Beautiful Spring Light and Broccoli

We have been busily preparing soil and transplanting baby vegetables. It is best to transplant young plants after the heat of the day. This gives them the evening and night to get over some of their shock, allowing them to cope with the next day's heat better. Sometimes it is tiring to be out in the field that late, but we are often rewarded with wonderful sunsets or clouds that we would otherwise have missed. Enjoy!

Marie cultivates a bed.

Baby kale in sunset light.

Cover crop in stormy sunset.

The sun set underneath the clouds shining on the bottom land and the South mountains.

Will Coffey and Marie plant kale with our new back saving tool-the hatfield transplanter.

Baby broccoli getting a drink (see the sparkling water droplet coming out of the irrigation tubing?)

Planting Season on Bluebird Farm

Wow, March just flew by. The arrival of spring brings a whole new level of activity to the farm: soil preparation, seeding in the greenhouse, animals out on pasture, and transplanting. Everyday as we work in the field we can practically watch the grass get greener and the blossoms on the trees open up. One morning I noticed that the flowers on our magnolia were looking full and ready to burst. By that afternoon the trees were practically in full bloom. It is amazing to see and smell the plants waking up.

Misty the horse, Sweet Pea the sheep and Clyde the (very fast growing) Sheep-Horse-Dog

Some of our early vegetable starts just a few weeks ago. Some of these are already in the ground!

Beautiful Crabapple blossoms on the way to our garden.

Happy meat chickens on grass!

Row cover protecting young lettuce transplants from the vagrancies of spring weather.

William and a volunteer-Jenny. She has been a great help getting plants in the ground on time! This was just last week in full coats and hats on a wet chilly day.

Mid-September and Spring Veggies?

Hello all,

It has been gorgeous dry, clear, dry, cool, dry, breezy, and dry weather. While we can’t complain too much about the weather we could stand a little more rain. Luckily enough we timed our last several plantings in the garden with the wet days we have gotten.

Our fall transplants of boc choi, chinese cabbage, lettuce, and kale are standing in vibrant green rows out in the field. However, you wouldn’t notice their bright little sprouts against the brown soil at first. What catches your eye are the giant white caterpillars, well not really caterpillars, but that’s what we call them. We have metal hoops about waist high and about 6 feet across from foot to foot. We set the hoops up over our garden beds and stretch a white spun fabric over them. Many of you have seen this row cover at the farm or in our photos. Right now we are using a lightweight cover for insect protection. Later in the fall we will switch to a heavy weight fabric for frost protection. Currently we have three of these hoops side by side running the 120 foot length of the field.

It is like entering another world when you lift the edge of these hoops and look under. The wind doesn’t blow; the air is moister and a little warmer. It’s like a little protected vegetable haven. Under each hoop are two beds separated by a narrow pathway. And down the beds are our little rows of bright green fall vegetables. Their green is almost incongruous with this time of year. Most grass, trees, and other plants are the dark rich, tried green of late summer. But not the vegetables, they have the bright almost neon green of spring in their leaves.

We tried something new with spinach this fall. Spinach is notorious for its poor germination. Ask almost any farmer or gardener about spinach and they will either tell you they have trouble growing it, or they have no trouble because of some complicated scheme they devised to make it work. Our new complicated scheme is to place the seeds between damp paper towels. We then put the towels in a plastic bag in a dark cool place for about three days. At this point almost all the seeds have germinated! They had little roots less than a quarter inch long. I then made small trenches about 1 inch deep and put the seeds down the bottom. I was afraid that the seeding might break off the roots and that the seed wouldn’t be able to regrow. But hey, farming is about trying new things. Next I put fish emulsion across them to give a little boost. Then I tamped the soil back over the seeds. Today we have rows of spinach with their two cotyledons (false leaves) reaching upward. Now the battle with the insects begins. We hope to win that one with the help of cooler nights. With any luck we will have some delicious spinach in a few weeks. Just in time for the last CSA week? We certainly hope it will grow quickly for Week 20, our last CSA box.



Pasta with Mizuna and Sausage
Mizuna is one of the primary greens in our stir-fry mix. I love its peppery flavor more than other spicy greens like arugula. Use stir-fry mix in this recipe (I thought it sounded better with Mizuna in the title) Feel free to substitute the sausage with cooked mushrooms.
1 large onion, cut into ¼ inch slices
1 tbl sp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
2/3 cup chicken broth
½ lb-1 lb of your choice of sausage, mostly cooked- a little pink is fine,
½ cup roasted peppers, cut into bite-size pieces
1 bag of Stir-fry mix, leaves chopped into 2 inch pieces, stems diced into ½ pieces
¼ cup chopped fresh basil
1 pint cherry tomatoes, washed and halved
12 oz medium bow tie pasta
¼ shredded Parmesan cheese or Manchego
½ tsp. freshly cracked pepper

1. In a large skillet cook onion in oil until tender. Stir in garlic, broth, sausage, roasted peppers. Bring to a boil, reduce heat to simmer. Add greens; cook 1 to 2 minutes or until greens are wilted. Remove from heat.
2. Meanwhile, cook pasta according to package directions. Toss pasta with sausage mixture, basil, cherry tomatoes,cheese, and black pepper.

May photos

Pigs enjoying a compost pile
mmmm grass!
The tomatoes and peppers are in the ground!
Marie waters the cucumbers
The chickens and the noble guardian beast

The month of May

Happy May Day from Bluebird Farm! While the spring solstice is an important marker of the end of winter, May 1st (or thereabouts, calendars have changed so many times) has been celebrated as the true beginning of the warm growing season. The weather this spring chose not to break with tradition and celebrated May Day with our first night that did not drop below 70 followed by our first truly hot and sticky day with fireflies flashing in the darkness of the evening.

Of course we didn’t have to wait for the warm weather to begin growing food at Bluebird Farm. As many of you are aware of by now we have been harvesting lettuce, salad mix, spinach, kale, and radishes for several weeks now. The warm weather has also helped many of the crops that take a little longer, like broccoli and cabbage, put on new growth. Our hard work is displaying itself as the garden fills up with luscious shades of green.
In the vegetable field-William recording the planting dates for carrots
Unfortunately, not all of the green growing in the garden is delicious fresh vegetables. Garden beds are perfect weed habitat. Most plants we typically call weeds are annuals that are very good at rapidly colonizing bare ground. In a natural setting they provide a valuable ecosystem service, preventing erosion and holding nutrients. As they die and decay other plants are able to grow. Eventually another disturbance occurs and the cycle continues. From a weeds’ eye view a garden is a freshly disturbed area perfect to move in to. Many vegetable crops are in fact highly bred versions of weeds. However, as we selected over the centuries for high yields and good taste we sacrificed some of the original weedy tenacity. So vegetables need a little (sometimes more than a little) help from us to compete with their weed cousins.
Cover Crop flowers- We plant a mix of cover crops to improve the condition of the soil and prevent weeds from sprouting up after vegetables are harvested

On the animal side of the farm we have been busy trying as hard as we can to grow grass without much help from spring showers. Grass is our most basic resource for our animals. Our grass management has two main components-grazing and fertilizing. We are using sheep and Misty, the horse, in a rotational grazing system to improve our pastures and produce quality, healthy, grass-finished meat at the same time (more on that next). As any of you who have mowed your lawn know grass grows extremely quickly after being mowed. Well, sheep do just about the same thing as a mower. After the sheep have mowed an area some of the grass roots die back leaving behind organic matter. Next the grass begins regrowing, drawing in CO2 from the air, water from rain and using energy from the sun to create more grass. Then, just as the grass growth begins to slow down, we mow again with the sheep. In between mowings we use the chickens to apply fertilizer (chicken manure). Over time this will improve the fertility and organic matter of our soil allowing us to grow more grass and more food.
The flock grazing happily

More grass means more grass finished meat. Grass finished means animals that eat only grass from birth to butcher. Keep in mind this is only possible with ruminants and other strict herbivores (sheep, cattle, goats, rabbits. Pigs and chickens are omnivores and rely on insects and grains to lead a healthy life). We are beginning our grass finished sheep enterprise this year. The emphasis on grass finished is so important because of the health benefits of the meat. When sheep (or cattle) eat strictly grass their meat is lower in fat than grain finished meat. Additionally, the fat that is present is lower in cholesterol, has a correct ratio of omega-3 (important for brain development) to omega-6 (not particularly healthy) fatty acids, and is high in Conjugated Linoleic acids CLAs (an important anti-cancer agent). None of these benefits are fully present in ruminant livestock fed grain.

Even if the animal being fed grain has access to pasture the meat will not be as healthy. You can think of it sort of like two people, both with access to excellent exercise programs. The first eats vegetables, brown rice, beans, small amounts of meat, and no deserts. The second eats the same diet, but snacks all the time on candy and cake. Who will be healthier? In the animal’s case the pasture is like the healthy diet and exercise while the grain is like feeding them giant desserts.

So May is a great month for growing food on the farm. And for you it is a great month because you can find our food near you! Farmers markets all over the region are opening up for the year. You can find us at the

Hickory Downtown Farmers Market Wednesdays 12-5:30 pm, April 28th- October 30, 2010


Morganton Downtown Farmers Market Saturdays 8 am -noon, May 8th-October
Located at 300 Beach St. in downtown Morganton, behind Geppeto's
Look for the Farmers Market sign on Green St.

Conover Farmers Market Saturdays 8-12:30, April 24th- October.

See you there!
William and Marie

Beautiful garden

More great photographs from our neighbor Leann. She captures the early morning so well!


Some of the lettuce that's in season at the farm, ready to harvest for markets this week.



Meat chickens eating grass, peas, and vetch in the pasture.

Here's Petunia doing her day job, protecting young meat chickens. Most mornings she comings running up to the meat chickens when we feed them, because they squawk so much. She gets very disturbed when her chickens make a lot of noise. In the evenings, she goes for another romp and later she wanders up to the sheep fence for her night job.


Here are the pigs clearing brush and stumps in a paddock. We cut out the overgrown trees around the pastures for firewood and the pigs love digging out around the roots; eating pieces of root and leaves.
They takes lots of breaks from digging. Pigs are always the last animals sleeping in the morning!

Greenhouse update

Yesterday we planted out first seeds! three kinds of Cabbage, two. types of broccoli and kale, and three varieties of lettuce. Oh, I almost forgot the spinach. Its amazing what a little change in the weather can do. A week ago I was in the greenhouse in my winter gear building shelves.



Yesterday I was wearing a t-shirt and the possibility of vegetables growing seemed more likely than it has in months.



This year we are growing our vegetables in soil blocks instead of trays. It is a technique that uses a little hand operated press to extrude blocks of potting soil. It takes a little practice to figure out how to get consistent blocks. But once we worked it our filling a tray with blocks doesn't take much longer than filler a regular cell tray with soil. Then benefit for the vegetable seedling is that the blocks allow more soil volume to fit in the same area. More soil volume means more root volume which mean stronger and more vigorous transplants.



Soil blocks also allow us to use less plastic. When we transplant we simply lift the plant and its soil block out of the tray and plant. There is no fighting the cell to release the root bound plant. We look forward to learning more about soil blocks this season as we go through the cycle of seed, grow, and transplant.

Seed ordering

Rain in 24 hours: 3.5 inches
Outside work done: 1 very wet hour

The best place to be was inside, warm and dry. We have been working away at our seed order for 2010. A seed order might sound like a simple event, and for a home garden it mostly is. With a backyard or community garden plot physical space limits your ability to go wild with vegetable varieties. But on a farm scale, a seed order is a different beast. And unfortunately, the most fun part is the easiest.

It is wonderful to receive seed catalogs this time of year and ogle at all the bright colors and descriptions of flavors. Choosing appealing varieties is a fun game of finding beautiful looking vegetables with good flavor that are adapted to your growing region.

But, then the work sets in. We can't simple order a packet of each thing, then on the recommended planting date, go toss the seeds in the field. More than likely we would get nothing, and what we did get would come all at once and in all the wrong quantities. So the past few days more farming has taken place on the computer than in the field.

The spreadsheets must be cultivated!

I have been studiously entering planting dates, days to maturity, spacing, and a host of other information related to vegetable culture. Each of the 101 vegetable varieties we have selected is different. And don't forget about the herbs and flowers! The results of the computer work will be a well-planned planting and harvest calender. This calender will allow us to smoothly (at least in theory) go through the spring planting varieties and successions to ensure a bounty of wonderful food all season long.

As our eyes begin to cross from looking at the screen too long we dream of the colorful, good smelling, tasty, fresh food that awaits us all. We look forward to sharing!