Skip to content
The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen
Menu
  • Home
  • News
  • Community
  • Schools
  • Business
  • Opinion
  • Obituaries
  • Sports
  • Mill
  • Flora
  • Print Archive
  • About
Menu

Spring heralds a rush to the fields

Posted on March 25, 2010March 25, 2010 by Staff

Ken Dawson in his Cedar Grove greenhouse (Photo by Ava Barlow)
BY KIRK ROSS
Staff Writer

Usually, Ken Dawson doesn’t sweat it — the weather that is.

Dawson’s Maple Spring Gardens in Cedar Grove is among the places where farmers who supply an abundance of produce at the Carrboro Farmers’ Market have adapted to the sometimes-unpredictable Carolina winters.

But this year, even Dawson, who has farmed here for 28 years, had to admit that the snows and the long cold spells worried him. “About the end of February, it looked like winter was just going to go on and on,” he said.

The plants he had in unheated greenhouses were coming on slowly and saturated soil in the fields was in no shape to till. Compounding that was a wet autumn that interfered with preparation of fields for this year’s planting.

“We got shut out of the fields earlier last fall than usual,” Dawson said.
Experience, though, and the sunshine and March winds that came roaring in, mitigated what winter had thrown at him.

Dawson, who intensively cultivates about 10 acres — rotating five in cover crops and five in vegetables, herbs and flowers — said mounding rows up high in some fields and laying down black plastic in others in the fall are methods he’s long used to avoid getting behind in wet springs.

Now, with the warm weather and strong winds drying out fields, Maple Spring Garden and about every other patch of cultivated land in Orange, Alamance and Chatham counties is fixing to rock.

“After a while, you take it in stride,” Dawson said. He expects to catch up quickly on potato planting and getting tomatoes and squash plants in the fields.

Carrboro Farmers’ Market manager Sarah Blacklin said she is starting to see a wider variety of vegetables and more starter plants. In a typical year, the market usually has more lettuces, bok choy, chard and spinach than it has in the past few weeks, she said.

But with plenty of sunlight in March as farmers prepare for the opening of the Wednesday afternoon market in April, selections are starting to expand.

“I feel like things are picking up really fast,” Blacklin said.

Assessing the winter, Blacklin said that while the farmers had to deal with cold, snow and higher heating bills, the retail side probably suffered more.

This is the second year the Carrboro market has gone year-round, and some particularly cold and miserable Saturdays made it much more of a challenge.

The die-hards still made it out, but not so many cyclists and passers-by dropped in. “It definitely hurt our crafts sales a lot,” Blackin said. The market also looked skimpier, she said, because the farmers shied away from having full displays of produce, which would dry out quickly in the cold, dry air.

Andrea Wood, market manager of the South Estes Farmers’ Market, said she’s also starting to see selections and the number of vendors growing as the market prepares to expand its hours in April to 8 a.m. to noon.

Wood can also attest to the miserableness of some recent winter Saturdays. This was the market’s first time going year-round outside rather than wintering inside University Mall. Wood said the market’s farmers urged the move, understandably, she said, since the winter of 2008 was full of sunny days in the 50s. This year, not so much.

“Farmers prefer to be outside,” Wood said, adding that she hopes the past year was a fluke. “It was pretty frigid some of those days.”

Web Archive

© 2025 The Archive of The Carrboro Citizen | Powered by Minimalist Blog WordPress Theme