As you can see, this blog has been static since early October.  Andy, the guy that had been doing it for me, is one of our CSA (community-supported agriculture) members and did an awesome job!  We traded him 22 weeks of vegetables for his IT knowledge and we probably owe him.  No, I know we owe him.   He as been strongly suggesting that I get out of my baby crib and start learning to crawl with this blog stuff.  Of course, he implied it in a very nice and laid-back way.   I am just excited that I finally learned how to add content to my own blog!  Pictures and videos are next when I figure out how.

Sauerkraut – I made a batch Sunday.  It should be ready in 6 weeks or so.

The moon was waxing and the signs were right.  Does that make a difference?  I don’t know, it sounds archaic.  But is it?  Planting by the signs developed over hundred’s of years from our ancestors watching the movement of the stars, observing plant growth, and paying attention to weather patterns.  They spent most of their days outside and sheltered in humble cabins and houses.  Most of us have parents or grandparents that grew up in homes with no electricity or running water and living on a dirt road or close to one.  Now we are constantly attached to our cell phones, the internet, cable or sat. tv  that we feel lost if we cannot have instant access to whatever we want immediately.  We no longer spend time looking at the night sky or paying attention to plant growth because we don’t have to.  But does that make our lifestyle better?

I spent a couple of hours getting the turkey set up in the brooder while everyone else was harvesting and washing around 500 heads of lettuce. The forecast for Friday is 97 with a heat index of 101-103 and our thoughts were that our lettuce would be better suited in the walk-in cooler than in the field.

We then started tying up tomato plants to their individual stakes. Labor-intensive… Erin and i were pulling off the suckers and Jen, Pam, Charles, and CJ were following being doing the actual tying.

It takes about 10 man hours to tie up our 600 tomato plants and it happens every week.

Then we moved to the garlic patch and started pulling up garlic.

Around 4 pm, everyone started to fade. Complaining about minor things like open, oozing blisters, heat stoke, and other such non-sense…

Jenifer and I have been humbled by the caliber of folks that have shown up this year to work along side us.

Howard Rotovator

Fun with Machinery

I twisted in to the pto shaft in to on my 50 inch Howard rotavator that mounts on a 3 pt. hitch behind the tractor last fall before we went to Italy. This is a general idea of what it does. Ours is 19 years old and looks more like this. My dad took it upon himself to fix it while we were in Italy. Which we are grateful for. I noticed that a bolt had sheared on the rotor axle which was puzzling. How does one bolt on a four bolt hub shear when the rest of the bolts are tight?
Two weeks ago, I decided to replace the bolts and went to Bowers Equipment in Albemarle, the John Deere place.

One of our CSA work sharers, Kevin, and I spent a couple of hours trying to replace the bolts on the drive hub. Apparently, the bolts had been loose enough to wallow all the threads off. We were only able to tighten one bolt of the four, 2 of the bolts were sloppy after been run in all the way, and the fourth was the sheared-off bolt. I was looking at replacing the axle and hubs, which would of cost around $1500, just guessing or hundreds of dollars to carry it to a machine shop and have them re-bore the holes slightly larger and re-thread them. Not much sunshine there.

The following Monday, another CSA work sharer, Joe, came by to help we were looking at the tiller and I decided to go with option three… Arc-weld the bolt holes to the hub. Joe hack-sawed off the heads of the bolts and screwed them into the holes and we took the tiller over to my Dad’s where the arc welder is. I can stick two pieces of metal together but I am no welder, I melt rods mostly. Joe had taken the welding class at Stanly Community College and was eager to try. Joe said he had maintained a high D in the course and his teacher kept telling him he was looking forward to Joe finishing the class…

So far, it appears Joe did a great job! I tilled close to two acres and the tiller is still in one piece.

Manure Spreader

I have been looking for a used manure spreader for for over two years. Every time I see one advertised in the NC Agricultural Review, it has been sold by the time I call. Used manure spreaders are hard to come by in NC. By the way, if you would like a hard copy of the Agricultural Review, they are available for free at the Charlotte Farmer’s Market. They are in the rack in B building down by the Coke machine.
My Dad’s had an old manure spreader that we pulled out last spring and figured it was not worth fixing.

This spring, he decided it was worth fixing and started working on it. It is a New Holland 331, made sometime between 1958 and 1966. I was a little skeptical that that rusted hunk on wheels could be made to work again, but my dad is much better mechanically than I am.

As soon as I got home from the farmer’s market last Saturday, I went to a gathering of local farmers in Mount Pleasant that intend to re-start an old feed mill. More about that in the bit.

It was dreary and raining all day last Saturday and on the way home from the meeting, all I was thinking about what a perfect afternoon for my traditional post market nap.

As I passed my dad’s place, I noticed my brother’s truck parked in front of his shop and I knew what they were up to; working on the manure spreader… So I pulled in.

They had it looking like it might actually work again. I spent a couple of hours there helping grease the fittings and re-packing the wheel bearings.

My dad and my brother Mark are good at figuring out how stuff works just messing with it. I am a bit slow in that department. When I got home, I googled New Holland 331 manure spreader, ended up at Ebay, and ordered an original operating manual for $10 bucks. It arrived on Wednesday.

I had told my dad that I would buy the apron chain for the manure spreader if we got that far. The apron chain is pretty important. It is what moves the load from front to back into the beaters that discharge the manure. Without an apron chain, you have a manure wagon you have to fork off by hand to unload.

I did that years ago. Overloaded an ancient manure spreader, broke the apron chain, and had to fork off the load. That spot in the garden was the fertile of the entire farm for 3-4 years.

I figured an apron chain would be $150-$200. I gulped when I found out the price was $500. Still, I find it amazing that I can order online an apron chain for a manure spreader that is more than 40 years old.

Mount Pleasant Mill

The gathering I went to last Saturday with my neighbor Carl Wagner was held at the old mill.
Local feed mills, along with hardware stores and farm supply stores are the backbone of the infrastructure needed to support locally grown food.

The guys spearheading the project are Danny Safrit and Aaron Ritchie. They were dis-satisfied with the quality of feed available for their pastured poultry and pigs and decided to do something about it. They are working closely with Jeff Mattocks of Fertrell in Pennsylvania.

I use Fertrell poultry nutri-balancer when I grind chicken feed. It is an organic vitamin and mineral supplement containing probiotics and kelp. I am convinced that nutri-balancer is one of the reasons our eggs taste the way they do.

Danny and Aaron have there work cut out for them just to get back to the quality of livestock feed ingredients available 10 years ago.

90+% of the corn and soybeans in NC are GMO/Round-Up Ready.

This year, they will have to use the grains local farmers have in their bins, which are probably gmo but it is a step in the right direction. They plan to roast the corn and soybeans before grinding into feed. That may not sound like a big deal but it is. Soybean meal is the most common protein source for livestock feed in this area. The oil from soybeans is extracted in two plants in in Raleigh and Fayetteville using benzene. What is left over is the meal.

The next step is lining up farmers to grow non-gmo corn and soybeans but still using herbicides. There is strong interest among local farmers. Step three is reducing or eliminating herbicides to grow corn and soybeans. That is a huge step.

No-till agriculture rules around here. Plant into existing residue, don’t disturb the soil, and use herbicides to control weeds. No-till works. It build humus, earthworms thrive in a no-till, and water quality is improved. Before no-till, when everyone plowed and harrowed their fields, a heavy rain would turn creeks the color of red clay from run-off.

I am always amazed that people think that agriculture is a fixed and static discipline. Growing stuff is an amazing field to be involved in. We know nothing. This is our 20th year market gardening and in another 20 years, I hope to maybe have a handle on what we do.

Farm Work

We love the rain, but let’s save some for June and July… We got 1.8 inches last weekend. Tuesday, with the forecast of more rain, I tilled up two 300′ strips and we put a lot of transplants in the ground. The soil was borderline dry enough to be working.

I had 4 CSA share workers lined up for Wednesday to cut up the 595 lbs of seed potatoes that were due to arrive on Tuesday. If the potatoes did not arrive on Tuesday and almost certain forecast for rain on Wednesday, I would be wasting everyone’s time and gas to drive out to the farm. Our UPS driver showed up around 6:30 pm on Tuesday with 13 53# boxes of potatoes. I assured him it was only a once a year delivery.

Heather and Kevin were there at 9 am, Pam showed up about a 1/2 hour later, and then Jonathan arrived. They were slicing up the seed potatoes like mad, it was all I could do to keep them busy.

We were done by 2 pm. What would of took Jenifer and I two days to do was accomplished in about 4 hours. The conversations were priceless.

Even though it was misting and raining, I had 4 folks gung-ho to work. I checked the field across the road and thought I would be able to till and we could transplant lettuce. It had only rained about 1/20th of an inch. That was enough to make it too sticky in already moist ground to plant in. I only tilled about 20 yards, and headed back to the greenhouse . Those guys had already loaded my old Toyota truck and Kevin’s toyota truck with flats of seedlings and headed over to the field. They were amazing, I am going to have to get used to having willing hands around.

As much as I wanted to utilize the four people willing to get muddy transplanting lettuce, I could tell our red clay soil was too wet to be kneeling on and transplanting into. We would of paid for that soil damage for the rest of the year and probably into next year.

We use a hard plastic flat with 72 cells made by Winstrip. We have about 80 of those and ran out of them Tuesday. We switched to trays with 3 inch peat pots in them until we ran out of those. We hunted around and found some used plastic 4-pack and 6-pack seedling containers and put them in trays and kept sowing until we ran out of table space. It was amazing how much 4 people can get planted in a day.

CSA stands for community supported agriculture. It is an opportunity for you to connect to a local farm in a unique way. A CSA allows you to buy shares in our farm before the season even begins.
This arrangement benefits both the farm and the share members. It gives us capital in advance to buy seeds, supplies, and prepare for the growing season.

You know in advance where your vegetables are coming from each week and can be confident that by investing in our CSA, you are supporting a growing local food economy. Your CSA participation supports a sustainable farm, preserves farmland, and keeps your food dollars local.

CSA members also share the risks of farming as well as the harvest. Weather is the biggest factor but insect damage and diseases are also contributing factors.

To minimize the risk, we are constantly planting a wide mix of vegetables. If one crop fails, there is good chance that the next planted will succeed.

A Share

A share consists of a diverse mix of vegetables delivered weekly for 22 weeks. The season begins with greens and lettuces as well as early root crops. Next comes cabbage, broccoli, beets, and hopefully carrots and peas. I say hopefully because carrots and peas in the spring have been hit or miss crops for us. Some years they work and some years they don’t. Then comes the summer bounty. Tomatoes, garlic, potatoes, peppers, squash, cucumbers, eggplant, etc.
One thing we want to try and do this year is to have more greens in the share at the height of summer. We will be growing a thin-stemmed chard that is heat tolerant and makes an excellent spinach substitute. We will also have Chinese/napa cabbage and are going to try some heat tolerant varieties of lettuce. Having lettuce in July is tough but it can be done.

We often get asked how many people will a share feed. In general, we say a family of four but it really depends upon your eating habits. A couple of vegetarians who rarely eat out may easily consume a weekly share while a family of four with small kids that eat out a few times a week may have stuff left over.

Delivery

Shares can be picked up Tuesday afternoons at the Charlotte Tailgate Market. or at the farm if you live close by. There is a possibility that we may have a drop-off point in Plaza-Midwood. One of last year’s share members has offered to host a drop-off point. Please indicate if that is something you are interested in.

We do not offer pick-ups on Saturdays at the farmer’s markets. Harvesting for the CSA and harvesting for market are two completely different operations. Since we are growing a much wider variety of vegetables for the CSA than we are for the farmer’s markets this year, I think we would go crazy if we tried to do both on Fridays.

CSA deliveries will begin sometime in April, depending on the weather, and run for 22 weeks. Last year, we were not able to start deliveries until June because of the cool, wet spring but this year we are dedicating our 28′ X 96′ greenhouse to early CSA production.

Eggs

The eggs we offer are from our pastured flock of free-range hens.

Newsletter and Events

Based on feedback from last year’s CSA, this year’s weekly newsletter will contain more recipes and preparation tips. Always remember though, if you have a question about anything in your bag, feel free to e-mail or call us.

We would like to have at least one on farm event this year for CSA members. We are not sure yet what that will be and we welcome any thoughts and ideas you may have.

As always, you are welcome to come visit your farm anytime except Saturdays.

Payment

Vegetable shares this year are the same price as last year, $600. A vegetable share with a weekly dozen of eggs is $700. We do not offer 1/2 shares but feel free to split a share with friends or neighbors. It will be your responsibility to divide up the share.

We are also offering a few working shares. A working share is an exchange of labor for food. Working shares would be flexible and would require 4 hours of work a week. We would be open to the idea of 8 hours of work every two weeks.

To tentatively secure your share, send an e-mail and include your name, phone number, and e-mail. Also indicate if you would like a weekly dozen eggs in your share. Please do this step even if you have already contacted us in the past couple of weeks.

We request that you send a $100 deposit within the week. A payment of $300 is due February 25 with the balance of $200 ( $300 with eggs) due March 18. You are welcome to pay in full if you like.

Make out checks to Laughing Owl Farm and mail to

Dean Mullis Laughing Owl Farm 28016 Ryan Rd Richfield, NC 28137

If you have any questions, feel free to e-mail or phone.