Tag: permaculture

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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.

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First Comfrey Harvest

Over the past year we have been planting comfrey in the food forest. We have also started planting comfrey with many of the trees and bushes that we plant. Comfrey is a great plant that has several jobs on the farm. These jobs (also known as function stacking for the permaculture crowd) include:

  • ground cover that suppresses grass and weeds for the plants and trees that we plant the comfrey around
  • living mulch that we can chop and drop in the fall to compost in place
  • medicinal plant that can be used in a salve or poultice

Today, we harvested enough comfrey leaves to make a full run in the freeze dryer. The plan is to freeze dry the comfrey and then make a salve. I’ve never made anything before with comfrey so this will be a new experience

We plan to offer comfrey on demand. When an order is placed, we’ll schedule a day for porch pickup in Sanford (most likely a Saturday). This allows you to have comfrey that was harvested earlier in the day. Next year we hope to offer comfrey root cuttings so you can plant your own comfrey.

The picture below shows comfrey leaves ready to go into the freezer and then the freeze dryer.

Elderberry Harvest Continues

We are still harvesting elderberry. The dry weather in June seems to have caused us to have smaller berries this year, but we are still getting a nice harvest.

Figs Growing Taller and Taller

It is nice to see our fig trees continue to grow. Many of them are covered with figs. We can’t wait to try them

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Elderberries Incoming!

We have started picking elderberries from our food forest. Please contact me if you are interested in placing an order. We don’t use any insecticides or pesticides. The fertilizer we use on them is organic.

You can order your elderberries here (select “porch pickup” under shipping options for local pickup in Tramway)

Raspberries

We have been trying a variety of raspberries that was developed for the climate in this area. Many raspberries just won’t tolerate the warmer tempertures here (zone 8a). That is why you see raspberries mainly in the mountains. The plants came from Rabbit Ridge Berry Farm in Coats, NC. We have bought friut bearing trees and bushes from them. They have great products and are wonderful to work with. They also have a u-pick farm.

Blueberries

This is our first year of having a blueberry harvest, even a small one. Previously our plants were too young, so we pulled the berries when they first formed to encourage the plant to put its energy into the plant instead of the fruit. The first of the blueberries are almost ready to harvest. I can’t wait to have blueberry pancakes.

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Getting Young Trees Ready for Summer

The project this week was getting the young trees ready for summer. This involves pulling off the anti-deer cages, weeding around the trees and then putting mulch around the base of the trees. The mulch helps to keep the soil around the tree moist. It also helps trap water when we water the trees during the summer months. As the mulch breaks down, it will also provide nutrients to the trees.

The elderberries are coming right along. We are looking forward to having a great elderberry harvest.

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Berries are Blooming

We’ve been getting ready for the farm tours so this will be a shorter post. We are seeing lots of green growth all over the farm. The elderberries, blueberries and blackberries are starting to bloom so it won’t be long before we have berries. The potatoes are starting to bloom so its time to hill around them to encourage potato growth.

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So Much Growth

The warm rains have helped kick off so much green on the farm. It is nice to watch everything grow. The fall and winter test plantings of fig, elderberry and pawpaw in the back field are growing well. We’ve had a few figs that might not make it, but overall it is looking good.

I hope you enjoy the pictures from this week.

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Spiders, Crazy Bugs and Flowers, Flowers, Flowers

What beautiful days to work on the farm! We enjoyed spectacular weather.

Day 3 of our Growing Potatoes class was today. Just in case you are wondering this is a day where we just weed potatoes and adjust any hay covering. The potatoes are growing nicely. Although we did discover that if you put too much hay down after you plant the potato slip, the plants won’t make it through the hay. So we had to uncover quite a few potato plants.

Potatoes growing nicely

There are so many flowers blooming on the farm and in the field right now. We must have some happy bees.

We also weeded garlic and onions. The garlic grows so well on our farm. However, I’m not sure that I’m much of an onion farmer.

It won’t be long before the garlic is ready to harvest, Connie did a great job weeding it

We also saw a lot of bugs from a very large spider with egg sac (maybe a wolf spider) to a very large unknow spider.

Big spider in the hay
What is this bug?
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Growing and Drying Herbs at Home

Herbs are often the first crop that we harvest. We grow them close to our house so they can be harvested just before cooking with them. If you are permaculturalist, then this is our zone 1.

This year we hope to have plenty of 

  • rosemary
  • oregano
  • dill
  • coriander / coriander
  • basil (best used fresh, not dry)


Pairing a basil with fresh mozarella and tomatoes with a sweet sauce drizzled on top is definitely a summertime treat

Herbs are one of the easiest crops to grow. We have already started harvesting herbs from some of our established pots and beds. They don’t take much space and you’ll get to enjoy them all summer long. If you dry your excess herb crop then you can enjoy them this winter as well.

Drying your own herbs is also super simple. Below is a link to a video that explains how.


We’ve also freeze dried herbs very successfully. They freeze dry quickly and store for a very long time.


I also enjoy seeing flowers in our yard. Here are some pictures from this morning