Published December 31, 2017
Blessings of the season and Happy New Year! We can't thank you enough for all your support this past year.
Up next is Willow Season! We are excited as the stems are beautiful this year. Is the entrance way to your home kind of drab in the dead of winter? Why not brighten it up with dried arrangements of red, yellow stick dogwood or flame willow mixed with stems of gorgeous catkins or perhaps Japanese Fantails. These arrangements will brighten your yard/porch/entranceway in rain, freeze or shine. How about a willow wreath? ... We have one medium and more on the way.
Willow season generally runs from Christmas to Easter. Saturdays during the nice part of the day is the best time to come by the farm. Always call ahead to make sure we will be there. In fact, you can call Walker anytime and you can set a date to meet at the farm. We will be doing various garden shows and club meetings (and we are always looking for more). Below is our schedule as of now:
Winter activities -
We will start pussy willow harvest in earnest after Christmas. They are in the red bud stage now with big fat red buds. If you want some red buds to put in water to "pop" and put on display, act quickly. They are quite beautiful, but the red bud stage will be over soon.
We were tardy in getting pussy willow plants started this year. If you want one/some pot(s) so that you can jump start their growth by keeping them in the house, call us. Just keep them watered and they should be plant-able by tax day. They are $10 now and $15 after they are well rooted. We are excited! This year has been an excellent year for pussy willows and other related woody florals.
We will start pruning blueberries the first of January. And you should too if you have bushes. Remember that you do not prune blueberries until they are 5 to 6 years old. We have 3200 bushes to prune so it will take us about 2.5 months. If you would like a pruning lesson give us a call and we will swap a lesson in exchange for pruning some bushes(available in Spanish or English). Remember your first application of fertilizer should go on about March 1.
Just as winter ends we will start pruning grapes. We will start with the seedless grapes and progress to the muscadines. We use spur type pruning on all. We leave 3 buds on each spur and space the spurs out based on the vigor of the variety and plant. We also use a cordon replacement system to manage Botryospheria Stem and cordon blight. It is really important to make sure you get all the discoloration out. It is primarily a problem in the seedless grapes but also occurs in the muscadines. We have found there is an association with the Grape Root Borer (GRB) with cordon blight. We think mating confusion/disruption is the best way to manage it. It is very expensive. We use it for the farm, but it is probably too expensive for your at-home crop management.
Fall activities - Looking Back
We have been tying back blackberries to the "V" trellis. This will enable you to pick the fruit so that you do not have to reach into the center of "V". It also enables the primocanes to come up through the center of the "V" trellis. The primocanes are the 2019 crop and they need the space and the sunlight to grow strong. We are not done tying back but getting there.
We have taken out the Goji berries after 4 years and no fruit. We are planting more Chester blackberry in their place. (The Goji were right next to the existing Chester). Chester blooms in mid May well past the likely chance of freeze so planting in this low area should not be a problem. Also Chester harvest is late hitting its peak, in early August, when all the others are done except for a few Von blackberry. Another added bonus is that the Chester harvest is very productive.
We have removed most of the Natchez. Because it was thornless, the deer were destroying it. Another drawback was that it is easily killed by, or susceptible to severe bud damage from Spring freezes. We are replacing it with Prime Ark 45, a thorny variety which the deer do not like. Prime Ark 45 is very prolific and so far has produced a good crop of quality spring berries despite late freezes. The spring crop is early and excellent quality. There is a drawback to Prime Ark 45- while it is a primocane producer (ie fall berries), the fall berries are kind of a nuisance as they provide forage for Spotted Wing Drosophila (SWD) when there is not enough fruit per unit of row to afford controlling SWD.
We have finished putting grape trellis up for the rest of Razzmatazz seedless muscadine grapes we have planted. At this point we are holding our breath to see how you guys like this grape. After several years experience we think we can grow it without spraying. Picking will require waiting until the berries are dark red. The berries are small, about the size of a large blueberry, but you pick them by the bunch. They will go all the way until we get a hard freeze. I was picking them in early November. Let us know what you think after trying them. There are other seedless muscadines in the "pipeline" so if you don't like them we can switch them out using the same infrastructure. We have a test plot of the new ones and so far they look good.
We are getting 6 more chestnut trees that are supposed to be resistant to Ink disease and chestnut blight that took out the American chestnuts in this area in the early nineteenth century. We are currently up to 13 trees. They are grafted trees on their own roots to keep them true to type. Our thought is that the chestnuts will be a carbohydrate source for our community, much like in the eighteenth century, if things "go south." The varieties are Marasol, Bouche de Betizac and Szego. As you can see from their names they are European in origin- so these are sweet chestnuts as opposed to Chinese chestnuts.
Our tea plants are now growing well. Who would have thought that ground hogs like tea leaves...Caffeine fix? We have put cages around them and some are 18 inches high now. Our thought about tea is that if things "go south" we will have stimulant for our community. The plan is to put instructions on how to make the various types of tea on our website.
We have also caught ground hogs climbing the Kaki persimmon trees and eating the fruit just before harvest but only where the branches were stiff enough to hold them, they fall out if they get too far out on the branch.
Spring activities - Looking Forward
We prune the figs in very early spring. We are converting from bench type pruning system to bush type pruning. Bush type pruning is essentially removing 1/3 to 1/4 of the stems at ground line each year so a bush is totally renewed every 3-4 years. Remember that figs are born on the current season's wood. As with all our pruning we are glad to show you how we do it in exchange for a little help.
Final thoughts...editorial and request for help -
This time of year, while doing routine work in the field, we get to think a lot. One of our farm objectives is to be a resilient member of our community. Work for us provides the pleasure of a good night rest, the pleasure of providing local food for our community to eat and finally the pleasure in our daily creative skills.
I/we worry a lot about things "going south". . Even though the stock market is booming, I expect the bubble to eventually pop. One of the failings or weakness of current capitalism is that profits are not going back to the consumer. After paying employees, spending on maintenance and/or investing into capital infrastructure, the rest of the profits, especially in large businesses, end up in savings or stock that does not enhance consumer spending. Over a large number of businesses and over time, this means there is either excess product or not enough money in consumers’ hands to buy the product. Hence economic bubbles. When the bubble pops, businesses crash and then government creates deficit spending to prop up consumer spending or provide bail outs to keep businesses going.
The second weakness of our current capitalism is that as things start to "go south" the first thing to go is spending on the environment. Because environmental damage does not show in the current system of book keeping, or in the economic "bottom line," it leads to business doubling down on doing things which pollute, because they can maximize profits by minimizing cost. Our fear is that the end result can be economic collapse or worse environmental collapse! Agriculture big business is just as guilty as the rest of the businesses.
So," What to do?" is what I wrestle with as I tie up the next blackberry branch... What I have come to applies not just to our farm, but I think needs to happen across the industry. Three things: 1) Perennialize the agriculture production system 2) increase biomass and the persistence of that biomass per acre thus carbon sequestered and 3) convert our carbon waste stream to a persistent form (char) that will stay sequestered for 10's, 100's or even 1000's of years. I offer a whole seminar on what these mean and how I think we can accomplish them. If you would like to learn more, please! call me. You might also want to check out our Carbon Capture web page.
So, "How are we doing?" Well ours is a perennial farm. We have eliminated plowing and enabled diazotrophs (about 800 species of bacteria and counting that fix nitrogen) so we can reduce our fertilizer input. At the same time we have increased our biomass per acre both above and below ground and we are building humus in the soil that is around for a long time and contributes to soil health, albeit slowly. The problem is that our soils are very poor thanks to 100 years of growing cotton and erosion. They have very low cation (that is the macro and minor nutrients in fertilizer) and no anion (also in fertilizer) exchange capacity. If we could convert our carbon waste stream to a persistent form (char) (as mentioned item #3 above) we would address the cation and anion problem and would also increase the water holding capacity of our soil and the infiltration rate of rain.
To do that, we need a char kiln at the farm. This topic is where I am currently spending most of my time thinking. After studying the char issue it clear that the char for blueberries should be made at or near 300 degrees centigrade. The process is called pyrolysis. Pyrolysis is exothermic above 280 degrees Centigrade. Char is created when pyrolysis takes place without oxygen. The lower the temperature the shorter the life (sequester time for carbon) of the char but the greater the benefits for soil health and the lower the pH or the more acidic it is. This is important for blueberries. Grapes, muscadines, blackberries and figs like a pH of around 6.5 or so, persimmons 7 but 4.8-5.2 is needed for blueberries our biggest crop.
Here is the pitch... We have a design for a small on-farm kiln that does high pH char. The design needs further engineering to enable low temperature char production. Anyone interested? Please call so we can meet and discuss where we are at. If we can make it work for The Happy Berry, maybe more farms will come on board, and next thing you know, maybe we are saving the planet!
Thank so much for your support!
Walker for "The Happy Berry Bunch"
Published August 13, 2017
Guilty! We have been short handed and the newsletter kept being pushed to the back burner. Also Ann's health has been challenging. She is on the mend now and has put on a couple of pounds. I/we are terribly sorry we have not done a better job communicating with you! We appreciate your support! Walker
Seedless Grapes are and have been fantastic this year. Venus are done. Mars variety is very popular so we are considering replacing the Venus with Mars. The Jupiter variety is very sweet and we are nearing the end. Mars are great picking right now. Saturn variety, so sweet and crunchy, is ready now too. Jupiter and Mars are slip skin varieties that you cannot get in the store. When you bite down on them there is something happening in the back of your pallet that just says "WOW"!
The figs are at peak of season. Late afternoon thunder storms have made picking tricky. If we do not pick the ripe ones every day they burst in the rain and are not desirable for anything but jamming pretty darn quick. We pay a dollar a pound to get them picked plus the cost of production... so we have some in a buckets (approximately 20-25 plus pounds/bucket) in the cooler for $2.00 per pound. We feel it is necessary to keep the trees cleaned off to keep the wasp, yellow jackets, hornets and other varmints from being a problem so we lose a little on the deal but it is a good deal for you. If you want to pick-your-own it is $2.75 per pound but you are sure of getting pretty figs. Pre-picked are $6.50 per quart, $13.00 a half or $25.00 per gallon. We have mostly brown turkey but do have other varieties. The second most important variety is Celeste. We find it to be a little more cold sensitive...but the figs are bigger and very sweet.
The best time to pick figs is early in the morning before we go through and clean the trees off. We are reserving the fig trees in front of the house for pick-your-own folks and only pick them when the weather causes burst figs. We have added a whole orchard more of figs on the hill behind the house where the blackberries use to be. We set a quota each day for our pickers based on the anticipated needs of for pre-picked figs at farm markets and sales at the farm and they are reaching the quota, therefore not getting all the trees in back of the house.
Remember figs are climacteric like a banana. They have reached the point that they are climacteric when the stem begins to bend. This is the ideal time to pick so they will last up to 7 days or so in your refrigerator. For more information, check out our "Tips for Picking Figs."
Blackberries continue at a trickle. We are impressed with the primocane bearing variety Prime Ark 45 (PA-45). PA-45 bears a spring crop as well as a crop August through early October on the primocanes. They are in their fifth season and the density of canes has increased such that we are getting 3 to 4 gallons a day from 500 feet of row. We are considering planting more, at closer spacing, where we will be taking out the Natchez. Chester blackberries continue to produce and will continue for another week or so. They are also very productive.
Blueberries are done for the season. We think that global warming pushed the season forward at least 2 weeks, hence it ended two plus weeks earlier. We have historically been able to have them for you this time of year, mid August. Normally college and high school students schedules coincide with our peak picking season. This year we were wide open by early June with students not reporting in until middle or late June. Also they left at August 1.
Please do not pick the yellow persimmons.
Many have seen the persimmons growing along the parking lot. The variety is Izu. They are about the size of an apple and as tempting as they may be, we ask that you do not attempt to pick them. First because they are not ripe yet. They are not ripe until they are orange. Second, they must be cut off the tree with a fairly stout snippers. As a result, we will only be selling persimmons as a pre-picked item.
It is seedless, about the size of an apple and the variety we grow is non astringent. Non astringent means they will not pucker your mouth when you eat them.
We actually have about 0.75 acres of Izu. The trees are growing...we finally got irrigation on them. We have also added a small block of Matsumoto Fuyu variety of persimmon. It is also a bright orange and non astringent variety. It ripens later than Izu. They are located on the back hill with the fig trees.
The dwarf black mulberry trees are finally growing. The deer are giving us a fit eating these trees. We have them completely covered top and bottom with bright orange plastic fencing now.
The Gojii berries have not done anything after 5 years so they will be “"history” this winter. Perhaps we will replace them with more Chester blackberries. It is under discussion by the family.
Thank you for letting us be your farmers...See you at the farm!
Walker for The Happy Berry Bunch
Published May 30, 2017
Rain, Yes!
We have had a marvelous rainy spring! A farmer never complains about rain. The plants are out there going OOH, AHA, YES! MORE! The plants are looking lush. Of course the weeds and pests are loving it too so we have been very busy trying to keep up. Sorry I have not gotten a newsletter out before now.
Picking schedule
We are only picking blackberries at this time. We started picking blackberries on Memorial Day. We will close Tuesday May 30, be open Wednesday May 31, Close Thursday June 1 and be open again Friday June 2. The picking will be slow this first week, but should improve quickly to excellent. Stay tuned to the website home page for updates
Beginning Saturday June 3 we will be open on the same schedule as last year.
Monday through Friday: 8am until dusk
Saturday: 8am to 6pm
Sunday: Closed.
Harvest Forecast
We expect Blackberries to go all season long.
Blueberries should start about June 15.
Seedless Table Grapes - we are predicting July 15.
Figs should start August 1.
Muscadines- August 15 and
Persimmons late September.
Farm Tour
We are one of many hosts for the Upstate Farm Tour. The tours will be from 1 PM to 6 PM on both June 10 and 11. For details here are all of the links:
Facebook
www.UpTownGreenwood.com or
www.EventBrite.com for tickets
The tour is free and we will answer any and all questions as well as provide interesting history of the area and agriculture and as much about how to grow as we can. For those that would like to donate we will set up a jar at the registration table. The proceeds will go to support a local farmers market.
2017 Prices
You Pick:
Prices this year for U-pick will be $2.75/pound. We love it when you bring your own containers.
Pre-picked on-farm: $6.50 per quart or $25.00 per gallon.
Pre-picked off-farm: $6.75 per quart or $26.00 per gallon, to help cover the cost of carrying it to market.
We sell pre-picked blackberries in quarts only. In a gallon container the fruit is piled too deep and gets squashed at the bottom.
The pre-picked Grapes, once their harvest begins, we also sell only by the quart. They are in vented plastic bags and each bag contains about a pound and a half.
Persimmons, not until September, are only sold pre-picked and will be $3.00 per pound. At this point we are not planning to offer U-Pick persimmons.
Thanks so much for your support! More later.
Walker for the Happy Berry Bunch
Published April 1, 2017
Spring News
In this edition:
The Summary Version:
2016 Financial Report
The Happy Berry losses were significant in 2016. A discussion of what to do follows. It is a struggle to be financially sustainable while still maintaining our purposes of being a food source for our community, being environmentally beneficial and seeking happiness through significant relationships.
Freeze and Crop Report
Pruning is almost done and not a moment too soon. After the recent freezes the news is ... Bottom line we still have 75 to 80% of the blackberry crop and 85 to 90% of the blueberry crop. We are very fortunate as massive fruit losses are being reported in the southeast including blueberries. More details on the crop follow further in the newsletter.
Other News
We have 46 new Rhode Island Red Chickens. Venus and Saturn seedless grapes are being transitioned to Joy and Hope varieties, out of Dr. John Clark's program at the University of Arkansas. We have visions of even better quality! We are discussing the possibility of adding biochar to our cultural practices. Biochar (composted charcoal which sequesters carbon for 1000's of year) would be a means for sequestering carbon from our pruning waste stream for thousands of years instead of 3 to 5 years. It also hoped that waste heat from the kiln can be used to generate electricity to help defray farm electrical expenses. A more detailed discussion follows at the end of the full newsletter.
The Extra Details:
Financial Report
I, debated whether to put this in the newsletter. I decided to do it even though...Well, it is embarrassing. We lost a significant amount... $33,000 in 2016 and for farmers that pride ourselves as being sustainable... It accentuates we are not sustainable. We pretty much sold out of blueberries (volume off by 20% due environment), blackberries (volume off 40%), muscadines (volume off 25% due to vine killing freezes). persimmons (volume small because trees are young) and figs (There were not many figs as a result of cold injury in 2014 and 2015). We had seedless table grapes that we did not successfully market (mostly Saturn but some Jupiter and mostly because the volume was so high so quick).
The loss begs the question of analysis of what to do.
First issue is diversification. Blackberries and blueberries are high risk crops due to spring freezes that have been accentuated by global warming. We are addressing this through crop diversification, ie. Grapes, Figs, Muscadines, persimmons and Mulberries all of which bloom after danger of frost is generally past. Although Navaho blackberries are susceptible to orange rust they have a higher chilling requirement (800 hrs) which makes them a better match for our bioregion by not coming out of dormancy too early, thus would be less susceptible to spring frosts. Growing pines as passive frost protection as well as cooling. We are continuing this vein of diversificaation with the addition of European type chestnuts (a carbohydrate source and much sweeter), pussy willows as a winter crop and tea plants for you to make your own tea.
Second is the issue of price. Generally the family is adamant, as we believe it is very important to provide reasonably priced food to our community, about not increasing prices. Our cultural practices are environmentally improving but they require greater inputs in terms of labor and technology. Socially the fact that we only sell directly to the consumer is also more labor intensive but includes benefits of having a personal relationships with our customers which is happiness. To quote somebody "If you love what you do you don't have to work a day in your life." The question of whether we raise prices requires a family discussion. We note that local strawberries went up about 12% in 2017.
Third is the question of how to better maximize the harvest. We grade all our berries. From the graded berries we developed three categories: excellent, baking/cooking berries and bad berries that are disease or insect infested. Previously we jammed some of the baking berries and the rest just went to be recycled. From another grower we got the idea selling frozen bags of berries. We tried it on a small scale this winter, and we sold out of both the frozen black and blue berries. We know we could do the same thing with grapes. We did it personally for ourselves. Frozen Jupiter grapes are 10 times better than grapes we get from long term storage, Chile and elsewhere that are in big box stores. We need to "run the numbers" on this issue.
Pruning report
Blueberries and Seedless grapes are done. Blackberries floracanes were removed last summer and the primocanes were trained to the "V" trellis end of summer and early fall. They made a little growth last fall as we were watering through the 14 week drought. They could stand a little trimming and training but not sure we will get it done in time. Muscadines are about half done but they are still dormant and we are focused on them. We did not get done before bud break last year and reduced vigor was obvious in those we pruned after growth resumed in 2016. In 2016 we were unable to manage the deer in the dwarf black mulberries, despite investment in "Plot Saver Tape" and stinky goo that we put on multiple times and $850 investment in automated deer audio device making a combination of deer distress sounds and various predator sounds, so the trees actually shrunk in size. The trees have been trimmed, blue tubes replaced and each individual row has been wrapped in a 4 foot orange plastic construction fence. Goji berries still need trimming. The willows were coppiced in time so that we had good air drainage during the past 6 freezes.
Crop report
We have had six freezes as of March 26. The good news is there are no more freezes forecasted for 10 days out (April 6). But we are not in the clear yet.
To try and protect the harvest from the freezes, we ran the wind machine to harvest heat from the inversion off Lake Keowee three times. March 13 was an advective freeze but the low appeared to be about 27 locally and damage was minimal in both the black and blue berries despite stigma showing in a lot of Climax and Premier blueberry flowers. March 14-15 was the most damaging with a low of 22 at our Weather Underground station... out of reach of our wind machine. Other local stations reported temps of 16 degrees. Wind settled at 11:30 on the 14th and our wind machine was going by 12:15. As of March 25 we have had 1067 chill units which was more than adequate for the year but down from the long term average. We had 564 chill units as of January 4, 2017 which was enough for all our blackberry and blueberry varieties. Since January 1 we have had 644 Growing Degree Units (max +min/2-50) verses long term average of 374 and 150 more than last year.
The detailed report on Blackberries
We still have 75 to 80 % of the blackberry crop. The breakdown by variety is:
Von - 100% Remaining; provided brown discoloration in pith does not limit growth
Chester - 100% Remaining; They do not bloom until May
Prime Ark 45 - 90% Remaining; This early bloomer surprised me! Anything open and or king bud at 1/4 inch was damaged but given the number flower bud coming... it looks good
Kiowa - 85% Remaining; We loss the king flower but all laterals look good provided pith discoloration is not a factor and there are a lot of buds coming
Chickasaw - 85% Remaining; same observation as Kiowa
Ouachita - 95% Remaining; A few king flowers damaged and pith discoloration noted
Natchez - 20% Remaining; maybe...many buds that had just started to break (1/8 inch in growth) were brown in the middle many king and lateral buds damaged and if laterals were alive the rachis looked like more than the pith was damaged (If we can afford it this one is gone)
The detailed report on Blueberries
In late summer and fall of 2016 we irrigated and sprayed for leaf diseases and we believe as a consequence we had tremendous fruit bud set over all. AFter the freeze damage, it looks to me like we still have 85 to 90 percent of a full crop. The breakdown by variety is:
Centurion - 100% Remaining, the buds were swollen with just few with flower definition...we have never loss a crop of centurions in 20 years for growing them
Powderblue - 85% Remaining; Anything with the stigma showing was dead
Tifblue - 98% Remaining; only a few with stigma showing but lots of good flower definition
Onslow - 80% remaining; mainly those with stigma well developed
Montgomery - 80% remaining; about like Onslow
Delight - 80% Remaining; surprise...big berries but this one is being phased out due to leaf disease and the need for post harvest disease control
Climax - 50% remaining; maybe... and we have lot of these bushes susceptible to leaf disease which requires post harvest disease control
Premier - 50% remaining; maybe
Other news
We have added 46 new chickens to our flock that has down to about 35 more senior chickens. They are about 8 weeks old and should start producing eggs about the middle of June.
We have started to transition from the variety Venus to Joy and Saturn to Hope in the seedless table grapes. We are planting Dog Ridge root stock next to the Mars grapes so we can inlay them to the Mars. The reason for this is grape root borer(GRB). Dog Ridge is about 50% less susceptible according to Florida research and another grower who uses it said he has no problem GRB. We have been unable to get any nursery to provide anything but own rooted plants. Chemical control did not work for us. Mating disruption using pheromones at every plant after 3 years has reduced vine losses from 30 + % annually to about 8% annually, still unacceptable. We are hopeful that pheromones plus rootstock will reduce vine losses to insignificant.
We are excited about the possibility of adding biochar to our cultural practices. This mean we will be sequestering carbon from our pruning waste stream for 1000's of years instead of 3 to 5 years. It also hoped that waste heat from the kiln can be used to generate electricity to help defray farm electrical expenses. To do so we will need to build a biochar kiln with a generation system. Dr. Mocko of the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the College of Engineering at Clemson University has volunteered the assistance of a senior Mechanical Engineering Class. The class is lead by Dr.s Dan Fant and S. Kulkarni. They have divided the class into 3 teams that are competing to create the best design. If any of you are interested in attending the final exam please contact me. I will provide background information. Final plan(s) and budget will be put on our web site and be made available to all. Ultimately we plan to crowd source the building of the kiln.
As always, we thank you for your support! We would not be here without you, and hope you are looking forward to the coming season as much as we are!
Walker for The Happy Berry Bunch
Published January 15, 2017
Willow Season!
We have cuts ready for you to make arrangements, cuttings so you can grow-your-own and plants already potted.
We will be open the following Saturdays with a small display:
January 14, and 21;
February 4 and 18;
March 4, 11, 18 and 25:
and April 1,8, 15 until they run out.
OR
You can call us anytime and we will arrange to meet you at the farm porch. We may be in the field working...we can coordinate by phone or texting... 864 350 9345.
We will also be at the following Home and Garden Shows:
January 27-29 ...Savannah, Georgia at the Savannah Low Country Home and Garden Show at The Civic Center, just a short ride across the river in a tug boat from downtown Savannah
February 10-12 Anderson Home and Garden Show at the Civic Center in Anderson, South Carolina
February 11 the Master Gardener Symposium at the TD Convention Center in Greenville, South Carolina
February 25 -26 Asheville Build and Remodel Home and Garden show at the Ag Center near the Asheville Airport Just off of I 26.
March 25 (tentative) at the Anderson Library "How-To fair from 10 till 3:30 we will be demonstrating how to root and plant pussy willows also with willow cuts for dried arrangements. This is a walk by program, so bring your questions.
If you need a program on willows and it does not conflict with theses dates call us(864 350 9345) we would love to help you!
Thanks for your support in fixing/sequestering carbon and protecting from erosion our streams with willow trees!
Published January 2, 2017
How did we do in 2016?
When we are out-and-about this is the most common question we get. This is always a difficult question to answer because it is multi-faceted. The success of any business involves three bottom lines...They are social, environmental and economic.
Social
It was a great year! We got to feel good growing food for our community, having fun participating in local farmers markets, and providing an opportunity for the community to harvest- their-own at a price that generally beats the big box stores while visiting with family and friends. We made lots of new friends and got to share hugs and well wishes with returning customers. We felt like we made a contribution to our community. We appreciate your support, look forward to serving you in the future and would love your suggestions on how we can do it better.
Environmental
For us global warming has become a real threat. The number of days over 95 degrees has increased from 10 or so to over 20. Hot days (days over 85 degrees) have increased in April and May. Our droughts have increased in length and frequency. Our number of chill hours is declining each year. Bud break in the spring is occurring earlier and as a consequence there is a longer period of exposure to killing frosts. The frequency of violent thunder storms and extended wet events is increasing. On a happier note, we are excited that we have taken proactive steps to adapt and mitigate environmental exposure.
Adaptation: We are diversifying our fruit crops to those that are less subject to vagaries of chilling and spring frost injury by blooming later. The pine trees you see in the field will provide passive frost protection and evaporative cooling for pick-your-own folks as well as the plants. Blackberry flowers, for example, are damaged by temperatures over 85 degrees. (Who has not walked under the shade of a tree and not felt 10 degrees cooler? ) The pines also slow the wind and reduce damage from violent storms. Walker is working on a biochar project proposal to improve the health of our soils. Biochar increases resilience by improving cation exchange (ability of the soil to retain and circulate plant nutrients), water holding capacity and microbial diversity that improves soil aggregation therefore less compaction. Healthy soils enable plants to be more resilient to weather extremes.
Mitigation:
The pine trees are increasing our depth of carbon sequestration (our ability to store the carbon for 100 years or more in the tree) and the pine needles are providing more recalcitrant carbon (it doesn’t breakdown as easily) for soil incorporation by soil fauna. We have eliminated pre-emergent herbicides thus have more organic trash under the bush which in turn means more diverse fauna under the plants that reduces pest pressures. The trash under the plants means even more carbon, better water percolation, thus drought resilience and less runoff thus less pollution. Similarly, the biochar will provide recalcitrant carbon that would be removed from the atmosphere for hundreds to thousands of years. He has run into some engineering problems with the biochar project that maybe one of you could help him. Please contact him 864-350-9345
Economically
This year we had a good crop year... but plant damage 1- from two previous seasons of winter extreme temperatures causing damage to plants, especially blackberries, muscadines and figs; and 2- leaf disease and resultant defoliation in 2014/5 due to extended wet events meant reduced blueberry flower bud set... did reduce the overall 2016 harvest volume. The 2016 droughts meant large water bills. We watered post harvest so that we would get good flower bud set for 2017. Even with the irrigation, the end of season, 14 week drought, killed many plants in the south valley where we had not installed irrigation. Replacement plants are mostly ordered. There have been several equipment failures at critical times which put stress on other equipment which then also failed under the added stress. We can’t get parts or repairs done quickly enough which resulted in additional capital expenses and/or higher labor, and/or things just not getting done (which will cost down the road).
Bottom line...
We haven’t done the final accounting, but "back of the envelope figures" tell us we will have to reduce expenses as well as borrow money to make it to next season. So in 2017 we will be playing catch-up as well as paying interest on borrowed money.
The good news is that, right now, volume is looking very good for next year. Everything planted with irrigation is looking good. We have learned from our mistakes and have plans/strategies in place to address our major threats. Those temperature extremes (both warm and cold) were associated with windless nights and in the future, we will run the wind machine as yet another adaptation strategy to combat mid-winter cold extremes. To combat the leaf disease, we are gradually changing blueberry varieties to those that are resistant to leaf defoliating diseases. We are investing in installing irrigation in the south valley as I write this.
Decorative Branches & Stems begin this month!
Recently a friend shared with me a blog that I thought was very interesting http://deborahsilver.com/blog/cut-branches-for-winter-pots/. It is worth the visit for winter decorative ideas. Our Red and yellow stick dogwood will be in short supply this year, not sold out but close. We will endeavor to plant more. We will have plenty of red curly and of course the "darling" of them all the woolly & silver willows will be in good supply too. We have a few Red Curly now and will cut more later. We still have a small amount of Red Stick Dogwood to cut. We will start harvesting and selling our woody florals after the first of the year. We are also rooting two varieties of weeping willow...we have had many requests... but give us time to get them going. In addition to selling cuttings, we also have willows ready for planting out.
Eggs, Jams & -NEW THIS YEAR- Frozen Blue- & Blackberries
We still have eggs and jams for sale on the porch. We have added this year frozen blueberries and blackberries in a small freezer on the porch. If you like this we could expand the volume for the winter of 2017. The prices are on the bags in the freezer. You can leave money in the honor-system/money box if we are not there.
In the Fields
Blueberry Pruning: We will start pruning the blueberries with the oldest bushes January 2 or 3. (The picture adjacent was taken 11-28-16). The pine trees have really grown and we will be removing limbs at the same time to allow more sunshine, yet keep some shade. If you have bushes at home now is the time to prune them. If not sure how to prune, visit with us and we will teach you. Your blackberries should have been pruned by now, and if not done yet, get them first. You can grind the stems up with your lawn mower. That goes for blueberry prunings too, except for the larger/thicker part of the stems
Pruning grapes, muscadines and figs will come later: We will start them in March. We are taking out 16 of our Venus plants and replacing them with "Joy" another dark blue seedless grape. We are taking out one row of the Saturn grapes and replacing them 47 "Hope" a green seedless grape. Both of these new varieties are out of University of Arkansas’s grape breeding program. In addition to high quality, sweeter and more flavorful, we hope they are more tolerant of leaf and fruit diseases.
Blackberries: The plantings of Von and Chester blackberry have done well and we should have a decent crop in 2017. The ten rows of Chester on the back hill in back of the old house are gone. We have reduced the number of rows to five and are planting Matsomoto Fuyu Persimmon which is an October bearing seedless Persimmon. The new Fig orchard is looking very good and should have some figs in it this year.
Solar/Gravity Fed Irrigation: We are developing plans for a small solar/gravity fed irrigation system for the very expensive wells we dug several years ago. Do not know when we will be able to do it... but the plans will be "shovel ready" when the opportunity avails itself.
Thank you for your support!
We would not be here without YOU!
Wishing all a wonderful New Year!
Walker for The Happy Berry Bunch