This past weekend Noel, Danielle, Mike and I went to the 13th Annual CFSA Farm Tour. We drove up Saturday night to the land in Silk Hope, ate dinner at Chatham Marketplace and sat in the camper trying to figure out which farms to visit.

The choices came down to our individual interests and proximity of those farm choices to each other. The proximity issue was important since the 35 farms on the tour were spread out over several counties. Our hope was to visit four farms in three counties.

Since we have seen vegetable production in full scale operation as part of our jobs and lives, we decided we wanted to visit farms that incorporated animals, passive solar greenhouses and alternatives to the things we see everyday. We went over the maps and each made our choices. With little debate we picked four farms that were pretty close to each other and fairly diverse. After the choices were made there was nothing to do but make fun of each other.

Saturday night was the full moon, but it was obscured right after I took this picture and didn’t return. The rain came soon after. We could faintly hear the Shakori Hills Festival going on nearby as the thunderstorm came through.

We fell asleep in the Wolf Den to the pounding of rain.

Sunday morning was a chance to explore the new growth around the farm. The spring oats that we spread out a bit ago were a few inches high. It looks like it is going to take. The yellow clover was harder to figure out, and we aren’t sure what will happen with it.

The mint patch near the house was already a few feet high.

Wildflowers were coming up everywhere. I haven’t identified anything yet since I forgot to take pictures of the leaves, which is where my key likes to start.

Noel thinks this is a Quince tree.

The picture below is Cedar Apple Rust (Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae), and its presence makes the poor health of the surrounding apple trees make more sense. The fungus needs both cedar and apple trees to complete its life cycle. This cedar tree is about ten or so feet from an apple tree. The only source I could find on the edibility of the fungus simply said, “I have no information on the edibility of Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae.” Thanks.

I find new things every time I visit the farm, and of course I had to set up a nice still life with the note I scrawled in the lean to when we bought the place -

I will have reviews of the four farms from the farm tour coming up over the next few weeks…

The 13th Annual Piedmont Farm Tour is this weekend, and I’m going to be hitting a few farms on Sunday with Noel and Danielle. I haven’t been to a farm tour although I have always wanted to.

The farm tour is put on by Carolina Farm Stewardship Association (CFSA). CFSA does a lot of work to promote, develop and sustain local and regional sustainable food systems in the Carolinas. Their vision:

Healthy and thriving communities of farmers and consumers in the Carolinas are supported by local and organic agricultural systems that are environmentally responsible, economically sound, and socially just.

Hopefully the next few posts will be all about the farms we visited with details about how the farms themselves fit in with this vision.

Oh, and this year CFSA is doing an Eat Carolina Food Challenge. They are looking for folks to participate during the week of July 7th through 13th. You can sign up by going to the website.

The third and finally stop on the farm tour was the dual urban gardens of Durham Inner City Gardeners (DIG) and Southeastern Efforts Developing Sustainable Spaces (SEEDS). The DIG program is youth oriented and works 1/2 acre of land. They sell the resulting produce at the Durham Farmers Market. The kids in the program are paid a stipend for their work as they plant, tend, harvest and attend their table at the market. DIG currently employs twelve Durham youth in its program.

SEEDS has youth programs but is also community oriented with community garden plots, teaching facilities and after school programs. SEEDS has 1 1/2 acres in mixed perennials and annuals as well as fruit trees, large compost facilities, two greenhouses and an outdoor classroom.

The DIG garden is about as urban as it can get without being situated in raised beds on a loading dock somewhere. Nestled near factories and train tracks, the noise of the city was never very far away. There was also the constant reality of “poaching”, which has the potential to ruin a kid’s experience with the garden if the particular crop they had started from seed became the target of theft. While not unique to cities (I never paid for sweet corn, peas, cabbage, onions or pumpkins when I was a kid in the country), it presents a unique problem when working in a non-profit, youth oriented setting. Stealing from acres upon acres of row crops is one thing, but taking all the peppers from a twelve foot row is completely different.

Like the garden’s coordinators, I would turn a blind eye to the occasional person jumping the fence to get some needed food. Sometimes folks have to steal food; as an adult I understand the concept. I might even be the one jumping the fence someday, but I would find it hard to explain it to a ten year old if they happened to catch me in the act of digging up their only row of sweet potatoes. The question that the coordinators are wrestling with at the moment – how to encourage the fence jumpers to get involved in the garden? Anyway, that is a long aside…

Through many years of soil work, composting and mulching, the garden beds have become very fertile. The okra plants in this picture are actually ten to twelve feet high, something I had never seen before. The bases of the plants were several inches around and looked like tree trunks on some of the larger plants.

To maximize space, the DIG garden incorporates some terrace beds where there used to be a steep slope.

A further indicator of the care they give their soil, this chard should have been dead in the summer yet it keeps on producing. The DIG folks have harvested this chard every week since mid-March. The stem bases of these plants were several inches around indicating a constant harvest and constant new growth.

On the other side of the street is the larger SEEDS space with its greenhouses, cold frames and education facilities. The gardeners use burlap coffee bags from a local organic roaster as mulch. The bags break down after a few months.

The outline of the garden is covered in perennials, mostly herbs and fruit trees. The cardoon pictured below was part of a wormwood and rosemary area.

Community members also tend to mushroom logs in a back corner of the garden.

I had visited SEEDS a few years ago under different circumstances. I was helping Kristin corral a few kids from Wilmington’s Community Boys and Girls Club. The kids were on my last nerve towards the end of the visit. They were more interested in picking unripe strawberries, making strange comments and laughing uncontrollably as our guide pointed out the Pussy Willows in the landscape. The garden has changed a lot since that visit and seemed to be more bountiful with more community garden beds and more compost bins integrated into the areas where they would be easiest to reach. The SEEDS project is set to take on another five acres elsewhere in Durham, which will extend its education possibilities as well as well get more kids involved in working on a small farm.

The second stop on the farm tour was the Anathoth Community Garden in Cedar Grove, NC, a rural town of less than 1,000 people. Following the murder of a town member a few years ago, the community got together to heal. This community garden project came out of that healing process. Sitting on five donated acres, this project of the Cedar Grove Methodist Church brings together eighty members of the area to farm together.

Rather than renting out plots, this garden truly brings the community into “community garden”. Folks work side by side over the entire 1 1/2 acres of current cultivation and share in all of the produce that comes out of the area. Membership is a mere $10 per year and requires two hours of work per week in order to get a share of produce. Member potlucks are held at least once a week after a day’s work.

The variety of cold weather crops was pretty amazing as was the actual garden bed construction. The farm employs the biointensive methods outlined by John Jeavons in his book “How to Grow More Vegetables“. The basic theory is that the deeper, more nutritious and well watered the soil is, the more plants it can sustain per square foot. A healthy soil eliminates the need for the plants to compete for nutrients and more calories can be harvested from less space.

The farm also uses raised beds dug to a depth of at least 18 inches with some beds dug 24 inches deep. Heavy mulches, rotation and use of farm made compost contribute to the bounty of the small farm.

Here is first year asparagus -

Broccoli ready for the first cut -

Brussels sprouts -

The farm’s new off-grid greenhouse -

A sweet looking bibb lettuce variety -

For irrigation the farm uses drip tape, which is a great way of reducing evaporation by getting the water to the soil surface one drip at a time. The result is a penetrating soak that uses much less water than overhead irrigation and gives a deeper watering. Usually this irrigation method is used with mulch for maximum benefit.

For cool season extension, the farm uses floating row covers. Underneath this cover was a variety of head lettuce as well as tatsoi, bok choi, pak choi and mustard.

The Anathoth garden is able to feed many more than its eighty members. It also delivers food to the elderly, to food banks and other community members. Overall I felt this was an extremely well functioning community garden, pulling a great member base in a low population rural area.