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.

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

This Week on the Farm

Seeded flats for herbs

Monday’s cold and rainy weather was really no joke! Nonetheless, we still set out to get some work done and seeded a few different herbs, including lavender and thyme, in 500 cell flats. Before Monday, I’ve always wondered why it’s always so dang hard to grow herbs from seed.. but we learned that sometimes herbs need cold stratification for germination! So if you’re like me, hopefully this will make you feel a little less insane when trying to grow herbs.

Germinated arugula saying hello to the sun

On Wednesday, we took advantage of a nice warm day and continued to knock out tasks in preparation for the upcoming CSA season. Last week, we seeded arugula, kale, radishes, and salad mix. We covered them with clear plastic to heat things up and encourage germination, and sure enough they’ve started popping up! We started the day off by pulling back the row cover and letting them see the sun.

Garlic

As groups set off to start working on their tasks, some of us headed to the amendments to prepare beds for peas and onions. We also top dressed our garlic that was planted over the fall with blood meal for a boost of nitrogen. Blood meal was the nitrogen source of choice for this because it breaks down quicker compared to feather meal. This is important because by the time the spring equinox rolls around, we want the garlic to start sending its energy into bulb production as opposed to growing leaves.

Aaaand- Peas growing in the hoop house!

It was a busy week! Everyone’s working really hard and looking forward to a great CSA!

By: Rio Kizis

CCCC Student Farm, Farm updates, Sustainable Farming

We’ve been busy!

by Mekayla Robles

This week on the farm the Advanced Crop Production class welcomed our first Student Farm Manager! Farm Managers are responsible for planning the days’ productivity schedule, and managing a team of ten or more people. Under her watchful eye, we got a lot done on the farm in preparation for spring!

Our first order of business was pea shoot harvesting! It may not seem like much in the harvest bucket but we harvested almost three pounds of shoots!

After harvesting was done, seeding was our next priority. In order from left to right, we seeded Argula, Salad Mix, Kale, and Radishes. Remember to keep an eye out for these crops in future CSA boxes!

Maintenance tasks were carried out as well such as tarping (for weed suppression) and pre-positioning of irrigation lines to make way for the new crops being planted in these areas. Spring will be here before we know it, and at this rate, the farm will be ready for the major growing season in no time!

What happened on the farm this week?

Advance Crop – January 2022 by Erika Cunico

Fall 2021 has begun!

While it is truly still summer, students of the CCCC Sustainable Agriculture Program have returned for Fall 2021 in-person classes.

Thankful for Our Farmers

As the day of feast comes ever near, it is a good time to reflect upon the food we hold dear. It is even more important to acknowledge the many hands that go into growing this sustenance; whether it is only a few volunteer hours a week or a daily burning passion, we at CCCC most genuinely thank every farm hand for their work, thoughtfulness, and motivation.

It is characteristics like these, after all, that make the upcoming changes possible. Fall is a time of transition from the heavy labor of summer into the cold embrace of winter. The warm weather crops that stand limp on their trellising are scheduled to be removed; cool weather cover crops will take their place in the rotation for both nitrogen fixing elements and eventual organic matter.

The increasing likelihood of nightly frosts also means a transition from field focus to tunnel vision. This method of season extension not only protects the crops from the cold but also from this never-ceasing pattern of persistent rain. This does require checking all irrigation in hoop houses and installing or fixing drip tape but even more must take place before this: hoeing and shaping the beds, using the heavy rake and then the fine rake to prep for direct seeding.

The Plant Propagation class had extra time this week to come out and help realize these goals. The outgoing summer crops include okra, lemongrass, and burdock. The landscape fabric that suppressed the summer weeds are now off the ground as is the drip tape; these items get bundled up and stored for the winter. The previously mentioned cover crops are nestling in for the long, cold season ahead.

 

The students and farmers at CCCC wish everyone a happy and safe holiday week! 

Posted by E. Stapleton AGR 214