homestead

Posted on April 7, 2024April 10, 2024 by admin — Leave a comment

Potato Planting Class (Part 2) and Finding Meaning in Life for Men

What beautiful weather and a nice day to plant potatoes. We took time to plant potatoes (and a few onions) then cover with hay.

We also installed drip tape. Because potatoes are a early crop and generally finish before the summer temperature gets hot, we may not need to irrigation the potatoes. The need to irrigate is driven by how much rain we get in May and early June.

Why work hard on the farm when we can just to go the grocery store? What does that have to do with doing big things as a man?

Growing your own food has many benefits for the farmer and people who work on a farm.

Getting out on the farm and working with our hands leads to good conversation and a sense of accomplishment. Men do better in life when we can take on and accomplish big things. What are we responsible for in life? We have responsibilities at work. We have responsibilities at home. What big things are we doing?

Our jobs are tenuous. You could be severed from your employer in one conversation because someone 1000 miles away made a decision while looking at a spreadsheet. We trade hours of our lives for time spent at the office. I’m not anti-company, I just recognize the system that surrounds us. Most of us work for someone else to earn a living and that is the system that we currently live in. Working for someone else is how we pay the bills and there isn’t anything inherently wrong with that. The tenuous nature of the relationship with our employers means that we should not seek meaning in life because of our position at some company but instead in what we do that has lasting value.

Growing part of your own food means that you have taken on responsbilities for the following:

for the land and the soil
for the crops that you have to nurture and harvest
for yourself so that you are there to prepare, plant, nurture and harvest
for the time you spend
for getting to know the people you work with as you grow your own food
the neighbors that you give some of your excess food
leaving the land better off than when you found it
leaving behind a lasting legacy of abundance – abundance that you developed and nurtured

How are you serving others around you?

These are all questions and opportunities for us as men to answer as we seek to live meaninful lives.

The abundance of a single fig tree and doing big things

Even a single fig tree can provide a bountiful harvest for generations. If you plant and nurture that tree, you are providing figures for generations. Having a purpose in life and accepting responsibility for a man is one way to develop joy. Don’t “search” for joy in things or titles, instead develop joy and purpose by accepting responsibility. Men were made to do big things. What is your big thing? Accepting the responsibility to do those big things can bring joy to your life.

Pictures from this week on the farm

Putting down hay to suppress weeds in the potatoes that we just planted

Picnic table is a great spot for taking a break

Potatoes planted and covered with hay and drip lines in place

Buckwheat cover crop planted in tilled areas

The Paw Paw seedlings we planted last fall are coming to life

Posted on March 23, 2024March 23, 2024 by admin — Leave a comment

Let’s Plant Onions

There was a break in the weather and it gave us time to plant onions. We have almost 1,000 onions sets started this year. We planted the onions and then covered with hay. The hay helps suppress weeds and makes weeding so much easier. The hay also serves as a soil amendment as it composts.

Word of warning with using hay, or any compost, in your garden: it is important to make sure that you aren’t introducing herbicides into your garden through the hay or compost. The vast majority of hay is sprayed with a herbicide. Compost from your local municipality usually contains grass that was treated herbicides. That free compost from the city or county can kill the plants in your garden. Here is a good resource on the topic – click here

How to buy produce and cuttings from Simply Us Farm

When we have produce available, we’ll announce it here and through our email list. Many of the the items from our farm are only available for a short season and often just once per year.

Onions planted, next is covering with hay

The daffodils are blooming. Nice to see the beautiful colors

Posted on March 16, 2024March 16, 2024 by admin — Leave a comment

Small But Mighty Growing Potatoes Classes

We had a great day on the farm teaching how to plant potatoes.

Yesterday (Friday, the day before class) I was out on the farm getting the rows ready to plant. It was all going well until it started raining. One of the challenge with planting potatoes is rain and wet ground, which also seems to happen when we go to plant potatoes. I’m not sure if I would know how to plant potatoes without standing in mud between the rows.

Today we accomplished the following:

– demonstrated and did hands-on cutting of seed potatoes in pieces to plant
– planted approximately 200 linear feet of three different varieties of potatoes
– installed and tested drip tap for the potatoes
– planted approximately 320 onions

This is the first day in a multipart class where we plan to prepare, plant, maintain and hopefully harvest some awesome potatoes grown without synthetic fertilizer, no herbicides and no pesticides using a low till approach. We work hard to practice regenertive farming.

I realize that if there aren’t pictures of video then did it really happen? So, lets take a look at the pics. Check out the purple potatoes! Scroll to the end for some bonus pictures.

Drip line installed and potatoes planted

Surveying the work – agricultural therapy at its finest

P.S. Planting one more tree

About this time of year, I declare I’m done planting new trees or perennials until fall. But there is also the temptation to plant just one more fruit bearing tree or bush. Friday, it was just me on the farm and I had brought with me a fig that somehow didn’t get planted this fall or winter. So, I decided to plant one more tree. Thanks to Connie for getting the fig cutting and turning it into a figlet that was ready to plant. One day, if all goes well, we’ll be trying to figure out what to do with a lot of figs.

My dad always says “the best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago and the next best time to plant a tree is this afternoon”.
Jean montie roland, quoting someone else, but still great advice

Getting ready to plant the “last” fig until fall

Wire cage to keep the deer away from the figlet so it can grow

P.P.S. Parting Throught

I haven’t run this meme by my wife yet, but I’m confident she will agree. I’ll ask her after I water the chickens.

Posted on March 13, 2024 by admin — Leave a comment

Nice Day in March and New Bees

Walking through the farm reveals a plethora of bushes and trees that are budding out. A few weeks ago, many of these bushes and plants were dormant. Now buds are forming and you can see the first signs of growth of the year.

Last year we sold out of honey from the farm. This year we are adding more bees. The first new hives arrived this week.

The first of the new bee hives have arrived!

The mighty goji berries seem upstoppable already

Elderberries are off and running, they do so well here

Hazel bush buds arriving. Looking forward to having hazel nuts in 2-3 years

Posted on February 18, 2024 by admin — Leave a comment

Dealing with Cold Season / More Joys of Elderberry

Cold and flu season is here. I was trying to catch a cold so it was time to hit the elderberry. These are elderberries that we grew on the farm.

This isn’t medical advice and no claims are being made.

Posted on February 11, 2024February 11, 2024 by admin

Pruning Blueberries and Blackberries

February is shaping to be a month of blueberries. We took a class in pruning blueberry bushes last weekend. Seems like there is a always something new to learn. This weekend, on a gloriously nice Saturday (mid 70s), we are pruned our blueberries at the farm. Next up is blueberries at my bonus child’s house (he has a bunch), then doing the grapevines and blueberry bushes at my parents house. Finally doing the blueberries at our home.

Blueberry bushes need to be pruned in the winter. February is the last opportunity until next Fall. Blueberries are a native plant but do much better (from a production standpoint) when they are properly pruned. A properly pruned blueberry bush will produce bigger and tastier berries than one that isn’t well maintained. The blueberry bushes at the farm were planted last spring, so it will be a year or two before we have a crop of blueberries from them.

We’ve pruned the blackberries at the farm. Next step with the blackberries is to prune them at the house.

If you want your own domesticated blackberry plants, we will have thrornless blackberrry plants in mid March. These will be ready to plant. Contact us if you want plants or want to learn how to prune your blackberries.

Another bit of good news is that at least one of our olive trees looks like it made it through the winter.

The elderberries have started to bud out. The diakon cover crop went through a winter kill with the cold weather. The clover cover crop is growing very slowly but should really take off as the weather warms up in March. It won’t be long before it is time to plant onions, potatoes and rotate cover crops.

The bees were very active today. Spring will be here soon.

Olive tree made it through the winter, next step mulch

Posted on January 30, 2024January 22, 2024 by admin

Upcoming Class – Learn to Plant and Grow Potatoes

Learn to Plant and Grow Potatoes

Come join us for a fun and educational event where you can learn all about planting potatoes! Whether you’re a seasoned gardener or a beginner, this in-person event in Bennett, NC, USA is perfect for anyone interested in growing their own potatoes.

During this hands-on workshop, our farmer will guide you through the potato planting process. From cutting up seed potatoes, preparing the soil and planting potatoes, you’ll gain valuable knowledge and practical skills to grow a bountiful potato harvest. You’ll actually get to work in the soil to get potatoes in the ground and ready to go.

This class starts out by planting potatoes. Following class sessions allow you to learn by doing and helping maintain the potatoes you helped plant. There will be 5 sessions between the inital date and harvest. If you come to 3 of 5 sessions (including the intial day), then you are invited to join us for the harvest day (late May / early Jun).

Discover how to plant and care for your own potatoes. Don’t miss out on this exciting opportunity to dig into the world of potato gardening!

Important note: if weather causes a delay, we will reschedule the next weekend (weather permitting)

Posted on January 22, 2024January 17, 2024 by admin — Leave a comment

Daikon Working While the Farmer Rests

Daikon (sometimes call field radish or mooli) is a large radish of Japanese origin. We use it as a cover crop on the farm. The daikon helps in 3 ways:

keeps roots and plant life active in the soil over the fall and winter months. This helps keep the soil biologically active. A good farmer first grows soil. If you have good soil then you can grow great plants that are full of nutrients
the tuber sinks down into the ground and helps keep the soil from compacting while expanding the soil at the location where the tuber is growing
acts as a bioaccumulator that takes into nitrogen from the process of photosynthesis and stores it in the tuber

This spring we will terminate the cover crop, leaving the tuber in place to compost over the summer returning the nutrients to the soil. We avoid the use of synthetic fertilizer and cover crops are a big part of making that possible.

Thanks for checking in with what is happening at the farm.

Posted on January 17, 2024January 21, 2024 by admin — Leave a comment

Farm is Sleeping, Spring is Peeking

This time of year, I tell myself that we have put the farm to bed for the winter. I think saying that belies the actuality that some of the plants keep growing, albeit slowly. Also, it makes it easier to take a break from working on the farm. The downtime is valuable for us farmers.

The garlic is doing well . In the picture below you can see places where weeks are starting to poke through the hay. The next step with the garlic is to put down more hay to help supress weeds. I like growing garlic. It is easy to grow and low maintenance since most of the growing occurs in the winter when most of the weeks have died back.

I hope that you can use to winter months to rest, refit and recharge. Spring will be here before we know it.

Posted on December 5, 2023December 13, 2023 by admin — Leave a comment

Our Love Affair with Elderberries

Elderberry plants are robust and easy to grow in most of NC. The umbrals are easy to harvest. The flowers and the berries have many healthy uses. We have found that many people don’t realize the healthy benefits from elderberries growing in the ditch that they drive by every day on the commute to and from work. However, a surprising number of people take a teaspoon of elderberry syrup every day during the fall and winter to help fight off colds.

Elderberry is a plant of contrasts. Join us and walk through some of these contrasts. Let us share what we have learned by growing this amazing plant.

Elderberries grow wild in NC, usually on a ditch bank or in wet soil. They are everywhere, but many of the wild plants are in locations that are hard to reach at the time of harvest. If you enjoy foraging, then consider adding elderberries to your summer foraging retinue. The berries you harvest will be worth it.

Elderberry plants spread along the ground and a row of elderberry plants tends to be come a hedge. If you plan ahead, it is easy enough to manage the hedge by mowing and just have to prune once a year when the plants are dormant. If you were to plant your elderberries in the middle of an area where you can’t mow around them to control spread then you might have a difficult time managing them. They can be invasive, but if you plan ahead before you plant them it really isn’t a problem.

Harvesting elderberry umbrals is straight forward. Removing the berries from the stems can be a challenge. Some of the ways to remove berries from the umbral are easier than others. At some point in the future, it would be great to add a destemmer to the equipment we use on the farm.

This year we have making different elderberry products including:

elderberry syrup
infused elderberry honey
elderberry oxymel
liquid of elderberry
dehydrated elderberries
freeze dried liquid of elderberry
freeze dried elderberries

It is really cool seeing the dark, dark and luxurious purple liquid that comes from the elderberries. Especially knowing all the health benefits in the liquid.

Growing and processing elderberries has been a wonderful learning experience. We’ve enjoyed teaching how to grow elderberries in hands on classes. Thanks for letting us share with you.