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.