Tag Archives: newsletters '10

Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #6, 4/14/10

What’s been going on?

Green, green, green. Looking out the office window it is now impossible to see down to the lower field as the trees are almost all leafed out. The Hickories are still slowly sending out their new leaves but everything else is far along. Still the lime green of immature leaves, not full sized and still very tender and susceptible to strong winds and cold snaps. They are not the hard, glossy, dark green leaves that can stand up to summers heat, still the innocents of spring.

Lots going on this week, with plenty of extracurricular activities to boot. Too many meetings- Rural Advancement Foundation International board, Friends of the Carrboro Farmers Market, and Farm to Fork Picnic. Today I am teaching a class on sustainable soil management at the community college, Friday we have a class from Elon College coming here to learn about small farms. Next week a Farmers Market board meeting and another community college class on tomato and pepper production. Hard to get the farm work done.

This coming Sunday afternoon I am co-teaching a class with Marilyn Markel, the head of Southern Seasons CLASS cooking school, and Craig LeHoullier who is one of the nations leading authorities on heirloom tomatoes. Craig, who is from Raleigh, maintains a seed collection and has grown somewhere around 1400 different tomato varieties, he is the one who introduced our favorite tomato to the gardening world, Cherokee Purple. This class is a combo of general spring vegetable growing talk and then specifically tomatoes as it is nearing the perfect time for planting. Marilyn with be cooking up a number of dishes using our spring greens and other veggies. I think there are still seats left.

Speaking of events, the Farm to Fork Picnic is just over a month away on May 23rd. Tickets are going fast with over half of the 600 sold already. This is a great food event pairing the areas best chefs and farmers together to raise money for new farmer programs. This year we are paired with our friends Ben and Karen Barker from Magnolia Grill. The annual Piedmont Farm Tour is also coming up, April 24 and 25. Get your buttons the ticket to the tour.

The Viburnums are at their peak, ahead of schedule, what a crazy spring

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #5, 4/7/10

What’s been going on?

There is no other way to say it, this hot weather combined with the pollen storm of the century sucks! The pollen part is just amazing to us as we don’t suffer from allergies but we never can remember one as heavy as this or as early, we do feel for those who are suffering from it though. The heat is just too much, too early. We finally had to give in and set up irrigation in the lettuces and spring vegetables on Monday to try and reduce the stress on those tender crops.

Heat this early in the spring greens season is not too detrimental as they are small and with enough water will just grow faster. If we get this kind of heat in a month then that will be more devastating. When these crops near maturity and get stressed they turn tough and bitter and may even go to seed prematurely as a defense mechanism. That means no lettuce or other greens for everyone. Let’s hope this is an aberration and when we go back down to the 70’s this weekend, it will be for a nice extended period. After all April and May are possibly the two best months of the year here, I would hate to lose them.

There are a lot of important dates coming up but one issue that is time sensitive that we would like for you all to know about is the impending vote on food safety legislation in the Senate. As a member of the North Carolina Fresh Produce Safety Task Force organized by the NC Farm Bureau, we have been learning about and commenting on proposed legislation coming out of congress for several years now. The Senate is about to take up S510, sponsored by Senator Burr. Like many things is it is a complicated response to the contaminated food scares of the past few years.

While we all want healthy safe food, this legislation, written by the FDA with the help of the giant scale conventional California growers, will put many small scale, local producers out of business. The inspections, paperwork, and non-science based approaches to reducing animal pathogens will definitely hurt organic and sustainable growers. Our friends at Carolina Farm Stewardship Association have put together a good webpage with the information you need to act on this legislation. Please check it out and call your senators today!

Picture of the Week

micro sprinklers in the lettuce field trying to keep it all cool

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #4, 3/31/10

What’s been going on?

The last day of March and a brilliant moon last night, just on the other side of full, it hangs on the tree line in the west as the sun is beginning to clear the horizon on the east. Signs of a good day to come. We need a solid day as “the stand”, as we call it, is rising like the phoenix after collapsing in January snow storm. Yesterday we got all of the posts back in line and the supporting beams in place so that today we can raise the rafters back up. With any luck we will be putting the tin roof back on tomorrow.

The moon setting over the rising Stand

Lots of good progress this week, we did manage to slide the “little” tunnels to their 2010 positions. Prior to moving we also prepare all the beds that will be soon indoors with irrigation lines, landscape fabric and for the tomatoes the trellises that will support them. We slid on Thursday and then closed them up to help warm up the soil before planting the warm season crops that go in them. Yesterday the early cucumbers and tomatoes went in the ground, a few days late but happy none the less, hmm real tomatoes in two months!

Great rain for us on Sunday, no severe weather, just a nice long rain with just over an inch. I was beginning to twitch with the thought of having to set up irrigation this early in the season but this rain will keep that job off the list at least for another week. With the winds of yesterday it should be dry enough in the next day or two to return to cultivating the early season crops, have to get ahead of the weeds when they are small. The big batch of spring crops have been going in the ground over the last several weeks and are really beginning to grow now that we have had a good rain. Another round gets planted this week and next and then it is time to turn our sights to warm season flowers and getting ready for the main planting of tomatoes. With the temperatures reaching toward 90 later this week it will seem like it’s time for summer crops, not yet please!

Glenn and Cov planting tomatoes

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Peregrine Farm News Vol. 7 #3, 3/24/10

What’s been going on?

It appears as if we have quickly settled into an April weather pattern, 40’s and 70’s. It is always interesting to see how we come out of these cold winters, will we have a pleasant gentle climb towards summer or jump right into it and race up into the 90’s? Let’s hope it’s the former and not the later, in any case the current days are mostly sublime and conducive to over work. Missed the newsletter last week for just that reason, too many spring projects going on and it slipped right by me.

Several large projects going on this week and last. On the cooler days, after the tiny rains we’ve had, we are pushing to finish up chain saw season. We try every year to trim/fight back some section of the woods at the edges of the field. It is a constant battle and if not trimmed up high enough we lose the ability to mow close to the trees and then it is a fast down hill slide into chaos. So in the last week we have worked the about two thirds of the bottom field edge and a section up near the blueberries.

Some of these tree lines we have not done much with since we cleared those fields back in the mid 80’s, that combined with the still lingering effects of downed trees from Hurricane Fran (1996) they were a mess. Lots of little trees grown up in areas we couldn’t mow, grape vines tangling in the branches, cat claw and blackberry briar, a difficult job. I run the chain saw and the guys drag the brush to the fire. It is a dirty, scratchy job to be done only with gloves and long sleeves so that is why we save it for the cooler mornings and days.

The other project that we are rushing to get done is the sliding of the moveable tunnels. Really should have been done last week but we were rushing to try and get things planted before the rain (that really didn’t materialize). Every year we have to replace some of the wooden parts that have succumbed to rot and this year there is fair amount that has to be done before we can slide. Today I will get the remaining boards replaced while the guys get the landscape fabric and trellis for the earliest tomatoes set up. Tomorrow we will move four of the six houses to their 2010 position (the other two get moved in January over the Anemones and Ranunculus). Maybe we’ll plant tomatoes on Friday!

Picture of the Week

Cov with a big ball of grapevine headed to the fire

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