August 25th – This has been a busy week on the farm. The seeding that was accomplished on the upper L-shaped garden last week is now sprouting 6 varieties of beets on the small section of the L where winter squash was harvested 6 weeks ago (Hreh and Bai, our Montagnard helpers plucked volunteer squash from the emerging beet rows). On the longer section of the L garden, there are a variety of brassicas appearing – Toscano Kale, Asian greens such as Tatsoi, Mibuna, and Mizuna, and Arugula. This favorable August weather is repenting for the putrid heat and humidity we experienced in July, and it’s a great climate to get fall crops up and going and contrasts sharply with drought-ridden Augusts of yesteryear. We ache for the farmers in the Midwest and West experiencing such hardship.
Even the beds where cover crops were grown this summer are given a fresh dose of leaf compost from the Carrboro municipal compost pile. “95% of the soil problems I consult on are related to the lack of sufficient organic matter,” states Larry’s soil science instructor, Dr. Kristen Hicks. Organic matter helps retain moisture, encourages microbiota, and improves drainage and thus discourages pathogens.
Visitors to Peaceful River often remark that they can’t believe all that has been done in renovating the farmhouse, teaching barn, entry courtyard, pole barn, and retreat center. They are also impressed with the amount of work that has been done around the farm. Much of that credit goes to our wonderful farm helpers.
We love our Montagnard workers – they love farming and especially Peaceful River. They come all the way from Greensboro at the crack of dawn and usually appear at the door before we are fully awake. Greensboro has one of the largest groups of Montagnards in the country – about 3,000. They have suffered such hardship in Vietnam as an isolated mountain minority (“they called us monkeys”, as Christians, and as allies to the Americans during the War. Hyai is the “grandfather” of the particular group we relate to, fought in the war and was hospitalized for a year with a wound to the abdomen, has a large extensive family he does not expect to see again, and phones home to his wife every evening and tragically does not expect to see her again. He exudes boundless joy despite all the cards he has been dealt and hoops and hollers each time he sees us. He works through the week at his landscape job and especially likes helping us plant flowers and vegetables – always ebullient and cheerful – a pick-me-up we look forward to each visit. He weed-eated around all of the deer fencing and at the retreat center on the day he worked with us.
Hreh’s wife has just been released from prison for teaching the Bible, and he is earnestly attempting to get her to America with their son before she is arrested again. He works on the UNC-Greensboro grounds crew and is always upbeat and smiling on the days he works with us. His English is good, and he comes up with some zingers that he states matter-of-factly but make us laugh. He helped prepare a lot of the beds this week and with his colleague, Bai, planted several hundred brassica plants – cabbage, bok choy, and broccoli.
Blinh is very handy and has helped us with all of the deer fencing, clearing invasive vines and shrubs along the creek, and preparing and planting beds. He also is adept at English and speaks in dramatic tones when he wants to emphasize a point. When we first took him down to the river, he picked up a nursery spade to take with him. Larry asked him what it was for. “Kill animals,” he replied. It was funny to us, but then again, who knows what kind of danger lurks along the river in Vietnam. He works for a company that clears power lines of limbs and loves operating our chain saw. He hopes to bring his family to America in the future.
A recent Appalachian State grad, Rick Surber, came back today to help us prepare beds and plant more brassicas. Rick worked on the student farm at Appalachian while getting his degree in sustainable development. His Dad has a livestock farm in West Jefferson in the NC mountains. Rick helped us several weeks this summer and landed a full-time position with a property development company putting his contracting background to good use. We enjoy having him help us on the farm – he painted the exterior and interior of the new food prep and refrigeration rooms on the north side of the pole barn and also shored up the chicken tractor and set up the chicken fencing.
A heat-tolerant variety of lettuce, “Lettony”, was started by Rick in seed trays a few weeks ago and planted by Hreh this week – its looking really good in the field and expect to harvest some in the coming weeks. Our lettuce mix has been especially popular at the Fearrington Village Market. Radishes and carrots have also been seeded, and Radicchio plants have gone in. The demonstration garden’s cover crop of field peas is being pulled to place on the compost pile, and we are beginning to get some of those beds planted and seeded ahead of Lee’s first Healthy Eating workshop the last Saturday in September.
This week we will plant the rest of the brassica plants, seed more beets, seed our first batch of spinach – which was a big hit with both Eastern Carolina Organics and Saxapahaw General Store, and seed lots of lettuce varieties. We’ve ordered three varieties of strawberries from Whitted-Bowers Farm in Hillsborough and will plant those in mid-September, but first, we need to fence in the long, linear plot on the east side of the property that has been prepped by growing two seasons of cover crops. This part of the property is on the deer trek, and we have 12 foot posts ready to go in – should be 9 feet tall once they are placed in the ground.
The favorable weather and beneficial rains have meant lots of grass/weeds to mow, and we see that there are already little baby weeds emerging in the newly planted beds that will need attention. We also need to catch up with placing drip irrigation back in place on the newly planted/seeded beds, so that we are watering the plants and not the weeds.
From the Kentucky farmer muse, author, and philosopher, Wendell Berry:
“So, friends, every day do something that won’t compute…Give your approval to all you cannot understand…Ask the questions that have no answers. Put your faith in two inches of humus that will build under the trees every thousand years…Laugh. Be joyful though you have considered all the facts….Practice resurrection.”

We are growing an increasing number of Asian Greens this fall – they tend to germinate quickly from seed; reach early maturity and can also be harvested at a tender, baby stage; have good market acceptance; are pretty in the field and on the table in a wide array of sizes and textures. They are power-packed with nutrition but very few calories — rich in antioxidants (in particular of vitamin C), iron, calcium, beta-carotene, potassium, magnesium, and folates, Oh, and also they are DELICIOUS! Most are in the brassica family (kale, broccoli, cabbage, mustard) and have a mild mustard flavor. Others are mild with juicy stalks akin to celery.

Plant Asian Greens through early October – stagger plantings, if you begin now, to extend the harvest. Do not plant where you have grown brassicas in the past three years. Add a liberal amount of organic matter to the soil in preparing and feed with a complete organic fertilizer preferably including boron (a little dab will do you). Keep well-watered during the germination phase and through the growing period. Below is a lineup of some of the standouts in our fall garden – you may find most of these on seed racks at your garden center or niche grocery store, or you can order from Johnny’s Selected Seeds, High Mowing, Sow True, Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, Fedco, and/or Seeds of Change.

Komatsuna – Also called spinach mustard, Komatsuna has dark green leaves that are rich in calcium and often quite glossy. They can be harvested at any stage and prepared like spinach in the early stages. This versatile green can be stir-fried, pickled, boiled and added to soups or used fresh in salads.

Yukina Savoy – Large, crinkled, savoyed leaves. Plant habit is similar to Tatsoi, but more upright and vigorous for improved baby leaf yields. At full size the thick, savoyed leaves are held upright on pale green petioles. Delicious steamed or stir-fried.

Hon Tsai Tai – A Chinese specialty also known as Kailaan. The young plants soon branch and produce quantities of long, pencil-thin, red-purple, budded flower stems. Pleasing, mild mustard taste for use raw in salads or lightly cooked in stir-fries or soups.

Mibuna – Easy-to-grow Japanese green similar to Mizuna but with long, rounded leaves instead of serrated. Long white stems are born in rosettes reaching 12” tall. Perfect lightly cooked and seasoned, steamed, or stir fried. Mild enough to be added to any salad with health benefits akin to Mizuna.

Mizuna – A mild, slightly sweet Japanese green with slender white stems and bright green, deeply serrated leaves. Mild in flavor, it is good for stir-fries, salads, sandwiches and soup. It means “water vegetable” in Japanese with its juicy stalks. Low in calories, high in folic acid, high in vitamin A and carotenoids, high in vitamin C, and contains glucosinolates which are antioxidants that help prevent certain cancers.

Purple Mizuna – Purple veined leaves are sharply serrated and slow bolting. Color is most pronounced in late summer harvests. Mild in flavor and adds a distinctive look to salad mixes.

Tatsoi – Fast growing green, most popular as a baby leaf for salad and braising mixes or bunch at full size. Spoon shaped leaves are dark green and glossy with thin white stems. We had a dynamite casserole last year at the Carolina Farm Stewardship banquet – tatsoi and spinach, where the chefs used our tatsoi.

Bok Choy (aka Pak Choi) – We grow three varieties: Prize Choy which has great taste, color, and crunch; Shanghai which is smaller in stature and can be harvested in the baby stage for stir-frying, soups, or salads; and White-Stemmed which has little retail inspiration with its gangly, floppy growth habit but has a rich buttery taste – we’re going to harvest it in the baby stage this fall. Both the leaves and stems are edible and can be used in stir frying with garlic, olive oil, and a hint of soy sauce; braising, grilled, or simmering in soups.

Chinese Cabbage is also known as Napa Cabbage (having nothing to do with the California wine region). It is barrel-shaped with tightly-arranged crinkly, light green leaves and tastes mild, and crunchy. It is loaded with nutrients and extremely low in calories and high in fiber. There is an array of antioxidant compounds that protect against various cancers and bad cholesterol, an excellent source of folates, Vitamin C and K, as well as many essential vitamins.

Have a healthy and happy fall!

Larry Newlin, farmer Peaceful River Farm, Chapel Hill, NC

Cold weather makes collards get sweeter. Our meal was straight from Peaceful River Farm: braised collards, beet salad over arugula, bok choy with black sesame seed crusted tofu over soba noodles and for dessert-apple crunch made with Century Farms Apples from Reidsville, NC.

Body says to owner…..thank you.

Can you imagine how this feels knowing that THIS is coming from the garden to the table in a matter of minutes?

As usual the garden doesn’t pay attention to calendars – we had some wonderful February Saturdays to work in the garden. Spring in the NC Piedmont always arrives in sputters – a beautiful 70 degree day here – a night in the 20’s there.

The big news this past week has been a near deluge of rain – twice in one week for the first time in a long time yielding over two inches of desperately needed rainfall for our region, which like much of the Southeast is in exceptional drought. Fortunately, our garden has not been too thirsty even in last summer’s record-breaking heat and drought. The reason is that we have been methodically adding compost to our kitchen gardens and plant beds for a number of years. This has done wonders to improve the soil texture, encourage earthworms and micro biotic activity, and retain moisture.

Discussing compost and humus isn’t as exciting or inspirational as talking about the newest plant or the latest gardening technique, but it is as critical to good gardening as a solid foundation is to a house. You can read a lot of technical minutiae about the ins and out’s of composting, but we like what an expert from the American Horticultural Society said, “Folks, this ain’t rocket science.”

‘Bin thinking
With that in mind we don’t follow any rules in tending our three compost bins. Our bins are slightly hidden from view but in close proximity to our shade garden and kitchen garden. If we were in a cooler climate, we would want to have sited them in more sun, but turning the compost is hard work where shade is welcome. This shady area also happens to be the best place to hide the bins in our garden – we moved them from a more prominent open space and are glad we did with no harm to the composting process.

We try to have one bin that is usable at any given time – obviously, there are times of the year that all three bins are still “cooking”, but more often than not we have some compost at our disposal to incorporate with new plantings. What goes in compost:

To everything, turn, turn, turn
We have found that what goes in the compost is just as important as turning the compost often (once every couple of weeks) helps the decomposition process. We know that the compost pile is cooking by the steam that emanates with the turn of the pitchfork. You can buy compost thermometers to gauge when to turn, but this leans towards the “rocket science” end of the composting spectrum. If we had had more rain these past several months, we would have had compost ready earlier, but we’ve saved our precious well water and recycled inside water for the new fall plantings.

“Double digging it in”
The past few weeks we have been adding compost to our kitchen garden – double digging it in. We aren’t too concerned about changing the pH of the soil because we limed this garden well last fall. We really don’t test pH much, deciding instead to add regular doses of lime to our clay soils.

Compost all around the mulberry bush and then some
On our “to do” list is to add compost around all of the hydrangeas and perennials. This provides a good bit of nutrients, helps retain moisture as a top mulch, and eventually works its way into the soil providing improved texture and organic matter. Larry fertilized most of the shrubs and trees with Espoma Hollytone yesterday, and the added compost will energize the plants to withstand droughts better and produce bigger and more prolific blooms and berries.

Above ground water barrel from Down Under
This past week we also ordered an 865 gallon above-ground cistern that is imported from Australia. We selected this rainwater collection device because we’ve tried 65 gallon rain barrels in the past, and a typical thunderstorm will overwhelm them – plus, the storage capacity didn’t get far in helping us keep up with our watering needs (a half acre of gardens).

The Aussies have designed above-ground cisterns that come in decorator colors – we chose desert sand to blend into our exterior color, do not allow sunlight to penetrate reducing algae and mildew, and are thick enough to reduce the threat of freezing.

We can use a pump if needed, but we are going to try gravity flow first since much of the garden that requires supplemental watering is downhill from where the cistern will be placed. The Raleigh garden center where we purchased it has sold hundreds of rain barrels and cisterns, providing evidence that even in a city with a total outside watering ban avid gardeners will find a way to continue to garden.

It’s not too soon to start thinking about your winter garden. Start your seeds in August.

Broccoli
Kale
Collards
Spinach
Lettuces
Oriental Greens
Carrots
Swiss Chard

These veggies will be grown in a large raised bed, and as frigid weather approaches will be covered by white transluscent plastic over short and wide plastic hoops.

Vegetable Soups
Deborah Madison’s Kitchen

Okay, we all know that fall is right around the corner, and we always think of soup when the first nip is in the air. This wonderful book has inspiration simmering on every page so that you can make new and exciting soups.

Over 100 recipes with stunning pictures will make your mouth water as well as make you run to the market. Recipes include Roasted Fall Tomato, Rice and Golden Turnip, Potato and Green Chile, and Roasted Squash, Pear and Ginger soups. When time just isn’t available and prepared soups take the place of home made, Madison offers a battery of suggestions on how to make them your own with simple additions from delicious oils and herbs to an invigorating Cilantro Salsa. This is a book you will turn to time and again when cool weather arrives.