be selective about how I want to spend my time with in the future.  It is one of the things that got me to thinking about how times have changed when it comes to educating new farmers and the public about small scale agriculture and sustainable farming.

Another was a call I had the other day with a very wealthy person who is starting a farm and wants to eventually make it an educational center.  He asked did we charge for farm tours and I said that we never had.  We have hosted hundreds of tours and thousands of people over the years from all corners of the US and the world and have never charged anyone.  Back in the early years the few sustainable farmers on the ground were helping to build the ship, we wanted to spread the word about sustainable agriculture and were happy to cooperate and share the knowledge we had to do so.

Beyond farm tours we would spend each winter, for decades, making the circuit of farm conferences going to at least four or five each season, learning and speaking, sometimes teaching three or four sessions at one conference.  Those non-profit organizations never had much money so we almost never got an honorarium, just free conference registration and sometimes rooms and travel money.  It was helping to build our business and to get the ship afloat, it was good for everyone.

We also served on (and still do) many boards and advisory committees to make sure the voice of the small farmer is included.  They range from local to national organizations all with a focus on sustainable agriculture.  Hours spent in meetings and on conference calls again all on our own time and dime but we did help to move the needle a little.

Things began to change in the early 2000’s with the new generation of farmers coming of age along with the internet.  When I produced the Organic Vegetable Production and Marketing in the South CD-ROM with the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group I realized I was putting everything I knew into one replicable place and wanted some kind of remuneration and copy write assurances for my intellectual property and I received some stiff opinions about this from the old guard, we just didn’t do it that way.

Now the new farmers charge for everything, online video courses, farm tours, big speaking fees if they have a book or solid online content.  I generally applaud them for being able to do that, we were just too early in the evolution of the movement and now much of it is passing us by.  That’s okay too, we did build a beautiful ship though!

Picture of the Week

 P1050049Our little farm in full production

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 15 #8, 4/11/18

What’s been going on!

First day of the Wednesday market for the 2018 season is today, 3:00-6:00, it looks to be a beautiful afternoon.  The mid-week market run by the Chapel Hill-Carrboro Farmers’ Markets, Inc. (that is our official name) has been at the Town Commons since 1997.  There has always been a mid-week market but it has moved both locations and days over the years and until 1997, was the Chapel Hill part of the equation.

The first location was at East Gate shopping center and was held on Thursdays from 1982-1986 and was a good market but the Food Lion grocery store began to object so it was moved to behind Mariakakis restaurant for two years until a better location could be found.  With the development of East Chapel Hill High School and the Cedar Falls Park across the street it was moved to the park in 1989 where at first it was on Thursdays but eventually moved to Tuesdays.  The mid-week market never really recovered from all the moves and when the Saturday market moved to its beautiful permanent location in 1996 we asked the Town of Carrboro if we could have a mid-week market there too.

We waited a year so we could settle the Saturday market into the new Town Commons properly before we brought the mid-week market over and became an all Carrboro channel.  The market organization did briefly operate the Southern Village market on Thursdays from 2004-2009, marking the return to a Chapel Hill location but it proved  not be a strong market so we once again consolidated our efforts back at the Town Commons.  Now 22 years later the Wednesday market continues to be a solid, if modest market day, with a great selection of vendors and products.  See you there!

Picture of the Week

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Some bodacious, tender and sweet spinach heading to market

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 15 #6, 3/30/18

What’s been going on!

Forty springs means a lot of produce and flowers have passed through the Carrboro Farmers’ Market.  Yes this year is the Market’s 40th season!  It is sometimes hard to imagine that a group of farmers could consistently organize themselves and set up every Saturday for that many years and do it so well.  Now Peregrine Farm hasn’t been there from the beginning, we are only in our 33rd year, but we can completely appreciate the effort that has gone into starting and building the institution that the Carrboro Market is.

For those who don’t remember, our first 17 years were in the parking lot on Roberson St. behind the Armadillo Grill.  That location was just leased from Carr Mill and when they decided they might sell it we worked closely with the Town to find a new permanent home for what had become an essential element in the fabric of the Town of Carrboro.  We knew that we needed to stay near Downtown but a location could be hard to find.  Fortunately the old ball field next to Town Hall (which used to be the elementary school) was available to become a town park.  It took nearly eight years from the first discussions, through design meetings, to fund raising efforts and finally construction before we moved to the Town Commons in 1996.

I was President of the market Board leading up to and during the move and we were ecstatic with our new permanent home.  It was a tight fit as we had grown to an 80 space market but working with the Town it all worked out.  23 years later I am once again President of the board as we prepare to move back into the newly renovated market space after 5 long winter months.  The improvements are vast.  One of the biggest goals was to improve the drainage and grass so that it does not become a muddy moonscape after rains.  They have buried huge drain pipes and graded in such a way to catch all the water.  The grassed areas under where vendor’s trucks and displays will be have been reinforced with a special grid to hopefully prevent wear and tear.  New water permeable walkways, a bathroom building, new playground and market storage building, new lighting and electrical hookups for the vendors that need power.   Refurbished shelters and gazebo to make it all more usable for special events both for the Market and other Town events.  It will be awesome!

Technically the construction is done this week but we cannot move onto the new grass until April 14th so that it has adequate time to become solidly rooted and can take truck traffic.  Until then the good news is that the new parking lots will be open as well as the bathroom building.  We will be able to park some vendors in the south side parking lot and near the playground but will probably still have a few folks in the main parking lot next to Town Hall.

Just as our amazing customers and market supporters followed us from Roberson Street to the Town Commons 23 years ago, we have been equally proud and appreciative of how they have been flexible and unfazed during this renovation chaos!  It is only a short time now and just in time for the blooming of the spring market.  Join us next week April 7th for the official ribbon cutting ceremony at 9:00 a.m.

Picture of the Week

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The ground breaking for building the Town Commons in 1995, Alex on the left was 15 😉

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 14 #36, 11/9/17

What’s been going on!

Raw, raw couple of days.  There are experiences in life that etch themselves so deeply into your being that they surface whenever the conditions or situation are similar.  Like knowing that something hot will burn you or that a barking dog with teeth bared can raise the hair on the back of your neck.  Usually these are survival lessons we have learned.

This kind of weather is exactly one of those for Betsy and me.  Our first year farming, in 1982, had been one of excitement and struggle as we planted and tended our first crops while trying to build infrastructure on this blank piece of land.  I was on the farm full time and Betsy was working in the kitchen at the Fearrington House.  In late March we moved into a tent next to the only building on the farm, a 20X20 tin roofed equipment shed that I had built the fall before to house the tractor and tools.  It allowed us to save money on rent and to be here to work as much as we could and not have to commute.

Spring moved into summer and we had to get a real house built but progress was painfully slow between trying to save the crops from biblical weeds, not having two dimes to rub together and building it mostly by myself.  By the end of October we finally had it dried in with just black board on the outside and the plumbing and electric roughed in but there was no insulation or sheetrock.

The first weekend of November we were staring down days of cold rainy weather that herald the end of beautiful fall and the beginning of winter.  After 7 months in the tent we did not relish being cold and damp so we rigged up the woodstove in the new house and moved in, not optimal but at least we were warm and dry!  By Christmas we had it insulated and the sheetrock up but it would be another six months before we would have running water and more electricity than what an extension cord from the temporary power pole could deliver to four plugs.

It was those days and many more like them that made us tougher and resilient enough to succeed in this business but as we sit here with the 40 degree drizzle outside and a fire in the woodstove it all comes rushing back like it was yesterday.

Picture of the Week

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 Our blackboard house in the spring of 1983

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 14 #23, 7/20/17

What’s been going on!

Into the furnace we go, had to happen sooner or later this summer and most appropriate the third week of July which is statistically the hottest of the year.  We are starting at 7:00 these mornings to beat a bit of heat and are out of the field by noon everyday.  You all stay cool.

I gave a fun talk yesterday to a group of Triangle Farmers’ Markets market managers some of whom are struggling with how to make their markets more sustainable and they were interested in how we manage to do it at Carrboro.  Most new and small markets have very part time managers (like 10 hours a week) who have a hard time in building a market and market community.

For some reason I have become the unofficial historian of the Carrboro Market and did a deep dive into the chronology of how the market developed and critical points along the way.  Now I will admit that Carrboro has had the benefit of 39 seasons to organically develop policies and solutions to problems that are common to most markets and that our success is in no small part due to the amazing customer base we have.

I do point to two original concepts that help make Carrboro more resilient and innovative.  First when the Town gave governance of the market to the farmers instead of a group of towns folks it instilled a sense of ownership and responsibility that most vendors at markets do not have.  Farmer run and farmer controlled, making decisions that make sense for the members not the economic development folks.

The second I have talked about many times before.  Carrboro is the only market that requires the owner of the business to be there selling, this further deepens that ownership and pride of the market.  When you just have an employee selling for you they don’t observe things that go on at market the same way, they don’t interact with the managers or the other vendors the same way, they don’t serve on committees or the board to help improve how the market operates.  We have 80 plus small entrepreneurs all contributing ideas and solutions that make the market cooperative better that in turn benefits their individual businesses.

The result has been a thriving market place for the farmers, a gathering place for the Town of Carrboro and an important part of the economic engine for downtown Carrboro.  We know we are fortunate to have such a market and never take it for granted.

Picture of the Week

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Our first year at the old market, 32 years was a long time ago!

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 12 #28, 10/1/15

What’s been going on!

Storm preparation mode.  Haven’t had a stretch like this since 2008, at least that we can remember.  That late summer, early fall we were coming off of a dry period just like this year when several tropical storms hit us in about a week and we had over 13 inches of rain over a two week period.  During the September 6th Saturday market, tropical storm Hannah arrived with high winds and 4 inches of rain.  It shouldn’t be that bad this Saturday but it does look to be wet.

Our first concern this weekend is the potential of the Haw River flooding our bottom field where the peppers are this year and part of the fall vegetables.  With 4 inches of rain this past week the river is already up some and if we get hit with the high end of the 5-9 inches forecast it could be a problem.  Fortunately we will be able know it is coming and will at least be able to pick a bunch of peppers and pull the irrigation pump if it gets that high.

Our second concern is obviously the track of hurricane Joaquin, which yesterday looked like it was potentially on a Fran track but today looks to be trending further out to sea.  As the last dryish day to get things done, we went ahead this morning and uncovered the last of the Big Tops and battened down other things in case the wind does really get up, better safe than sorry.

Tomorrow looks to be a really wet day but we are hoping some of the forecasts are correct about less rain on Saturday.  Of course you all will come on to market because it is the market’s Pepper Festival with lots of good things to eat.  Like last week, we will bring the roaster to market but we will just have to see how windy it is.

Picture of the Week

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This is what the well-dressed market shopper looked like in the middle of a tropical storm in 2008

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 12 #20, 7/22/15

What’s been going on!

We had another interesting first time experience recently when I recorded an hour and a half podcast for Chris Blanchard’s Farmer to Farmer Podcast series.  Chris was a farmer and now is consulting with organic farmers and has started doing these interviews with mostly organic vegetable farmers from all across the country.  If you have great stamina you can listen to the whole thing which is wide ranging but the following is a breakdown of the major subjects if you want to skip around.

Starts with an intro; minute 5- where we market and how we got started; min. 10- how we financed the whole thing; min. 20- record keeping and crop planning; min. 30- high tunnels and tomatoes; min. 45 our transition plans with Jennie and retirement; min. 65 efficiency, labor, equipment and farm design.  We recorded it over the phone so the sound is a bit funny as I sound out of breath.

Friday we have another interview for a profile of Peregrine Farm to be in yet another book, this one about successful small farms under 5 acres in production.  This will be, I think, the seventh book we have been included in over the years, something we never imagined.

Planting of fall crops picks up over the next few weeks with many flats seeded at the greenhouse and celery, turnips and radishes all in the ground already.  In the next few weeks we will plant or seed leeks, carrots, beets and Romanesco broccoli.  We even harvested the first of the winter squash yesterday, I know it seems wrong when it is 90 degrees but that is how the timing works here in NC.

Picture of the Week

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Another steamy morning, summer cover crops with late flowers behind

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