Read and Get Smarter!

Tom Philpott is a farmer from western North Carolina, and a blogger for the environmental website Grist.org. His postings on the intersection of local food, industrial farms, and governmental influences on what we eat are always thoughtful and interesting. Here is a link to one of them.

http://grist.org/news/maindish/2006/02/22/philpott/

Mid-Spring Loveliness

Bright Lights Swiss Chard

Earthly Mirth Garlic

Crimson Clover, beloved by the soil and the bees

Fennel


Here are a few photos to make up for my lack of postings as of late. I have been outside planting summer things, and will snap some photos of newly transplanted peppers, basil, tomatoes, tomatillos, parsley, and eggplant when the light is a little better. I have quite a few seeded summer crops (such as beans, melons, squash, edamame) in the ground, patiently awaiting some rain.

Nice Work, Ladies!

Rainy Days

Finally, some rain! Charley and I did some work in the greenhouse this morning, and as you can see, he loved every minute of it. I pulled the row cover off of the strawberries today to check the damage. Unfortunately, many of the flowers and berries have been destroyed by these past few nights of hard freeze. While this diminishes our early harvest, I still have hope for a later crop if the weather doesn't get too hot too fast. Most of the plants that spent the past few days and nights under row covers are still kickin', although they are a little crispy around the edges. The plants that were not under row covers, however, are looking mortally wounded. Fortunately, I use lots of row cover! What remains to be seen, though, is the effect the ups and downs in temperature will have on the plants in the coming weeks. They may bolt to seed because of the stress...We'd better eat fast!

The Construction Project Continues

Although he is carefully avoiding making any promises, Joe says he may be done with the new layer house next weekend, provided we can find some used tin for the roof. This means I can get a batch of meat chickens in just a few weeks. We ate our last chicken from the fall batch of broilers this week, and I think having a freezer with no tasty chicken inside is spurring Joe on, through wind and cold, to finish this project! This time I am planning to try broilers from a hatchery 90 minutes north of Greensboro called Pure Quackery. They are working to build a regional food system by providing chicks to farms within driving range of their hatchery, and I would like to support them instead of purchasing chicks from a national hatchery. Check them out at Purequackery.com.

The Mercury Drops

Our farm once again looks like a strange research plot, with everything swaddled in layers of row cover and piles of straw. I have done all I can do to protect the plants from the upcoming record cold temps. Everything in the field now is technically cold hardy, but plants lose their hardiness in extended hot spells like the one we have had for the past two weeks. I am also concerned about plants bolting prematurely to seed in this erratic weather. We'll see how everything fares in the dry ground, 20 degree nights, and scathing wind...