Category: local food

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Last Minute Christmas Gifts

We have some awesome last minute Christmas gifts with porch pickup for that truly last minute option.

Honey

We have honey from the farm and from our place on Troublesome Gap. The farm honey is local but the Troublesome Gap honey has a distinctive taste from the Basswood trees that were in bloom while the bees were up on the mountain. The choice is yours, or give one of each.

Many of our customers use our honey every morning in their tea or coffee. This is a great way to support local agriculture and have an amazing tasting raw honey from people you trust.

Honey

Gifts sets

We have a limited amount of gift sets for that pit master in your life. Enjoy the benefits of smoked or bbq from the grill over the Christmas break! The gift sets are a collaboration between our farm and Brick City Burn in Sanford, NC.

Porch Pickups

We offer last minute porch pickups from Sanford, NC. I can definitely understand how easy it is to need that last minute gift that is something more personal and local.

Thanks for supporting our farm in 2024 and Merry Christmas!

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Planting Fruit Trees and Having Fun

We had a good time as a family on the farm planting fruit and nut bearing trees. We planted fruit and nut bearing trees and bushes.

We were able to plant 41 trees and 15 bushes including

Trees (Fruit)
Apricot
Mulberry
Nectarine
PawPaw
Peach
Asian Pear
Kieffer Pear
Pecan
Plum
Plumcot

Trees (Nut)
Black Walnut
Chestnut

Bushes (Fruit)
Blueberry
Elderberry
Goji Berry

Medicinal
Comfrey

The comfrey is planted with trees and bushes as a living mulch and as a medicinal.

It was so nice that it was a family effort with Connie and JonnyLee.

Thanks

Rob K for the walnut trees and the use of his autocross car a few weeks ago (that was fun and we didn’t die)
Rabbit Ridge in Coats, NC for the fruit trees.
Permapastures Farm in WNC for the comfrey

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Local Gift Sets from the Farm

We have fun creating abundance on the farm. We enjoy seeing other local farms and businesses creating products that they are passionate about. These gift sets respresent the a combined joy of all the work coming together in a delightful way.

This year we have teamed up with Brick City Burn (local company) to create a wonder experience for your favorite pitmaster! Elevate you next batch of BBQ with these wonderful flavors, including our unique Troublesome Gap Honey. This is a wonderful gift for the guy (or gal) that loves to BBQ. Visit here to order or click on any of the images below.

Any honey you have left after cooking your BBQ is great in your morning coffee!

Gift set for Mild BBQ
Gift set for hot BBQ
Deluxe set that includes everything for hot and mild BBQ

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November Figs? – Go Fig-ure

Still more November figs

We’re trying to put the nice weather to good use. It was a nice day to to put out mulch.

Putting mulch around the trees and bushes helps to

  • suppress grass
  • provides nutrients as the mulch breaks down
  • provides a great environment for the comfrey to grow
  • helps to regulate the moisture at the tree root ball

This is a great example of function stacking. Function stacking is using one plant, material or process to accomplish multiple things.

November Figs and Our First Raspberries

Our fig treses are still putting out figs. We also have our first raspberries. I can’t wait to taste them. The Daikon radish is growing like crazy.

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Farm and Forest – Digital Detox at Its Finest

Starting a farm has been quite an experience.

Jack Spirko often contends on his podcast that answers can be found in the forest. I’m thinking that most answers can be found in the forest and farm because we already know the answer most of the time. We just need to face to up the answer we already know and looking at the beauty around us help us to face those answers. Or sometimes we just need to something to help us focus so we can put the pieces together and arrive at an answer. Other times there is inspiration that we can find in the beauty and grand design of nature around us.

Crinum lily in bloom

Many times I find that while I’m working on something on the farm, I’m learning about how to be a better farmer but also gaining a deeper understanding of life and myself. Hard work is good way to push out the some of the mental clutter. Getting that mental clutter out of the way helps me to think through any challenges or questions. Often I find that I get to the end of the day and the work is done and I’ve figured out answers to challenges that have nothing to do with the farm.

During the day at work and home, there are a lot of things competing for our attention. Getting outside and working filters out that digital noise and info, giving a very important digital detox. The act of labor and the concentration on the task at hand helps deepen the effects of the digital detox. These moments of digital detox peel away the layers of mental clutter and leaves me prepared to enjoy life and remember what is truly important.

I hope you have a great week!

Our camping site in the back field is coming along nicely
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Pumpkins Are Coming, Maybe

We tried something new this year. We planted pumpkins in withour sorghum / sudan grass and buckwheat cover crop. The plan:

  • plant the pumpkins and cover crop in the area where we had just dug potatoes. The row was already covered with straw that we used around the potato plants
  • let the cover crop and pumpkins grow – the buckwheat grew first and was succeeded by the pumpkins and sorghum / sudan grass
  • weed around the pumpkins
  • let the pumpkins grown out into the grassy rows beyond the cover crop area
  • [future] hopefully harvest pumpkins

Doing this allows us to add organic matter to the soil when we terminate the sorghum / sudan grass and it composts over the winter. The sorghum / sudan grass also acts a a mulch for the winter cover crop. Hopefully we get a good harvest of pumpkins. Innovating in small ways means trying new things.

I’m looking foward to pumpkins!

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Expanding Our Orchard

“The plan” is to install the next phase of orchard just after Thanksgiving. We’ll offer a class in planting fruit trees for anyone that wants to learn and join in as we plant the next phase of our orchard. I’ll post the class invite on the website once it is scheduled. It would be great if you could join us for a day of planting trees and wonderful fellowship.

2 of the walnut trees with room to put pawpaws in between
Test planting of figs and persimmon in the back field

Back Field Plans

This fall we plan to add the next wave of fruit trees to the back field. These include

  • Peaches – Contender, Redhaven, and Belle of Georgia varieties
  • Asian Pear – Korean Giant and Chojuro varieities
  • Plum – Byron Gold, Methley, Ozark Premier and Blue Damson varieties
  • Plumcot – Spring Satin variety
  • Nectarines – Carla Rose variety
  • Black Walnut – native
  • Asian Chestnut – Dunstan variety
  • Mulberry – Dwarf Everbearing

We also have a pecan tree that didn’t survive. So we’ll replace that pecan tree. The variety is Occonee. Pecans have very specific pollination periods so it is important to choose the correct varieties so they can cross pollinate and produce pecans.

Our camping site in the back field is coming along nicely

Campsite Plans

We want to keep plenty of room for tents in the back field campsite as we add more fruiting plants to the mini-food forest there. We hopee to add blueberries this fall. The selected rabbit eye blueberry varieties are Premier, Columbus, and Tifblue.

Food Forest Plans

One of the plants that has struggled in the food forest is the blackberries. We plan to take out part of the blackberries and their trellis. Then we can come black and plant fruit trees. We’ve already replaced part of the blackberries with black chokeberrie (you may recognize them as aronia berries). I’m hoping to add additional chokeberries to the food food forest along with plum trees (Methley and Ozark Premier varieties).

Goji berries climbing the trellis

Field #2 Plan

We have an area of field #2 that stays fairly dry, which is ironic compared to how wet the rest of field #2 generally is. This is most likely caused by the depth of the water in that one area. We plan to add goji berries to the dry area. The goji berries have in the food forest in the hugelkultur mound and we hope to continue the success in field #2.

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Mowing Grass and Enjoying the Crinum Lillies

Motherwort is Growing

Motherwort is a medicinal plant with studies that show it has benefits for the ciculatory system. There are also anti-inflammatory and antioxidant effects. Extracts from this plant may also help stimulate the uterus and fight bacteria. This is our first time growing motherwort and it is doing well.

The black walnut trees are doing better as we remove brush from around them and cut back grapevines that are growing in the trees

Where to Find Me? Find Me Under this Old Hat!

Somtimes it is good to take a few minutes and just sit at the picnic table and enjoy being outside, especially after working hard on the farm.

As Sawyer Brown says, “you never need to wonder where I’m at, you can find me hanging out under this old hat”

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Fresh from the Farm this Week

One of our goals has been to send out emails as we have items available from the farm. This is the first edition of that notice. Currently we have available:

  • elderberries
  • garlic (very limited supply)
  • raw honey from the farm in Bennett (yes, it is back – we sold out last year’s supply)
  • raw honey from Troublesome Gap
  • comfrey

You can place your order our store. You can go to the store directly at https://www.simplyusfarm.com/shop/ or click on the store icon (circled in red below). Any of the produce will need to be picked up locally. We do porch pickups in Sanford.

Freeze Drying Comfrey

We freeze dried our first batch of comfrey and stored the test batch in a vacuum sealed canning jar with an oxygen absorber. The freeze dried comfrey was easy to turn into a sorta powdery consistency after the freeze drying completed. The comfrey freeze dried fairly quickly. The entire run fit in a single wide mouth mason jar after we crunched up the leaves and stem. I’ll call it a success.

Next step is to make a salve.