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Pumpkins: take your pick in white, green, blue, orange, or warty at the Hudson’s

October 10, 2023October 10, 2023gotofarms Leave a comment

*Hudson grandchildren Aria and Elora enjoy working with the different pumpkins on their farm* (photo by Donna Hudson )

No, these pumpkins didn’t get bleached in the wash. They are new hybrids that are spinning off from the traditional orange jack-o’-lanterns. These are grown by Michael and Donna Hudson on their farm in Virgilina, Virginia and sold at 1023 Foster Lane, South Boston, Virginia. White ones, Donna says, are easy to decorate. You can just paint them.

How about these warty specimen? The bumps come from deposits of sugar.

For a more elegant look, the blue-green Cinderella pumpkin is a favorite for October weddings. According to Martha Stewart, the Cinderella or Rouge Vif d’Estampe, was popular in French markets in the 1880s. Burpee introduced these beautiful pumpkins to the United States in 1880, but they didn’t catch on then. But my nieces,cousin and nephews who married in October all highlighted their buffets with these gem-like pumpkins that they got from the Hudson’s.

*These beautifully rounded pumpkins offer a range of color* *and are great for decoration. They are not as good for carving.* (photo by Donna Hudson )

The old-fashioned Jack-O’-Lantern remains the favorite of most people, Donna says. (Read more about the legends of Halloween and Stingy Jack below.)

You might not notice, with all the big fat pumpkins out on farm stands and grocery stores, but this wasn’t a good year for pumpkins for Michael and Donna.

“We probably got 1/3 of a crop. We got five inches of rain and when we planted the next ten acres, there was another hard rain.

“When that happens seeds get washed away and the little plants drown,” says Donna, who is not deterred by this bad season. “Because a good year is a good year.” And 2022 was a good year.

“Last year we had pumpkins out the wazoo,” she says.

The flow of pumpkins from their farm goes steadily. They sells bins to people who run seasonal stands in cities and towns within a 100-mile radius of their farm, which includes Hillridge Farm in Youngsville,North Carolina, as well as their home yard outside of South Boston, a small city 125 miles southwest of Richmond. Even though the pretty blue pumpkins — the Cinderellas–were washed away this year, the Hudsons bought a transfer truck and bought a load for their customers. “Our customer expect them,” says Donna.

And then there was Covid, another bad year. They grew a perfect crop of what they call “field trip” pumpkins, which are just the size for children to take home after field trips to farms. They had to plow most of them under. “In the fall, there were no field trips,” notes Donna, who has the confidence and good humor of a school teacher, her other day job.

This year the sales of the little pumpkins are booming, with names like Baby Boo and Sweetie Pie.

With her years of experience of picking and assessing thousands of pumpkins from years of producing them, Donna offers some tips on selecting the perfect pumpkin for carving:

Look for a heavy pumpkin; that means it’s solid inside. “If it’s watery inside, it’s not going to last.”
Select one with a solid stem. And never pick up by the stem.
Avoid pumpkins with any soft spots or slices. “Once it starts to rot, it smells terrible. If we see ’em with a soft spot, we get ’em before they rot and feed ’em to the cows.”
Check out new varieties.
If the weather is hot, store in a cool place.With proper care and selection, your pumpkin should last until Christmas.

As for toasting the seeds and making pie of the meat, she advises a pumpkin bred for that purpose, called a pie pumpkin.

AllRecipes has over 130 pumpkin pie recipes to choose from. Enjoy!

Where to find them: The Hudson’s roadside stand, at 1023 Foster Lane, South Boston, Virginia, is open Tuesday-Friday, 1 until dark and Saturdays 9 a.m.-dark. You can find mums, gourds, hay bales, sweet potatoes and pumpkins.

Why do we use pumpkins at halloween? Why is halloween supposed to be scary?

Halloween has its origins in a truly scary Irish myth, starring a menacing character named Stingy Jack. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, Jack didn’t make it to heaven when he died and wandered around the Irish countryside as a lost soul, inspiring terror and mischief. The Irish carved demonic faces in turnips to scare him away.

When the Irish immigrants moved to the United States, they carved pumpkins, which were more common and bigger for making a scary face. So you have Jack of the lantern.

The legend of Halloween adds a layer of horror to the Jack-o’-lantern story. Halloween,based on a Celtic myth, marks the end of summer. According to the legend, souls of the dead who passed away in the last year, travel back to the human world. And other lost souls from other times return to their homes. Now, these spirits are not all-bad. But you never know. . .

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Cole Brothers: from fish to blackberries

August 14, 2023August 16, 2023gotofarms Leave a comment

They have raised bumper crops of blackberries, but this year might be their last

The Cole boys had been out at sea, living and fishing for a living on their boats, when they decided to cast their fate back home in the red clay of Halifax County in a blackberry patch–a huge, cultivated blackberry patch with berries the size of golf balls. Their father was getting ready to retire from his apple orchard business. “He told us he heard from the grocery stores that blackberries could bring a pretty high dollar,” say Jeff Cole, taking a brief break from bringing berries in from the fields, established now for over 30 years.

*Jeff and Joey Cole with Bailey, taking a brief break in the middle of blackberry harvest*

“We could see the fishing industry was getting crowded. Instead of buying boats, we took the proceeds and invested it in berries. We had lived on the boats. We didn’t have homes. . . And now we were home,” Jeff explains.

They began in 1986 with an acre of blackberries and an acre of raspberries in the farming community of Vernon Hill. Demand for fresh local produce was growing. They struck deals with grocery giants, Richfood and Ukrops, bringing in the berries as they ripened. Local. Local. was their calling card. Dealing with some other chain grocery stores posed some problems because they could not always predict when the berries would ripen. “They want to know way in advance, and we couldn’t always make that call,” says Jeff.

The fresh berries sold themselves: Three times as big as the little wild ones, and twice as sweet, without the occasional hard bits. Pretty soon the Cole brothers one acre grew to 15 acres, mostly blackberries.

From our house in Halifax, we would drive up three miles to their farm, a simple white building where they kept produce refrigerated until they could deliver it to a market, at a cool 31 to 34 degrees. My mother made blackberry dumplings, which remains my favorite dessert. Bunched and baked in a packet of dough, the juices would bubble out in sweet little rivulets running in the cracks and cervices of the pastry (See my mother’s recipe at the bottom.) Or you could just mush them up in cream, which turned the most beautiful deep blue purple. Or you could eat them fresh from the basket.

Pretty soon, as the word spread of these luscious giant berries, the Cole brothers were growing trillions of blackberries on 15 acres and selling them to grocery stores and farmers markets directly and through a middleman.

As the Cole brothers moved from fish to berries, they confronted a plethora of issues. They fought all varieties of insects, recruited pickers in a region that is losing population, and coped with devastating weather. In 2016, the temperature in April dropped to 25-26 degrees. They lost the whole crop, $300,000 without insurance to cushion the blow. And now they are thinking they are ready to retire.

The brothers pride themselves on their service, carrying the berries to market on the same day that they are picked and keeping them at a cool 32 degrees. They are transported from the field to the refrigerated house where workers sort and put them in plastic containers until Joey moves them. Some go to a Richmond marketer who delivers them to five different farmers markets in Virginia. Most end up in Jessup or Northern Virginia.

“We are trying to provide our customers with a service. Say they order 750 count. We can get the order through that day. That’s a service. That California can’t do,” explains Joey. Competing with Mexico prices adds to the competition. “When they aren’t there, the market is red hot.”

The pests are a worry at every stage. Going without any pesticide at all would result in massive rotting or failure, Jeff says. The fruit fly, for example, hatches in the berry. Gray mold infects the blossom, June bugs and Japanese beetles add to the enemy list, not to mention gray rust and leaf rust.

They use a modified shift trellis system for support that keeps the berries off the ground and allows them to ripen layer by layer for more precise picking and avoid pests that devour the ripe berries.

*The berries ripen in stages on the trellis system.*

The brothers have figured out pest control but seasonal labor is more unpredictable. They have some faithful skilled pickers like Vanessa Venable, who has worked at the Cole Brothers for 32 years. But half the labor pool they relied on has died and the younger generation which relied on farming has moved away. The brothers would like to use migrant labor, but they do not have housing.

The crew of pickers today will work from 6:30-11:30 a.m. They will receive from $12 an hour or $5 a flat. Once a girl picked 54 flats in one day, which netted her over $200 for a morning’s work. The average is 30 trays or $150. Vanessa gently tugs the berry which drops into her palm and then into a flat. Without a nod to the heat, she glides from bush to bush, selecting the black berries and leaving the red to ripen.

*Vanessa has the knack of berry picking*

“You’ve got to go fast without damaging the fruit,” explains Jeff.

It has become more difficult to deliver the freshest and best quality to the markets. Joey will return from an overnight run to Richmond for farmers markets, while Jeff tends to the fields. Up since 4 a.m., he has rounded up about 20 pickers who will pull the berries in the morning. About 80 percent show up. The unpredictability of the workers, coupled with the decrease in laborers, makes for stress.

“We’re too small to be big and too big to be small,” says Joey.

They have scaled back from 15 acres down to four and say this is their last harvest. They are ready to sell the farm.

The price of berries fails to keep up with the increases in inflation. “We can’t continue to do at the highest level.We’re burning the candle at both ends,” explains Jeff. “I tell you, the world is pushing the small guy out.

“I’m grateful for what’s taken place,” he says. It’s a good life being self-employed, We’d like a few more dollars per flat. . . But our season’s over.”

*Bailey greets drive-up customers who make up a small fraction of the business*

RECIPE for Blackberry Dumplings (makes 6)

From my mother Vin Edmunds (Lavinia)

For the pastry:

2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter or lard (1 stick)

4 TB water

1 TB sugar

1/2 cup blackberries per dumpling

(Shortcut–use Pepperidge Farms puff pastry for the dough)

Mix flour, sugar, salt, butter, then add water gradually. Make pastry. Gather dough into one ball. Roll out to about 1/4 inch thick. Divide into about six sections. In the middle of each section, add 1/2 to 3/4 cup berries, 1/2 pat butter, 3/4 TB sugar. Gather the dough at the top and twist together at the top. Place in greased cookie sheet or pan. Bake at 450 for ten minutes. Reduce heat and bake another 30 minutes until brown. Serve with ice cream or whipped cream.

Searching for an old-fashioned diner

July 27, 2023July 28, 2023gotofarms 3 Comments

*Old 360 Diner attracts the sheriffs department, EMT workers and locals for lunch.*

Roaming around my home-country in Halifax County, Virginia, this summer, I have been looking for a good old-fashioned diner that serves good- old-fashioned food. I only had to drive about a mile and half to the Old 360 Mountain Road Diner, on the curvy two-lane Route 360 to Danville. There is no MacDonalds or Burger King on this road–only a deserted gas station on the left just before the parking lot, full of trucks, ambulances, jeeps and sedans.

Two sheriff’s cars were parked right in front. In Baltimore, this might have been a sign to quickly move to the next Burger King, but here the sheriff, police, Blacks and Whites, and workers are regulars, creating a friendly buzz of conversation. I settled at the counter beside Joy, an emergency worker, and assessed the menu. Meat loaf was the first choice but it already had sold out. So I settled on chicken fingers plate with two sides–green beans and macaroni–and sweet tea ($10.99).

By the time I received my plate,heaping with food, Joy and I were friends. She had told me her life story. She’s from Ringgold, up the road, and is on the emergency team that eats here regularly. I learned about her job, her children, her divorce and the calls for emergency around the area. Diabetes and heart attack predominate as the major calls for help. No joke, given the rich food I’m about to eat. I’m indulging but you can also eat your fill of vegetables, from okra to butter beans.

But who wants to skimp when you get these amazing chicken fingers?

Each of the four chicken fingers was as big as a drumstick. They were succulent, hot and full of chicken flavor, compared to fast food chicken fingers that taste like paper.

*The chicken fingers plate with sides, iced tea, homemade ranch dressing and corn muffin was good for two meals.* *Just what I was looking for: great local fresh food and friendly conversation. And the price, $10.99, was right*.

Barry, the owner, from behind the counter, told me he makes his own breadcrumbs. The genial host, with a broad face and grin, and sunburned complexion, won’t tell me what’s in the crusty skin, but I suspect it comes from the delicious cornbread muffins. He soaks the chicken breasts in buttermilk before he rolls them in bread crumbs and drops them in crackling hot oil.

*Barry, owner, manager and cook at Old 360 Mountain Road diner*

How do you prepare catfish? I asked Barry.

He uses pliers to peel away the tough skin and volunteered he could cook a fish for me if I put my catch on ice and bring it up to the restaurant within two days. I bragged about my catch from two days ago: a big black catfish that was a thrill to reel in.

But it didn’t look that appetizing. Its gills pulsating, on the ground, I could see part of its mouth was missing, probably from an earlier catch. We threw it back in the pond.

How many restaurants would cook your fish? BYOF.

I stored this info in my head as inspiration to try again to land one of the more savory catfish. Like many who live out in the country in these parts, Barry has a pond at his home and prefers crappie and blue gill and bass. You’ve got to fish the little ones out or they will take up space from the big ones, he advised.

About 2 p.m., closing time. No dinner is served here but it’s not necessary with the huge lunch I just ate. I asked for a breakfast menu that includes pancakes, sausage, country ham, bacon, eggs, and fresh buttermilk biscuits.

“Umm, that looks good,” I said. This could get to be a habit. My cousin James eats breakfast here everyday.

“You’ll be back tomorrow,” Barry replied.

Driving back from the Cole brothers berry farm (the next post coming up) the next morning, I stopped by for a biscuit. $1 grilled with butter and so good. I may be returning for lunch. I noticed the day’s desserts feature chocolate meringue pie, brown sugar pie and coconut pie ($3 a slice).

R-VA Tomatoes, all shapes and colors, reign in peak harvest in Hanover County, Virginia

July 12, 2023July 14, 2023gotofarms Leave a comment

How I became a tomato lover after decades of detesting the fruit

Hanover County, Va. — I have never liked tomatoes.

This is not a wise statement to say here in Hanover County, Virginia, when I was visiting the home of Master Tomato Growers David Hunsaker and Barbara Hollingsworth in the middle of peak harvest.

*Barbara Hollingsworth and David Hunsaker display the day’s tomato crop on the pool table (right) and in flats (left).*

I just don’t like the texture or acidity, I tell them.

“Maybe you didn’t have any good ones,” suggests David, as he offers me a Sun Gold cherry, the size of a golf ball. Tomatoes, in a mosaic of brilliant greens, reds, dark purples and yellow in all different shapes, just picked this morning, are spread out for sorting on a pool table in the couple’s basement.

Barbara sorts the cherry tomatoes for restaurant customers, ensuring each pint is full *of prime specimens. Blemishes are the mark of heirlooms*

I popped the tomato in my mouth—tarter than a plum, as juicy as an orange, and sweet as honey, unlike any tomato I have ever seen or tasted.

Today under the name Village Garden RVA, they grow over 325 varieties, as well as 100 types of chiles, using sustainable and organic practices. “We like to experiment. We look for old and obscure tomatoes,” David says. The heirlooms range from the hefty 3-pound Goatbag, in the shape of a goat’s udder, to the petite Sun Gold cherry. There’s the misshapen, dark purple Ukrainian, and the bright red Reisentraube, the hiking tomato that you can break easily into sections without dripping juice. The Oxheart, a seedless dense kind with 20 different variations, is their favorite.

“Diversity is the key, I mean it in every sense. We are a very accepting couple of people. We want to reinforce the diversity of nature. We want people to appreciate all the shapes and colors and tastes of these amazing fruit.”

David Hunsaker, Tomato Farmer

Tomato Paradise

Dating back to the 1800s, Hanover County, Virginia, has been known for its luscious tomatoes. In their one-acre plot, David and Barbara have created “a tomato paradise,” in the words of Food and Wine magazine. They’ve built up a following among Virginia chefs and foodies who love the complex, varied flavors which they can’t get in the typical supermarket. Heirlooms do not travel well in crates. They get smushed and mishandled, says David. Refrigeration, used to extend shelf life, robs the tomatoes of flavor and texture.

What makes the Hanover tomatoes so delicious?

“It’s the soil,” says David. A loamy mix with a touch of clay exists in Hanover County only on the east side of 95, along the Eastern Seaboard Fall Line that intersects with the Coastline. Their garden is situated on a slope, protected by a forest from frost. The climate is perfect, with cold nights and hot days and just the right amount of rain as opposed to more precipitation in the mountainous regions around Charlottesville.

*David heads down the slope with tomatoes, at that point in the land where the Eastern Coastline and Piedmont intersect*. *Their tomatoes flourish in the unique soil mix of Hanover County.*

When David retired from a career as a health care executive in 2004, he bought the ten acres of forested land next door to a horse farm, adjoining a suburban development in Mechanicsville–located a few miles west of Interstate 95 between Richmond and Washington. Growing up in a poor coal-mining community in southwest Virginia, he wanted to grow the heirloom tomatoes that sustained his family during hard times. He cleared a few acres and built a greenhouse for a small vegetable garden. When he met Barbara, who shared his love of farming, they began growing and selling 50 different varieties at local farmers’ markets in 2011.

Tomato heirloom boom

“After the market, we had all these tomatoes,” Barbara recalls. “We started going to restaurants in Richmond, taking them in the truck.” Most chefs were just starting to work in the afternoon. “They would come out to the truck and would say, what are you doing? Where did these come from?” They were sold. At one time, they made kimchi and bottled herbal blends to sell, but the tomato has taken priority. It has all morphed into a business and lifestyle as rewarding as it is delicious.

They select seeds from specialty catalogues and plant over 4,000 seedlings in tiny containers in February. The couple works every stage to the end of the harvest in August. “We’re it. We grow from seed. It’s very hard work,” David says. He adds, it is not a lucrative business, grossing no more than $30.000 a year; they are lucky to have savings.

“We are in love and love what we do,” David adds.

On my tour of the tomato garden, David and Barbara pick specimens in the first blush of ripeness to take to their customers in the afternoon. Beside the tomatoes, chili plants are flourishing in a geodesic dome, and a big banana tree shades a corner of the garden. While heirloom varieties are more subject to blight and disease, no bugs, rotting tomatoes, or significant weeds intrude on the neat rows.

*David and Barbara gather tomatoes that show a faint blush of color to ripen perfectly in the next few days*

Barbara hands me sweet tomatoes from the vines to try—a lovely peach tomato and a unique coin-sized fruit, covered in a gauzy husk—Aunt Molly’s ground cherry. I savor the sweet, tropical flavors of this tomatillo.

No wonder the top chefs and foodies are going wild over the rich, diverse tastes of heritage tomatoes. The demand has increased so much that they no longer make the rounds of farmers’ markets. Only Yellow Umbrella Provisions in Richmond carries RV tomatoes.

RVA tomatoes find a place in high end restaurants

During Covid, Jason Tesauro, sommelier at Barboursville winery, David and Barbara, hatched the idea of Supper/Summer Somm, a series of dinners developed by top chefs in Virginia and DC to showcase their heirlooms. (Find out where and when here) In addition, David and Barbara opened their home to a limited number of diners July 16 for a Tomato Jubilee with music, tours of the tomato garden, forest walks, free favors, courtesy of their sponsor Duke’s mayo and more.

The restaurants promote the name R-V tomatoes, or RVA, on their menus with the same zeal they reserve for Napa Valley wines. For last year’s Tomato Jubilee Extravaganza, L’auberge Chez Francois, rated the top French restaurant in the Washington, D.C. area, featured fresh heirloom R-V gazpacho and R-V tomato and herb-crusted local sauteed rockfish on its 7-course menu. In Barboursville Friday August 4, Executive Chef Michael Clough is preparing R-V tomatoes in focaccia, risotto and a local peach tart with tomato gelato, among other items, to be paired with Barboursville wines for $155 per person.

*RV tomatoes on the menu for last year’s Extravaganza at L’Auberge Chez Francois in Great Falls, Virginia, just outside Washington*. *This year’s is August 6.*

The ultimate tomato sandwich

Back in the living room, laying down a flat full of fresh tomatoes, David asks if I would like a tomato sandwich, something I have avoided all my life. With the introduction of these unique tastes, I decide to try it.

He slices three small fresh yellow gems and lathers two pieces of white bread with Duke’s mayonnaise. “Only the cheap white bread and Duke’s mayonnaise, with a little salt and pepper,” says David. I take one bite and devour it in six luscious bites. I’m a total convert now.

*The ultimate tomato sandwich that converted me to heirloom tomato lover*

Is this on the menu of the high-end restaurants?

No, says David, but all the chefs love tomato sandwiches , made exactly this way. With a fresh R-V tomato, it’s a gourmet lunch.

######

What are R-V growing secrets for the best-ever tomatoes? Here are David’s answers to questions:

He begins, “The big issue is plant as deep as possible to give you a better root structure.”

How do you fight blight?

You can’t avoid blight. But you can reduce the chances with sterilized compost, of 3-4 inches, refreshed each year so you don’t have pathogens from last year.

Carefully pinch leaves off from the bottom of the plant.

Avoid over-watering. Water from the ground up, without splashing any water on the leaves or fruit. Keep tomatoes off the ground.

How do you avoid chemicals?

We use fresh compost and a mushroom mix that we order.

Spray with soapy water to kill aphids. Castile soap, unscented, mixed with water. In the greenhouse, nwem oil and pyretheum, can wipe out other tough pests.

Do you use stakes or string to support towering plants?

Both. Set stakes 8 feet apart. We create an ellipse, twisting the twine (sisal) from stake to stake. It’s called the Florida weave.

How do you avoid refrigeration?

Eat.

Lavender: calming at Star Bright Farm

June 27, 2023June 28, 2023gotofarms 1 Comment

*Farmer Peter Elmore in lavender fields, Star Bright Farm, White Hall, Maryland*

On picturesque property in north Baltimore County, farmer/entrepreneur Peter Elmore has found his calling–in lavender. At Star Bright Farm, Elmore grows, distills, packages, and sells this crop with almost as many variations as a tomato. Here you can drink it (in lemonade), spray it (in hyrdrosols), eat it (in cookies and cakes), put it in potpourri or bouquets, walk through lavender rows and destress, and best of all, snip and smell its astringent, sweet perfume.

With a degree in ecological agriculture and certification in permaculture from University of Vermont, the 31-year-old farmer is using the best regenerative techniques on the land to grow this stunning plant. (To really get a sense of the farm, see the video with audio by Peter’s brother Patrick by clicking here. Scroll down and click on the arrow. )

Blueberries and Lavender

When his parents bought the 130-acre farm across from his uncle and aunt’s farm in White Hall, they came up with a complementary plan. His mother, Photographer Helen Norman, was entranced with the lavender fields in France. Peter wanted to grow blueberries. So the blueberries and purple lavender have merged in a riot of aromas and taste. And they have added some 23 varieties of flowers and herbs—all organic. It’s distinctive because everything is done on site, from seed to packaging lavender skin and health products.

Elmore is the epitome of a new breed of farmer–young, creative, super-conscientious about the environment and food and how his farming can positively affect climate change.

He describes himself as a small farmer who will be able to take a greater share in profits than small farmers of the past, as consumers, concerned about health and taste, demand more quality and no pesticides—and they are willing to pay the price. “We don’t need huge access to land and capital. Large scale farming is designed around planting and spraying. I’d rather focus on diversity of what we are growing and find the technology to go with it.”

(Read more on this website about regenerative farming by clicking here .)

Most everything is done by hand. That’s a lot when you consider each row of lavender requires about 12 hours of pruning and cutting for 26 rows. Elmore spends more time per plant, which produces more value, and in the long run, will be more profitable, he says. After a while, he says, you get the knack of snipping. He hires some harvesters in season.

*The red barn offers space for music, picnics and crafts*

As the mission statement for Bright Star says, our goal is to “foster a durable ecosystem that generates human wellbeing and regenerates environmental health.”

On a recent busy day, Elmore strode to the barn, under a magnificent roof redone by Amish builders to show off the copper still, used to distill lavender and other herbs for the products Bright Star is selling online and in the Barn Shop downstairs. A model of the modern enterprising farmer, he’s energetic, in red crocs and a North Face cap—and a serious practitioner of regenerative agriculture.(Read more about regenerative farming here.) ”The idea is to plant flowers and perennials around and establish perennial cropping—landscape diversity,” Elmore says.

*Elmore distils bunches of lavender, roses or blends of other herbs to make hydrosols, in this vesse*l

The herbs have become the jumping off point for a business in herbal skin care and healing sprays and ointments. Elmore and an assistant distill bunches of dried herbs in a 20-liter copper still that looks like a big cappuccino machine.

The herbs, roses or a blend are in effect distilled in water in clear glass with spray tops. They make hydrosols which contain the essence of chamomile, lemon balm, thyme, peppermint and of course, lavender –all organic to the end.

Learning from One Straw

Elmore learned to admire the taste and healthy aspects of organic vegetables from his uncle and aunt, Joan and Drew Norman, the owners of One Straw Farm, (featured here in an earlier post on Farm-Finds) which adjoins Star Bright. The Normans got into organic farming when most people associated it with hippies growing marijuna. Today chefs and savvy consumers look to One Straw for the most desirable fresh vegetables in restaurants, CSAs and local farmers’ markets.

“A bunch of us kids would ride in the back of the truck. Then I started doing more work around the farm. I learned to drive tractors,” recalls Elmore. The experience fed his passion for organic food and to the study of food systems, permaculture and ecology. After college, he moved to Oregon and worked for a local food aggregator, which acted as a liaison to set up farmers to sell their produce to restaurants and markets.

It takes a lot more work to maintain the organic approach than in an non-organic farm. For now, Elmore is the primary worker, along with one full time helper. To gain the organic certification , he must plow through a lot of red tape and prove first that no chemicals have been used on the property for the last three years. For the products he sells, he fills out a daily sheet documenting the process of production and verifying that no pesticides have been added.

To avoid pesticides, he plants dense cover crops, such as white clover, that will enrich the soil. He covers the roots of all the plants with plastic to keep out weeds. And he uses on-farm composting as well as organic fertilizers.

High end marketing

Star Bright offers an array of products–all organic, made by hand– in a store in the basement of the barn. On the website, the featured hydrosols and lavendar products look like a spread in a home and garden magazine. No surprise because Helen Norman is a lifestyle and garden photographer with credits in national magazines, and her husband Mark has a background in marketing. They sell fine tools, such as the $90 Japanese pruners, arranged artfully on a rustic farm table, French country baskets, a $22 leather fly swatter, as wells as creams and organic “buzz-off” bug spray. The high-end marketing buoys the difficult farm days when drought or bugs can affect the harvest.

Most sales are online or in farmers’markets.

In the future, Elmore would like to add more fruit trees and more acres to develop a self-sufficient, diverse farmstead. “I’d like to supply people with fruit, my uncle’s farm grows vegetables; we have skincare, herbal medicine, and we can get into produce,” he says.

The lavender continues to be a big draw: for brides and models who want their pictures taken in the scenic setting, for people seeking solace, for crafters making lavender wreaths and a plethora of events from country rock performances to an open house for dogs.

Lavender for dogs

Lavender allegedly has a calming influence. I had a chance recently to test its effects on my super-active dog Jojo, an Australian cattle dog with energy to burn. I asked my friend Connie with her rescue dog, Kona, who had been a good companion when we walked in the park, to come with me to Star Bright Farm for a benefit for BARCs, Baltimore’s largest pet adoption agency.

Star Bright opened up its lavender fields to the dogs for the event.

Driving out the 36 miles from Baltimore through the beautiful north Baltimore County countryside, the dogs were not getting along. Jojo, safely contained in her crate, was snarling and barking at Kona, who was curled up under the back seat with anxiety.

Maybe the dogs were relieved by simply getting out of the car, but by the time we led them out to roam (on the leash) down the curved rows filled with thick cushions of lavender, they were in dog heaven.

*Connie (left) and me (right) with happy dogs Kona and Jojo in foreground.*

Jojo and Kona were nearly drunk on the smell and the fields were alive with the happy sniffs and arfs of over twenty assorted dogs. Kona just lay down and chilled.