Where I grew up, it was hard to go nine days in Winter without some sort of snow fall event.  Here in North Carolina, nine years is about the average wait for an significant snow.  In New York, days off from school because of the weather were very rare, but those days were always met with enthusiasm.  A snow day meant sledding on the Thruway bridge or banging around on snowmobiles or just walking around in the woods.  Days off from work because of snow were even rarer, and those days were usually met with early beer and earlier bed.

With the beauty of the snow in NC comes the problem of clearing it from the roads and the ridiculous frenzy and panic of the local population.  Just the threat of snow is enough to close all schools and most businesses.  Bread and milk flies off the store shelves, people forget how to drive and banks close their doors.  It took me three days to make a deposit at the local bank branch; even the day of the deposit had a delayed opening.

Snow plows are in very short supply around here, and it can take a day just to clear a major highway.  We live on a side road off another side road off yet another side road and then down a dirt road, which basically means that we never see the snow plow anywhere near our home.

It is nothing like New York where the plows come fast and often, their sounds destroying the quiet of night.  I wrote about the plows in Quitter #5.  Here is a taste -

Oh, How Long December…
During a snow storm, the plows mostly come at night.  In the sturdy, hoary months of childhood in Western New York, I would lay awake listening as the distant scraping of the plow brushed its steel blades over the roughly poured asphalt.  In the dry winter air, the low hum could be heard for miles, the flashing orange roof lights of the plow radiating off the lumbering snowflakes, themselves moving unpredictably towards any available surface, wrestling the wind’s vacillating directions.

First the plow would pass to the south of our house, down the thin Barville Road, then up North Byron Road and finally across our unmarked, no-shoulder road.  As the sound grew closer I would pull my face up to the window, watching the coming lights reflect off every available inch of ground, the thick cover of flurries yielding very little until the massive vehicle was right in front of my eyes.  A wave of snow and rock passed over the giant chisel, driven by a mass of grinding metal and boiling oil, echoing brutal noises off the aluminum siding of the house.  The sound and lights would fade as the driver made way through the expansive grid of rurality, on and on towards the gawking of other children unable to sleep.

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In Chatham County we are blessed with the ability to grow food all year round.  With this blessing comes the curse of trying to fool the natural cycles either through the creative use of energy (wood stove in the greenhouse) or by the less intensive means of row covers and low tunnels.

Yesterday’s snow meant that the folks at Piedmont Biofarm had to battle the flakes in order to keep their crops alive.  I found farmer Doug Jones busy in the storm sweeping off his row covers with a push broom.

Even he had to admit that it was a losing battle.  A day later, he and a few of his interns finished the work, clearing the snow and ice by hand.

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Yesterday ended up being a half day of work for myself and Kristin.  The first snow at the farm was an event for me even though snow and cold and ice is basically in my blood.  I haven’t studied an icicle in years.  The icicle is an indication of poor roofing and a lack of insulation, but let’s leave all that for the adults to think about…

One thing you don’t usually see is a Magnolia grandiflora full of snow.  The evergreen leaves stand out during the brown of our short Winter, but they really stand out against the cold white of an even shorter and rarer snow fall.

And what would the short work day be without a little snow fight action?

We threw snowballs at each other and at 80 (our doggie).  But she was busy with work most of the afternoon, and could barely be bothered to play along.

Her “work” mostly consists of chasing mice in the back field and running around like a crazy person.

This work keeps her occupied and healthy, alert and slim.  It is almost a script – the mice run; she follows their scent, bouncing from grass clump to tree stump, digging up rocks and fallen branches all day long.  The mice run some more.  Repeat.

80 doesn’t really come off as a killer.  Now I’m starting to think that I should be cheering her on.  After all, with a depleted mouse population, we may be able to lower the tick infestation in the Spring.  Mouse blood is the gateway drug for young ticks.  Damn delinquents…

After she caught the mouse (the first one I ever saw her catch), I basically took it away from her.  Later on in the evening I thought that it probably would be best if she had been allowed to eat her catch.  We live in the middle of nowhere, so these field mice are not eating poison.  Kind of a waste of protein.

From now on at Circle Acres, the number one rule for all of us is “You eat what you kill.”

So, the reality of starting a farm is starting to creep up.  Noel and I are tossing around ideas, and it seems that the current stage can best be labeled as “experimental design”.  We have lots of ideas on what we don’t want to do, such as growing boring yellow squash and cucumbers in a market where everyone has boring yellow squash and cucumbers.

For several reasons, we can afford to mess around (within reason) with nutritionally superior, fun to grow and aesthetically amazing food all while building the soil.  As Noel says, we’re soil farmers first and foremost.  And we have an amazing array of soils on our little twelve acres.

Our land is basically split down the middle into two basic soil types.  To really geek out for a minute, the west half is a Cid Lignum complex or CmB.  The east half is Nanford Badin complex or NaB.

The Cid series consists of moderately deep, moderately well drained or somewhat poorly drained soils on Piedmont uplands. These soils formed in residuum weathered from argillite and other fine-grained metavolcanic rocks.

Soils of the Lignum series are deep and moderately well and somewhat poorly drained. They formed in the residuum weathered from Carolina slate or other fine grained metavolcanic rocks.

Soils of the Nanford series are deep and well drained. They are on uplands and formed in material weathered from argillite and other fine grained metavolcanic rocks of the Carolina Slate Belt.

The Badin series consists of moderately deep, well drained, moderately permeable soils that formed in residuum weathered from fine-grained metavolcanicrocks of the Carolina Slate Belt.

So basically CmB and NaB are combinations of these two soil series.  What does that all mean?  From what I interpret it means that NaB is the preferable soil type.  But the thing is that each soil type can be modified significantly (at the top level) by adding organic matter.  The subsoil will remain as the identified complex.  Keep in mind that I am not a soil scientist, so I could be completely wrong.

Beyond those two types, a half dozen areas of the property have top soils with different characteristics.  In the northwest corner of the below picture, dense orange and gray clays are dominant.  Gray clay is generally nutritionally inferior to the darker orange clay.  Both drain poorly though and dry into hard clots if tilled when wet and left bare.

In the northeast, the soil has more organic matter and crumbles unlike the clay.  This is most likely a former garden site that has had organic matter added over time.  That are will be the start point for production.  The rest will go into cover crops and mulching.

Since the June 2008 release of my book Quitter: Good Luck Not Dying, I failed to reach my goal of one-hundred books sold by the end of the year.  I sold a little over sixty, which isn’t bad for a six month effort.  I know it doesn’t sound like much, but sixty hand-made hardcover books represents about two-hundred-plus hours of work.  Design, prototyping, printing, cutting, gluing, etc. paid me about $4.00 an hour to do.  Add in the cost for materials, and I almost broke even for the year.  Almost.

So, for 2009 a few things are changing.  For one, the price of the hardcover is going up to $18.  I am not looking to get rich with this effort (it is working so far, right?) but the process should at least cover the associated costs.  In addition, I will also start printing a softcover version for around $8, give or take, that I can start shipping really soon.  The softcover will also be full color and individually numbered just like the hardcover.  Both versions should be available through The Abundance Foundation pretty soon.  In the meantime, check out the Quitter page to order.  If you live in Chatham County North Carolina, I’ll take payment in Plenties at the old hardcover price of $15 (1 and 1/2 Plenties), paperback at $5 (1/2 Plenty)!

If that were not enough, the ideas for Quitter #6 are rattling around in my head, on scraps of paper thrown all over the heres and theres of my life or sitting alone somewhere, talking to themselves and waiting for me to go pick them up.  I’ll get on that shortly…

And finally, I hope to commit issues one through five to audio in the very near future.  Look out!