Wednesday, May 30

What's new this spring?

Hello!
We are wet from all the rain, but safe and all accounted for - no mudslides or driveway washouts so far. We are still moving forward with the farming season, albeit a little slower than we would like because the field is so incredibly saturated, and we want to watch that we don't destroy our (fortunately) wonderful soil structure by walking on it or working in it when it is soaked.  We also don't want to get our tractor stuck...

Crossing over into June, we are still at the Saluda Tailgate market every week.  We are also opening new restaurant and chef accounts.  Please let us know if we have something you want!


For this week, we have available: 
  • Kale, 
    •    Green Curly
    •    Green/Red Curly Mixed
    •    Red Russian
  • Collards
  • Head Lettuce
    •    Black Seeded Simpson (bright green looseleaf lettuce)
    •    A limited number of Rouge D'Hiver red romaine heads for market (one of my personal favorites for tenderness and flavor)
    •    A few New Red Fire (red oak-leaf lettuce)
  • Shiitakes (Hopefully they won't be completely rained out and tasteless - we do our best to save what we force into bloom. But with 20" of rain in the last couple weeks, there is only so much a farmer can do!)
  • Dried, packaged shiitakes (labels coming soon!)
  • Microgreens - Mixed or Separate: 
    •    Beets
    •    Radish
    •    Sesame
    •    Sunflower
    •    (next week: also peas)
  • Mustard greens


Call or text for wholesale pricing.  828-702-1704.  All our produce is tended according to organic standards and we can work with you to be in line with local pricing.



Thanks,
Mollie and the crew

Monday, August 7

It's one of those "been-a-while" updates....

We've been back at the farmer's market this spring and summer - yes, "we."  Except for one day off with Daddy, the kids have been there too with me.  It's a trip worth taking.  They have taken the market in stride, and it's rewarding to see them adding sums and bagging mushrooms for folks.

We still have sweet sorghum for molasses in the ground - it won't be ready till October.  The sweet potato crop was a bust this year (my fault, various reasons), but it is still struggling along and we'll have at least some.  One of our favorite things this year is taking a few flower bouquets to the market each week.

If anyone needs flat-leaf parsley, we've got it!  Give me a call.

The mushrooms are holding the farm together this year.  They are producing quite abundantly - thanks again everyone who came out to the inoculation clinics last year!  And they are beautiful and delicious to boot.

This was our first year to offer whole chicken at the market.  We sold a few of our first batch - they were all heritage breed and free range.  The next batch is still in the chicken coop, along with our 6 remaining baby guineas, including Darling (maybe a copper) and King Cowboy (a pearl), Big Silver and Little Silver, Two-tone and the last one, who I cannot recall just now.  We are also still holding a friend's young hens we've been raising, Dandelion (buff orpington), Fuzzy Face, and Fuzzy Legs.

We are just in the turn of the season where it is time to start fall crops, but a virus crept in and got us all first.  We are pretty much over that, but I am still not accomplishing much more than the bare minimum right now.  I am taking it easy on myself and just gathering steam for another push forward.

Things are changing a lot this fall - Simon starts kindergarten.  What an adventure that will be for each of us.  I think Carina is looking forward to time alone with me, and Simon is looking forward to adventure time with new friends!

See you soon my friends,
Mollie and The Crew

Monday, May 2

The First Round of Transplants are in the Ground. And, a Brief Treatise on Falling.

So, I was tilling under the last of the fall kale Saturday, just after planting thousands of tiny new seedlings of kale and collards. Tilling those kale plants in was so hard to do when I had come to know them so well. And, there were still edible leaves on them, although every time I harvested, the leaves came back smaller as the plants kept putting more and more energy into bolting! What a beautiful sight with the tall, tall yellow flowers reaching up above the nose of the tractor and bending back and lending their energy back into the earth for the new crop as I passed over them. No pictures taken since I was concentrating. Such a bittersweet day.

Apparently, that feeling distracted me as I hopped off the tractor to move some layflat (irrigation) out of the way. And so instead of gracefully exiting the tractor, I stepped into a hole with my right foot and rolled over, twisting my ankle. Fortunately, I was able to keep my cool. I curled up in a ball and just lay on the ground howling for what felt like several minutes as a gut-wrenching pain washed over me. Poor Anthony heard me from inside the house (!) and ran down the hill at top speed, worried I had sustained one of the very real, very serious, and all-too-common tractor injuries. After a few more minutes of me howling and whining with my face in the dirt, I was, with his help, able to put myself back together enough to realize it really was nothing more than a twisted ankle.

I here would like to thank my mom, a former physical therapist who made sure to teach all of us how to fall as kids - protect your head, get anything in your hands out of your way, and just go ahead and fall and don't be scared. And probably some other pointers too that are ingrained without me knowing it. I gave into the fall and wasn't scared. I let myself roll and didn't sprain or break my ankle. And, in light of the coming rain that afternoon, at the end of it all, I was able to get back up on the tractor and finish up the last of the tilling I needed to do for the Swiss chard transplants. Otherwise, it would have seemed I worked and hurt in vain. And even though I loathed leaving the field and the tractor and my other tasks that have to be done on a nice dry day, I came inside and iced my ankle. Still sore a day later, but I was able to run some errands today.

I am glad much of the transplanting pressure is off for this week. There are many things to catch up on and wrap up as I "take it easy" till the next round of seeds and transplants are ready to go in.

I love you, Mom!
-Mollie

Thursday, April 21

Progress!

So we have certainly been busy!

But first we had to hurry up and wait on a tractor part to be manufactured for us - we wanted to rip our field (dig a thin line as deep as we could) to help with drainage.  This is our 9th!!! year of field production, and after tilling and running the tractor across the field for that long, the soil can become compacted and form a "plow pan." This is where the soil you till seems fluffy but underneath everything is getting harder and more solid as it is compacted by heavy equipment.  This happens even though we try to use the tractor in the field as little as possible.  So, it's about time.

Then....we spent pretty much most of a recent Sunday trying to re-orient the garden in perfect north to south rows.

Why, you ask?  Because over the years, our perfect original alignment has strayed from true north as the boundaries of the field have snuck? sneaked? outward.

Why else, you ask?  It exposes the plants to the most sun as it runs across the sky east to west.  On a side note, I once heard that cattle align themselves north to south as well.  I wanted to disbelieve that, but a drive across the US through Texas to Colorado demonstrated that most cattle within a herd do indeed, at any given point in the day, seem to point north.

No, really, why did it take so long to set 12 flags in the ground, you ask?  Well...., I'll tell ya'.  Since we didn't have any cattle on hand, and I couldn't remember where I last stowed our good, or even our not so good compass, I tried the compass app on Anthony's phone.  Please do not use your phone as a compass if you are lost in the wilderness of Saluda and are trying to head to Charlotte. You may just as well end up in Delaware, or South Carolina, or perhaps you would actually get to Charlotte after all.  Turns out I finally remembered where the good compass might be, and lo and behold, there it was.  It was in my dresser I have no idea why, but it went back there for whenever I need to find it next time!

Is that really all?  Well, no.  Because to the north line I needed was longer than my 100-foot tape measurer.  It was 166 feet, to be exact.  So somehow we had to extrapolate a correct line.  In the meantime, the kids got bored, went to check the chickens, and started hollering because one poor chick was getting his foot pecked by all the others.  After an impromptu break (this was a different  break than the one for lunch and nap) during which I cleaned up the blood and put Blue-Kote on the wound with the help of my calm and collected, willing and concerned, confident and gentle in-house vet tech, rehoused the bird by himself with food and water, it was back out to the field to wrap it up.  Except during all that, I misplaced the good engineer's compass my older sister gave me so many years ago!  Aaarg!  So.....while I was counting how many times the thought "if I just drive the family 20 minutes into the next town and hunt down a new compass, we will have more fun AND save time" had crossed my mind during the day, we finished off the task amazingly rapidly by calculating the hypotenuse of the two sides of a rectangle we had already established, checking it against the other direction of the same rectangle, and extending the line from there.  Eureka!  And yes, I did find the compass as we finally drug ourselves back into the house,  It was right by the front door.  Of course.

So, Yay!  Straight lines!

We need those straight lines.  Because after that we put in over 300 asparagus plants which I do not intend to dig back up and straighten out anytime soon.  Straight lines make weeding between the rows with the tractor (cultivating) easy.  And any other work with the tractor is easier too,   We have exciting new implements this year, which have already saved us days of backbreaking work.

Friday, I dug up all the rhubarb I could find, and all the lovely, mild elephant garlic collected from Mexico by and bought from my fellow grower/market friend Carolina (who is also a parol officer!) Saturday, Anthony tilled up a portion of the garden.  Sunday we lined up the rows.  Monday, my good and one of my first friends from the area, Shoko, came and helped replant the  Then Anthony set all the rows with the subsoiler (lifted up a little bit to not be so deep as when we ripped the field) according to the flags.  On Tuesday and Wednesday (today) my good neighbor-friends Jenai and her son Tukki have been coming over for the past couple days and voluntarily helped plant the asparagus, 40 pounds of seed potatoes and 10 pounds of onion sets.  At the end of the morning of planting and fertilizing - and I can't believe it didn't take longer! - being able to bring the tractor down to cover the rows with the new hiller/bedder discs without having to hoe the rows closed is absolutely amazing!  Well, except for the first day, but there is a learning curve for every implement!

Honestly, I am extremely grateful.  To Anthony, for selecting a tractor and implements, getting them running and keeping them that way.  To Jenai and Tukki for helping plant!  And to Simon and Carina, for their patience and cooperation.

Last year, Simon and I planted half the amount of potatoes and onions.  It took us a whole day to get each of 6 rows planted, at 1 row a day.  That is a week of planting potatoes and onions.  Granted, the kids were each a year younger, and I seem to remember it as being colder and grayer.  But this time, we planted twice as much with the help of two friends and a tractor...in just 2.5 hours.  Wow!  I finished before noon, and went to make lunch, close enough to on time for little stomachs.  My main thought was, for that much work, why doesn't my back hurt?

So while it seems like the planting was so fast, it probably really did take a week of work.  Just an easier work.

But we aren't done yet!  I just got our trays of transplants from our fellow grower and market friend, Mr. Richard.  I like to call him Sir Richard because he is always so gentlemanly and kind.  So....now we have to plant like mad to keep these tiny transplants in good shape.  Yes, it is much more economical to buy a tray of 288 or 406 seedlings in a plug tray than to buy them in 6-packs.  IF you can get them in the ground fast enough from the prime greenhouse conditions.  And keep them watered and weeded.  Here we go!

We'll be planting head lettuce, pac choi, kale, kale, and more kale, and swiss chard, Seems like I am forgetting something but I will remember it when I water tomorrow!

Later, we still have to plant sweet potato slips, which we have yet to pick up, and our winter squash.  We are uncertain whether we will attempt the enormous quantity of butternut as we did last year.  Time will tell though!  Oh, and I have to finish inoculating the last about 100 of somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 mushroom logs.  The end is in sight!

In the meantime, my library books are overdue and I will bake cookies for anyone here who will kindly dress out of the clean clothes pile for the rest of the week.

I better get some sleep.

Thanks for reading!

-Mollie and the Crew

Monday, March 28

Second Mushroom Inoculation Clinic



Back by popular request - and the fact that we still have a good many logs left to inoculate!  If you are looking for more of last weekend, or you missed the first clinic, come on out this Saturday to our 2nd mushroom inoculation clinic.  Bring your questions - I will do my best!