It’s November, and things are still growing! We didn’t have a hard frost until the first week in November. Chinese cabbage, kale and swiss chard are some of the things we’re still harvesting. Lettuce is under cover and coming along , an experiment with growing sweet potatoes in a hoop house along with peppers and tomatoes surprised us with a small but beautiful yield. Sweet potatoes next year for sure!

The 22 chickens we got in August have been busy helping process and compost refuse from the Hospitality House Bread of Life kitchen, overripe/spoiled donated produce from our food pantry and the Hunger and Health Coalition next door.  They are providing nearly an egg a day each and now our clients and residents have fresh eggs every morning.

Volunteers have been tasked with distributing our beautiful black, year-old biodynamic compost among our beds. The rich earth from the chicken run contributes to these beds as well as we systematically clean from the coop. In order to simplify the process while expanding capacity, we are establishing new growing beds where compost sat last year. As you may be aware of the news of wildfires climbing mountainsides throughout western North Carolina, evidence of the drought is visible in the low volume in our rainwater storage tanks. Because of this, we’ll focus the rest of fall and winter on enriching and building our living soil to better withstand what may be coming.