Craft Night with Craft Beer!

You asked for it, so we made it happen! March 5th from 4-6 is our first of many events at The Plant in B2.

Sign up with this link on Eventbrite to play with the remainder of our 2022 dried flowers! We’re headed to The Plant with all our dried flowers and craft supplies for a really fun late afternoon. BMC Brewing is joining us with their beer cart too! You’ll get to learn a little more about us, BMC, and all the fun things offered at The Plant! Stick around after for some dinner at Lilly Den Meat & Eats and explore the other shops. It’s a great place to hang out, young and old.

Here’s the catch. You can be wildly creative or be as creative as a rock. WE’VE GOT YOU! Show up ready to have a good time and we’ll take it from there. You could make anything from bouquets, picture frames, flower disco ball, collage, mobile, really…you get as creative as you want!

Chatham Magazine Feature!

We were absolutely thrilled when managing editor Anna-Rhesa Versola came out to the farm to see if we’d be a worthy family farm to feature in the Chatham Magazine. We walked the farm and talked about all things farming, community, and family. I instantly was smitten with her, and you can tell that she really GETS us! The article she ended up writing is AMAZING! I feel so honored and seen reading how she describes our farm and how we function. John Michael Simpson was the photographer that captured the beauty of our farm. It’s always fun to see our farm through the eyes of others. Especially through the eyes of a professional photographer! And I’m thankful we have such a great local magazine to highlight all the great things about Chatham County!

Make sure to read the article about our BFF’s BMC Brewing and the article about our favorite hang out spot The Plant!

CLICK HERE to read our article.

What's in store for 2022 - GROWTH

I sat down and wrote out the goals for 2022 then shared it with my husband, Jeff. He responded with a smile and laughed a little, saying that it all looks great, but maybe a little aggressive. Me? Wanting to achieve ALL the things? Noooo. This is where it’s okay for you to laugh too. I laughed, knowing this of myself and the big dreams I have for this farm. I’ve never had such a wild and fun vision for anything prior to farming. I think it’s a job requirement to think big when farming. You’re already slightly not cut from the same cloth as most people if you choose to farm. The rewards are big, but the day to day reality can be pretty tough. The physical and mental demands never stop and it’s near impossible to leave the farm for a day due to the never-ending grind. And for all the reasons, I LOVE IT.

2022 marks year 4 of growing on our farm. I read in a couple places that year 3 is one of the harder years, and I found that to be true last year. The pest pressure was higher, the responsibilities more, the financial deficit greater even thought we were growing and selling more than ever. But! We got through it and I feel better equipped, wiser, and even more fearless to throw my face into the wind. I can do this because I AM doing it!

My word of the year is GROWTH. I feel like it’s always an appropriate word when living on a farm (insert chuckles). I’ve expanded the farm each year and this is the first year to not add a new growing zone. It’s time to maintain and push all the boundaries with what I have. I’ve set myself up nicely to rock out what is established. It’s time to grow wisely and with intention. Maybe that’s why my goals list is so adventurous? It’s time to grow: let the roots go deeper, and the branches spread wider!

You can expect to find an ever rotating party at my tent at The Pittsboro Farmers Market on Thursdays. Flowers are taking the main stage on the farm. They are magical and bring more joy than I could have ever imagined. As for produce, we are narrowing down to mainly a wide variety peppers and tomatoes. Otherwise, it’s things like garlic and onions that are needed for the seasonings. Lastly, we are upping our herb production! This is a great flex of passion of all things culinary and wellness. We hope to expand your access to quality and fresh herbs. The Smoked Garlic Scape Salt can never come fast enough in the Spring, the normal crew of smoked pepper seasonings will join in, and I’ll add dried herb mixes throughout the year. Farm Tea & Sweet Sleep Farm Tea will come back and maybe we’ll roll out a few new varieties!

I’m really excited about this growing year. The flowers will be bigger and better than ever. I’m adding more roses to the garden (fingers crossed that I get a grant to help me go big). There’s a running list of perennial plants that I plan to add to the farm. It will take a couple years for them to get up and growing, so just sit back and wait for the show! Emma and I planted a good amount of flowers to overwinter, so I look forward to this Spring being VERY colorful. And the other fun addition with flowers this year is that we’re taking on a handful of weddings. If you’re wanting to use local flowers at your next event, call me up! I’m working with a few florists who are known for their amazing floral design. Or, we sell curated flowers by the bucket for events.

The peppers and tomatoes will take a strong role this year. We grew over 50 varieties of tomatoes and over 60 varieties of peppers. This year, the tomato list will shrink a good bit. I have such a hard time narrowing it down, but it’s time to grow the best hits. As for peppers…nope. Give me all the varieties! This is where Emma will roll her eyes and give a silent sigh. Haha! There are so many peppers to grow and so little time! The master list hasn’t been chosen yet, and I really look forward to putting my focus there soon. I’ll update the list on our website when it is finalized.

The last thing I want to update you with is on-farm events. It has been a goal to share the goodness of the farm with you all! As the rose garden develops, we’ll have tea time in the rose garden. There will be classes offered : bouquet basics, wreath making, painting with local artists. We’ll have some special dinners on farm with the help of amazing local chefs. And, like last year, we’ll have a few plant sales to fill your gardens and homes!

I look forward to spending time with you in 2022.

Love,

Farmer Emily

Hello 2021

Well. Well. Well. It’s year two of Heart Song Farm being up and fully running! I’m full of excitement, big dreams, (high and low) expectations , some anxiety, and energy. I’m also full of seeds! Ha! I’ve been ordering seeds like crazy all Fall and Winter. In fact, almost half of the proceeds from your shares last summer were reinvested in just seed orders for this year.

Here’s what’s new on the farm for 2021:

I’ll be offering a larger amount of shares for the Spring CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). I’m upping it from 10 shares to 25. A Summer Flower CSA is being added! Yay! The flowers were too much fun last year so I’m making them a more substantial part of the farm’s production. The new Members Only Market will be introduced this year! It will run June-September and is a good option for those who don’t want to commit to a full CSA but still want all the farm produce, flowers, and products. The last big news is that I will not be coming back to the Sanford Farmers Market on Saturday mornings. This was a huge decision that I chewed on for awhile. Instead, I hope to be a part of a weekday Farmers Market that is much closer to my farm. And, the Members Only Market will be held on Saturdays here on the farm in Silk Hope.

We’ve got two 50’ Farmers Friend high tunnels to set up. One will be in Zone 3 for vegetable and flower production. The second one will be between the tiny house and Zone 3 and it’s just for plant propagation (starting seeds and getting plants ready)! I’m really excited about this! I’ve outgrown my small green house, so this is very needed. This will also allow me a little more space to have a fun plant sale this Spring on the farm! You too can grow some of the wilder varieties that I grow! More on that closer to time.

One last fun thing to note is the tomato and pepper variety numbers for the year. This is a first! The peppers outnumber the tomatoes! Peppers - 64 varieties. Tomatoes - 36. It might be because I’m really starting to hone in on some of my favorite tomatoes, but that wouldn’t be the full true. I kicked out a good handful of varieties only to add many new ones. And, I can’t say I won’t find one or two more to grow before it’s time to start my seeds. As for the peppers, there are many varieties you’ll never get your hands on. They will only be for my smoked pepper seasonings and other farm products. I’m excited to see all the tasty things that come from this.

Now for the 2021 Goals!

• Goal number one is complete, hire an employee (see Meet Emma! blog post).

• Jeff and I are working on getting a walk-in cooler on the farm! This is the reason I can up the amount of Spring CSA shares! And, of course, bringing on super star Emma.

• Workshops on the farm. I’ve got some fun things in store for you! Currently, I’ve got 2 artists and one baker/icing artist (not sure how to label her, her work is A-mazing) lined up ready to teach classes. Also, I’m excited to do some classes on flower arranging, wreath making, and how to do farm to table.

• Create a smoked hot sauce….ah yeah.

• All around goal of improving processes and growing the farm’s value-added products. I have lots of wild and crazy ideas in my head. And I think I juuuuust might be able to pull it off!

• Personal goal: prioritize my work vs family time better.

• Add more perennial plants around the farm. It’s time to set roots and make this place our forever home! I look forward to heavy scented trailing roses over archways, flowers coming up every year to care for the pollinators, trees to give shade to take a rest, and bushes to make wind blocks for my growing zones.

Lastly, my word of the year!

DANCE!

I’m ready to dance through this year. To have a blast in the good times and weave through the bad times. Slow dance when it’s time and heck, maybe even do The Worm! When you’re moving and light on your feet, you’re going to get through anything. So many happy thoughts that come to mind when I think of the word dance. So many memories of dancing. If you lived in Nashville, TN during the years of 1998-2008, there’s a good chance we shook our booties together. Hahaha! I love to dance, not to say I’m good at it, but it sure feels good to get out there and move, to be yourself, not have a care in the world what anyone else thinks. It’s just you and the music having the time of your life. That’s what I’m doing this year, the farm and I are going to have a good time grooving! Meet me on the dance floor if you’d like! I’ll be the one moving to the beat of my own drum and loving every second of it.

Meet Emma!

I’d like to introduce you to the first Heart Song Farm employee, Emma Stapleton! I asked her to write a bio to better introduce herself, but first, I’d like to share why I find her so special.

Emma and I met at Central Carolina Community College, taking classes for Sustainable Agriculture a few years back. I’m thankful it was a friendship that stuck! The summer of 2020, Emma came out most Mondays to work with me on the farm. She was my lifesaver! Having someone I could trust to be on the farm during Covid, someone I could ask to do a job and walk away to do another job, someone I could talk to about my dreams & woes of farming. She was many things to me in a time when I needed it most. A major thing I learned after my first year of farming was I need more hands on the farm to help. So when I decided it was time to hire on my first employee, Emma was the most logical (and only) person I wanted to hire! She’s hilarious, a hard worker, smart as a whip, loyal, has a huge heart, and somehow shares my quirky sense of humor (see hilarious). Now, to let her share!

Why hello there!

Born and raised down the road in Chapel Hill, my farming ambitions started modestly with an unfulfilled but thoroughly planned out Senior Project. A glorified garden replete with city chickens, giant cabbages and leafy lettuces danced around my imagination. The Senior Project fell by the wayside as did any action towards fulfilling this dream. I followed the call of the mountains and moved to Boone, NC wherein I became deeply involved in hospitality and tourism while studying Biological Anthropology. Dedication to hard work enabled a dear friend and I to spend three months road tripping in an ‘84 Toyota Tercel around the states. We visited multitudes of national parks, met many a wonderful folks, and fantasized about how fulfilling it would be to spend a life outdoors connecting with nature and people. We moved down the mountain back to my childhood home yet never stopped fantasizing. It’s serendipitous how the idea started like a seed, at first sitting in the dark depths of my mind deciding on whether or not the conditions were ideal to germinate. I looked around at my local community colleges for anything that resembled a ‘work and live outside’ technical skill. I found a program just down the road in Pittsboro that boasted an impressive line up of academic rigor and physical skill: Central Carolina Community College and its Sustainable Agriculture Program.

That ‘idea seed’ sprouted roots, anchoring itself down, readying its cotyledons to pop through the shell and reach for the first rays of photons and begin growing. Well, from there, everything fell into place; my ‘idea cotyledons’ quickly gave way to the first true leaves of what I wanted to passionately do with my life.

Six months into the program, I applied for a farm hand position at Funny Girl Farm in Durham. It was there that I met my first Farm Mentor, Andrew. He propelled my classroom knowledge into true experience. I gained many firsts in the farming world from grueling summer harvest days to crawling under chicken trailers at night snatching waylaid pullets. This is around the time that I first met Emily at CCCC. We were immediately enchanted with each other for one another’s love of many different pens and markers. Also, we both laugh constantly.

As life happens, Funny Girl farm closed down. Since I resided on the land, I stayed on as the land manager until another chance opportunity presented itself to me. Dave of Red’s Quality Acre reached out; little did he know how many questions I would ask him in the following two years of working with him. His knowledge, tenacity and willingness to educate has been an invaluable addition to my life as for many others. Just last fall, I volunteered through WWOOF and lived on a sheep wool farm in Lancashire, England to further broaden my agricultural wonder. Be it vegetables, fruit, or animals, I am ready to try anything (hello, grains?).

I now find myself looking towards the future with a renewed enthusiasm to be a part of growing both vegetables and a community with Heart Song Farm. Ironically for how loquacious I am, I lack the words to properly express my gratitude for everything that has happened and is to come.

But enough about me. What brings me to farming is to hear your stories of why you take an interest in local food-sheds, farmers, and the like. I cannot wait to hear these tales unfold in the upcoming seasons of undoubtable taste (and humidity!). Thank you!

2020 in Review

Happy New Year! There’s no way to sum up what a whopper of a year 2020 was. A global pandemic hit. My family moved out of our one bedroom 600 sqft farmhouse to our new home we built on the farm. I kicked of the farm’s first Spring and Summer CSA. The year held a lot of highs and lows. The biggest low was releasing my Paw Paw (my Mom’s Dad) to heaven at age 92. He’s one of the many that passed due to Covid. It happened right after wrapping up the Summer CSA. Due to that hard hit, the farm took a pause for the rest of the year to let me grieve and heal from that loss. My Paw Paw was one of my best friends and someone I shared my joy of farming with most.  

There were also lots of highs, so here’s the highlights of 2020:

-       We built a house! And actually, had fun doing it! Our contractor, John Cummins, did a fantastic job. Leaving the pull-out couch bed in the tiny house for a real bed in the new house was amazing. NOTE: if you’re new here, the daughters got the bedroom and Jeff and I slept on a pull-out couch in the den…for 15 months! Yeah. Exactly.

-       Jeff built a chicken coop/palace for our chickens and we gained Ancona ducks.

-       We planted 100 blueberry bushes in Zone 3! Get ready for some yummy blueberries in your life!

-       Jeff and I put up a 100-foot-high tunnel from Farmers Friend where I grew most of the Spring crops. It makes me so proud to have this structure!

-       We added sweet barn kitties to the farm: Dusty & Sheriff.

-       The Spring CSA had loads of delicious greens and all the spring goodies. A smoked garlic scape salt was included that was out of this world awesome! Since I’m lacking a walk-in cooler, I had to do most of the harvesting in the morning and deliver in the afternoons.

-       The Summer CSA grew to 25 shares! Since you don’t refrigerate things like tomatoes, potatoes, and garlic, it made it a little easier to grow the amount of people in the CSA. I delivered 17 boxes on Wednesdays and 8 folks picked up on the farm on Thursdays.

-       The Sanford Farmers Market was a wonderful place to sell on Saturday mornings! I really enjoyed making new friends at this market. The customers are sweet and would even call to see what tomatoes I’d be bringing that week.

-       I got a tractor! My parents surprised me for my 40th birthday and gifted the farm a tractor. I boohooed. The blessing of this unexpected gift encouraged me to break open a whole new growing zone (Zone 3).

-       I “won” a 3-bay stainless steel sink at a restaurant auction in Siler City for a great price.

-       I grew 40 varieties of tomatoes and 28 varieties of peppers! I’ll totally brag here; I grow amazing tomatoes. Maybe the best you’ve ever had.

-       The flowers were awesome in 2020. I upped my game and grew a whole experimental block of flowers. This way I could make mistakes or successes with no pressure. It has brought so much joy that I’m going all in for 2021!

-       I learned I could make dried flower wreaths!

-       My farm pepper jelly and smoked pepper seasoning continue to be two of my favorite things in life.

Now for things to look forward to in 2021! This will get its own post, but I still want to list them out:

-       Emma Stapleton joins the farm! I’m thrilled to announce it’s time to hire on an employee. She’s amazing and you all will love her as much as I do!

-       Two 50’ high tunnels need to go up, one will be just for plant propagation.

-       Flower production will grow in size and gain its own CSA this summer.

-       The dried flower products will increase as well.

-       Vegetables are still going strong!

-       Members Only Market on the farm.

-       Hopeful to add on a new Farmers Market location.

-       I’m upping the pepper varieties something crazy.

-       Walk-in Cooler plans are in the works! Finally!

-       And because of having better refrigeration and Emma on staff, we can up the Spring CSA! That’s very exciting to me.

-       As I work with a NCDA Food Regulatory Specialist, I hope to roll out some really cool farm products! I’m thankful for the tiny house kitchen to work in. There’s so much potential there. I’ve got crazy plans in my head of building a smokehouse for the peppers…stay posted. Maybe it’s something the NC Food Innovation Lab can help with.

-       Lastly, I hope to offer classes on the farm this summer. Expect to see signs ups for painting flowers, flower arranging, and more!

There’s so much more on the docket, but we can wrap it up there. I get excited and can talk your head off about the farm! What I want to leave you with is my gratitude. You blew me out of the water with your support. Thank you. I am still in disbelief that I had to cap my summer CSA. I had spoken with another farmer to take on their CSA for the summer, thinking I’d just have a few who’d be interested in mine. I had to embarrassingly go back them to say I can’t do it because I’ve had more sign up than I might can handle! You blessed me with encouraging words, pictures of your meals, tales of your kids eating veggies they’d never eat before. The flowers were able to bring sunshine when we needed it most, we, I totally needed that sunshine too! The drop offs of CSA boxes were moments of sweetness to see faces that I loved. I feel like we carried each other through this tough year. So, thank you for being you, for being wonderful, for being on this wild ride of farming with me. I aim to fill your bellies full of yummy and nutritious food and homes with beautiful flowers. You are precious to me and I love you. If you’re not already in my heart pocket, welcome. I look forward to getting to know you!

Short Documentary by Gracie Gibbs

We had the privilege of hosting college student, Gracie Gibbs, of UNC Chapel Hill this Fall while she shot a short documentary for a Senior level class. It was such a fun experience to welcome someone to the farm and let her in to our rare quiet Saturday morning when “Dad” (my husband, Jeff, was out backpacking on the AT), farm chores, playing, and regular tasks like picking the girls up from school. Gracie captured so much in her short documentary that I can’t share on a day to day basis through social media or a quick hello.

What we are doing at Heart Song Farm is setting up a place that creates change. That gives love through nutritious food and authentic human interaction. A farm that educates and cares what your next step is. I hope you take the time to watch this and join us in cheering on Gracie in her future. Gracie, whether behind the camera or with it by your side, you are amazing and we are proud of you!

Click here to watch

Happy New Year!

I love the New Year! The fresh start is always exciting. A healthy reset. New goals to be made. Reflection on the growth from the past year.

If you’ve been on this journey with us all along the way, then you have seen how much growth and change our family and farm has seen in the last year. We moved from our comfy home in Chapel Hill to a 12.7 acre farm with a 600 sqft house. Our family of four (plus two dogs and a cat) have been living in this one bedroom home for over a year now. Jeff and I sleep on a pull out couch bed, as we gave the bedroom to our daughters. You don’t know what a sore body feels like until you’ve farmed all day and then slept on a pull out couch bed, hahaha. The deal was to build a new home and keep the current house for all kinds of projects: commercial kitchen, guest house, venue space, food storage, etc. Our new home should be finished up in the new few weeks, which is beyond exciting to think that we’ll get to reunite with our bed again!

I took a weedy horse pasture and turned it into vegetable production! I started summer of 2019 with about 1/4 an acre of growing space. By Fall, we put in 100 blueberry plants. This winter of 2020, we will put up our first lines of season extension with a 100 ft high tunnel. For the summer of 2020, I’m clearing out more land and we’ll have about a 1/2 acre in production!

Things I’ve learned over the past year:

• Living in 600 sqft with the majority of our stuff in storage: you don’t need much to get by. I think we will end up donate/selling a lot of what we’ve been paying to be in storage. Go figure.

• I have a lot of energy. I sleep so much better now that I’m farming. I love going to be tired.

• Our family really gets along well. Living in small quarters hasn’t destroyed us! It has been an annoying blessing at times, but it is a blessing.

• Farming projects that should take an hour will take at least 3 hours.

• Weeds kicked my butt in 2019, but I’m going to have better systems in place for 2020.

• Nature has always made me cry, always will. God is beautiful in every detail of nature.

• Saying, “I don’t know” is a great place to start. Great things come from that.

I have big plans for Heart Song Farm. I don’t think the farm could have a better name. Only God could put a song in my heart to farm, and follow through so big. The last 4 years, I like to assign a word to the year. For a couple years, it was “Peace”, but more specifically, God’s perfect peace. I decided it was time to rest in His will and plans to allow peace into my life. He brought it! Then came “Humbly Bow”. I felt so compelled to be humble in the sight of the Lord. To bow down, physically and mentally. But to be humble in all walks of life. It was a time of life I was to be quiet, listen, watch, build up, praise. This year, it’s VERY different. And oh so appropriate. The word for the year is ROAR! I have listened and waited. Prayed for wisdom and guidance. And now is the time to go for it! Be mighty and courageous! There is a swirling in my stomach, an excitement that is new. It’s this feeling of a lion roaring to get going, lets’s do this! It’s always been clear to me, that when I’m in alignment with God’s purpose, great and magical things happen. So here I am, a roar in my belly and a song in my heart! I’m ready for 2020!

Fall thoughts

The fields look weirdly empty. Given time, they will fill out with fall crops of garlic, onions, leeks, cabbage, kale, lettuce, carrots, and cauliflower in Block 3. In Blocks 1 and 2, it will be a soon to be lush cover crop. I use cover crops to keep the soil where I need it, block out weed growth and will till it all in to use as a “green manure”. That green manure will help feed the soil, and good soil creates great tasting produce!

I’m taking this slow period to plan out the 2020 CSA, set goals for the farm, process summer gifts that the farm has blessed us with (think: seed saving, dried beans, and smoked pepper goodness). Also, I’ll be expanding the growing area from 1/4 to a 1/2 acre to achieve a full bounty of produce for the CSA and possibly sell at a farmers market. Being a young farm, the world is my oyster! Our farm 13 acres of fun and mysteries to be unveiled as we go!

When you boil down what a farmer does, it’s pure magic. We put a seed in some soil and poof! A plant grows and gives us food! However, there is so much that happens before, during and after to make that magical fruit bless you and yours. The cover crop is a good example of something that happens before. It will take a half year to grow and mature before it’s cut down and incorporated into the soil. Then whatever is planted in that space was probably started by seed in the greenhouse and tended to and loved on for 2+ months. But before the plant is transplanted, soil is tilled and prepared and a soil test is done to find out what nutrients are needed to help that plant grow to its fullest potential. You get your results back and amend the soil. Then you can get the transplant into the ground. From there, it’s watered, weeded, pruned, insects picked off, whatever is needed to care for that plant. Once you harvest the fruit or vegetable, it’s washed, dried, and stored so it can make its way to you. After all that work, it still feels like pure magic on my part though. One -tiny- seed can produce so much and feed so many. My hope for you is to find excitement and appreciation for your food. Know that someone cared for that produce or animal. You have the privilege to eat meals that are nutrient rich and made with love. You have the choice to buy local and know that your produce or meats were raised ethically. Be empowered to take control of what and how you eat. And to finish off this rant, when you buy your produce from Heart Song Farm, know that it is grown with all my love, is pesticide free, delicious, and nourishing. What I feed my family is what I feed to you.

Abundance NC Pepper Festival 2019

Heart Song Farm will be a food vendor as well as a farmer supplying peppers this year at the Pepper Festival! We hope to see you there. Make sure to stop by our booth to say your hellos and try our roasted red pepper hummus with a smoked pepper seasoning and candied pepper on top!