Carolina Farm Stewardship Association now runs two farm tours per year, one in the Spring and another in the Fall.  The Spring tour has been going on for quite some time, but the Fall tour is in its infancy, this most recent tour being the third annual.

Our first stop this time around was Edible Earthscape, about a half hour drive from our land.  Edible Earthscape, home to a one acre farm intensive incubator farm, is also home to the Piedmont Biofuels Cooperative.  Edible Earthscape is farmed by Haruka and Jason Oatis with the help of several interns.  One of the interns, Brandon, gave us our tour.

On many levels, Edible Earthscape is committed to sustainability and biodiversity within their small farm setup.  Their primary irrigation system uses runoff from the greenhouse stored in a series of 275 gallon totes.

All vegetable rinse water is recycled back into the irrigation system through pipes connected to the wash sinks.

Fall cover crops of cowpeas were recently sown among the freshly mulched raised beds.  Adding leaf litter and other mulches gives our primarily clay soils more “spring” and allows for better drainage.  Over time, heavy mulching also helps with everything from water retention to freeing up nutrients that might otherwise become locked up in the heavy clay.

Bamboo is harvested locally and serves as trellising systems throughout the farm.

The farm focuses much of its energy on Asian heirloom varieties with an added emphasis on seed saving.  Burdock root is grown using a small bamboo chute or trench in order to train the root.  Normal burdock root grows deep and is difficult to remove from our clay soils.  The bamboo chute allows easy access to the root for harvest.

Turmeric (in the ginger family) does moderately well in our climate if removed from the ground and placed in greenhouses to overwinter.

Hops also grow well in our climate, the ones in the picture below were recently harvested for beer brewing.

Flowers add to the biodiversity of the farm both by having the flowers themselves and by attracting beneficial insects.

One of the awesome sights on the farm were the huge trellises of beans, gourds and squashes.  Asian varieties of noodle beans, cucumbers and more formed dense walls of green in contrast to the red clay below.

Add in stevia, borage, Thai bottle gourds, Japanese purple sweet potatoes, echinicea…

A diverse farm is also home to plenty of creatures -

Tomato hornworms (Manduca quinquemaculata) are quick destroyers of the leaves of tomato plants.  They can quickly defoliate entire plants in an organic system.  However, braconid wasps (Cotesia congregatus) will parasitize hornworms in the biodiverse system of yarrows, clovers, and lemon balm that Edible Earthscape has created.

The white cocoons on the hornworm are the developing wasps, which have already started the process of eating their host.  Once most of the wasps emerge, the hornworm will be dead or dying.

What small farm would be complete without a chicken tractor?

And finally the wild edibles that can be found in the places where agriculture is not considered a war on the land.  Winged sumac (Rhus copallinum) supposedly makes a decent lemonade type drink.  Kristin thinks it might be a bit too sour though.

Our last stop on the CFSA Farm Tour was Perry-winkle Farm in Chapel Hill, NC. Cathy Jones and Mike Perry farm roughly three and a half acres of intense vegetable and flower production. They also have chickens for eggs and meat as well as a new addition of pigs.

The weather was pretty crappy when we arrived at the farm. Shortly after parking and getting out of the car, a thunder storm rolled in and dropped hail on us for a half an hour. After the storm, Cathy took us on an in depth tour of the farm and gave us plenty of time to ask questions since there weren’t many folks left at that point.

One of Cathy’s cash crops for the spring season is green garlic. She gets a good price for it at market, and it helps her pay her labor bills. We listened as Cathy told us to make friends with the people who grind up trees and the folks who collect leaves for municipalities. Both are sources of free mulch that can quickly add organic matter to poor soils.

The farm boasts a passive solar greenhouse made of AAC block.

The greenhouse had plenty of seedlings and larger plants ready to go into the ground.

The best part of the tour was hanging out with the pigs. These Tamworths were digging and rooting machines. They inspired plenty of ideas for our near-future farming projects.

On the right side of the picture is the pigs’ previous work, now mounded into rough rows. If the pigs could form the rows, they would be even better. But unfortunately they still need help in cleaning up their mud-hole messes.

Tamworths are known for their digging abilities. They were ripping out roots right in front of us, and they had no intention of looking at us until they were disturbed.

Near the pigs was the chicken mansion, a large version of a chicken tractor.

I forget how many chickens were living in the mansion, but there were quite a few different breeds. I don’t know anything about the names of chicken types…

All of the creatures, veggies and flowers were located behind and eight foot tall electric fence. It was designed to keep deer and predators away from the crops and chickens. Noel is trying to figure out how to build one out of grass clippings and concentrated solar energy. Not really, but that would be awesome.

Thanks to Danielle for loaning me most of these photos.

Our second stop on the farm tour was Eco Farm, a small diverse operation in Orange County, NC. Eco is run by Cindy and John Soehner and has been in operation since 1995.

John proclaimed that the large hackberry tree on the property is in fact THE largest hackberry tree, anywhere.

Back to the beginning…the first thing we saw when we arrived were a handful of pigs feeding on fruit and vegetable scraps from the Lantern Restaurant and other such places. They seemed to be enjoying the spent lemons and limes which seemed to make up the majority of the piles.

Elsewhere on the property were young turkeys…

…and Vernon, the farm’s pet pig. Vernon seemed to have full access to the farm as there was no fencing around his little pig house.

Eco Farm makes use of a passive solar greenhouse made of AAC block, the same kind of block we are going to build our house out of. The block has a very high insulation value, which makes it a great material for an unheated greenhouse.

One of the big products from Eco Farm is shiitake mushrooms. Dozens of stacked log piles were scattered throughout a shady wooded portion of the farm.

Logs are drilled all the way around with 5/16″ holes for dowel plugs or 1/2″ for saw dust plugs. The holes are then covered with wax as are the ends of the logs. A close up of shiitake plugs -

It takes two years for shiitake logs to really start producing.

John mentioned that he has good luck using gum tree logs even though most growers suggest using oak only. John said he can grow mushrooms on pretty much any log, but the lifespan will vary greatly depending on the type of wood used. Typically the logs used in mushroom production last four to five years before they become too rotten to produce decent flushes of mushrooms. After their life in production, logs can be further composted and used in the fields.

Prime time for shiitakes is July through September. During this time the logs are submerged overnight in cold water then left in stacked piles. Mushrooms will emerge in about a week after soaking.

Near the mushroom logs was a small field of greens. The tatsoi had been left to flower and go to seed, probably to bring in beneficial pollinators. I was able to get some good bee pictures, but was briefly interrupted when a student reporter with The Daily Tarheel asked me a few questions. None of my answers made it into the article. I don’t really remember saying much that was quotable or newsworthy, so I guess it was for the best.

The bee pictures pretty much speak for themselves…

A close up showing a pollen basket -

And a parting shot of some Eco Farm strawberries, which I’m sure by now have been picked -

Our first stop on the CFSA Farm Tour was Wells Branch Farm in Alamance County. Wells Branch is a combination of Braeburn Farm and Cane Creek Farm. The farm consists of roughly 500 acres built up over time with the purchase of fourteen smaller farms. The owner of Braeburn, Charles Sydnor, is working on getting a conservation easement for the farm in order to protect it from ever being developed. Charles is also involved in restoring the wetlands on the farm using wetland mitigation resources. This is basically a trade from a developer looking to build in a wetland area to a place in need of restoration. The result is, in theory, no net loss in wetlands.

We started our tour on the back of biodiesel burning hay wagon, winding up and down through pasture roads and crossing through small rocky creeks. We were accompanied along the way by various sizes of dogs, all of which wanted to get a ride on the wagon.

Our first stop was the farm store where both Braeburn and Cane Creek sell their meats out of a walk in freezer and walk in cooler. They offer grass-fed beef, pork, sausage, hotdogs, chicken and turkey. Cane Creek focuses on the pigs, chickens and turkeys. They raise heritage breeds of animals, including the Ossabaw Island Hog, which is descendant from the hogs left by the Spanish in the 1500’s on Ossabaw Island in Georgia. Cane Creek Farm is run by Eliza MacLean who also runs the store.

The next stop was to the goat pasture where a bunch of new kids were running around with their moms.

I’m not sure how old the kids were, but they weren’t all that big.

Goat kids are sickeningly cute especially when they are well taken care of and allowed to run around like the crazy animals that they are.

You can see that they really aren’t very big yet -

I got to see a few minutes of head-butting between a couple of goats.

Last stop was by the grazing cow herd. These are part of Braeburn’s grass-fed New Zealand Red Devon herd. While we didn’t come across any, Charles said that donkeys are used as guard animals on the farm.

The cows are rotated daily to one of the thirty fifteen-acre pastures. The pastures remain ungrazed for twenty-nine days in between sessions.

Charles passed along a few interesting beef facts -

• One half of every cow will become ground beef.
• The term “ground beef” means that the beef came from a single cow while “hamburger” means a mixture of meats from lean milk cows and the fat from feedlot cows.
• Out of a 1200 pound cow only eight pounds will be tenderloin, which explains the price of that cut.

All of the meat products from the farm are available at the farm store, Piedmont area restaurants and farmer’s markets as well as Chatham Marketplace. Hopefully we will bring in some of their products to Tidal Creek as well.