Last Week of the Spring Semester!

Boy time sure does fly, seems like not long the advanced crop production class was surveying the orchard and making plans of what to grow and when for the spring CSA. This week for the advanced crop production class started with a walk around the orchard and the farm to see the progress the sustainable agriculture students and volunteers made this semester.

The first stop was in the orchard to check in on how far everything had come. We had several trees in January that were suffering from fireblight, and the fix for this was heavy pruning. I’m happy to report that many of those affected trees have bounced back and already have fruit growing on them, like the apple pictured above. The blueberries are also looking great after the heavy pruning the advanced crop production crew gave them back in January. The bushes have a lot of new growth and each had fruit developing, should be a good year for blueberries!

Moving on to the student farm, pictured above is our potatoes looking great so far! We’ve come a long way from those cold, rainy winter days to our thriving fields and happy plants. We’re at the real start of peak farming as May is when just about everything is growing and there’s so much to harvest. We also planted thyme and nicotania or flowering tobacco in the pollinator garden around the pack shed. On Wednesday we had Owen back as our farm manager for the day and we got a lot of harvesting done for our last box of the spring CSA, as well as some weeding in the asparagus bed.

Each semester the orchard and farm look better and better, thanks to our great sustainable agriculture faculty, students, and volunteers. This spring semester’s drawing to a close, but if you’d like to volunteer time during the summer or fall to the CSA there’ll be plenty of food to harvest! And, congratulations to all the graduating ag students! We can’t wait to see the crops and livestock you’ll grow!

— Charlie Vedell

IT’S HERE!! THE CSA BOX HAS ARRIVED

After all the careful bed preparations, transplanting, weeding, watering, covering, mulching, seeding, and even more weeding…the day has arrived for students and staff to enjoy the fruits of their labor!!!  Following Good Agricultural Practices (GAP), we harvested bok choy, baby arugula, tatsoi, mizuna, mesclun mix, dill, cilantro, sage, and green garlic.  Less known in the western diet, Asian greens (bok choy, mizuna & tatsoi) are rich in antioxidants and micronutrients.  Tatsoi, specifically, has more vitamin C than oranges and spinach which can help lower risk of heart disease, stroke, and cancer.  Mizuna and tatsoi leaves work well in salads or can be incorporated into a delicious vinaigrette.  Bok choy is great in a stir fry, or it can be braised or steamed making it extremely versatile!

Rinsing and storing freshly harvested vegetables

After harvest, it was time to get on the tractor and mow the rye grass in another block to start preparing those beds for cultivation.  On the student farm, rye is used as a cultural control for weed management and for its allelopathic properties.  The rye releases a toxin that suppresses the growth of nearby plants…and weeds!!  The farm manager, Farrell, spent time showing us how to hook up the flail mower properly and safely.  Each student then took a turn and mowed a row!

Farrell going step by step with Jada

That’s some tall grass Mikaela!

As this week’s farm manager, Anthony did a great job pivoting and keeping us on task. In addition to harvesting and time on the tractor, we planted 200 feet of asparagus crowns and installed drip tape for the beds, planted lettuce, and some weeding with the weed eater.  It was certainly a busy day, but the weather was beautiful and we all knew we would be rewarded with delicious food (and some knowledge, of course)!  Anthony finished off the day with some Mexican candy/treats and soda!  It was a neat experience to taste some different flavors.

– Danielle V.

Farming with spring break and rain

It has been an interesting week. The early April weather has up and down as. We only had class Monday April 3 because the school is on spring break. We divided into 3 groups. Some of us were stepping up the baby tomato plants into bigger vegetables cell trays, other group washing what we needed to use for harvest and then harvesting, and last group made sure the wash station was clean.We got over 20 heads of Tatsoi, a bunch of green garlic, asparagus, parsley, dill and spinach. Most of what we harvested was for us to take home and enjoy over spring break. I have enjoyed so many good dinners this week from everything we harvested. It has been really good for my overall health. The asparagus, spinach, and green garlic has such a good taste, so many health benefits and makes the house smell really good when your cooking it.

Like many other leafy green vegetables, tatsoi is high in micronutrients. It is High in calcium, almost twice as milk. Calcium is essential for strong bones, blood pressure and heathly teeth. Tatsoi is also High in vitamin C..

Tatsoi we harvested. The beauty of this farm both on the field and under the tunnels is that nothing is sprayed. It has been over 3 years since an y has happened and our farm manager tries to find natural ways to handle stuff. Observing and reacting to it is key. Asian greens dont have as many pest as some things but brassicas have lots of little bugs coming at them.

Fresh green garlic and asparagus we harvested on Monday. we worked hard harvested everything as a team and making sure we had some great food to eat. I enjoy doing the prep for the harvest washing everything, getting in rhythm. some people are really on point in the class and great at washing stuff, leading the crew. Our teacher always makes sure we are working hard, and efficiently getting stuff done. It feels real good working with the farm manager, classmates and our teacher. Such a good mix,

Getting ready to bunch the asparagus crows, Jada and Mikaela work to get it all done before class ended. They did and it was fantastic.

Bagged tatsoi and the green garlic sitting side by side . waiting for us to pickup as class ended.

Stetson Million

What’s Happening Out There?

This week, our manager of the week was Hailey, and boy did she have the weather do a 180 on her day. It rained Tuesday, and clay does not take too well to the tillage that was planned. However, taking all things in stride, she pushed forward and herded us cats to our tasks! 

A few of us (Owen, Charlie, Randall, and Mikaela) learned and practiced how to set up the harvest system according to GAPs (Good Agricultural Practices) and harvested cilantro, dill, spinach, and asparagus. Watch out CSA’ers! Your box will be full and ready for you in a couple weeks! 

Randall, Charlie, and Owen harvesting spinach.

Mrs. Cheryl McNeill, teacher at CCCC and farmer of Four Dog Farm, demonstrating how to pack greens.

In the Propagation house, Anthony and Stetson set up shop seeding cucumbers, yellow squash, and zucchini. In the planned Space Ship house for the cucurbits, Danielle and Jada finished getting the house prepared for liftoff. Thank you to the Greenhouse class for setting up the irrigation system!

Hoop House 1 prepped for cucumbers.

The Student Farm is getting prepared for a quick turnaround into early summer crops but don’t forget some delicious spring sweets, such as strawberries!

Strawberry ‘daughters’ cozy and happy under row cover.

Hope y’all have a wonderful rest of the week!

Mikaela U.

Last week of Winter- farming hard getting ready for extreme weather shifts

This week on the farm we got a lot done. It was the last week of winter and it was a cold week. Monday and Wednesday when we were out on the student farm, it was around 30-37 degrees at the start of class both days. We were all a little cold but once you start moving around the weather didn’t seem as bad. One thing that was tough is when it would go from being really warm but got cold again once that wind starting blowing. Wednesday was especially bad first thing but we are all tough farmers, out there in the elements getting stuff done. By the end of next week the high will be 80 degrees. Just a huge shift in the span of a week. Welcome to the jungle!

Danielle was our farm manager this week and she did a great job. Really good at directing, while also working with us. We got a whole lot done in class this week and she did a good job of making sure we got everything we needed complete. It was really important to get stuff done because it is spring break next week. Short week so we needed to be productive and on point.

We did mostly prep work on the farm which resulted in weeding, putting row cover on all of the brassica beds we just planted, making sure the strawberries were all covered. One thing that was really impressive was how we dug up a bunch of leeks and onions that were started in low tunnel. We then went out and planted a 100 ft bed full of onion and leeks right as a few of us went in and dug the rest of them up. We did 3 row of onions and leeks on a 100 ft bed.

The Agribon ag- 30 row cover was used on all of the beds to protect them from the chilly nights we will have this week. It normally takes 4-5 of us to put the row cover on but to also take it off. All of the brassicas we planted last week in this bed, we covered this week. (kale, broccoli and cauliflower.) We had to get some metal rods to use as our arch. A lot of rods had to be bent a little bit to get them in ground right. Many hands make quick work when working with 100 ft beds and starting seeds. The row cover is huge because when we didn’t have it on last week a few brassicas got hit a bit by cold. They can recover but it was telling of the overnight lows we’ve had lately.

This is where we planted all of the brassicas last week. I wish I would have posted a photo of all of us putting row cover on. I think it was on my other phone that decided to stop working on me where I had photos. The ag-30 will keep all of these plants from getting too cold and tapping out before they had a little bit of time to get some roots and get big for us.

There were 5 of us taking this silage tarp of this block. The potatoes are going to be planted here soon so it was time to take it off. Everything was mostly dry and the wind was going to take care of the rest of it considering how windy it has been lately.

Owen, Jada and Hailey start our solanaceous transplants. Smiling while you work is the way to do it and these 3 do it well.

Making sure the leeks are covered. Once they get zapped by the cold there is normally no going back. We got all of this covered up and the strawberries as well to the left in this picture.

Danielle was not only managing her crew today but also getting down and doing some hand weeding on probably the hardest thing we had to weed today. The perennial flower bed.

I am excited to see how everything looks in a couple of weeks that we planted and the solanaeous seeds we sowed in the Greenhouse. This is such a great group of classmates and farmers. There is no ego and we all get along really well. Everybody here is more than capable of not only running a farm but also managing workers as well. I am very impressed of what we all got done this week in this cold weather. This was big for the farm and for the CSA that will be starting in a few weeks.

Stetson Million

Orchard Update and Transplanting!

This February brought some abnormally warm weather for us and caused many of the plants in our orchard to break dormancy. The last frost date for our area is April 15^th so anyone with an orchard or even just a few fruit trees may not get much sleep for the next month.

The orchard on campus has blueberries, pears, apples, a couple paw-paws, and 4 pecan trees that we planted earlier this year. Most of these plants have broken dormancy, but the blueberries have already sent out their flower clusters. Some of the flowers are still closed but some have begun opening slightly. At this stage (depending on the variety) these buds can tolerate temperatures from 24^o to 27^oF but some loss may still occur.

The NC State Extension for blueberries provides some information on how to combat late freezes:

• Prune smaller-diameter shoots because they bloom earlier than larger-diameter shoots
• Avoid cultivation (bushes can stay up to 2^o warmer on uncultivated soils
• Keep the soil moist, more water in the soil = more heat absorption = more heat released.
• Irrigate with sprinklers. When water is sprayed on plants heat is produced from the process of freezing.

Another common way you could protect your plants is with frost covers but you would either need small plants or a lot of cover for that to be worthwhile. March in the southeast can always be unpredictable so other than these techniques, all we can really do is hope for mild weather!

Blueberry freeze damage and protection measures: NC State Extension. (n.d.).

https://content.ces.ncsu.edu/blueberry-freeze-damage-and-protection-measures

This week we also got a lot of planting done on the farm. Mikaela was the student farm manager and thanks to her, we transplanted kohlrabi, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, collards, kale, and fennel. This was probably the biggest planting day we have had on the farm so far this year. Not too much longer and we will have enough things growing to fill up some CSA boxes!

We also had Danielle and Anthony team up to install drip tape onto our newly planted beds and they did a great job.

The last task for the day was to put some frost cover over our strawberries which have all started to send out flowers. Strawberry flowers can start to take some damage at temperatures as low as 30 ^o so getting them covered before things get a bit cold early next week was essential.

– Randall Thomas

*Record Scratch* *Freeze Frame*

Yep. That’s me. The guy in the matching orange pants and hard hat. (Safety first)

You’re probably wondering how I got into this situation. I guess I should start at the beginning. All my life I’ve wanted to learn how to grow food for my family and my community…

And that’s why I came to the sustainable ag program at CCCC! In this picture you can see me learning by doing–the best way to learn, in my opinion. I’m driving those stakes along the bed in block 1 as part of a trellis we built under the supervision of this week’s student farm manager, Charlie (seen here driving the tractor most authoritatively)

While I was driving in the vertical T-posts, Jada and Hailey drove in some U-posts at an angle for added structural support, which were fastened with wire.

Like we learned while building our bamboo trellis in Permaculture last semester, triangles are more structurally secure than rectangles, so we’re protecting the peas from heavy winds with the power of triangles!

Rolling out the wire fence material for the trellis would be a pain and take forever by yourself, but when you’ve got a large, talented crew like this, it gets done in no time.

We trellis peas because their natural growing habit is to climb. Giving them a solid structure to grab onto with their tendrils aids the farmer during harvest, by making the peas more easily visible and accessible, and helps the plants resist disease pressure by allowing more air flow.

In the adjacent beds of block 1, we took turns weeding, fertilizing, and mulching the garlic beds, weeding and mulching the first year strawberries, and prepping a bed for onion transplants.

Speaking of transplants, here are Mikaela and Stetson working on thinning, watering and fertilizing Brassica transplants over at the greenhouse:

According to Pam Dawling in Sustainable Market Farming “in early spring, transplants have the advantage over direct-seeded crops–they grow faster under protected conditions and bring earlier harvests.”

Ever considered a career in broadcasting? Well at CCCC you can try your hand using the broadcaster to spread cover crop seed! Did you think I meant radio or television broadcasting? No, those industries are dying, quit living in the past! Sustainable agriculture is the future!

Here’s more proof of the power of teamwork. If I’d had to lay out this silage tarp by myself on a windy day, I would have gone home and cried instead! But with the whole team on the job, it was a piece of cake!

And don’t forget good hygiene!

Thanks to Anthony we can rest assured that our hand tools won’t be a vector for spreading disease!

Well I hope you enjoyed my little tour of the goings on at the student farm. Charlie did a great job as manager this week! There were a lot of laughs, and a lot of work got done

Now wish me luck 😳😳😳😳Next week it’s my turn as manager!

-Owen Phillips

Spring is Coming!

Spring is fast approaching, and the student farm is in full swing! With warm, sunny skies this week and no freezing temperatures expected for the next two weeks, we are full steam ahead with preparations for this year’s CSA. 

Congratulations and great work to Jada (right photo) in her role as our first student Farm Manager this week! During the Advanced Crop Production course, each student will take turns filling the role as Farm Manager. Each student Farm Manager will do a walk through of the farm with Farrell and Cheryl and will come up with a task list for all the students in the class. Jada did a wonderful job keeping the students on task while being safe, and was able to pivot well when she encountered an obstacle…such as when the string weeder went out of commission!

Several things needed to be done in this hoophouse which grew lettuce and salad greens over the winter. Old plastic was removed from the outer border of the hoophouse to prevent the plastic from breaking down any further. One bed is already planted in onions (photo right) and continues to do well .  The overgrown arugula was cut and laid down to provide organic matter to the bed. The remaining two rows were forked to loosen the hard, compacted soil and chopped with a bed-forming hoe to break down clumps and loosely reshape the beds (photo below). The final step is to cover the beds with finally chopped leaf mould and soak with water to let Mother Nature do her thing until this hoophouse is put into production with brassicas.

Owen and Hailey spread organic compost and Harmony fertilizer on the beds

Mikaela was busy thinning and fertilizing brassicas in their seed trays (photo below). After thinning to one plant per cell, trays that had true leaves were dipped in fish emulsion at a rate of ½ cup per gallon of water. Additionally, Mikaela misted the sweet potatoes until the leaf mould was thoroughly soaked and removed any rotting potatoes.

In HHA & B, Randall used the BCS to till beds before cover cropping in oats (photo below). It will remain in cover crop until the winter to add valuable organic matter.

What a busy week! The warm weather really got things moving on the student farm. With a little effort towards thoughtful preparation, you may be “saving your bacon” when things are slammed in a few short weeks! Happy Spring y’all!

– Danielle V.

Rain, Rain, Rain! This Week and the Last on the Farm!

Last semester was unusually dry, and so far for this semester it is a total 180! This week and last week our Advanced Organic Crop Production class worked through the gloomy weather on the student farm in preparation for the spring CSA. Tools were cleaned and sharpened, beds have been prepared, and seeds have been sown.

Farrell showed this class a great way to propagate “free” sweet potato slips from existing sweet potatoes. We divided up into three teams; a team to cut up cardboard into a foldable box for this method, a team to process and gather up leaf mould, and a third team to start covering another hoop house for future rainy day farming.

The sweet potato propagation method starts with cutting up leaf mould, or composted leaves, as finely as possible. In our case, Farrell safely demonstrated how he accomplishes this by putting the leaf mould in a wheelbarrow and using a string trimmer to cut the leaves up. Next, we sieved the cut up leaves through a fine mesh and the smaller particles are used in the propagation process. In this process we combine peat and the sieved cut up leaves as a soil medium for the sweet potatoes to lay in. We use these two materials because their retain just enough moisture to encourage rooting and sprouting without getting waterlogged or too dry. Then after one team cut up the cardboard to make the boxes for propagation, we staple the cardboard into shape and place them in a strong support tray which are usually used for seed trays. The soil medium and the sweet potatoes are then placed in the boxes, and these boxes are kept on heat mats until the sprouts appear. A pretty slick way to get slips without having to buy them every year!

Hailey seeding green onions in one of our covered hoop houses using a Jang seeder.

These two weeks have been a great push towards our CSA in the Spring as we prep and hope to have produce as early mid March ready for harvest. In the picture above, the Advanced Organic Crop Production class weeded, built beds, and seeded the beds all with hand tools and hard work. Hand weeding throughout the whole production area as well as digging up the soil bordering the beds and touching the bottom of the hoop house to reduce the likelihood of weeds spreading into the beds. We also added leaves into the walkways in between the beds for the same reason.

Mikaela and Stetson seeding lettuce and fennel.

On the day of the picture above the class split up into three groups to accomplish different tasks across the farm. The duo pictured above mixed up a wheelbarrow of seed starting soil mix and started up 15 trays of various winter hardy crops. The other two groups were divided into builders and harvesters. The builders built covered hoops to protect the strawberries as they enter their second year of production. While the harvesters brought the rest of the group heads of lettuce and escarole from our hoop house with leafy greens to sample.

Even with the cold, rainy days we have experienced the past two weeks, the farm is as abundant as ever. Through our diligence and management of the farm, we can always find work on the farm and ways to grow great organic vegetables and fruit!

━ Charlie V.

This Week On The Farm!

Winter break is over and our Sustainable Agriculture students are immersed in farm prep, for the fast-approaching spring! The warm weather has allowed us to spend some time outdoors, giving the orchard some much needed revitalization. This week the Advanced Organic Crop Production class spent some time pruning apple trees, pear trees and blueberry bushes. The orchard is currently home to apple and pear trees, blueberries, grape vines, newly planted pecan trees, and hazelnut trees.

Fruit trees and shrubs should be pruned yearly to ensure maximum yields and superior fruit quality. It is important to prune to prevent disease, allow space for new growth and keep your tree in a more productive shape.

Owen pruning a pear tree while Randall and Anthony supervise!

You want to ensure you get any dead or diseased branches, branches that are rubbing together or impeding growth, and branches that are growing in a less than desirable direction. There is a balance between the root and the treetop that needs to be assessed, you do not want to over prune as this will send up a vigorous amount of new growth and affect your yields.

Charlie V. pruning a blueberry bush with the helpful supervision of Randall!

The blueberry production area will see many welcomed additions in the coming months as a second row of bushes are added. In preparation for this, the crop production students took soil samples to determine the acidity and any needed amendments. Farmer Farrell mentioned that most of North Carolina has a suitable PH for blueberries but the Georgeville soil, here on the farm, has a higher PH more suitable to growing annual crops.

As the days grow longer and warmer the students will see the fruits of their labor as the plants start to wake up and direct their energy to the freshly manicured branches!

By: Jada