Old barn at Imladris Farm ... goats and chickens inside.
For the past two days, the annual Family Farm Tour has been afoot. The tour is sponsored by our beloved ASAP, and features farms of all sorts. So, Ali and Nicole and Christopher and I packed up our farm family and headed out down the highways and byways of Western North Carolina to explore some small farms.
It was exhausting and amazing. We visited Gladheart Farms, Imladris Farm, Flying Cloud Farm, Firefly Farm, Mountain Farm, Arthur Morgan School, and Mountain Gardens. We returned home inspired.
To top off the weekend, Christopher cooked up an incredible meal of the last of the fava beans and the first of the summer squash sauteed in butter with garlic and walnuts and served with a goat's milk white sauce over gnocchi. It was perhaps the best meal he has ever prepared in all the time we've known each other. I cracked open a bottle of sparkling Lavender-Rosemary mead I made last fall and drank it ice-cold with the aforementioned feast, and we gave thanks for the rich community that we live in, and the gifts of our own garden.
Here are some highlights of the tour:
Michael Porterfield at Gladheart Farms. Gladheart grows vegetables which they sell wholesale and through a CSA, and also has a small number of dairy goats and laying hens. All of their diesel equipment is run on biodiesel made on-site from recycled waste oil, and their hoophouse is heated using biodiesel too.
Christopher and goat friend at Gladheart.
Gardens, barn, biodiesel production facility, and chicken tractor at Gladheart.
View across fallow fields at Flying Cloud, a Fairview farm that runs a very popular CSA and always generates a long line at the farmers markets.
Tops of sweet corn visible through the packing shed window, Flying Cloud.
Fall starts in the hoophouse, Flying Cloud.
Christopher tries out a homemade planting contraption at Firefly Farm.
Border collie pup, Firefly Farm
Poultry at Arthur Morgan School, a Quaker-oriented school for grades 7-9 with a work requirement for students.
Grape arbor shading south-facing windows at Arthur Morgan School.
Shitake logs at Arthur Morgan School
View into the vegetable garden, Arthur Morgan. Jerusalem artichokes in the foreground; passive solar greenhouse in the background.
We ended the day today at Mountain Gardens, the woodland "paradise garden" of the amazing Joe Hollis. Joe and his apprentices cultivate 500 species of edible, medicinal, and otherwise useful plants on about two acres.
Wineberry trellis, Mountain Gardens.
Cob house built for under $100, Mountain Gardens.
Cob cactus cultivation wall, Mountain Gardens.
Dried herbs, Mountain Gardens.
