Small sweet potatoes

   Our normal way to cook sweet potatoes is to bake them directly on the oven racks.  The skin blisters just enough for easy peeling. 
  But this doesn't work so well for the smallest of the sweet potatoes; it is tricky to keep them from falling through the racks and their small size makes it hard not to overbake them. 
  So our favorite way to enjoy baby sweet potatoes is coat them with butter and salt and put them on a baking tray to roast.  We then eat them, skin and all.

CSA share

Sweet potatoes, Chinese cabbage, turnips, scallions, snacking peppers, peppers, carrots, lettuce mix

 

Yacons

  What can you eat raw that's crunchy and sweet mid-winter?  Yacons.  

  A friend gave us starts to these South American tubers years ago and they've been a family favorite since. 
  We mostly eat the yacons raw, simply peeled and sliced.  They are a great snack.  We've also grate them onto salads or combine them with grated carrots and a sweet salad dressing.
  They are also a low maintenance crop.  After the last chance of frost in late spring, we roll out a round bale of mulch hay over the length of the row we are going to plant into, creating a thick weed free and moisture holding layer.  We then set the transplants 3 ft. apart.  Then we simply let them grow. 
  By fall they have grown to large bushes, about 4 feet tall and touching each other.  We let them frost a few times then dig them.  Unlike digging potatoes, you need to be very careful as the tubers are brittle.  We slice the ground in a circle around each plant then lift out the plant.  The part just below the soil is the propagation part.  These we trim then store in slightly moistened sawdust in a building that doesn't freeze for the winter.  Come spring, we break the propagation part into pieces then start in pots in the cold frame.  Underneath the propagation part when digging, is the edible tubers.  Some are skinny as a finger.  Others are bigger than a hand.  We bring some into the house right away to cure for a couple weeks.  When the skin looks a bit wrinkly, they are ready to eat.  The others we store in the freeze free outbuilding and bring in the house to cure as needed.
   

Homegrown eating

 

CSA share

Chinese cabbage, multiplier onions, carrots, snow peas,
snacking peppers, TN Red sweet potatoes, Irish potatoes

 

Saving jalapeno seeds

 

Shop with us

 PICK-UP AT THE FARM

  We welcome customers to pick up orders at the farm.  To find up what is available, sign up for our e-newsletter list.  We send out the newsletter with an updated farm goods list weekly from April through November and about monthly December through March.

STATESVILLE HOME DELIVERY

  If you live in Statesville, consider taking part in our home delivery program.  You can order the produce you want whatever weeks you want it and have it delivered to your house.  We do ask for a $150 yearly commitment to take part.  You can find out more about it here.  

  We also occasionally plan meetups in Statesville, often at the farmers market parking lot.  You simply e-mail us your order ahead of time and we'll meet you at the designated day and time.  We announce these opportunities in our e-newsletter.

JOIN OUR CSA

  If you're ready to commit to regularly getting produce from us, consider joining our CSA.  You will receive an assortment of the best we have to offer each week from roughly early May until late October.  We offer Tuesday CSA shares for pick-up at the farm, and you can read more about it here.  We deliver CSA shares Saturdays to Statesville as part of the home delivery program, and you can read more about it here.

CSA Share

green onions, seminole pumpkin, lettuce mix, che fruit,
 chestnuts, yellow squash, snacking peppers, kale

Sweet potatoes

   Sweet potatoes drying in the sun after getting washed.

About us

 We're a small family farm trying to pursue thorough independence from the mass-produced food system.  We mainly sell vegetables, but we also sell some fruits, cut flowers, specialty crops like peanuts, eggs, shitake mushrooms, an occasional beef... 
  We grow almost everything we as a family eat, and we try to offer as many of those food groups as we can to our CSA members.
  We're inclined to low-tech, homegrown ways of farming, so, for example, we save a majority of the seeds we plant and avoid a lot of plastics (like for mulch, coverings, etc.) We don't ever use any synthetic fertilizers, herbicides, or other pesticides. We raise our animals with exceptional access to natural forages and without any pharmaceuticals, artificial stimulants, or genetically modified feeds. 
  Our desire is to provide affordable, homegrown food for your everyday table.
  Here is a photo tour of our farm.

Contact us

  We'd love to hear from you.  Please call or e-mail us with any questions.  We'd also be glad to get you on our e-mail list.  You can find our contact information on our Local Harvest Listing.  Just click the link below.

 Milk and Honey Farm - LocalHarvest

Herb Highlight: Oregano

 The oregano plants are big and healthy right now, so enjoy this herb fresh right now and get extra to dry for use throughout the year.  It can be dried in the dehydrator or hung in small bunches to air dry. 

  A quick story about our journey with oregano.  We've been growing oregano for years and enjoyed it but always thought our oregano didn't have a very strong flavor.  So we were curious when, a few years ago, we read in the Southern Exposure seed catalog the description of their oregano: "the flavorful Greek Oregano, not the flavorless oregano commonly available."  So we bought some seed and it grew well.  And in fact, this oregano had quite a bit stronger flavor.  Another interesting difference was it bloomed white while the other blooms pink.  In any case, we were excited and ready to make a complete switch to the new variety when we noticed something: the new variety was starting to suffer with some mildew diseases while our original variety was still going strong without any issues.  The plants didn't die completely but couldn't be harvested from.  So we kept both varieties to over winter.  And again the next year, they both came on strong, but our original far outlasted the new one that again got disease.  So we're continuing to grow both varieties of oregano, but the one because we like it better this time of year when we could grow either, and the other in order to extend the season after the variety we have now is done.

From the kitchen: baked sweet potatoes

  You can microwave a sweet potato, but it will taste a lot better if you bake it.  That's what a friend told us after we served him our baked sweet potatoes for dinner, and sent him home with some extra baked ones to eat later.
  I have multiple sweet potato cookbooks from the library right now, and after I try a few recipes from them, I'm pretty sure I'll hear what I always hear when I try a new sweet potato dish, "You can make that if you want, but they taste better if you just bake them."  Of course, I'm not including slicing potatoes into chips and deep frying them in lard.  And sweet potato pies are popular, too.  And everyone likes sweet potato biscuits every couple weeks, but our family can eat simple baked sweet potatoes multiple times per week and not grow tired, especially by rotating through the different varieties with all the different tastes, textures and colors.
  It doesn't seem quite right that such an easy preparation can be so good.  Just put the washed sweet potatoes directly on the oven rack and bake at 425 for about an hour.  That's it.

The Statesville Home Delivery Plan

DELIVERY AREA  Our regular delivery area is the part of Statesville west of I-77, south of I-40, and north of Hwy 70.  Other areas, particularly if they're very close to the regular delivery area or between our farm and Stateville might also be options, so if you'd be interested in the home deliveries but don't live in our regular delivery area, please ask.  Picking up your orders at someone else's home that does live in our delivery area is also an option if you don't live in our delivery area yourself.  Picking up at our farm is also always an option (in which case none of the following details apply -- you can just pay for whatever you get when you get it.) Sometime this year we may also add a Statesville drop-off point where customers could meet us at a particular time, but for right now we're just leaving orders at customers' homes.

PAYMENTS  Home delivery customers maintain a balance with us to pay for orders.  To get started, we ask that you send us a check for $150 and plan to spend at least that much over the course of the next 12 months.  The first $150 is non-refundable.  We ask that subsequent payments be in increments of $100 or more.  Anything you add to your credit after the initial $150 is fully refundable.

DELIVERY FREQUENCY  We'll be making home deliveries year round, with more or less frequency depending on the time of year.  The weekly delivery season will start around late April/beginning of May and continue through most of November.  After that, we'll gradually transition to approximately monthly deliveries and then back to weekly deliveries again the following growing season.  During the weekly drop-off season, drop-offs will almost always be on Saturday mornings.  There will be no set day for drop-offs over the course of the rest of the year.  The day and time will be given in the delivery announcement e-mail.

ORDERING We'll send out a delivery announcement e-mail 2-3 days before our intended drop-off.  We'll typically leave a 24 hour window for you to place your orders.   Simply e-mail us a list of the items and amount of each item you would like.  You can order whichever weeks you want and skip whichever weeks you want.

SHORTAGES  Most of what we have to sell will be practically limited to one degree or another, and we expect demand will randomly vary a lot from week to week, so there will surely be weeks when we don't have enough to fill all the orders we receive of some items.  In that case, we'll give priority to the customers that are the most regular in ordering.  And sometimes we won't be able to harvest any at all of things we thought we were going to be able to harvest when we sent out our e-mail newsletter ahead of time.  If we don't have enough to fill your order, we'll short you whatever we have to, and, of course, deduct from your balance only whatever we actually deliver.

ITEMS MARKED "CSA ONLY" If you see items on the list marked "CSA only" that means we expect we may not have any of that item left after packing CSA shares.  Please request these items anyway if you'd like them.  There's always a chance we'll have to short you on an item, so if an item is marked "CSA only" that just means the odds are greater that we'll have to short you, but it doesn't mean we won't have it or that you're not allowed to order it.  About half of the time when non-CSA members have ordered "CSA only" items we have been able to fill those orders.

DROP-OFF FEES  There is no drop-off fee for orders of $20 or more. For orders less than $20, we charge 25c for every dollar less than $20 (so there will be a 25c drop-off fee for a $19 order, 50c for an $18 order, 75c for a $17 order, $1 for a $16 order... $2 for a $12 order... $3 for an $8 order... $4 for a $4 order... $4.75 for a $1 order).
  Drop-off fees will apply regardless of whether we're delivering to your house or whether you're picking up at someone else's house, but if the sum of the orders to a particular house exceeds $20, then we'll reduce the drop-off fee for each order to that house by an extra dollar.
  If we don't have enough of an item to fill your order and we have to short you, we'll nonetheless count that item toward your order total for calculating your drop-off fee (unless it's a "CSA only"/"probably CSA only" item and you're not a CSA member.)

RECEIPTS AND SUPPLEMENTAL PAYMENTS  We'll e-mail you a receipt of the credit you used that day with a running tab of your remaining credit.  This should help you determine when you need to add to your credit.  If you want to add to your credit, you can leave a check for us to pick up any week, but please alert us ahead of time to look for it.

RETURNING ITEMS AND REUSABLE BAGS We very much appreciate you saving food grade plastic and paper bags for us (and any other reusable containers that you receive from us).  You can just leave these on your porch and we'll pick them up.  We're also glad to pack your order in your reusable bags.  To get started, just give us at least two bags with your name written on them.  Then each week, leave your empty bag out for us to use the next week.

TO SIGN UP Call us with any questions: 704-546-5074  Then make sure we have your phone number, home address, and e-mail address, and contact us about making your initial payment.  Then watch for our delivery announcement e-mails and order whenever you like.

Seminoles

   Seminoles taste great, keep well, and are productive in the garden.   The pulp can be eaten as a simple side dish or used in baked goods.  The seeds roast up easily for salty snacks.  They are pretty, both before and after cooking.  In fact, in almost every way, seminoles are an outstanding winter squash.

Sign-up for our e-newsletter

 Want to know what we have available for pick-up at the farm or to find out about drop-offs in Statesville?  We send out a regular e-mail to keep you up to date.  Sign-up by contacting us through our Local Harvest account.  Let us know your e-mail address and approximate location.

Local citrus

  "Is that a citrus tree?"
  Until we finally harvest the last of the fruit sometime in December or January, the evergreen "bush" laden with orange balls is hard to miss.  Visitors pulling up our driveway regularly point toward our front porch and ask.  
  It is a citrus, in fact, one called a satsuma, familiar to lots of casual backyard fruit growers in Louisiana and elsewhere near the Gulf Coast.  They are very similar to clementines/cuties, though a bit larger.  They're very easy to peel ("zipper skinned"), seedless, and a nice fresh eating fruit.

  This is a 10-year-old tree, planted against our south facing rock porch.  Harvests have gotten bigger as the tree has grown, of course, but the last few years we've had around 150-300 fruits each year.

  We're a bit too cold for satsumas, which means our satsuma needs to be kept warm when temperatures fall.  We're not sure how much cold the fruit can take so we cover it more often until we've harvested all the fruit, but the tree itself can survive temperatures in the mid-teens, so after the last of the fruit is harvested we only cover it any time the nighttime forecast shows any chance of teens or colder.  The coldest night we've had since we planted it it got down to right around 0 degrees.  We keep some water buckets next to the tree with the idea that they'll provide a temperature buffer as they gradually freeze, but we don't use any supplemental heat.  The blankets come off most days so it can get sunlight, but we're not sure how necessary that is.

It is really amazing to see the branches full of fruit.  The other great thing about the tree is the smell of the blossoms.

Both the interior and the exterior of the fruit are precious.  We always zest them before we eat them and then mostly let the zest dry out on a plate for later use.  We use the zest for ricotta pies, donuts, salad dressing... 

Until just a couple days ago (mid-January) we were just harvesting the fruits as we ate them, but with multiple nights in the forecast with lows in the teens we decided to go ahead and harvest the rest of them.  The eight of us have eaten one or two per person almost every day since about the beginning of December, and we filled a couple small tubs with our final harvest.  We're hoping we've figured out a way to keep them in cold storage for a few more weeks without drying out too much.  Then the only fresh fruit we'll have to eat until spring will be fuzzy (regular) kiwis (which have kept incredibly well for us in cold storage) until strawberries start to ripen in late April or early May.

Some eggs

  The hens determine what we have for breakfast.  Slowly moving to the "some eggs" options.

Sweet, sweet winter carrots

   Winter carrots are the best.  We grow both a spring crop and a winter harvested crop of carrots.  And by far, the winter carrots are sweeter.  They are sweeter than you thought a carrot could be.  We seed them in mid to late August.  By November, some of them have sized up enough to pull up.  But they keep so well in the ground, we're not in a hurry to get them out.  During a really cold winter spell, we cover them with hay mulch.  But for the most part we enjoy them fresh dug through late February at which point we try to have them all dug.  We then store them in the fridge where they continue to keep very well.

Threshing dry beans and peas

  A major food in our diet is dry beans and peas.  We try to grow a variety of both beans and peas to keep things interesting.  During the summer, as these crops dry down on the vine, we collect the dried pods into paper bags.  We then hang these bags in an outbuilding from wires to finish drying and to deal with them when we have time later.
  Now is that time.  Winter is when we catch up on threshing all of the beans/peas and seed crops.
 

  If we need to keep a variety pure, like for seed, we'll thresh the bean/pea in a pillow case hitting it with a baseball bat to insure there is no contamination of another variety.  But for eating beans/peas, our electric sheller makes quick work of the job.  From the picture you can see there is a drum within a box.  In the drum are flails that rotate.  The peas are knocked out of the pods and fall into the drawer below.

The first step is to pour about a quarter bushel of pea pods into the sheller.  Much more and the drum is too crowded to thresh well.

Then the lid of the drum is put on.  As you can see, the drum is covered in hardware cloth.  Off set from this about a half inc is sheet metal.  This allows the peas to roll out without the pods coming out too.  Then there are three gaps in the sheet metal from which the peas can fall out into the drawer below as it rotates.

Finally, the box lid is put on.  We made the lid out of some scrap lumber lying around (thus the Turkish writing) after we realized some of the peas were flying out.  It usually only takes a couple minutes of running the sheller to get the peas good and threshed out.

Once it is finished running, we pull the drawer out.  There are some hulls, but it is mostly peas.  We dump this into a bin for later winnowing.

The next step is to take the box lid off and then the drum lid.  Then just the box lid is put back on and we run it a minute.  With that large gap in the drum, all the hulls are dumped into the drawer, leaving the drum empty and ready for the next peas to thresh.

The hulls get thrown to the chickens to find any remaining peas.  The bin of peas is then ready to winnow.  We simply set up a large fan and dump the peas back and forth in front of it. 

They are quite clean of hulls and chaff at this point, but will need one final going over to pick out any bad peas before they are ready for the pot.

Finally, it is time to cook them up.  These here are Big Boy Brown Eyes.

Pick-up at the farm

  We welcome customers to pick up orders at the farm.  To find up what is available, sign up for our e-newsletter list.  We send the newsletter with an updated farm goods list out weekly from April through November and about monthly December through March.