Farm Report : March/April
Farm Report : March/April Coweeta Heritage Center/Talking Rock Farm
Hello Franklin Tailgate and Mountain Valley Health Food Folks:Thanks for buying local and supporting your local growers! We thank you for making it possible for us to serve you! And to provide you with some of the best food available from locally produced, sustainably grown, and good for you food.
Garden News and other meanderings-Is it really March? My last newsletter was Sept/Oct, so the winter has just about slipped away. And you might think I have been hibernating the past few months, but the opposite is true. It is true that rain has put a damper on things, but in between showers I have been making some progress on my “net zero” house (one that uses little to no outside energy). I got the walls and one roof poured with concrete and the front south facing wall (knee wall) built and put in place. I build the wall on the ground and raised it up in 8 foot sections with my track hoe. I’m finishing attaching it now. Then come the east and west triangular walls and a center knee wall and I will be ready to put up beams to support the green-living roof. So what does this have to do with my gardening newsletter? Not much except I suppose I could grow crops on the roof! LOL. It will have PV (photo voltaic) panels for electricity, and hot water panels for heating the floor of the house for radiant floor heating. The front of the house (about 12 feet high) will face south and allow enough solar gain to warm up the house in the winter. An overhanging roof with shade it in the summer. A living roof will help keep it cool in the summer as well. Gravity feed water from a spring will run to the house. If you would like to come see my house construction, please let me know.
Winter garden chores: There is a lot to do in the winter in the garden. The main chore I do in the fall/winter is gather the organic matter (leaves) for the critters (microbes) in the garden. This means blowing leaves to one side of the road and raking the banks (so moss will grow). This amounts to about 10 tons of leaves so it is a big job and I have to blow them more than once. I let them sit, settle and get wet and then gather them up later (my next big chore), haul them to the leaf corral to let them break down for another few months. I make sure the leaves are wet before I pile them up or they won’t break down. It is mostly the job of fungi to break the leaves down; then I take my Mantis tiller and shred them up a bit before I use them for mulch in the garden. If I shred them up first before I pile them up, they break down too quickly. Leaves are rich in nutrients (minerals) as the roots go down deep in the ground. They don’t however, provide very much nitrogen. Lately I have been worried that my garden doesn’t have enough nitrogen in the soil, so I did some quick research into the matter.
Nitrates in your food? Some research shows that too much nitrogen applied can cause both environmental and human health concerns. Excess nitrogen leaches into the water causing blooms in aquatic environments which reduces oxygen needed by fish. Nitrogen (nitrates) in the ground water can end up in your drinking water. Nitrates are harmful to humans and may contribute to cancer. Nitrates are used in cured meats like bacon which I try to avoid. Excess nitrogen in the soil can also accumulate in leafy greens, especially lettuce. Excess nitrogen also causes poor root development and poor fruiting but lots of leaf growth at first. I have heard the recommendation that in organic gardening, little to no added nitrogen fertilizer is best. Nitrogen fixing crops can safely increase the amount of nitrogen in the soil and compost is perhaps the best source for adding nutrients. Another method is to use compost teas applied as a liquid to your garden. Microbes in the tea take up the nutrients and prevent them from leaching and make them available to plants.
Caution in the use of nitrogen fertilizer seems to be the best path to healthful and sustainable farming practices. Best to error on the side of too little nitrogen fertilizer than too much! And organic sources of nitrogen are shown to be best. The main source of nitrogen from my understanding of organic farming practices comes from micro organisms. Bacteria have the highest nitrogen content of any living creature, so when they die, they release nitrogen to the soil for plants to uptake. This is the main difference between organic and chemical farming. Organic farmers feed the soil which in turn feeds the crops. Chemical agriculture try to skip this step and feed the plants directly. Chemical fertilizers can evaporate into the air as well as leach into the water. But organic farmers need to be concerned about over fertilizing as well!
I have also been busy harvesting greens for the market, cleaning up beds and planting cool weather crops in the garden such as spinach, beets, carrots and the like. My cat Gypsy instructed me on the proper way to build mounds by pulling up the loose top soil into a nice shallow mound. This soil/mound will stay drier, and warm up quicker than if seeds are planted deeper (maybe important if it is drier). Each mound gets a few pinches of seeds. With all the rain we are having, there is no need to water! Sugar snap peas are coming up as well.
This is another instance where raised beds really shine: despite all our recent cloudy and rainy weather!. With enough organic matter content, in my case leaf mold, the soil can be worked a day or so after a rain. Mulching in the fall seems to give good benefits, as the mulch is broken down enough to directly seed into it. I also noticed that the soil below the mulch seems looser than the beds where I did not mulch. The mulch may allow earth worm to be more active. In some of my beds, all I had to do was pull up the soil into mounds with my hands and plant. This makes gardening much easier and enjoyable, and that is the point, isn’t it? While gardening should be a labor of love, it shouldn’t be a labor of dread and work. It does take, in my case, getting down on all fours (knees and hands) to do some of the work.
The joy of gardening, besides getting you hands in the dirt, is to watch the miracle of seeds sprouting, growing into mature plants and harvesting. As a market gardener, my final joy is to find the right homes for my greens and produce where they will be appreciated and enjoyed! Thanks to you.
My goal is to produce the healthiest food and get it into the hands of folks in the local community. Local sustainable agriculture has many benefits: protecting the environment, reducing energy requirements in transportation, and of course providing the freshest and healthiest available food to you! If you are not a gardener, you might think that the information I’ve shared here is irrelevant, however knowing all this can help you make the best choices in buying your produce! Eat well, and live happy! And thanks once again for coming to the Franklin Sat Farmers’ market. We appreciate getting to know you, too!
Harvest from the garden: spring garlic and onions, mustard, Asian greens (now going to seed), kale, collards, a little chard and beet greens, endive, lettuces (that survived the winter), escarole, arugula, cilantro, parsley and more.
Cooking with greens! I don’t spend much time in the kitchen, so I want to prepare food in the quickest way possible. I start with onion and garlic in the skillet with some olive oil and let that cook on low heat. While that is cooking I cut up the greens into fairly small pieces. I dump these in the pan, add a little more oil and turn the heat up high while chopping it with a metal turner (anything else would probably work too). When the greens have wilted down and are good and hot, I add a little water, turn the heat all the way down and put a lid on it and let the greens simmer for a good 10-15 minutes (or however long you prefer). I prepare enough for a few days and keep them on hand. I like them with rice grits, and eggs, noodles or just about anything.
Spring garden tour: Maybe it is time to think about a spring garden tour to one of the local farms. Perhaps you would like to see what is possible as far as growing greens throughout the winter, so now would be a good time. Just let me know and we will schedule a time. I don’t mind individuals or small groups coming out, so maybe you have a few friends who would like to join you on a trip out to Coweeta. We can all learn from each other; there are no experts; you are your own expert when it comes to gardening as every garden and gardener is different. There are myriad ways of growing and enjoying getting out into the Great Out Doors (G.O.D.) for short.
You can contact me at the market or email me at coweeta@gmail.com or the old fashioned way, give me a call at 828-369-0231. I’m probably in the garden, so leave me a message and I will get back to you. Paul
—-New bags: I’m trending toward using ziplock bags again. I think they offer the convenience and utility that the regular produce bags don’t. They cost more, but if the produce is better utilized, they may be cheaper in the long run. But you can make them go farther by washing, turning them inside out, drying them and bringing them back to the market to be refilled. They are clearer than the regular bags and it is easier to get produce in and out of them. Some things won’t fit in them so I will continue to use regular produce bags as well. I have a new bag size as well (8” by 10 inches). They hold about 5-6 ounces and take up less room in your fridge. So now you have more choices: small bags, gallon bags, or produce by the bunch. Hopefully this will help you use your produce efficiently with less waste.
Organic Gardening Classes
—–You are welcome to come visit my garden or even lend a hand! I work most mornings and evenings. Just send me an email or call to arrange a visit. Get some friends together and schedule a tour!
——My email is coweeta@gmail.com and my phone number is 828-369-0231. Leave a message if you can’t reach me. Thanks! Also email me for CONVERSATIONS WITH MY CAT (if you have nothing better to do).
Gardening with Paul: Would you like to learn more about Organic Gardening??? GWP provides hands-on opportunities on an organic farm. Expect to spend an hour or two with Paul or our volunteers in our garden doing whatever happens to be going on at that moment. I tend to be a spontaneous gardener without too much planning. I’ll share with you whatever happens to come up during your garden session. I believe gardening is an ever-changing evolving experience and if one is open to change and learning new things it can be wonder-filled experience. Isn’t life a bit like that? My one advice is not to learn from the experts and there are no experts (except yourself!), Early morning or late evening is the best time. You can take home some produce you helped grow!
Intentional Community Sprouts
I am attempting to commence to begin to start an Intentional Community at Coweeta which will focus on both the health of its members as well as the larger community. It will be a community which is grown up from its foundation by its members. Please let anyone you know (including yourself) who might be interested. They can visit Coweeta Heritage Center on IC.org (Fellowship of Intentional Communities). Here is a short description: Coweeta is looking for others who would like to join together to form an Intentional Community embracing the principles of Voluntary Simplicity. Simply put (no pun intended): We wish “to live simply so that others may simply live.” It is a recognition that nature provides us with valuable services and resources that we can use to enrich our lives. Utilizing local resources, appropriate technology, and working cooperatively, we can discover creative ways to meet our needs as “directly and simply as possible.” Voluntary Simplicity is based on the recognition that “very little is needed to live well” and that “abundance is a state of mind”. All human beings have the potential to live meaningful lives while consuming no more than an equitable share of the world’s resources and that these resources need to be shared worldwide. Voluntary Simplicity is a quiet revolution that can change the world. As one person said, “We must be poets of our own lives and of a new generation.”
Good grief! More cat conversations! Maybe you missed some of the latest cat conversations that have kept me sane throughout the winter. Gypsy, the cat, is always happy to offer her advice on most any subject (cats have been advisers to humans for millennia!). Perhaps you know that it was cats, not aliens that helped the Egyptians build the pyramids. Well, to learn much more, just email me and ask Gypsy for some of her conversations! She is happy to take a break from meditating to send them to you. I think I feel a new conversation coming on any day now. Cats are great instructors in teaching us how to enjoy life, take one day at a time, and appreciate the beauty all around us. Coming soon is our new book together with all her conversations: Talking to God: Conversations with Gypsy the Philosophical Cat.
Happy Spring to everyone!
Paul and Gypsy and all the critters out in the woods