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That would be my dad, Lane Landon Mullis, and my Grandpa, Otto Lane Mullis, circa 1946.
No market for us this week. I will be back March 6th.
The dearth of local vegetables at the market due to the extended cold and cloudy, wet weather has become noticeable. Just speaking for us, we expected a cold winter but the amount of rain and lack of sunshine has been a surprise. Current weather is impacting the sowing of spring crops. We have picked about every marketable leaf off our over-wintered collards that we can. We expect some regrowth when the weather finally does warm up a bit and we get a few days of sunshine in a row. Jenifer scrounged up 10 bags of spinach for last week’s market but she had to hunt and peck four 200+’ rows to get a half a tub. The beauty of our local food economy is that it is spread across various micro-climates surrounding Charlotte but we need more local growers.There is a misconception that us farmers, because we are farmers, are able to grow anything in the seed catalogs. That is certainly not true in our case, although I think we have tried to grow just about every crop available in seed catalogs. We grow some great crops, some good crops, some fair and some poorly. What we don’t grow well, other farmers do. We have smartened up a bit over the last 20 years and have dropped the fair and poor producing crops from our cropping mix for the most part. Most farms eventually find the the niche of crops their farm is suited for. That being said, I am still growing broccoli, carrots, and peas. Crops I have never been able to grow with reliable success. I continue to grow them because they taunt me. And cabbage…, I am a cabbage farmer at heart. I want to grow beautiful heads of cabbage but mine always turn out puny. Last year, Levi brought a single cabbage plant in a dixie cup home from the third grade. I helped him transplant it in the front of the greenhouse. It was growing well. We were working in the greenhouse last spring and had the door propped open. Some renegade chickens sneaked in and stripped all the leaves off Levi’s cabbage. He was bummed. We took a couple of handful’s of worm castings, mixed them up in a couple of gallons of water, and poured it over the cabbage plant. The cabbage recovered and went on to be the biggest cabbage by far grown our farm. 12+ lbs. We took pictures, it was twice as big as Levi’s head. While I was happy for Levi, I was seething about my impotent cabbage growing skills. Maybe it is genetic and the cabbage growing gene skips a generation… Don’t let these two storm troopers fool you with their “cute” looks. They showed up Wednesday morning asking for “Papers Please!” They are mean.Frick and Frack are two of our remaining three cotton patch geese. Gretchen hangs out with the chickens.
We had the geese in with the laying hens as guard animals because they honk at the slightest disturbance. About 6 weeks ago, Frick and Frack, figured they could escape the poultry netting and go where they wanted. They fixated on three spare range feeders near the barn. They would huddle around these feeders and honk all day. When we got the new pullets a few weeks ago, I asked Jenifer to go get a couple of range feeders to put into the chicken wagon. Frick and Frack freaked out and attacked Jenifer. They still hate her. She has bite mark bruises to prove it. They have yet to bite me, I think they sense I consider them edible… |
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