Recently, manager Emily and I drove over to Pittsboro to join NC Extension Agent Debbie Roos’ weekly tour of the Chatham Marketplace “Pollinator Paradise” garden. We arrived early and decided to peek at the student farm at the Chatham County branch of Central Carolina Community College. Farm manager Hilary noticed us wandering around, and the three of us fell into conversation about managing student farms (and managing their many people- and plant-related challenges!) Hillary invited us to observe her farm’s buildings and structures– refrigeration units, CSA prep station, storage barn, office, and more. We hope to have our own soon at DCF!

Hil was also gracious enough to talk us through the college’s extensive sustainable ag. curriculum. Through classes focused on everything from crop production to chicken care, students have built the farm from the ground up. We absolutely loved it!Emily and I walked away inspired by the program and full of new ideas for our own operation — our conversation with Hilary was a good reminder that the DCF plays a crucial role in Duke students’ immersion in food issues, whether or not a formal academic program exists (yet!) to underlie student interest.

We were so grateful for Hilary’s time and interest in our farm. She genuinely cared about our unique story and struggles, and asked questions that helped us think through both the production and educational sides of the Duke Campus Farm. We can’t wait to return the favor, and we hope to see her and the CC farm crew in Durham soon!

After remembering the reason we went to Pittsboro, Emily and I hopped over to the Pollinator Garden at the Chatham Marketplace co-op. Since getting into farm and garden issues in North Carolina, I have heard Debbie Roos’ name come up in many conversations. After learning from her first-hand, I now understand why she is so well-known for her expertise. This woman knows it all, from the Latin names of every single plant in the Marketplace’s extensive garden to the cures for every possible plant disease or conundrum. Debbie and this garden gave us great ideas for our own flower and herb demonstration garden at the DCF (breaking ground soon!)

I walked away from the garden beyond impressed, and couldn’t more highly recommend Debbie’s free Wednesday evening tour. Bring your questions, no matter how obscure, because she most definitely has answers!

All in all, the trip to Pittsboro was wonderful for the conversations and education it offered. The town has much to teach us about sustainable agriculture and landscaping. Thanks, Pittsboro friends!

Happy 4th of July, farm friends!

We hope you enjoyed some of the delicious produce our region has to offer in the middle of summer. We are focused on keeping our crops well-irrigated during these hot weeks. Our corn is growing inches at a time and will soon be ready for harvest. Don’t forget to stop by the Duke Farmer’s Market on Fridays from 11am-2pm to grab other goodies like our wonderfully plump and refreshing cucumbers!

Hello again!

Another busy week at the farm has passed, and we’re making progress every day. We had a great group of volunteers out this past Sunday, and the weather was much cooler during our new 6-8:30pm community work time. With so many extra hands, we pulled up our snap peas, lettuces, and a row of herbs in order to make room for even more tomatoes and new peppers – yum!

Extra hands were a huge help with so many tomato plants. Thanks volunteers!

We’re grateful to Highfield Farm for hosting our team this past week for a very fun (if rainy!) visit to their property. Highfield, located in Rougemont and run by Duke Campus Farm friends Marybeth and Brock, is a satellite operation owned by Hillsborough’s well-known Coon Rock Farm. Highfield grows produce to sell at markets and for Coon Rock’s CSAs, and the farmers also manage cattle and pigs. Venturing through Highfield’s cow pastures was a neat experience for our crew, since the campus farm  focuses exclusively on produce production. We also helped plant some corn with the Highfield farmers, which reminds me how excited we are about our crop at the campus farm! Being around Highfield’s animals (including some very adorable little goslings) has us really looking forward to this week’s animal-filled adventure at Prodigal Farm, a goat dairy in Chapel Hill.

Farmer Brock moves his cows to new pasture.

While field trips are fun, there is plenty of planting, weeding, and planning to be done at our place. It is especially important to focus on the transition period when old crops come out and new ones go in. A volunteer asked other day asked whether it is sad to rip dying plants from the ground. Although it’s not joyful to dismember crops that have provided us fruits for weeks on end, the act reminds us that everything does have its time and place at the farm. The compost bin is teeming with pea leaves that will fuel a future harvest; tomatoes growing against the trellis can thank those same peas for their nutrient-rich footprints; and the neighboring rows ebb and flow with their own colors, growth, and, when the time is right, degeneration.

A farm’s definition of progress includes continuous cycles of life, death, and reincarnation. Whether we’re plucking peas to sell at market or wheeling them in heaps to the compost, each step of the process contributes to the larger farm cycle. And by that definition, we are making progress at the farm, every single day.

Hey friends!

It’s been a busy and beautiful summer at the Duke Campus Farm so far. My fellow summer intern, Katie, and I have enjoyed becoming part of the multi-faceted and fascinating world Emily Sloss (farm manager) has created here.

Items covered in this post:
-Summer begins as our business continues to grow!
-What’s growing at DCF?
-Our visit to Frog Pond Farm (and why you should go, too!)

Our first month-long CSA has been a great success and we’re looking forward to another round in August (see a sample CSA box below!) We have also spent the past month selling produce at theDuke Farmer’s Market on Friday afternoons, and we will continue to sell there through the summer. The market is a great place to grab some Duke Campus Farm swag as well!

In addition to expanding our business model, we are just darn excited about summer. Our space is always evolving, but the summer season is a particularly vibrant time of year for the farm. We are anticipating the coming weeks when tomatoes will spring from their vines and the bright colors of corn, okra, beans, eggplants, peppers, and more will explode from every row. These summer favorites are coming up as their spring neighbors produce final fruits (come out Friday for some of our last beets, strawberries, snap peas, and more!) We’ve laid drip irrigation so the plants don’t fry in Durham’s heat, and we’ve shifted our work hours so we don’t fry either. Join us Thursdays and Sundays from 6-8:30pm for community farming fun!

Our hands-on internship at the farm also allows us to learn from the experts. Manager Emily is arranging visits to area farms so Katie and I can witness how the veterans construct their own ventures and visions of sustainable, organic agriculture. Our first visit landed us at nearby Frog Pond Farm, owned by Libby Searles and Larry Bohs. Larry and Libby (with help from their two kids and a pair of friendly cats) maintain a marvelous operation that focuses primarily on berry production but also includes some row crops similar to ours depending on season (chard, tomatoes, leafy greens, potatoes etc.) for a CSA and personal use.

A particularly impressive feature of Frog Pond’s farmed land is that it is extensively mulched. Although small wood chips don’t sound like the sexiest farm feature out there, the protective groundcover effectively prevents weeds from sprouting through – believe us, weed-less crop rows are a beautiful thing (and hard to come by!) We’ll work hard this summer to follow Frog Pond’s example.

Worth noting: Frog Pond’s irrigation system, while way beyond my level of comprehension, is a wonder orchestrated by Larry’s engineering brain. Definitely worth asking about it you get the chance to visit!

Finally (though we could write a novel about this place), a simply awe-inspiring piece of the Frog Pond puzzle is the family’s home. Libby and Larry designed and built the house themselves, and it includes every possible feature –and more—that you could imagine under the labels ‘sustainable,’ ‘efficient,’ and ‘insanely innovative.’ We left our visit more than energized by the family’s commitment to ethical farming and living.

Thanks, Frog Pond Farm! We are grateful for your stories and advice, and are glad to call you mentors and friends. We certainly know where to send friends of the Campus Farm during berry season!

Stay tuned for more of our agricultural adventures!

~Emily