Category Archives: Articles

I found some youtube videos of Crazy. Enjoy!

Written by Jeff Poppen
Tuesday, April 26, 2011

The light green of spring usually brightens me up, but I must admit to a sadness. Among other things, my friend “Crazy Owl” died. You may have met him, gray old fellow with a long beard. He was born in 1927, a long time ago.

His family had a chicken ranch, as he called it. They got sued for polluting the neighbors, and “Crazy” was upset to the end about the chicken ranch moving in here. His dad put in a drive-in custard shop instead and did well.

Charles Hall (Crazy Owl) became a Phd in mathematics, and studies statistics, which is what my father did. So we had that in common. Like my Dad, “Crazy” quit the professor role to become a horticulturist.

Studying herbalism led him into the world of Chinese medicine and he helped many people with their health problems. His knowledge was vast and he enjoyed sharing it.

Crazy lived up the road from the farm, and walked down often to tend his herbs and roses. He made tinctures and other medicines from them which he gave to my customers. He never asked for money, but loved to pick a few vegetables to take back home.

He liked to take folks on an herb walk. Immediately pointing out the plantain, dandelion and chickweed at your feet, his herb walk could last an hour and not travel 100 feet. All of the plants seemed familiar to him. If he did not know it he would try and figure out what it was and what it was good for.

Yoga was important to Crazy. He practiced quite a bit everyday. His library contained many fascinating book on many different topics.

He had models of geodesic domes that he wanted to build on the farm. I came home one day to find a bamboo dome greenhouse being erected. He built top bar beehives that are full of honeybees.

On delivery days he would try to have something to send. Sometimes it was spearmint, thyme or another herb, and other times it might be an edible weed like perilla or chickweed. He was glad to be a part of our farm, and we will all miss him.

Crazy lived a long, diverse life, and will be missed.

Crazy died at 8:10am on Monday, April 4th, 2011, after announcing his impending death about 10 days prior. Jeff offered to take him to hospital, and Crazy promptly refused, which didn’t surprise anyone. His knowledge of plants and Chinese herbal medicine, and his subsequent generosity and desire to help people, is a real loss. Many more people will miss his miso, which was always top-notch.

When his obituary is printed in the paper, I’ll post it as well. In the meantime, please visit his web page, Crazy Owl’s Perch to read more about him, his views, and his knowledge of plant medicine.

Written 10/28/10

Dad had a table at the end of the driveway where we offered vegetables for sale. A shoebox collected the money that folk would leave when they go their corn, beans or whatever. It was the honor system. When questioned about people taking without paying, Dad just shrugged his shoulders and said they probably needed it more than anyone else anyway. All were our neighbors, and the farm had community support.

That was in the 1960′s. By the 70′s I had my own farm and started selling organic produce. When I took produce somewhere, it was best not to mention the “organic” word. It implied buggy, less-than-perfect vegetables, grown by hippies.

I desired many things that have since happened which now I’m not so sure about. In the early 80′s the United States had about 3,000 organic farmers who did their own organic research, developed organic markets and organized organic farming conferences. It was a lot to do, besides our farm work.

We longed for funding to do these things, but our government was on a different path. We wanted higher prices, plenty of farmer’s markets and a rising demand. Now the times have changed, and so have my ideas.

Our government owns the word “organic”, and colleges do government sponsored research, none of it applicable to a small old-timey farm. It’s mostly product-oriented research. We don’t need to buy stuff just to grow vegetables. The money they are throwing at research, marketing and conferences is astounding, but not very useful. I guess we should have predicted this. The non-government sponsored conferences are a lot more fun.

Although our farm was certified organic 15 years ago, we can’t call it organic anymore because it’s not government inspected. I dropped my certification in 2002, when they got involved. We sold it without the word before, and now we get to again. I guess I could call it O’ganic.

You would think I’d be grateful for high prices, the proliferation of farmer’s markets, and the rising demand. But all of these trends are part of the present food distribution system which I now feel needs a fundamental change. You don’t solve a problem with the same thinking that created it.

Everyone ought to have access to fresh farm vegetables everyday. They are not just for people with money. The prices in an organic store are scary. My experience has been that the longer I farm o’ganically, the less cost I have in producing food. Something fishy is going on.

Farming and marketing are two fundamentally different occupations. Growing food uses the forces of nature to produce new goods each year. Marketing is a human activity that uses up the farm’s production. It’s clear to me that food is free; it is a direct result of human labor interacting with the land and animals. The high prices come from the marketing, which is all of the transportation, advertising, packaging and overhead to run the stores.

A farmer’s market seems like a good idea, so that here are no middlemen. But the farmer’s role is on the farm. With less than 1% of the population, farmers don’t need to be running around trying to sell stuff. A few of the other 99% can market much better than us farmers can.

Farms need support for a wide variety of reasons besides vegetable production. Good farming is good for the environment, air quality, conservation, recreation, rural preservation, the beautiful scenery, education, inspiration and community building. A rising demand for good farming is beneficial, but a rising demand just for “organic” produce could lead us into trouble. “Organic” farming does not necessarily mean good farming to me anymore.

What excites me now is community sponsored agriculture, where a group of people takes responsibility for a farm in exchange for produce. Our co-op gives money, and we run a farm. We cut hay, move cattle around, take care of wood lots, lime pastures, plant orchards and all kinds of activities besides growing vegetables. It requires very long-term thinking. The farm, not monetary concerns, guides my planning. I limed this year for better hay next year, to feed the cattle the following year, to make compost, which isn’t used until the year after that, which fertilizes soil for many years later. I’m using their money to get the soil ready four or five years from now. The vegetables I have now are free and need to be eaten before they go bad.

This week we sent in plenty of the following vegetables for about 200 people: potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, sweet dumpling squash, delicatta squash, butternuts, pumpkins, sweet potatoes, rhubarb, lettuce, bok choy, apples, pears, swiss chard, kale, mustard greens, turnips, celery, parsley, mizuna, arugula, and a little thyme and sage. All of this is is easy to grow with a bit of labor, and the farm’s hay, animal manures and tractors. A garden needs a farm, and a farm needs community support.

We always have excess, which we offer to neighbors or donate to charities. I don’t feel like I sell produce anymore. I am paid to run a whole farm. We don’t want government funding, high prices, farmer’s markets or a rising demand. All we need is love, mouths to feed and community support.

Successively sowing summer squash seeds surely secures a supply of squash and a successful season. We start in May and two months later planted the last three rows. Little ones are sprouting up as the old ones bite the dust.

There are many kinds of summer squash, but none as early and prolific as Early Prolific Straightneck. I wonder where it gets it name? A crookneck is similar but has the more traditional curvy look. We call them yellow squash and fry them with oil and onions in butter, another squash we grow is Zepher, but half of it is light green.

Zucchini is the dark green one but this year ours is yellow instead. That’s because the variety is Gold Rush and it seems to be more resistant to the stem rot caused by the squash borer. The leaves of zucchini are also darker green and the stem is fatter than on the yellow squash.

As squash matures you might notice a pretty orange and black moth flying around. She lays her eggs near the base of the squash plant which hatch into the squash borer. This larva is responsible for the plant wilting and eventually rotting off at the stem.

In a small garden a piece of cloth or nylon stocking wrapped around the stem deters the moth from laying her egg there. A tennis racket can take care of the moth if you are know which one it is. Once the plant starts wilting they are hard o rescue. Splitting the stem and removing the worm is satisfying, but the plant rarely recovers.

Patty pans look like flying saucers. I’ve heard them called scallop squash, too. They come in yellow, white and a few shades of greens.

Our rows are almost 300 feet long, and the first planting of three rows suffered from lack of rain. We mulched them with hay, which helped a little. But it’s the second planting of four rows that are really producing now. I’ll probably mow the first ones down even though they still have squash because the quality is lower and we simply don’t need them.

This is a great advantage to successive sowing; if one planting doesn’t do week the next one will. You can never tell about the weather. A squash plant has a limited lifespan anyway, so if you want late squash in September it’s wise to sow seeds in July.

All plants want to reproduce. If we can keep the squash picked the plants will live longer. But once we miss a few fruit and they mature into caveman clubs the vigor goes way down and the satisfied plant happily withers away. We harvest squash every other day.

We sent over 20 bushels in last week. The CSA Members take it to their neighbors. The abundance of a garden needs mouths to feed, and community supported Agriculture is a great way to distribute food. We just grow a bunch and send it to Nashville and let them deal with it. and our tiny sprouts will be producing squash on up until the first fall frost.

Pole bean need to be staked. We’re growing two varieties this year, Kentucky Wonder and the Purple Variety that Ed and Margaret gave us many years ago. I like picking pole beans because I don’t like the bending over that bush beans require.

Along the garden’s deer fence is a good place to grow them. We lean sticks up against the fence and the plants quickly send up their runners. It amazes me how a climbing plant sends out tendrils and knows where to go, and how quickly they find the poles. By the time we finish staking the row, the first plants are already wrapping around the stakes.

We use two kinds of stakes. Eight foot long poles that are an inch by an inch are all the beans need to grow on. A local sawmill cut them for us, out of ash lumber. Poplar or soft maple won’t last as long as ash or oak.

The Chinese bamboo at the end of the driveway also supplies bean poles. The older canes last better than the new ones. A bamboo patch grows bigger canes each year, so the smaller ones with the more developed branches are the older, more mature canes. They are harder and don’t bend as easy as the new, taller shoots.

Leppers or small saw cut them down, and we wiggle them out of the patch. A machete, swung the opposite way it grew, clips off the branches. They are cut into eight foot lengths and some some of the straighter ones are left long.

These long ones are laid out between two rows of beans, overlapping a foot or two. Metal fence posts are driven in at the overlaps, and a cane or stake is tied to it at an angle. They are also tied where they cross, and the long poles are placed on top of the X.

Two more stakes go underneath the lateral pole at the halfway pint to hold it up and keep it from swagging. Then the other poles are leaned against it and pushed into the ground on either side, right next to the beans. They’ll climb all the way to the top and make a tunnel of easy to pick beans.

Sometimes beans are grown in a circle with a six or eight foot diameter. Poles are set around them and tied at the tops to make a Teepee.

When mature, these beans completely cover the trellis and are a beautiful sight in the garden. Even at the end of an eight foot pole they are sending out tendrils which wave in the air, looking to continue their ascent.

One time I traded a cow for some beans. They really grew tall. They kept on growing taller and taller. So I climbed up the bean stalk. But that’s just one more tall tale.

Summertime in Tennessee brings forth the favorite fruits of the earth. Tomatoes and swee corn quickly follow on the heels of beans, squash and cucumbers, and the melons are swelling. So what am I doing out in the garden with lettuce and cabbage seed?

We are planting the fall garden, now, during the middle of the summer harvesting. the tiny seedlings will be ready to transplant in mid-August, to make their heads in September, October and November. To harvest then, we plant now.

If you want beets to pickle, talk to me. As a row gets pulled up we can resow it into something else. A row of leeks is now a row of lettuce, and so is a row of beans. I love to get rid of old vegetables to make room for new ones.

The cold frames are used for growing tomato seedlings to set out in the garden. They were full of extra plants, which were already starting to make fruit. But I didn’t make the mistake I made a few years ago.

“I’ll just let those ‘maters go,” I said to myself. The cold frames filled up with delicious cherry tomatoes. We ate from them all summer long.

The next year I filled it up with tomato seeds again, my usual 10 or 12 varieties. I like Whoppers, Big Boys and many other big red tomatoes. We don’t grow cherry tomatoes for our customers because it takes too long to fill up a basket.

You’ve probably guessed by now what happened. The cherry tomatoes from the previous year sprouted in the cold frame along with my seeds, and I couldn’t tell them apart. I didn’t realize the extent of my mistake until the tomato patch started ripening and what I thought were going to be big reds turned out to be those volunteer cherry tomatoes.

So we clean out the cold frames before the tomatoes start producing. We mixed up some creek sand, conviently left from the flood, with compost and rock phosphate. Into this mixture, which was raked into the cold frame soil, I sowed the fall brassicas (a fancy name for cabbage).

Chinese cabbage, Bok choy, Kohlrabi and broccoli are all poking their cute little heads up out of the ground. The broccoli is Purple Sprouting, and is supposed to over-winter and give us broccoli next spring. All of these plants will be set out in the gar den next month.

Until then we’ll keep harvesting he fruits. Cucumbers and dill, tomatoes and basil, beans and zucchini, and corn, corn and more corn. When any of these crops starts to peter out we don’t care. We have other, younger plantings awaiting their turn.

I simply mow them down, till them in, and get the ground ready for the fall garden. It’s like New Year’s in summer as we ring out the old and bring in the new.

A great crop of garlic graces the garden shed. Tied in bunches and hung from nails in the rafters, it creates quit a sensation. Although the sight is on to behold, especially for garlic lovers, the aroma really stands out.

Each clove of garlic, sown in the fall, makes a bulb. They are planted six inches apart in rows 18 inches wide. A thick hay mulch is laid on over them immediately.

It was October when we planted the garlic patch, but I usually get them in during September. The beds received a healthy dose of compost and the soil was well pulverized. Only the biggest cloves from the best bulbs are used for seed, which insures the biggest and best harvest.

The small green shoots emerge through the hay in about a month, then winter comes and plant life comes to a seeming standstill. But underground the roots are still active, until the dead of winter. When the weather warms, new green growth appears.

By April it’s a foot tall and thriving. We pull weeds and shift the mulch around to smother small ones. Having plenty of hay between the beds makes this easier.

At the end of May flower stalks shoot up and curl. The distinctive pigtails or racombole garlic are called scapes. They are a culinary delicassy and we snap them off to send to our customers. By relieving the plant of it’s flower and seed, more energy is put into the making of the bulb.

Towards the end of June the tops wither and it’s time to harvest. I run through the beds with the subsoiler to loosen the soil so we can pull them up. They are laid in shallow piles to sun dry for a couple of days.

I treat them like eggs, being gentle and careful. A little of the hay mulch is put on the truck bed so they don’t get bruised when loading. Baling twine is used to tie bunches of 15 to 20 together.

Each bulb has about eight cloves, so it will take on eighth of the harvest to replant a similar sized field. We got through the crop and set aside the biggest and best ones for seed. Any bulbs that are damaged or not fully covered by their sheath are also set aside to be used first, as they won’t store well.

Up in the rafters we look for wasps, which need to be knocked down. Then the bundles are passed up and hung from nails that are about a foot apart. Here they hang and finish curing.

Hanging garlic gives the shed the look of cornucopia, but the smell is what overcomes you. Dreams of Italian dishes will have to suffice until the tomatoes come in. Until then it’s roasted garlic on baked potatoes, sauted garlic in omelets, and raw garlic for the hardy garlic lovers.

By July, we try to hang up the hoes and make much use of mulch. The benefits of mulching are similar to hoeing; it controls weeds and conserves moisture. But mulch has the added asset of bringing carbon into the garden.

In June, I like to see clean rows of vegetables. The summer crops like warm soil, so we don’t mulch right away. Constantly stirring the soil releases nutrients and makes it easier for the roots to penetrate.

Once our crops are established, many won’t need any more attention until harvest. Potatoes and sweet corn are laid by, and the winter squash and sweet potatoes will just need a bit of weed pulling. Bats and other spring crops have already made and will be out soon.

So we turn our focus to tomatoes, cucumbers and summer squash. Big rolls of old hay are set at various spots around the garden and a fork starts peeling off the layers. This is a dusty job.

In between the plants and in between the rows, hay is laid down at least a foot thick. Pile it on deeply is the mulching motto. Rain and footsteps will pack it down a whole lot, so mulching is not a time to be stingy.

Farmers have cut hay by mid-summer, and often have some left over from last year, which they sell cheap. Expect to pay enough to cover their expenses in making the hay. Square bales are much easier to deal with, but will be more experience.

Weeds are an issue. I try to avoid Johnson grass, but it finds its way in sometimes. We spot it’s corn-like sprouts and pull them immediately. A thick layer of hay won’t sprout, but the seeds may stay viable. An advantage we have is that we make our own hay, although I’m not adverse to using my neighbor’s old hay.

Underneath the mulch the soil stays moist. The vegetables love this, and prove accordingly. Having hay between the fruits, and soil also prevents rotten spots on the vegetables. And after a few months of hoeing, a mulched garden is a blessing.

But the real blessing is still to come. When we farm without bagged fertilizer, our fertilizer comes from the life in the soil. As the hay slowly decays it becomes incorporated into the organic matter of the soil. With compost and it’s myriad of microbes, the old hay increases next year’s fertility.

So we mulch to help our soils, besides helping our crops. It’s a beautiful sight to see nothing but vegetable plants poking up through the hay. With the mulching done and the hoes hung up, our backs feel better too.