
{"id":9576,"date":"2010-03-25T15:11:11","date_gmt":"2010-03-25T23:11:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/?p=9576"},"modified":"2010-03-25T18:03:09","modified_gmt":"2010-03-26T02:03:09","slug":"spring-heralds-a-rush-to-the-fields","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/2010\/03\/25\/spring-heralds-a-rush-to-the-fields\/","title":{"rendered":"Spring heralds a rush to the fields"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure id=\"attachment_9590\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9590\" style=\"width: 375px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/dawson.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.carrborocitizen.com\/main\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/03\/dawson-e1269568968816.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"dawson\" width=\"375\" height=\"281\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9590\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9590\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Ken Dawson in his Cedar Grove greenhouse (Photo by Ava Barlow)<\/figcaption><\/figure><strong>BY KIRK ROSS<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>Staff Writer<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\nUsually, Ken Dawson doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t sweat it \u00e2\u20ac\u201d the weather that is.<\/p>\n<p>Dawson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Maple Spring Gardens in Cedar Grove is among the places where farmers who supply an abundance of produce at the Carrboro Farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Market have adapted to the sometimes-unpredictable Carolina winters.<\/p>\n<p>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. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153About the end of February, it looked like winter was just going to go on and on,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n<p>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\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s planting.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153We got shut out of the fields earlier last fall than usual,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dawson said.<br \/>\nExperience, though, and the sunshine and March winds that came roaring in, mitigated what winter had thrown at him.<\/p>\n<p>Dawson, who intensively cultivates about 10 acres \u00e2\u20ac\u201d rotating five in cover crops and five in vegetables, herbs and flowers \u00e2\u20ac\u201d said mounding rows up high in some fields and laying down black plastic in others in the fall are methods he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s long used to avoid getting behind in wet springs.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153After a while, you take it in stride,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Dawson said. He expects to catch up quickly on potato planting and getting tomatoes and squash plants in the fields.<\/p>\n<p>Carrboro Farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153I feel like things are picking up really fast,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Blacklin said.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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.<\/p>\n<p>The die-hards still made it out, but not so many cyclists and passers-by dropped in. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It definitely hurt our crafts sales a lot,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d 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.<\/p>\n<p>Andrea Wood, market manager of the South Estes Farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Market, said she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.<\/p>\n<p>Wood can also attest to the miserableness of some recent winter Saturdays. This was the market\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s first time going year-round outside rather than wintering inside University Mall. Wood said the market\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s 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.<\/p>\n<p>\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Farmers prefer to be outside,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Wood said, adding that she hopes the past year was a fluke. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153It was pretty frigid some of those days.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dawson\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Maple Spring Gardens in Cedar Grove is among the places where farmers who supply an abundance of produce at the Carrboro Farmers\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 Market have adapted to the sometimes-unpredictable Carolina winters.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":9590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,30],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9576"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9592,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9576\/revisions\/9592"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ibiblio.org\/carrborocitizen\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}