Loose Leaf Notes

-The following first appeared in The Floyd Press on May 26, 2016.

It was the best attended open house at Riverstone Organic Farm since the farm began hosting Tour and Tasting events.  Children delighted in getting close to chickens, finding eggs in nesting boxes and petting baby lambs that were born in April.  Visitors learned about the farm, now in its 5th year of operation, and sampled grass-fed slimjims, coffee cake made with farm grown rhubarb and more.  About 30 took the 12:00 guided tour, led by farm manager Kat Johnson.

As tour-goers walked alongside some of the farm’s 15 cultivated acres, they tasted just-picked mint and rhubarb, which Johnson described as “the sour candy of nature.”  They learned about the pick-your-own English flower garden that the farm is developing, and toured the plot where medicinal herbs are being grown for the Blue Ridge Center for Chinese Medicine’s herb consortium.

Johnson talked about growing winter cover crops as green manure for the soil and lifted a large sheet of fabric cover to reveal kale, broccoli and cabbage seedlings growing underneath.  The lightweight cover protects plants from flea beetles and allows growers to limit spraying the vegetables, which the farm retails and wholesales locally and to distributors in food hub centers, such as Charlottesville, Richmond, Durham and Raleigh.

At the greenhouses, visitors saw how everything starts from seeds and learned how hardy cold weather crops are grown throughout the off-season.  In the greenhouse where ginger plants are just starting to pop through soil, Johnson said, “It’s going to be like a tropical jungle in here soon.”  A young boy asked how rain got in the greenhouse.  “We make our own rain,” she replied, pointing to an overheard watering system.

In another greenhouse, Johnson explained how heirloom tomato plants were grafted together to promote disease resistance and flavor.  In between the tomatoes, the farm crew laid down cardboard. They sprinkled in the spawn of wine cap mushrooms, a delicious culinary mushroom, and covered that with wood chip mulch.  Johnson explained that when the mushrooms colonize the wood, the farm will reap a second crop in the potentially lost space that they would have had to otherwise weed. “Any chance we can be smarter than the weeds is a good thing,” she said.

Tour-goers walked past rows and rows of recently planted blueberries, which Johnson said will one day need some helping hands to pick. They met a herd of cows and some stopped to sit on the shaded porch of the new processing kitchen building, built by farm co-owner Woody Crenshaw.  Visitors were invited to walk the farm’s wooded trail and along the banks of the Little River, which runs through the farm and is used for crop irrigation.

Floyd resident Eleanor Ingram took the tour with friends who were visiting from Florida. “We looked at the list of what was going on today and this is what they were interested in,” she said. Ingram has been on the tour before. She regularly shops at the Farm Store (also built by Woody), which stocks

organic produce (even in winter), fresh eggs, pasture raised meats, jams made from farm fruit by farm co-owner Jackie Crenshaw and more.  “I love this place,” Ingram said.

Note:  Riverstone Organic Farm is part of the June 10 – 13 Floyd Artisan Trail.  The next Farm Tour and Tasting is scheduled during the Trail on June 11 from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm.

Tours are expected to happen monthly on the 2nd Saturday of the month, unless otherwise posted on the farm’s webpage (riverstoneorganicfarm.com) or on Facebook.

Colleen Redman  ___________Our World Tuesday