Farm News
The colder temps have certainly been a challenge for us here on the farm. We’ve been busy putting out row covers, and I even made another trip to Country Farm and Home this week to pick up more. I wanted to cover the collards and kale, just to be safe. Both of those brassicas are pretty cold-hardy, but when temps drop into the teens, it can still do some damage. It takes me back to the year we lost our whole kale crop to 11°F weather. It also just so happened to be the year I was pregnant with Elliott, and I was pretty annoyed that I had to buy my greens at the market instead of picking them fresh from the garden. Farmer problems…
When we’re facing freezing temps, we have to be smart about our harvests, too. We can’t harvest anything while it’s frozen—if we did, it would just turn to mush when it thaws. On the flip side, it’s fine to harvest from plants that are thawed, even if they were frozen beforehand. So we have to keep a close eye on the weather to know when we have a good harvest window. We usually like to harvest first thing in the morning, but this week, most days found us harvesting in the afternoon. We had our scheduled make-up shares this week and even made it to the Pittsboro Farmers Market for the first time since summer. It was nice to see familiar faces, but I’ll tell you—we don’t miss standing out in the cold for three hours hoping people will stop by. We’re so thankful for all of you who support us with your early financial help, enabling us to keep our family and crew going.
Despite the challenges, we managed to get a lot done this week, including two field trips with the kids. We saw A Very Electric Christmas at the Carolina Theatre in Durham and the A Christmas Carol musical at the Temple Theater in Sanford. While we were in the area, we stopped by our friend Shauna’s shop at Tasting Queens Market. She has some amazing tea blends, spice mixes, hot sauces, and so much more—and you can order from her online.
Speaking of friends with great shops, CSA member and friend Stephanie over at Solstice Herb Farm has some wonderful skincare products. If you’ve got someone on your list who loves bath bombs, pretty soaps, essential oil blends, room sprays, and all sorts of good stuff, be sure to check out her shop. She’s on Business 64 in town, but you can also browse and order from her online shop.
Yesterday, Ben, Lee, and Kirstie planted garlic and shallots, and today, Ben will be adding straw mulch to those beds. On Monday, Jonathan from NRCS came out to chat about conservation programs that offer funding for farm conservation efforts. Some of these are a good fit for our farm, while others are better suited for larger operations. For example, they have funding for creating snags in forests to encourage wildlife—but we already have plenty of natural snags around here. Still, the program looks promising, and we’re hopeful we can get some support to keep up the conservation practices we’re already working on. Ben also spent some time chatting with our amazing extension agent, and friend, Debbie Roos on Friday. If you want access to her wealth of knowledge, check out her Growing Small Farms site. Debbie is a skilled photographer and writer and a wealth of garden and farm related information!
In other news, Finn cultivated the baby spinach in one of our tunnels, then placed hoops and row cover over it. He also spread some diatomaceous earth to keep the critters from munching on it. Lee pulled up the drip tape from empty beds so we can put down leaf mulch and plant cover crops.
Finally, I spent much of the week finishing up garlic braids and wreaths. I hope to get some pictures up in the online store soon for anyone interested in buying. I’ll start adding them over the weekend and should have more ready for next weekend too.
In Good Heart Farm 