Happy New Year! There’s no way to sum up what a whopper of a year 2020 was. A global pandemic hit. My family moved out of our one bedroom 600 sqft farmhouse to our new home we built on the farm. I kicked of the farm’s first Spring and Summer CSA. The year held a lot of highs and lows. The biggest low was releasing my Paw Paw (my Mom’s Dad) to heaven at age 92. He’s one of the many that passed due to Covid. It happened right after wrapping up the Summer CSA. Due to that hard hit, the farm took a pause for the rest of the year to let me grieve and heal from that loss. My Paw Paw was one of my best friends and someone I shared my joy of farming with most.
There were also lots of highs, so here’s the highlights of 2020:
- We built a house! And actually, had fun doing it! Our contractor, John Cummins, did a fantastic job. Leaving the pull-out couch bed in the tiny house for a real bed in the new house was amazing. NOTE: if you’re new here, the daughters got the bedroom and Jeff and I slept on a pull-out couch in the den…for 15 months! Yeah. Exactly.
- Jeff built a chicken coop/palace for our chickens and we gained Ancona ducks.
- We planted 100 blueberry bushes in Zone 3! Get ready for some yummy blueberries in your life!
- Jeff and I put up a 100-foot-high tunnel from Farmers Friend where I grew most of the Spring crops. It makes me so proud to have this structure!
- We added sweet barn kitties to the farm: Dusty & Sheriff.
- The Spring CSA had loads of delicious greens and all the spring goodies. A smoked garlic scape salt was included that was out of this world awesome! Since I’m lacking a walk-in cooler, I had to do most of the harvesting in the morning and deliver in the afternoons.
- The Summer CSA grew to 25 shares! Since you don’t refrigerate things like tomatoes, potatoes, and garlic, it made it a little easier to grow the amount of people in the CSA. I delivered 17 boxes on Wednesdays and 8 folks picked up on the farm on Thursdays.
- The Sanford Farmers Market was a wonderful place to sell on Saturday mornings! I really enjoyed making new friends at this market. The customers are sweet and would even call to see what tomatoes I’d be bringing that week.
- I got a tractor! My parents surprised me for my 40th birthday and gifted the farm a tractor. I boohooed. The blessing of this unexpected gift encouraged me to break open a whole new growing zone (Zone 3).
- I “won” a 3-bay stainless steel sink at a restaurant auction in Siler City for a great price.
- I grew 40 varieties of tomatoes and 28 varieties of peppers! I’ll totally brag here; I grow amazing tomatoes. Maybe the best you’ve ever had.
- The flowers were awesome in 2020. I upped my game and grew a whole experimental block of flowers. This way I could make mistakes or successes with no pressure. It has brought so much joy that I’m going all in for 2021!
- I learned I could make dried flower wreaths!
- My farm pepper jelly and smoked pepper seasoning continue to be two of my favorite things in life.
Now for things to look forward to in 2021! This will get its own post, but I still want to list them out:
- Emma Stapleton joins the farm! I’m thrilled to announce it’s time to hire on an employee. She’s amazing and you all will love her as much as I do!
- Two 50’ high tunnels need to go up, one will be just for plant propagation.
- Flower production will grow in size and gain its own CSA this summer.
- The dried flower products will increase as well.
- Vegetables are still going strong!
- Members Only Market on the farm.
- Hopeful to add on a new Farmers Market location.
- I’m upping the pepper varieties something crazy.
- Walk-in Cooler plans are in the works! Finally!
- And because of having better refrigeration and Emma on staff, we can up the Spring CSA! That’s very exciting to me.
- As I work with a NCDA Food Regulatory Specialist, I hope to roll out some really cool farm products! I’m thankful for the tiny house kitchen to work in. There’s so much potential there. I’ve got crazy plans in my head of building a smokehouse for the peppers…stay posted. Maybe it’s something the NC Food Innovation Lab can help with.
- Lastly, I hope to offer classes on the farm this summer. Expect to see signs ups for painting flowers, flower arranging, and more!
There’s so much more on the docket, but we can wrap it up there. I get excited and can talk your head off about the farm! What I want to leave you with is my gratitude. You blew me out of the water with your support. Thank you. I am still in disbelief that I had to cap my summer CSA. I had spoken with another farmer to take on their CSA for the summer, thinking I’d just have a few who’d be interested in mine. I had to embarrassingly go back them to say I can’t do it because I’ve had more sign up than I might can handle! You blessed me with encouraging words, pictures of your meals, tales of your kids eating veggies they’d never eat before. The flowers were able to bring sunshine when we needed it most, we, I totally needed that sunshine too! The drop offs of CSA boxes were moments of sweetness to see faces that I loved. I feel like we carried each other through this tough year. So, thank you for being you, for being wonderful, for being on this wild ride of farming with me. I aim to fill your bellies full of yummy and nutritious food and homes with beautiful flowers. You are precious to me and I love you. If you’re not already in my heart pocket, welcome. I look forward to getting to know you!
