Bring Local Food to Consumers with a Real Farmers’ Market

My sister is rich enough to shop where she wants and to buy what she wants in the way of food. I guess most of us are that rich but most of us won’t shop and buy what we want. She does. I’ve seen her cook a $10 steak for her little boy’s bedtime munchies. She says vegetables straight from the garden are best but she thinks Harris Teeter is almost as good. I really wouldn’t know since I don’t shop there, but their use of the term “farmers market” does bother me most every time I hear it. In my mind a real farmers market has to have farmers.
If one of the other chains would like to compete with Harris Teeter, here is an idea.
Let a local farmer set up in the parking lot of each store. Then advertise that you have real farmers. The customers would come to buy something in season then wander in the store to get what they can’t get from the farmer. The customer traffic would pick up enough to pay for the advertisement plus give you an increase in sales. The farmer can’t be there all the time, but the customers will still come. (Such is the nature of variable rewards). Limit what the farmers sell to what they can grow themselves. This will keep the volume low enough so there isn’t a chance they will hurt your inside business. Just the increase in customer traffic will make this strategy worthwhile, but go ahead and charge the farmer about 10% on his total sales. If you have no stocking cost, no product loses and no overhead cost, you can almost make money on 10%. Like I said, it doesn't really matter since you have improved your bottom line already. The final point is that with the number of farmers in our area, the first chain store in will be the only chain store in. There are not enough farmers to go around.

Ponds in our landscape

In a world with higher energy cost and more frequent water restrictions ornamental pond design needs to change. Ponds designed so they have to be topped off to maintain aesthetics require more water than a similar size lawn or vegetable garden. Ponds designed where large pumps have to run continuously use quite a bit of energy. Neither of these features will suit a certain clientele in the future. These environmentally conscious consumers might be interested in water features that could double as rainwater storage and fluctuate in depth to comply with water restrictions without compromising aesthetics. But those criteria are not the best practices of the current water gardening industry. I’m not sure how to make these clients happy, but there will be opportunity.
These clientele will be born after 1962. The first earth day occured before they were ten years old. 10 years old is the time when people look around and say "This is what the world is like". Everybody wasn't affected by the environmental movement but the ones that were have a totally different mind set than people born a few years before 1962.

Peak fall color for Cabarrus County

Peak fall color for Cabarrus County for 2007 was on November 14. A rain fell overnight and knocked many leaves off, however there is still plenty of color. Some plants that partly died from the drought had excellent color in the rest of the plant. Wonderful year for sweet gums. Dogwoods are still hanging on. Often they drop their leaves early. Poplars and maples are still providing good color although the leaves dropped during the drought would have improved them. Blueberries have colored earlier than normal. Oaks still haven't colored. Black Walnuts still have leaves. Often, their leaves are diseased and gone by the middle of September.

Strenghtening Our Local Food System.

This morning I set in on a meeting about our local food system. There are three proposals on the table for strengthening our local food system. They include a small farm incubator. This is a facility to help young people interested in farming overcome two major barriers. The first is the capital expense and the second is the knowledge of how to run a farm. Prospective farmers lease a portion of the property to farm. The only one I know in NC is called Raft Swamp Farm. Another idea is developing a local facility for killing livestock. Right now a farmer would have to haul a cow to a different county for slaughter and then go back in a separate truck to haul the animal back. The extra expense increases the cost and makes it less profitable for farmers. Concurrently, we are looking at developing institutional markets for the cheaper cuts of meat. One of the problems with growing local beef in the past has been selling the cheaper cuts. Solving these two problems should create more money for the 7 million dollar livestock industry here in Cabarrus County. Finally, improved management for our local farmers market would strengthen our fruit and vegetable industry.

Sources of Water for Cabarrus County

Somebody asked me why the local government didn’t develop more sources of water. My initial answer was that additional sources were limited and had their own set of problems and costs. While that answer was true, there are additional sources of water that could be developed fairly reasonably.
One of the most obvious sources of water is Rocky River. People tend to discount it because it isn’t very clean water. Yet it could easily be cleaned up well enough to use it for downstream water at Lake Howell. The EPA requires the release of 1.3 million gallons of water downstream from Lake Howell daily during drought times. Mother Nature would have dried Coddle Creek up in 2002 if man hadn’t been interfering. I’m not satisfied that man knows better than nature in this particular situation. Anyway, to get the water from Rocky River to the dam on Lake Howell would require a pumping station and about 3 miles of pipe. The city already owns land around the airport and some land on the east side of Coddle Creek. The line would only have to cross one road. The water line should be run near the rock quarry. Once Vulcan quits digging rock out of the rock quarry, they might sell the quarry to the city rather than undertake the expense of reclaiming it. Then the Water Authority could fill the quarry from Rocky River during times of high flow. Then when the river gets low, they could then use the quarry to supply the downstream water at Lake Howell. I don’t have any figures but I suspect having both this quarry and a pump from Rocky River on line would increase Lake Howell’s capability by 50%.
Another possible water source is above Mt Peasant’s water intake on Dutch Buffalo Creek. My understanding is that the Corp of Engineers had approved a site on Dutch Buffalo the same time Mt Pleasant built the reservoir on Black Run Creek and that the landowner was willing to sell land for that purpose at that time. In the past Dutch Buffalo Creek has been more reliable than Coddle Creek. This year it wasn’t, but having a reservoir on both would allow us to hedge our bets. Again, I don’t have any figures but I suspect this reservoir would be about 10% of the capacity of Lake Howell.
If a reservoir is built on Dutch Buffalo, an idea I brought up before the Lake Howell was constructed ought to be revisited. Private individuals throughout the county have been willing to construct ponds on their own land for fishing, watering livestock and recreation. Additional ponds would be constructed if the cost was lower. The water authority could subsidize the cost of pond construction within the Dutch Buffalo drainage in exchange for the right to purchase water during droughts. The individual landowner could use the pond for anything other than irrigation until a drought situation occurs. Then the water authority could mandate the release of the water which would gravity flow downstream. The upstream ponds need to be in place before the downstream pond is built or the sediment from pond building will negatively impact the downstream pond. There are probably 50 landowners on the drainage willing to put in a pond if there was total payment. This would give a volume close to 5% of Lake Howell for a cost of around ½ million and almost no environmental problems due to the small size of individual ponds. There would be some loss moving the water downstream but not enough loss to ruin the idea.
When you get out west and see people pumping water for 100’s of miles and tapping every river and aquifer, it makes you realize that we could do more.

We can't let those chickens cluck.

Chickens have the potential to turn kitchen scraps and excess vegetation into healthy high protein meals for inner city children. This has the potential to reduce fossil fuel consumption, reduce landfill waste and reduce poverty. Borys and dhijana Scott-Harmony were demonstrating this in Charlotte. Unfortunately Mecklenburg Animal Control has ordered the chickens slaughtered. In their memory I wrote this song. I think a male country vocalist could do the best job with it, but feel free to set it to any kind of music you wish

Great Tasting Eggs?
Well you’re out of luck:
We can’t let
Those chickens cluck.

Vitamins up
Cholesterol down
That’s not the kind of eggs
We eat in town.

We buy our eggs
From the store
When they have aged
A month or more

Great Tasting Eggs?
Well you’re out of luck:
We can’t let
Those chickens cluck.

Other noise doesn’t bothers me
We’re a world class wannabe.

But Great Tasting Eggs?
Well you’re out of luck:
We can’t let
Those chickens cluck.

Screaming kids
Whistling trains
Barking dogs
Shrieking planes

Bobcat screams
Panther cheers
Verizon concerts
Till you can’t hear

Great Tasting Eggs?
Well you’re out of luck:
We can’t let
Those chickens cluck.

Other noise doesn’t bother me
We’re a world class wannabe.

But Great Tasting Eggs?
Well you’re out of luck:
We can’t let
Those chickens cluck.

Radio Blaring
Amps a thumping
Rock Star cursing
Till the cars a jumping

Mufflers roaring
Jake brakes choking
Gears a grinding
Engines smoking

Great Tasting Eggs?
Well you’re out of luck:
We can’t let
Those chickens cluck.

That other noise doesn’t bother me
We’re a world class wannabe.

But Great Tasting Eggs?
Well you’re out of luck:
We can’t let
Those chickens cluck.

Maybe you should try moving. Didn’t the Soviet Union give you that much freedom? Just don’t go to Concord.

Cause Bruton Smith and the politicians are in bed
To build a drag strip that would raise the dead
With car engines you can hear 5 miles away
You will barely hear some bureaucrat say

Great Tasting Eggs?
Well you’re out of luck:
We can’t let
Those chickens cluck.

That other noise doesn’t bother me
We’re a world class wannabe.

But Great Tasting Eggs?
Well you’re out of luck:
We can’t let
Those chickens cluck.

Farm Land Preservation

I am in favor of letting people who want to live stacked up like chickens in a coop do just that and leaving the rural areas to people like me who know how to take care of it. For example, some of the zoning laws that force people to live in one place and work in another place ought to be changed. Legislate how it will look not what it will be. On the other hand, I don't favor mandating farm land preservation.
The state is going to spend some money on Farmland Preservation. I am not sure this money will be spent wisely.
Some of my thoughts are that the more profitable the farm, the more likely it will stay a farm. So any project designed to make local farms more profitable would be a candidate for this type of funding. One idea that has already been bounced around is a business incubator for value added products of local farms (kind of a community kitchen where a farmer could produce some product and get some cash flow before investing in their own facility). Another idea is a type of “Vegetable Mobile” to take local farm products into various subdivisions creating a larger market than our current farmers market. Or perhaps a small farm incubator that gets some of the farmers who want to farm a chance to start. If you have any ideas, let me know.