Pictures from 2010

2010 what a year. The hottest summer on record and one of the coldest Decembers. Here are a few pictures from the year, starting with spring flowers, strawberries, summer flowers, tomatoes, peppers, hoop houses, etc. See you in 2011.

White Christmas

We haven't had a White Christmas in this part of North Carolina since 1947. This is at least our 4th snow storm of December, maybe our 5th....I am starting to lose track. Here are some random shots from around the farm.

Feliz Navidad

Rudolph was unavailable due to this week's mandatory FAA preflight checks and some minor electrical issues (soon to be corrected). Eli our crazy poodle was up to the task and extends "Merry Christmas" wishes to everyone from WHF.

Increasing Infrastructure

Infrastructure, you've got to have it to be successful farming, the conundrum is how much. Not enough and you don't have what you need to accomplish the tasks and too much requires maintenance, time and capital. Every one's situation is different and no one model fits every farm. Our goal has been to build what we can afford while being mindful we may want to add on at a later date. We have purposely remained small and have elected to build on a scale we can handle ourselves. For instance, our hoop houses are 16x48 ft and two people can cover a hoop house without additional assistance.

Some of the things I worked on this summer was increasing the size of our equipment pole barn and increasing hoop house space. The barn and other construction projects this fall are in large part why I have been remiss in blog entries. The original barn was built in 2007. It was roughly 24x36 ft, 3 bays, 6x6 poles with a 5v tin roof. I would have preferred to have made it larger at the time, but with the cost of materials and other higher priority projects, the size was kept smaller with plans to increase it at a later date.

Here's a picture of the original barn with the new addition just starting.
The 3 new bays prior to the roof being added.Here is a picture of the new addition's sheathing and rafters with the old roof.
A look from the old roof to the new roof sheathing.
I had a roofing company bend a couple of pieces of the 5v tin on a "break" to make the transition from the old roof level to the new roof level, this keeps rain from blowing in the side between the roofs.

I added some basic lighting and a couple of electrical outlets to make life easier.
Here is a shot of the barn with the new addition. I plan to add a couple more bays a few years from now when we out grow this space.
We also built another hoop house this year.

Mater Matters

Even though the summer heat is already cranking up....we really like this time of year because we have tomatoes. Been looking for to a fresh tomato sandwich since last October.

There isn't anything better than a tomato sandwich. Big slice of tomato, mayo, salt and pepper.....love it. We have several varieties of slicing tomatoes currently, Cherokee purples, big beef, pink girls and small sun golds on the way. We also have basil. Some olive oil, tomatoes, onions, little garlic and fresh basil over pasta.... in fact, that is what we are having for dinner tonight.

Speaking of onions, we have some beautiful white and red candy varieties.
And if for some crazy reason the tomatoes don't sell at market....it is not a problem as that just means more for me!

Farm To Fork

Wild Hare Farm is excited to be participating in the 2010 Farm To Fork Picnic. We are honored to be paired with Amy Tornquist of Watts Grocery as well as Sage and Swift catering. The New York Times recently ran an article on Amy's exceptional culinary talents and Watts Grocery. She has been more credits than I have space to blog in.

For more about Farm To Fork: http://www.farmtoforknc.com/

For more on Amy and Watts Grocery: http://www.wattsgrocery.com/

Say hello to my "lily" friends

If you didn't see Scarface then the play on words will be lost.


















Our first calla lilies of the season are starting to come on. I am not much of a photographer so this picture doesn't do them justice. These guys are cool and we'll have several different colors available.



















Asiatic Lilies. Over the course of the summer we will have these in white, yellow, red, pink and orange.



















We also will have oriental lilies in red, white and pinks on and off through out the summer.

All of these flowers have a great vase life. The orientals have a strong sweet fragrance, the callas and asiatic are not fragrant, they are just eye candy.

Mother's Day

OMG ! It's almost Mother's Day and the conundrum of what to give mom.

Not to worry, WHF will have you covered.

What mom doesn't love beautiful flowers?









For Mother's Day we will have several varieties of flowers available: fragrant stock, tall delphinium, bachelor buttons, agrostemma, poppies, dutch iris, lilies and last but certainly not least tulips.





This is our last planting of tulips and we'll have red parrots, a neat red fringe, along with multiple varieties of regular long stem tulips in pink, yellow, red and orange.






To ensure you stay in mom's good graces and score extra bonus points we have delicious strawberries to compliment the flowers. Or you can eat the strawberries yourself and your secret will be safe with us.



Merle ensuring the bachelor buttons meet WHF quality standards.

Photos from around the farm

Strawberries ready for market.
















Hoop House tomatoes.



















Onions. We have 3 varieties this year.















Bee hive from Cedar Grove Bee Works.











Crimson Clover cover crop. Bees are happy.














Delphiniums.













Sunset at Wild Hare Farm.

Farm Tour April 24 and 25

Wild Hare Farm is excited to be participating for our 7th straight year in the Carolina Farm Stewardship Associations North Carolina Piedmont Farm Tour. Visit this link for more information on how to participate. http://www.carolinafarmstewards.org/

Farm Tour is a great opportunity for folks to visit area farms, see where their food
is grown, get ideas and meet the farmers.



We have tomatoes growing in our Hoop Houses, multiple varieties of flowers, our field strawberries are just starting to ripen and other goodies growing such as lettuce, radishes, carrots, etc.


Hope to see you all on the tour and that everyone enjoys all of the great local farms.

Where's Tom Sawyer when you need him

Recently a proclamation was made at WHF, that the pretty flowers didn't look so pretty on the ugly market tables. It was a fair statement. Being dearth of Tom Sawyer's powers of persuasion meant a mini-project painting the market tables was in my immediate future. Our market tables are of the home made variety and serve double duty. They are handy for several things around the farm and as such catch a fair amount of abuse. An antique table from Smith and Hawken (while very cool) is not really required for the farmers market, but having your market hardware distract from your product is not smart for business either.

Painting our tables is really no big deal, other than there is nothing about painting I like. Some people state they don't mind painting, it is the prep or clean up they don't care for. Not me, I loathe it all. The only thing I can find redeeming about painting is I can usually have an adult beverage during the process.

The brush strokes I employee can be best described as: sling, glob, dribble, pool and puddle. And if I have to paint it, then you can have any color you want as long as it is white. The word "Trim" is not part of my vocabulary.

The final paint job doesn't look too bad all things considering and achieves the goal of not distracting from this bucket of ranunculus. Now I have somewhere to place my beverage. Wonder if I'll be required to use a coaster?

Parrot Tulips before coffee

It has been a busy spring and we were looking forward to having 2 cups of coffee and a low keyed Easter Sunday morning. Our parrot tulips thought otherwise, formed a union and decided to all open at the same time. Who can blame them, if we were as pretty as these guys we'd want everyone to see us too.

In "The Botany of Desire" Michael Pollan poses the question of who controls who. Do we control the plants or do they control us ? Needless to say, we spent Sunday morning pulling Tulips instead of drinking coffee.

With the early summer like temperatures Tulip season is rapidly coming to a close. We'll have have them for another week or so and we will have one last round for Mother's day.

Tulips require a great deal of our time and energy, but they are something special. We are already planning the varieties we'll have for next year!

Signs of Spring

Spring is close, here are 3 signs of spring at Wild Hare Farm.

Turdus migratorius (aka Robins)

These guys are great. We have several roaming gangs of 20-30 Robins around the farm. Each individual group of birds moves together doing that funky 5-6 bouncing hop, then stopping to look around and display their orange breast.




Radishes
We have been harvesting radishes for several
weeks now and they are awesome. One of our favorite ways to eat them is on good french bread with butter and a sprinkle of salt.

From Jacques Pepin:
Cut a baguette into thin slices about 3/8 inch thick. Cover each slice lavishly with unsalted butter. Thinly slice several radishes horizontally (a vegetable peeler is good for this) and cover the butter with overlapping slices of radish. Sprinkle a little fleur de sel on top and enjoy with drinks.

Turnips
Our first hakurei turnips of the year and they are beautiful. This variety is mild enough to be sliced
thin and used in a salad. They are also excellent roasted. The tops are delicious sauteed.

For roasting remove greens, slice or quarter, rub with olive oil, generous salt and pepper, place in a baking dish. Preheat oven to 400 deg and cook until tender and golden brown (about 30 mins).