Category: this week

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Pause Before Spring? No Way, No Pause

Everything is warming up. We have been busy. We have also been using the nice weather to work on cleaning up fallen trees. The bees are loving their new home.

Our garlic is doing well. Garlic is one of the easier crops to grow because it requires so little maintenance until the last few weeks. We sold out of garlic last year, so when it is available in early summer, make sure to get your orders in. We don’t use pesticides or insecticides on the farm.

Sometimes details are important, a toad hopped on my chainsaw box while we were cutting up a tree that fell down in the storm. Connie noticed the small toad and snapped the pic

Tiny toad on chainsaw case
Tiny toad up close
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Pruning on the Farm and More Bees

What beautiful weather this weekend. We’ve had several Saturdays in a row where the weather was just gorgeous. This weather definitely makes for a relaxing day.

Successful Elderberry Pruning Class

Thanks to everyone that came to our elderberry pruning and planting class. We had a wonderful time. We sent many of the elderberry cuttings to WNC to help with stream bank retention for areas damaged by the hurricane.

Expanded Apiary

New home for the bees

Moving the bees to the back field gives us room to expand the number of hives. We hope to have 10 hives in place for this year. I’ve been surprised by the number for people that want local honey. The bees are a great example of function stacking. The bees pollinate the trees and bushes while producing honey

Blueberries Needed Pruning

These blueberry plants are two years old. We have 22 blueberry plants on the farm. 20 on the HugelKultur mound and 2 in the back field (as a test planting). They were not pruned when they were originally planted 2 years ago. This was their very first pruning, we did leave a few cross branches but they weren’t rubbing on other branches so we chose to leave them for this year. Next year they will be pruned away. We did have a small bowl of blueberries last year but this year we are expecting bigger and better harvest. Here are the before and after photos

Blueberry plant needing to be pruned

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Bee News | Pruning Moms Grape Vines and Orchard

Bees Have a New Home Soon

The bees are moving to the back field and more bees should arrive in a few weeks. The plan is to have 10 hives total. We currently have 4 hives. We keep selling out of honey from the farm so additional honey capacity will be good as the farm grows.

Good Family Times

One of our yearly traditions has been to prune the grape vines, blueberries and fruit trees at my mom’s house. We did that this week and had a good time. What a beautiful day. We had a good time as a family and accomplished a lot.

It is wonderful that the orchard, berries and vines produce an abundance that my mom can share with the community.

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Planting Beauty Berry and Black Locust

What a beautiful. The snow has melted and it was a wonderful day to work on the farm. We planted fruit and nut trees in November. Now we are planting the second wave of trees and bushes.

The american beautyberry bushes have edible berries that have a different taste. They are harvested in the fall. The beautyberries were Connie’s idea. The brought one home a few years ago and it has really grown and produced lots of berries. The berries are a metallic purple color. The beautyberries are also a native plant. We shouldn’t need anti-deer cages around the beautyberries (at least until the berries are ripe).

The black locust trees are going into areas where we are working to improve the soil. The plan is to let them grow for a few years and terminate them. Then we can come back with fruit trees.

The pomegranate trees needed anti-deer cages. Those are built and installed.

A great day to work on the farm

Don’t forget about our elderberry pruning class in 2 weeks.

It is that time. Join us as we prune our elderberries. We’ll have a great morning learning to prune elderberries and also learning to plant the cuttings. The cost of the class includes a 1/2 lb of honey from the farm and cuttings so you can plant your own elderberries. Please sign up below so we know how many people to expect.

Event Schedule on Saturday, March 8th

Take Aways from the Event

You’ll learn how to

  1. prune elderberries and make cuttings to plant
  2. plant elderberries

Experience

  1. pruning elderberry plants
  2. planting elderberry cuttings

Bring home (included in the ticket cost)

  • enough elderberry cuttings to start your own elderberry patch
  • 1 lb of honey from the farm

Agenda on Saturday

9:00 AM – Welcome

9:15-Noon
Demonstration – how to prune elderberry bushesPractical – prune elderberries and take home elderberry cuttings so you can grown your own elderberry plants.

Demonstration – how to plant elderberries
Practical – plant elderberries and comfrey

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Taking a Break for a Few Weeks

We hope you have enjoyed the news and pictures from the farm in 2024. We’re going to take a break from the blog for few weeks.

Expect to see more pictures when it is time to prune the elderberries, mulberry trees, fig trees and goji berries. If you want to learn to prune your berries and fruit trees, let me know and we’ll set up a class for late February or early March.

Goji berries
Starting to put mulch around the mulberry trees
Fig tree
Elderberries
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2021 Til Now – the Story So Far

We purchased the land for the farm in 2021. Since then it has been forward plunge into the turbulent waters of agriculture.

The Beginning

Standing at the gate looking across the farm as it looked in the beginning of the journey
Property when we first bought it, mainly fields and forest

Planning and Getting Started

Using GPS data to build CAD models to plan the plantings in field #2
Putting in the deer fence and putting down plastic to solarize the grass in field #2
Putting down plastic to solarize the hugelkultur mound, note the driveway that just went in

State of the Farm Today

Connie and a happy fig tree
Enjoying opportunity to share about our farm
Connie and JonnyLee planting a chestnut tree

I’m proud of the fact that we have planted and tagged over 200 fruit and nut bearing trees and bushes . We have also grown several seasons of row crops.

Trees (Fruit bearing)
Apricot
Mulberry
Nectarine
PawPaw
Peach
Asian Pear
Kieffer Pear
Pecan
Plum
Plumcot
American Persimmon
Figs
Yaupon Holly

Trees (Nut bearing)
Black Walnut
Chestnut
Hazel nut

Bushes (Fruit bearing)
Blueberry
Elderberry
Goji Berry
Blackberry
Aronia / Black Choke Berry
Gold Raspberry
Prickly Pear Cactus

Medicinal
Comfrey
Motherwort
Witch Hazel
St. Johns Wort
Burdock

Row Crops
Garlic

Plan to plant in the spring
Jujube trees
Quince trees
Pomegranate tree
Goumi berry bushes

Who is We?

Thanks to everyone that has helped in many different ways. Friendships have formed and deepened. We have so enjoyed teaching hands on classes and giving tours. Thanks so much!

Having the oppotunity to pass down skills and share has been great
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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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Getting Ready to Plant Trees

This week we have been working to get everything ready to plant trees next week. First step was a trip to Rabbit Ridge Berry Farm in Coats, NC to pick up trees and bushes.

Fred and Amily are great to do business with. We have been buying trees and bushes from them for more than 2 years and it is a wonderful experience.

We filled up the truck and trailer and headed to the farm. One of the trees we purchased was a pecan that was more then 8 feet tall. It was longer than the 8 foot trailer!

The next step was to take measurements and put flags showing the future location of the trees. The fields are starting to get wet so we transferred the trees to a smaller trailer and towed the trailer (with the tractor) to areas close to the intended locations. You can see me with the lines that we used to measure out the 20 foot grid.

Weather permitting, the plan is to plant 47 trees and bushes next week including:

  • pear
  • plum
  • plumcots
  • nectarine
  • peach
  • black walnut
  • mulberry
  • chestnut
  • goji berry
  • blueberry
  • PawPaw

Next week should be a busy week.

Garlic and Wolly Worms

The garlic is coming up. We had tried something new with the garlic this year. We planted the garlic then rolled out hay from a round bale (instead of manually spreading it). Once we started unrolling the hay we were concerned that the hay would be too thick. However the garlic is growing through the hay so hopefully this approach will work.

We are still seeing wolly worms. We saw a really big one yesterday

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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!