Heading Into Winter

This season is bringing some much-needed calm to the farm after an intense and productive summer. With the help of two dozen volunteers from the N.C. State Poultry Science Club last weekend, almost all of our aisles and beds are mulched, and our row cover is set up so that we can trap the soil heat overnight to protect crops from sub-freezing temperatures. Their contribution was just what we needed to get everything in place before Sunday night's freeze.

And to catch you up on the recent harvests: We donated 1,200 lbs. of sweet potatoes! Some of the harvest was lost to little rodents, but the severely damaged tubers went home with Mark, one of the Bland Landscaping crew members, for the hogs he's raising. (The oinkers quite appreciated the treats, he tells me.)

We grew Beauregard (this regional stand-by was the most productive), Georgia Jet, Vardaman, Hernandez and Centennial varieties. Thanks to all the volunteers who ripped away vines and dug out the treasure.

Unfortunately, we had to harvest the collard greens as whole plants instead of harvesting bunches of leaves throughout the winter.

After noticing a yellowing and mottling of the outer leaves of our cabbage, collards and other cole crops, we submitted a plant sample to NCSU's Plant Disease and Insect Clinic (one of the school's many amazing resources) for identification. The bad news was that our transplants had arrived infected with a black rot of crucifers, a vascular disease for which there is no treatment. Heeding the pathologist's advice, we decided to harvest the 400 row feet of collards while they were still ahead of the disease.

As you can see from Mark's "Gorton's Fisherman" suit (he's from Maine - we can't help it), this fall has been rainy! Late September/early October brought two straight weeks of rain.

The timing could've been better. That period is important for getting rapid growth on the plants before the cold hits, and our beets and carrots were seeded toward the end of the planting window as it was. We had some rotting of beet seedlings, but with our well-draining soil, we had relatively little damage all around.

When the sun returned, the chickens couldn't get enough of it (and neither could we humans). They spent half the day just catching some rays.

As for our other harvests, the cauliflower and broccoli stayed ahead of the black rot.

We're hoping the cabbage will head up soon. The plants are stunted from the disease, but it's looking like we'll have some beautiful and nutritious, albeit miniature, cabbage heads.

In other fall news, it's the time of year when we just have to hope for the best for the honeybees. They've collected the nectar and pollen that hopefully will fuel them through the cold months. (We did not harvest any honey this first year.) We combined our two hives because we weren't confident about the smaller colony's ability to get through a possibly harsh winter. The cluster of bees may have been able to stay warm enough, but instead of risk it, we went for one large mass of bees. We plan on splitting the colony in the spring if it thrives.

Here are some shots from inside the hives this summer:

In the last picture you can see that the stronger colony's queen is excellent, as she missed very few cells while laying eggs. Before combining the hives, we had to kill the queen from the smaller colony so that that its bees would adopt the strong queen as their own without the queens fighting to the death.

Here's hoping that this winter will be good to our bees - and our carrots, beets, turnip greens and garlic.