Blackberry Planting Frenzy

I was talking with the county agent in Cleveland county (about 90 miles west of Cabarrus County) about a year ago and he said he suspected there would be 100 acres of blackberries planted in Cleveland County during 2007. This week I asked the actual count. It was 150 acres. He suspects there will be an additional 150 acres planted in 2008.
I don't forsee very much acreage being planted in Cabarrus County. If a person planted 10 acres, that person should be prepared to hire 70 workers during picking season.
At any given time the total number of people in Cabarrus County willing to work that hard and who don't have a job is probably less than 70. I moved to the Charlotte area during the recession in the early 80's. I remember a guy telling me in 1986 that anybody who really wanted to work during that depression never had to leave town. It has pretty much been that way ever since. There have been people working at jobs they didn't enjoy, or a jobs where they wished they were paid more, but anybody who wanted to work hasn't had to leave town. When cuts down on the number of people who would want to pick blackberries.
Twenty years ago there were people willing to pick blacberries and strawberries for the fun of picking them and the ability to save a little money. In 1986 there were 4 pick your own strawberry operations in Cabarrus County. Today there are none and while strawberries could be a profitable crop, you better plan on hiring somebody to pick them.

I was asked to talk to some Concord City planners about the downtown market. Here are the talking points.
We feel a downtown farmers market is an amenity that brings several advantages to the City. It brings people out on the street, it is a social equalizer, and it increases number of visitors to downtown.
Here is our current situation.
30 day lease with Wachovia is problematic. Farmers need to plan on a yearly basis.
Difficulty of Parking
Customer mix seems about 50% drive up/50% downtown workers. Drive up traffic could double with better access. Several customers who worked in the CTC building have been terminated in the change to Windstream and nobody knows if replacement workers will support the market at the same level.
Vehicle traffic crosses pedestrian traffic within farmers market. Not sure if this is suppressing customer counts but we suspect it might be a factor.
Lack of Shade
Difficult on produce
Reduces customer count on hotter days (around 90 degrees)
Difficult on farmers

The future of the Farmers Market is unpredictable.
Most likely scenario is that vendor and customer counts will stay steady given current conditions.
Vendor count could rise with better conditions.
The farmers market has discussed finding a better venue for Wednesday (Mt Pleasant, Odell or Midland) but currently the market doesn’t have volunteers willing to take on this task. If another location was found outside of Concord and all vendors given the option of moving, vendor count would probably be cut in half.
Piedmont Farmers Market is committed to building a local food system. Any help achieving this goal would be appreciated.

Horticulture Newsarticles Available

Between the holidays, I finished putting my 300 best news articles on line. http://www4.ncsu.edu/~djgofort/ I still need to index them better but you can access them. News articles are written for Cabarrus County which is near Charlotte North Carolina.
Also some of my TV shows are on line at http://www.co.cabarrus.nc.us/News/Channel22/programs.html

Potential Opportunity for somebody interested in farming

Yesterday I visited a farm where the development rights have been sold to Central Carolina Land Trust. There is a house on the property. The owners would be willing to rent the house ($500 monthly was mentioned) along with some farmland ($50 per acre annually was mentioned). They are not interested in selling. If somebody is renting anyway, this is a beautiful place just to live back off the road. Location is about 4 miles out of Mt Pleasant. The house was originally built around 1800 but has been expanded and maintained so that it looks very livable (from the outside anyway). There is a 7 acre field adjacent to the house along with two smaller garden plots although one garden plot won't be useable until some weed control takes place. There are a few mature pecan trees and mature blueberries with the potential to make a marketable crop. There are plums, pears, figs, apples and muscadines in various conditions. I wouldn't plan on selling anything from these last ones, but the potential for something worth eating is fairly high as well as the opportunity for saleable preserves and jellies on some items. Several people would share the deer hunting on the back side of the property (there seems to be at least 30 acres of woodlands) but I figure a person who lived there would be able to shoot some of their own food. Soil is probably a Badin. I know for certain it is a slate belt soil which won't be the best soil a person has ever seen but I know farmers living off that type of soil. Not a lot of potential for erosion in the 7 acres. (More nearby cropland is available for rent if a person needed it). Irrigation could come from a pond on the property or from the well which was originally rated at 35 gallons per minute. There is a beautiful white oak around 120 years old in the front yard and a cedar near the old spring in the back yard that I bet is 200 years old with character to match. There are some sheds so some storage space could be arranged plus I suspect there are some farm shop type items a person would find useful if they did much farming. Let me know if you know somebody that would fit this opportunity.

Solar Greenhouse Pixs

The most recent Successful Gardening article for the Cabarrus Neighbors (http://www.charlotte.com/) talks about solar greenhouses. Here is a picture of mine without the plastic covering. The green color in the bottle is algae evidently growing on left over corn syrup. Some people suggest adding dark food coloring to the water. This may improve heat collection but isn't critical.

Hot Links to Websites Referenced in Rotary Club Talk

United States Geological Survey
http://water.usgs.gov/
Blue Ridge Aquifer
http://capp.water.usgs.gov/gwa/ch_l/L-text4.html
Information from NC State
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/disaster/drought/
http://www.bae.ncsu.edu/programs/extension/wqg/publications.html
Other Links
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/depts/hort/consumer/hortinternet/water_quality.html

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.