Category Community Support Agriculture

An introduction to gardens, weeds and groundhogs

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I confess, I am not a farmer. Until now, I had not grown much more than a bunch of kale.

The mighty groundhog poses for a picture after feasting on the community gardens in Druid Hill Park. I was looking for a just ripened tomato for a sandwich when I encountered him.

Maybe you can tell, by Farm-finds, that I am in awe of farmers who nourish the earth, using the least harmful methods, those tough men and women who dig and seed and nourish the earth with their smart ways. And bottom line, I love to eat local food– like the luscious white peaches, heirloom tomatoes and plump blackberries, whose tastes that defy poetry. The closer I get to the source of the food, the more local, down to the dirt, the better it is. All thanks to the farmers whom I know.

I have been into the beauty of the cultivated land, not the hands-on, dirt-digging, chicken shit spreading, weed pulling gardening. That is, until this spring, when my friend Rob, renowned for his heirloom tomato crops, recruited me to help in his garden. Rob’s book, Raising Kids and Tomatoes, is full of wonderful anecdotes that made it all sound fun and delicious. Plus I am a recent convert to tomatoes, owing to a tomato sandwich, made with a Cherokee Purple from his garden last year.

Since he had back surgery, he needed someone to help plant and weed. I took the challenge and the chance to learn in depth about gardening, from the ground up. Was this a Tom Sawyer scheme?

Trying to support the overbearing tomato plant

Rob had a plot that he had heard about from our mutual friend Stephanie a few years ago–a space about the size of a pickleball court in the Druid Hill City Farm that he rents for $35 a year from the city in Druid Hill Park. You won’t find a more dedicated, ethical group than these urban farmers.

One of 80 in the park, each plot has access to water, wood chips, pathways–and weeds.

A view of the community garden at Druid Hill

I helped out with planting the seeds under a grow light and nurturing them to hardy plants to put into the soil, with a dollop of fertilizer and compost. The seeds of Heirloom Brandywine, Glacier and Cherokee Purple were dropped in holes.

May: tomatoes are growing furiously

By May, the plants were robust and healthy. To support the unwieldy growth, we placed the bushy plants in cages and staked the bold branches that were growing overburdened with little green globes. In exchange for my help, I got to plant flowers-- columbine, bells of Ireland, marigolds and beebalm along with the old standby--zinnia.

A week ago, the garden was looking good. Clusters of tomatoes had popped out, a smudge of pink on the curve, ready to redden with a bit more sun. Cucumbers, as big as baby baseball bats, lay in pleasant slumber growing under the vines. Basil was high as my thumb.

July: Weeds and groundhogs invade

But like a bad omen on the flower front, my flowers were struggling in a mass of weeds to survive. Cosmos, which I thought, would almost grow automatically if you put the seeds in the ground, were overwhelmed. The last of the marigolds which sported big yellow pompoms like corsages on stems were nibbled to the ground. And only one columbine out of the 40 seeds planted survived. Not a great record, one out of 40. The tomatoes, however, were low hanging fruit, ready to pluck in a few days.

Upon return from a 4th of July vacation, I was craving that tomato sandwich. I thought the tomatoes would be ready.

OMG! the tomatoes that were hanging in those inviting clusters had disappeared. A few shards of tomatoes were at the bottom with bites taken out.

I was furious at who and what could have stolen these gems. How how could a critter have gotten to the top of the plant? Had a human being stolen them?

Vanishing plants

According to Rob, there is a powerful ethic at the gardens. The urban gardeners don’t take any fruit or vegetables from one another, not even a strawberry. Everyone appreciates the sweat and muscle ache of gardening to harvest. More likely, judging from the size of the bites and the numbers of bitten green tomatoes on the ground, a ground hog was on the loose, as was the case last year.

It is so discouraging! What is the point if we are just feeding the ground hog?

Word of the invasion soon spread that day, and fellow gardeners sprang into action. A burrow, probably home to a whole family of the critters, was located and a strategy was hatched to set a trap. True to their strong sense of ethics, someone would be checking the trap every day so the culprit could be freed in woods far away from our tomatoes and other inviting delicacies. I wasn’t feeling so kind; I could have kicked it to the moon. Striding through the plots and observing other bitten fruits, Julia, the director, in well-worn overalls, suggested other ideas; bright whirley gigs can scare them off, she said. Also she may bring in some used kitty litter to line along the borders; groundhogs don’t like its smell.

Did we mind the kitty litter? she asked.

Not at all. Anything to stop the rampage.

All this action was encouraging but it didn’t bring back the tomatoes.

Taking action to defeat the groundhog

Looking over the garden-jungle, I was so depressed. i sat on a weed-covered mound and stared at the jungular grass mass, tight as a rug, that had replaced the cosmos. Weeds were now up to my knees. They could cover the world!

Are you discouraged? I asked Rob. He was glum, sitting on a stool pulling up weeds around the ravaged tomato plants. In vengeance, I attacked the stubborn things with a hoe and piled them into the wheelbarrow. The sweat poured down my face, the dirt lodged under my nubbed down fingernails as I dug out the roots and shook out the soil and dropped weeds in the wheelbarrow to cart to the compost pile.

Within the hour, I sowed 25 Cosmos seeds in the bare square of soil. Hope springs eternal.

In that action, replanting, I built my hopes back up, that this time the seeds would survive and we would rescue the seedlings before they could succumb to any critters, drought or weeds. The marigolds were gone, cosmos mowed down, but — the zinnia were flourishing in such a undaunted display of bright pink, orange and yellow it renewed my spirit.

The zinnia are flourishing

There were still some green tomatoes left to ripen. I collected enough basil for pesto, and four cucumbers, for a sandwich or cold soup.

Mayo, plus onion and thinly sliced cuke is good, but not as good as the tomato version!~

Three days later. . . I went out to the garden to cut some zinnias for a friend. The tomato plants, bending with the weight of green fruit, were towering over the trap, set up by a neighboring gardener. There was the culprit groundhog, round as a basketball, appearing to lick his mouth after his feast, in the cage. He looked up at me, as if to say, thanks for all the great tomatoes. Around him, I assessed more damage:tomatoes with tiny bites taken out. He must have had a feast before the cage door shut.

I called Rob, who then notified Julia, who will make sure he finds a happy home away from the garden before the day is over.

It's  only a matter of a few days before those green gems ripen and I have my tomato sandwich; the Cherokee Purple, on textured white bread slathered with Duke's.

Groundhog trapped, at least for a day

On my way out, I announce triumphantly to a toiling neighbor-gardener that we had caught the groundhog. In his plot, he was surveying cabbage which the groundhog had dined on earlier, maybe as an appetizer. I thought he’d be happier about the news. He’s experienced, persistent as the critters and the weeds, as you have to be in this business.

He said he had a garden in the Shenandoah Valley a few years ago. He trapped two groundhogs and took them five miles away to another place way up in the mountains in the woods.

“The next day both were back,” he said, turning back to weeding.

Tomatoes ready to ripen–without the groundhog

Lavender: calming at Star Bright Farm

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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.

Bees are loving this crop

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 vessel

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.

Keeping down the weeds with plastic

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.

Kona relaxing in lavender
Jojo serene
Dog lovers listen to music at the barn
A happy rescue dog owner with Connie

Plantation Park Heights: Oasis in the Middle of a Baltimore City Food Desert

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Chickens provide eggs for market

By Ayotomi Akinlosotu-Williams

with Lavinia Edmunds

Note I asked my students to go out and find stories on farming in the Baltimore area.  Ayotomi AkinlosotuWilliams, who took most of these photos unless otherwise designated, discovered this farm in the heart of a Baltimore City food desert in the fall. I visited this week.  It is changing the way children eat, cook and farm.

As you enter the alley from around the corner, you hear the soft clucking of chickens which first indicate the presence of the farm.  Occasionally in the mornings, a rooster crows. The brown and gray hues of the city slowly yield to the bright greens of foliage, and you are suddenly on a working farm in the middle of Baltimore city, Plantation Park Heights, established almost 10 years ago, has remained an iconic staple in the neighborhood.

Townhomes overlook the garden, here in October

Entrance to the farm from the street leading to garden boxes, pictured here this month.

The farm brings together people of all backgrounds and ages, from its school-age volunteers to Wes Moore, who visited the farm as he was running for governor this election season.

“I’ll be sitting around a table with someone who’s a professor, someone who’s an immigrant from the Caribbean or something, and a 9 year old who’s lived in Baltimore his whole life,” said Scott, a volunteer at the farm since last September. He and the other volunteers sat in a circle inside the greenhouse, enjoying conversation as they waited for their boss to arrive.

Scott described the farm as a “melting pot”, and compared it to his understanding of Martin Luther King’s dream. “We can all sit together, no one’s considering skin color or where someone’s from,”  he said.

The harvesting season begins early spring. Seedlings are placed in black trays in the greenhouse. Lettuce, kale, and other plants that thrive in cold weather are planted in black trays in the greenhouse as tiny seedlings. They remain there all throughout spring and summer, until they are ready to be transported outside and into the ground. There is no cold storage on the farm, so once grown, the crops are harvested and cleaned for farmer’s markets to pick up and sell before each plant’s individual market begins. This process is different from that of a larger, more industrialized farm that would harvest everything atone point.

 This farm in particular takes pride in variety, from indigo flowers and bananas to crops like okra and kale.

Banana tree and other exotic plants thrive next to staples like kale and potatoes.

One volunteer joked, “If it could be grown in Baltimore, Chippy’s probably tried it,” referring to the founder and director of the farm. “If it can’t be grown in Baltimore, he’s probably still tried it.”

Farmer Chippy is the leader of the farm (Photo by Lavinia Edmunds)

Richard Francis, better known as Farmer Chippy provides the inspiration for the grassroots efforts.  “As a biomedical field service engineer my travels took me to amazing places with fun people and great food but the daily experience in hospitals, clinics and urgent care facilities continued to be disturbing,.  . . . I had a burning desire to explore options that promoted a healthier quality of life for our youngest citizens,” said Farmer Chippy.

“I hope to be the engineer/farmer that popularizes the benefits of conventional medicine while exploring potential new research that brings cleaner, greener food close to less fortunate communities in Baltimore.”

On a visit in January, Farmer Chippy was checking in at the farm which even in the stark winter had la ot going on. Winter is the farmers spring, after all.    The farm is adding  55 more boxes for growing more flowers and vegetables. A cluster of men were working on fixing a motor, while volunteers were handing out fresh food boxes; about 50 neighborhood residents in need of food lined up for a fresh vegetable drive-through that occurs each Thursday.  Each box contains beets, potatos, apple ,cabbage and greens, all fresh and organic.

Farmer Chippy has carved out his own niche in the farming community. He just returned from a farmers’ organizational meeting in Puerto Rico where he brought seven student farmers to represent the only urban garden at the nationwide meeting of farmers. He says his farm can be a model for other urban communities in need of access to fresh food and nutrition.  They make money selling produce in the spring, summer and fall, at three city farmers markets.

The farm’s next venture may be cannabis once legalization takes place. “It’s a gray area right now, but we’re trying to get things in place so that when recreational stuff is all legal we can hit the ground running,” Scott said

Besides growing crops, the farm seeks to educate city folk on expanding their palates for healthy food.

Tiara Matthews , a volunteer who has been working at the farm for eight years, sets up the food demos.  Students learn how to make dinner through the demo, then they get the ingredients fresh from the farm and the recipe to take home and make the meal with their parents or grandparents.  Today’s dish featured collards, eggs, potatoes and lavender.

To make the farm work, you have to have dedicated people and have to have funding and support, said Matthews.  “We have a lot of youth support.  Everyone lives around here. And they like to hang out here,” she added.

Tiara Matthews has been volunteering at the farm for 8 years (by Lavinia Edmunds

Farmer Chippy is not into corporate sponsorship but has received grants from sources as diverse as Rite-Aid and the Baltimore Community Fund.  “We have our own capacity.  We move around on our own dime,” he commented. Most of the money comes from sales to farmers markets.

Recently the farm received a grant to support agriculture curriculum in five city schools.  Students will learn how to grow, harvest and market nutrient-dense food. Farmer Chippy points out the farm is one of ten selected by the American Farmers Bureau Federation as the one of the top ten innovative farms in the country.

Featured

Cynnie Keller Davis and the farming legacy at Bellair

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Cynnie Keller Davis and her farm manager form a strong team in the Charlottesville area

Nestled between vineyards, with the Trump winery as a neighbor and the Blue Ridge as the backdrop, Bellair farm sprawls across 900 acres. It has been a farm of some kind for 200 years.  Today, with the vision of Cynnie Keller Davis, Bellair is flourishing as the most popular Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm in the Charlottesville area.

I was intrigued when I met Cynnie at my Hollins College reunion this summer.  At Hollins, (which is now Hollins University) we didn’t have any agriculture classes to guide farming careers.  Cynnie had majored in art history and spent her junior year in Paris. How did she end up farming?

To find out I drove up to see her from Halifax, around curving two-lane roads, up to southern Albermarle County where the straggly fields smooth out like green velvet.

Cynnie, casual and relaxed in her khaki slacks and moss-green sweater, reflects on the long porch overlooking the property that is thoughtfully planted and producing bumper crops this summer.

A swatch of meadow flowers to the left, a dogwood tree in the middle of her kitchen’s panoramic windows, and somewhere down the hill lie vegetable gardens, in the thick of a rich harvest full of ripening tomatoes, herbs, onions, and more. And further down the farm road are 30 cows, 30 hogs, and 1000 laying hens.

Back in 2006, she faced a major dilemma when her husband Mike Davis died of lung cancer.  Still dealing with grief, she had to decide whether to continue farming.

With a Master’s degree in social work from Virginia Commonwealth University, she was  building a practice as a clinical social worker in Charlottesville. Mike had taken on the role of managing the farm. The bottom lands were leased to commodities farmers who grew soybeans and corn.


“We had suffered through everything farmers went through.  It seemed really impossible.  There had always been the question: should we throw in the towel?’” she recalls.

Concerns about chemicals and industrial agriculture
But the seeds for an organic farm that was a vital part of the community had already been planted in Cynnie’s mind.

As a child growing up in rural Louisiana, she had been alarmed at the devastation caused by DDT after reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring in high school. She recognized at that time that DDT was commonly used in agriculture, including on her family’s farm. Later The Omnivore’s Dilemma, published in 2006, added to Cynnies’s concerns about the pitfalls of agribusiness and the potential dangers of fertilizer and chemicals in food.

“With the growing interest in eating local food following Pollan’s book I thought there might be an opportunity to orient the farm business to the local community,” Cynnie says.

On a visit to her daughter in Washington, DC, at a Saturday farmer’s market in 2009, she was impressed by the produce of New Morning Farm from Pennsylvania.  “I talked with the owner. I couldn’t believe organic vegetables could be so beautiful.” She convinced the owner to come to Charlottesville and evaluate the possibilities of growing organic produce on her property. 

“He thought it was doable.  Mainly it gave me the courage to try.”

The Pennsylvania farmer also gave what she considers the most valuable advice for starting the new venture: hire the best farm manager you can find, one who can grow food as well as market it.  Today Michelle McKenzie, a devotee of good food and nature-friendly farming practices, holds that key job. Michelle, a graduate of William and Mary College, has no degree or formal training in farming.  “I consider myself a lifelong learner.  I pick up information from conferences, farm visits, podcasts.” She learned the ropes over two years working under Jamie Barrett, the previous manager.

 Enthusiasm for fresh local food feeds popularity of farm to table

The farm-to-table movement has fed the enthusiasm for fresh local food.  “I see it in the farms that have popped up around here.  And I see it in the huge enthusiasm in our customers,” Cynnie notes. 

Together Cynnie and Michele practice regenerative farming techniques that are environmentally friendly and innovative.    Without deep preconceptions about farming, they are free to come up with creative ideas and projects that appeal to their discerning customers. Cynnie acts as CEO on the business side while Michelle works in the field and manages labor and marketing as well as the crops.

Touring the barn and farm

We meet Michele down at the barn where farm workers are packing bags of homegrown garlic and mushrooms for the CSA members.  The barn is a beautiful two story open-air building built in the 1930s.    They’ve got standard mixed greens and turnips along with bok choy and choy sum.  Bellair offers its own organic, grass-fed filet mignon and beef brisket, while selling the luscious cheeses from Caramont farms and blue corn grits and other non_GMO grains from Deep
Roots Milling, among others. 

Filling orders for CSA members

The CSA has attracted some 400 locavores ready to embrace –and eat—Belair’s delectable produce.  Members pay $38.50 for a full share, for the basics, each week but often add on specialties which are available through Belair’s markets. “The CSA is the main part of what we do and makes up 60 percent of our income,” says Cynnie.  The remainder comes from sales at markets and events. Members can pick up their shares at seven markets in the area or at the farm on Fridays and Saturdays.  Or they can get delivery in certain areas.  Periodically, on selected days, anyone can pay $20 for whatever they can pick on the farm.

As word has spread, demand increases for other products so that customers can do almost all their food shopping through Bellair.  “They will pick up a share of vegetables, and someone will say, oh, do you sell eggs? Then they will ask it they sell chickens?  turkeys. . .” says Michelle.

On a tour of the farm, we see a pretty field, which looks silver from a distance. It’s a mix of buckwheat, sun hemp and sorghum that has grown as tall as corn. Michelle has bush-hogged an intricate maze, to be used for fall fest October 22-23, a two-day family affair on site.  After the festival, rather than plow away the old corn stalks, the remaining stalks will be turned into fodder for the soil.

Healthy pigs, healthy land

While the fields are green and rich, the pigs in a well-planted pasture steal the spotlight. These dark brown pigs are the prettiest, neatest pigs I’ve ever seen.  They are rooting around in a pasture full of ironweed, golden rod and fescue. They also feed on corn in troughs. And while they are not strictly organic due to the content of the feed, they are what they refer to as “pasture-raised.”

The knee-high two-tier fence is electrified and powered by the sun to keep the pigs in.

The pigs are moved every three weeks. “If they are kept here, it would be a mud pit,” explains Michelle.

The pigs carve out an under-story of shrubbery to attract quail, a species which has been vanishing from the area due to destruction of their habitat, mostly due to the rampant development around the Charlottesville area.  “We are trying to diversify the types of animals and in the environment so that they diversify themselves,” says Michelle. “We are doing less so nature will do its thing.”

Through her newsletter, designed for members, Michelle promotes the crops, recipes and new projects in hopes that more people will adjust their tastes to what is in season. 

Challenges

The challenges in organic farming go beyond the many challenges of standard farming which wipe out weeds with the help of pesticides and fertilizers.  “You have to figure out ways to manage disease and weeds. But part of their strength is the diversity of the vegetable operation,” says Michelle.  This wasn’t the best year for tomatoes due to the abundance of rain. But the other flourishing crops made up the difference.

There is also the challenge of year-round reliable labor.  Bellair sets up decent work schedules and pays minimum wage and higher which sets it apart from many of the area farms. The mostly-all women workers work for the season and then return to school or their families. This year for the first time, they hired two Mexican workers.

As for other major challenges?  “Honestly, it’s been a great joy and a constant preoccupation. . . . trying to wrap our minds around all the pasturelands.  Now we’re thinking about managing for both wildlife and agriculture. I’m always thinking of ways to sell more at the CSA and trying to develop more events to bring people here,” says Cynnie.

As the farm strives to reach a break-even point, it has grown in Charlottesville as the source of great fresh produce. Cynnie approaches her success with guarded satisfaction. “At this point, I feel a deep love for the land and a deep sense of community. There is a lot of joy in harvest time and in the spring planting. And I feel joy in seeing my vision come into being and seeing it evolve.”

Franklin (Delano Roosevelt) enjoying a mudpuddle at Bellview farm

It’s Shitake Season

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Joe Foster and his blossoming shitake mushrooms. It’s a great harvest this fall!

Everyone asks if his mushrooms are hallucinatory, notes mushroom farmer Joe Foster as we head down in the woods to check out his crop of shitak emushrooms.
“Those are medicinal.  I only grow culinary mushrooms,”  he says.

While they don’t produce visions, the shitake, among other native fungi, are touted to have immense immunological powers, according to WebMd. Some say they can protect you from cancer and other dread diseases. And if you are interested in just eating these delicious morsels, as I am, the stats are favorable. One/half cup has just 35 calories,and loads of elements that we don’t get otherwise: copper, selenium, potassium, and all the vitamin D you need in a day, among other nutrients.

Shitake to be harvested at Foster’s farm. They are thriving today as result of the rainy summer.

Foster grows shiitaki in the most environmentally sustainable way possible. Way down in the forest by a rushing stream in the pure clean air of northern Halifax County. Nathalie is the nearest town, population 183, at the last census available. We pass a variety of wild mushrooms along the path on this day after rain—morels, oyster, and lion’s mane. “Most of the ones that grow in the dirt are not edible,” says Foster, pointing out a bright red specimen standing alone, tiny in a grove of pine trees. And a number are poisonous.

Don’t eat this one!

Shiitakes grow in wood logs.  Over a thousand years ago, samurais cultivated them to serve as a delicacy for aristocrats in Japan.

As we drive through Foster’s 40-acre property, I see how Foster has cultivated the landscape, from the apple orchard by this house to the pond lined with bald cypress trees and stocked with bass. We finally come to a clearing beside a swirling pristine stream, where the white oak logs are set up and shot up with mushroom spores or spawn. It’s a beautiful spot, with the trees offering shelter for a neatly ordered system of logs. You can smell the decaying bark, the richest, best foundation for the mushrooms, and the clean air freshened by the stream.

Foster cut over 250 logs from white oak trees on his property and bored holes 5-6 inches apart in each. Then after he inoculated the logs with the spores, he sealed each hole with a little beeswax. Today after a year, mushrooms are sprouting out of the logs like slow motion popcorn.

Just this week, he sold seven pounds to Molasses Grill, the best restaurant in the area, specializing in local food.  “It’s really amazing to get food from your own county,” says Chef Steve Schopen, who does his own bit of foraging for exotic native species, like pawpaws.  “And Joe’s home grown shitake mushrooms are among the best and freshest you can get.”

For this retired landscape developer who had a thriving business in Farmingdale, N.J., the role of mushroom farmer seems a natural development, though not at all planned.  When he and his father Joe Senior finally bought this old tobacco farm, known as Old Chester Farm deep in the Halifax County country, they were thinking primarily of a place to store their collection of antique gas engines.

His father Joe Senior, who had worked for International Harvester for 27 years, was an avid collector of these heavy gas-powered motors, which used to run farm machinery before electricity became standard.  They are not exactly the kind of heirloom to display on a mantel piece. Carting their antiques in a truck, father and son would travel to shows all over the country.  They were displaying their collection at the Heritage Festival in South Boston in 2006, when a realtor showed them Old Chester Farm. 

The property in Halifax County was a find: a fraction of the taxes he paid in New Jersey, 20 times the acreage, plus a barn for the storage of their collection.  Joe built a log cabin for his father, who unfortunately passed away this spring.

“I was just a hands-in-dirt kind of guy,” says Joe, who attended University of Maryland agronomy school and went  onto run a successful landscaping business in coastal New Jersey.  After settling on the farm, he attended a mushroom cultivation seminar by a master gardener from Japa. Foster recognized that he had everything that she listed as essential: “the live, healthy white oak trees, a source of water, the best air circulation.”  He also had chain saws to cut the logs; a drill bit for boring holes; and he could order the spores from a mushroom catalog. The catalog, which had the slogan,  “Proud to be Part of this Rotting World,’” offered many varieties of mushrooms and kits for growing them in your basement, if you so desired.

But growing them outdoors in their natural setting was the attraction for Foster.

“I don’t make a lot of money off it. It’s such a seasonal hit and miss thing.  I do a lot of bartering and trading.”  He’ll get a summer worth of corn in exchange for a supply of mushrooms. 

He sells the mushrooms to farmers’ markets and local restaurants during the fall and spring harvests. 

Fresh mushrooms are fruiting through November, but he is trying to convince his customers to try the dried ones, which he claims are just or more flavorful and longer-lasting. “They have 40 times more Vitamin D!” Foster says.

In addition to the fresh mushrooms, he grows apples and all kinds of flowers that attract goldfinches and hummingbirds.  In his spare time, he makes tinctures of mushroom, which many health food customers believe provides the ultimate potion for boosting immunity.  Foster makes the tinctures at his kitchen table.

First he packs in dried mushrooms in a mason jar and fills it with 40-proof Vodka. Then he boils down the solution with water and eventually extracts an intense mushroom liquid.He pours it into small bottles with screw tops the size of bottles of eyedrops. Foster takes a dropper full of the tincture in tea or food every day, morning and afternoon. He gives small bottles of the tincture to friends.

Does it prevent cancer? 

“I can’t really say.  I’m not selling it like snake oil,” Foster says. But there is a thriving market for such potions on the Internet.

He gave me a bottle that I have tried but I don’t know if it is keeping me from getting sick.  I do know that the shitake are a special delicacy. At Molasses Grill the night after he received the mushrooms from Foster, chef Schopen concocted a dish of scallops and mushroom that was amazing in its suggestion of ocean and forest combined. The slivers of mushrooms added a note of the white oak and the rushing stream at Foster’s farm.  And knowing where and how the shitake had grown made the meal especially wonderful.

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