Main Barn and Museum1

Kitchen

Bathroom

stalls

Forge

Work-shop

Woodshop

Our barn was built in the 1950’s as a typical 50 x 50 pole barn. The floor was packed dirt, and sloped toward the pastures. The entire back half of the barn was divided into 4 cattle stalls, with the front half used for equipment and hay storage. Around 2004 we built the stall area on the south side to house our cattle, and in 2006 began a complete renovation of the main barn, leveling and pouring a cement floor, adding lofts on the sides, upgrading the electrical service and adding the kitchen and lavatory. Since then we have held weddings, concerts, dinners, dances, and all sorts of classes – and put in years of work!

STALLS2

Main Barn

Our Stall Addition was completed in 2005 to allow conversion of the main barn to a more functional space. We use the 3 large stalls to keep young animals before they are weaned, and the middle stall is where our goats hang out. Unlike cows, goats hate rain and need shelter. Our stall area is also our nursery – baby goats and calves get bottle fed until they are weaned. If you go into the stall area, you are likely to be mobbed by hungry kids looking for a bottle. Be sure to wash your hands after petting the goats.

Calf

Goats

BabyGoats

HayStorage

Antique Wagons3A mere 100 years ago 95% of the agriculture in North Carolina was horse powered. The wagons in our East Shed and the implements in our museum and out in the yard are relics from those days, and the evolution of their designs can be seen in modern implements. The largest of the wagons is an old horse-drawn manure spreader, still intact. An “Amish School Bus” needs repair to its body but the wheels and axles are sound. The nicest wagon is a simple dunnage cart. Look at the craftsmanship in the wheels – the rims are forge-welded. Can you find the seams?

SOIL BANK4If you can’t hide it, feature it! So, welcome to our Soil Bank – not the prettiest spot on the farm, but its what keeps our soils able to sustain crops year after year. Organic farmers cannot use chemical fertilizers. To replenish nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorous in the soil we use natural manure – rich in the essentials, but also with trace minerals that came from the ground we farm. We “cook” our manure for about 2 years, turning it gradually into rich, black dirt which we then spread onto the fields.

Milking Parlor5The best times to visit our milking parlor are 8:00am and 6:00pm – every day! The “girls” follow a strict order: Heidi goes first, then Tyra, Sunshine*, Bonnie, and Starshine. Each cow must be washed, dried, stripped, and swabbed. We use a Surge Milker system which is efficient and sterile, and suitable for a small dairy. After the cows are milked, we milk 4-5 goats, converting the stanchion area to a goat milk stand and using a portable milk-stand for a second goat. Milking takes about 1 – ½ hours from start to finish, and we usually have two people for the job.

Stan-chion

Port-ableStan-chion

Homing Pigeons6Our pigeon coop is the result of Chris’ passion for learning about living things, and Allan’s passion for surprising her on Christmas morning! This year’s surprise was a pair of pigeons. True to form, Chris has quickly become a pigeon breeder, with one young pair already nearly grown, and a second set of eggs in the nest. Homing pigeons fly – Home, which is wherever they were hatched and learned to fly. Sadly, our breeding pair will need to stay caged their whole life, but their children will one day be swirling in the air over the rest of the farm.

Hoop House (High Tunnel)7Its taken us 22 years to get used to the longer growing season we enjoy in North Carolina, but 8 months is still not long enough. With our hoop house, we can get early vegetables in the ground in mid-February, harvest through May-June, replant, and have fresh vegetables for Christmas dinner. Amazingly, our hoop house is not heated other than by solar power. Even during days that are below freezing, the hoop house stays nice and warm – and allows us to deliver our 1st week of CSA in May.

Market Garden8Our Home garden is just about ¼ acre. That’s 20 rows, 5’ wide, and 100’ long. Its amazing what you can grow in that space if you work at it – and we do. We start in February (or as soon as its dry enough) by spreading compost from our soil bank – as much as we can. Next we till the compost in and get the soil loose and crumbly. By March 15th it has usually dried up enough to pull our raised beds and plant early crops (not this year!), and by April 15th, our last frost date (sure it was!) we want to havethe entire garden planted. During the next few weeks we’ll paper-and hay mulch the open spaces, begin insect control, and start weeding the rows and perimeter. We’ll be harvesting these veggies in June and July.

Jersey Dairy Cows9Woodcrest Farm is a licensed Pet Milk Dairy, milking 4-5 Jersey cows twice a day. Jersey’s are one of the 5 major North American dairy breeds, along with Holstein, Guernsey, Brown Swiss, Ayrshire. Jerseys have the highest butterfat content in their milk, and our milk has a rich yellow “look” that you can almost taste (if it weren’t illegal in NC to do so). Jerseys are also gentle and hardy – and even somewhat intelligent. Ours all know their name, their order to be milked, the personalities of the people who milk them, and a lot about hay. They all have different personalities and eccentricities. If you’d like to see them milked, join us at 8:00AM or 6:00 PM.

Dairy Goats10We have five dairy goats, four of which we are milking. Our goats are primarily Alpines, which have the sweetest milk of all. Their milk is almost indistinguishable from cow milk, and is naturally homo- genized which makes it especially easy to digest, but the cream does not separate enough to make butter. Pound for pound, Goats out-produce cows on poorer quality feed, which makes them the most commonly-used dairy animals in the world. The only drawback to having a goat dairy is that they all kid in late February, which means that there will be 3 months out of the year when they are not producing milk. (And also 3 months out of the year when there are just too many baby goats to be fed!)

Great Pyrenees Guard Dog11These dogs take their name from the mountain range in southwestern Europe, where they long have been used as guardians of the flocks. In the United States they are called Great Pyrenees. In the United Kingdom and on the continent of Europe, they are known as the Pyrenean Mountain Dog. Ours is named “Oak”, short for White Oak, and he lives with the cattle he guards. The breed is an old one, and is believed to have arrived in the Pyrenees Mountains with their shepherds and domestic sheep about 3000 BC.. In the isolation of the Pyrenees Mountainsover these millenniums, the breed developed the characteristics that make it unique to the group of flock guardian dogs in general and the primarily white members of that group.

Tamworth Hogs12Well, mostly Tamworth. The major American hog breeds are Yorkshire (Yorkies), which are the standard pink pig (Babe), Hampshires (Hamps) – which have “belt” around their shoulders, poland chinas with white feet, and Glouchester “Old Spot”. If you look closely at our 8 Tams, you’ll see evidence of some of these other hog breeds. Small farms raise hogs in a number of facilities. We raise ours using the Taiwanese model – a roofed shelter and a dry manure bed. This allows them to stay dry and cool without destroying the area where they live.

Chickens13Our chickens are a mix of Delaware's and Rhode Island Reds, with a few Black Australorps and Araucanas (they lay the green eggs). Our flock is “free range”, meaning that they wander about eating insects, grain spilled by other animals, and weeds and grasses in addition to their chicken food. At night, most of them roost in the mobile chicken house at the back of this pasture, making it easier to collect eggs, but lately several hens have decided to lay in the barn (or other sheltered area) which can make egg-collecting a bit of a treasure-hunt. Fortunately, we have several young treasure-hunters that visit us regularly!

Apaloosa Mule14The long-eared animal in our south pasture is not a donkey – she’s a mule, the offspring of a male (jack) donkey and a mare. Mules are, pound for pound, stronger than horses, and also more sure-footed, have more endurance, and are generally more intelligent. Most people have heard the phrase “Stubborn as a mule”, and it probably because it’s very hard to make a mule do something it doesn’t want to do. Our mule Mae has been trained for riding and for pulling wagons, and she is very gentle and even-tempered. She is also a good guard animal for this pasture and will chase down anything she thinks is a threat.

Haflinger Draft Horse15Most horses these days are bred and kept for riding, but 100 years work, or draft, horses far out-numbered their fancier cousins. The most famous draft horses in the world are probably the Clydesdales that pull the Budweiser beer wagons. Our horse, Buddy, is a scaled-down version of those horses: caramel-colored, white blaze, blond mane, and white socks, but weighing in at about ½ a ton versus a full ton for the Clydesdale. Buddy lost his full-brother and teammate 3 years ago, and hasn’t done much draft work since, mostly because all of ourworking horse-drawn equipment uses a double-tree hitch which Allan has not gotten around to converting, probably because he is secretly hoping to have a matched team again. Buddy would agree: he would be much happier with a Haflinger to share his pasture.

Dexter Cattle16We raise both dairy and beef cattle, and our big pasture is home to the Dexters. This small, hardy breed comes originally from the highlands of Scotland and Ireland, bred to subsist on meager forage and in harsh conditions. They are also a a “dual purpose” breed, with good dairy characteristics as well as being tasty. This makes them the perfect homestead animal: small and economical, excellent meat quality, and milkable. Ours are all grass-fed: their diet is exclusively grass and hay, and because they mature slowerthan the major beef breeds (Angus, Herefords, American Shorthorns) their meat is fine-grained and, well, “beefy” tasting. They subsist well on forage, are good calvers, and last but not least, ½ a Dexter fits nicely into a standard freezer. It is a horned breed, and bulls and cows have a distinctive horn shape – interestingly, cows have longer, fancier horns than bulls. Our bull is not particularly aggressive, but bulls should always be treated with respect.

Pond and Woods Trail17If you feel like a quiet walk in the woods, take our “blue trail” along the pond and behind the pasture to get a great view of the whole pond and the wooded area we call Goatland, where we sometimes pasture our goats to eat the weeds and brush down. The trail is marked by blue circles and stays outside the fences all the way to the back of the pasture. On a good (quiet) day you may see otter, muskrats, or even an optimistic beaver scouting out the area as a possible future home site. While we welcome beavers inthe area, they are just a little too busy – one of the reasons our pond is so high is that beavers have blocked the man-made standpipe that drains the pond. If you take the trail, be wary of the nesting pair of Canadian geese about half way down. The gander is protective, and can be aggressive. If he is on station, walk by quickly. Don’t linger, and don’t approach the nest.

Farm Pond18 Our pond, like much else on the farm, was built by the COE in the 1950’s as part of a USDA program to create water resources on farms. It is home to our Muscovy ducks, some wood ducks, China geese, and is visited by egrets, herons, and Canadian Geese. It also has a large catfish population, some bass, and crappies which provides an occasional dinner – and if you like turtle soup we can almost certainly provide the ingredients for that too!Unfortunately, our pond, like many otherlocal ponds, has become silted in over the years and is too shallow and warm for productive aqua-culture. Our list of future projects includes pond-reclamation, draining, dredging, refilling, and restocking the pond to make it a good place for fish to live and where we can swim.

Rabbits19 We raise American Chinchilla rabbits for both the pet and meat markets. Most Americans (who have grown up with Bambi and Thumper) are hesitant to eat rabbit, but it is a a better source of meat than chicken: leaner, sweeter, less salty, and pound for pound, rabbit yields more meat than a chicken. We have been raising rabbits for over 40 years, and Chris is an expert. The most common meat rabbit is the White New Zealand. (The white rabbits with pink eyes). The American Chinis on the “watch list” of endangered breeds, and we are doing our best to make it less so. Rabbits do well if kept in a shaded area and have plenty of water and clean food. One of ours will occasionally escape, and will live quite happily for quite a while hopping around under the cages eating dropped food and clover tops until (we assume) it is caught by a fox or hawk.

Greenhouse20 Our greenhouse is small, but large enough to start the thousands of transplants we later put into the hoop house or gardens. We have a small heater to keep it above freezing during the winter months, but like the much larger hoop house, the main heating is solar power. Seedlings are started in flats of 50, and germinated either inside or on warming mats. Once germinated, we grow them for several weeks until their stems are strong, then move them to the hardening bench outside where theyget strong enough to be transplanted. North Carolina winters and early spring can be a tricky time to keep transplants and seedlings alive – our temps can easily range from below freezing during the night to the 70’s during daylight. Like much else at Woodcrest, we are cramped for greenhouse space and hope to upgrade this year to a larger, warmer, and sturdier structure.

Farm Store 21 Our farm store serves primarily as a pick-up location for our CSA bags and veggie bundles. Because we operate the farm almost exclusively on a subscription basis we are “open” dawn to dusk 7 days / week. Our customers and friends simply pick up pet milk and produce at their convenience - we don’t need to be on hand to take money or package up our products. Walk-in business is based on the honor system, and we have no reason to have to changethis approach. If you are interested in signing up for our spring or fall CSA, or are interested in pet milk, please speak to Beth or Chris about your pickup preference.

CSA Subscriptions Available

Border Collies 22 We have been raising Border Collies at Woodcrest Farm for 20 years.  All of our dogs are registered with the American Border Collie Association, and have working-dog pedigrees. Border Collies are, in general, loyal, territorial, friendly, and active.  Ours tend to be happy and biddable as well.  At the moment, our farm border collie staff consists of:KC - our senior and much-loved herd dog emeritus, now blind through an on-the-job accident,. Tucker - official greeter and house dog, with an insatiablethirst for company and playing fetch.  Skip - a rare red and white, tri-color, and sable border collie with working dog credentials.  Amber - Our sweet but feisty female, also a rare red border collie, and mother to our current litter of puppies.  Puppies - Amber whelped in February, 2014, courtesy of Tucker's attentions, having 3 males and 1 female, 2 black/white, and 2 red and white. 

Woodcrest Forge 23 Most farmers of 100 years ago were occasional blacksmiths, as necessary a skill as carpentry is today. Farm machinery of the time was repairable only in the blacksmith’s shop, gates, fences, latches, and tools needed on the farm were often fabricated on the premises. Today’s blacksmiths are also usually artist/craftsmen, creating decorative pieces, but at Woodcrest the forge is still used primarily for repair and maintenance. When we need something made of metal, we can often make it on the farm rather than have to go to the hardware store. Many of today’s blacksmiths have switched to propane forges, but at Woodcrest, coal is the fuel of choice, both for historical reasons, and because coal fires get hot enough for forge-welding. And, lastly, blacksmithing is truly a heritage craft that needs to be kept alive so we have an appreciation of what metal fabrication was like 100 years ago.