Winter Reflections

To capture the essence of winter on the farm, there are a few words that come to mind: reflection, slowness, preparation. Winter for Full Moon Farm typically starts at the beginning of November and lasts until the beginning of March. By late October, we have harvested everything except the winter greens and we do not start planting in the ground until early March. 

The reflective part includes tracking the previous season crop successes and failures, the equipment or supply effectiveness, and any of the experimental new growing methods used that year. We get feedback from our partner organizations about which vegetables and fruits were popular with clients. Some vegetables may not be useful for low income families and the winter is when we can assess how to change our approach to growing for charity. But, we also like to reflect on our finances and assess what seemed to be the most worthy of our time on the farm outside of the crops. That can include things like the farm tours or workshops that bring us financial stability outside of the food that we grow. We spend the winter months reviewing our impact in the community and how we in turn have been blessed by the seasons. 

The slowness part of winter is mostly due to the weather. Full Moon Farm is in Watauga County, which is part of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Western North Carolina, and we actually live at the lowest elevation of the county at 1800 feet. Much of the weather that happens in Boone and higher elevations can occur in our valley called Triplett. Say it's snowing six inches in Boone, then we might get one inch of snow at the farm. 
However, we also get big temperature inversions, which is something most people don't know about. It’s when you have warm air on the mountain side or up on the higher elevations and a cold shift is blowing through and the cold air sinks into the valleys where we are. Or we'll have a low pressure system where fog and precipitation are staying in the valley while it’s bright and sunny when you go up 1500 feet in elevation. The weather can definitely slow us down with snow days or the common days of 35 degrees and rainy.
Sunlight drastically changes during winter due to the sun aspect changing and the ridges surrounding us blocking sunlight. Around Winter Solstice, December 20, we only have direct sunlight for about 4.5 hours! In the summer, we have direct sunlight for over 10 hours. Considering the difference in the winter sunshine, we must slow down because even if it was a little warmer or if we could change some of our growing methods for colder crops, we cannot control how much sunlight we get. But I see this as a “blessing in drag” that we get a natural season of slowing down. Which, in turn, pushes the farm to produce more of the storage crops that we can sell throughout the fall and winter, such as carrots, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, storage radishes, and cabbage. We grow greens through the winter by planting in October and while the plants decrease growth - even going dormant - it can be harvested and sold well into February. I think there is room to improve where we could try hydroponics if there was funding and support for us to learn a new system like that in the winter months. For now it is a scale that allows us to work really hard in the warm season and take the cold season to rest and also allow the soil to rest. 

The preparation side of winter looks like taking plastic off high tunnels so that the ground can get rain and we are not wearing out the plastic as quickly. We also invest more time creating compost on the property so that we can have large stockpiles of balanced compost come Spring. Our compost system uses food scraps from restaurants - procured by B.A.D. Composting company - manure from the horses on our site, and amendments like biochar or wood chips to help balance the carbon and nitrogen rates. We have put lime in our fields in the winter so that it has time to absorb before the spring plantings. Typically there is a cover crop established in the fall so that there is ground cover in the winter. If that is not possible for late season beds, we lay down straw or heavy compost so that the ground is not naked and susceptible to erosion or harsh conditions. We also spend a lot of time in the winter taking care of the horses on the property! Thinking into the future of our nonprofit,
it is exciting to plan and make changes so we can have equine therapy. One of the biggest challenges in the winter is having enough quality hay to feed the horses from mid October to late March. We love volunteers who want to help care for the horses by mucking their manure, which is used in our compost. There is more time spent caring for the horses in winter compared to the warmer months when they're grazing in the pastures. 

The last thing that we do every winter, without fail, is build something. Whether it's a storage shed or the greenhouse or new tunnels, we typically have a winter building project since the growing season is not taking our attention! Adding infrastructure has been crucial to the success of the farm over the last eight years. We do plenty of planning in the winter for the coming season like seed orders, crop rotation planning, workshop dates, beautification projects. It's a real blessing to have eight years of building the soil, the infrastructure, the systems, and the relationships that make The Full Moon Farm Collective succeed year after year. As a new nonprofit, we could waste a lot of time trying to figure out exact quantities of supplies, or yields from crops, or how to store all of the equipment needed. Thankfully, we don't have to go through those learning curves anymore and the nonprofit can build on 8 years of answering those headaches.

Now that we're getting into the new realm of workshops and therapeutic services, we have more to learn about what we can build here and how we can serve people in those ways. And I think the winter time has been a good period for our board and staff to assess how we can fund the next phase of the farm. I hope that you enjoyed reading about the mundane but crucial things that happen in the winter at Full Moon Farm. The fluctuation with the seasons is very important for our style of farming, community care, art, and therapy. I hope you too slow down in winter, because when spring comes, you literally run into action and you don't stop until next winter!