danrouth

Monticello Vegetable Garden

My wife and I went on a rare pleasure trip this past weekend to Monticello, the home of President Thomas Jefferson near Charlottesville, Virginia. It was a gorgeous day and while we did take a short tour of Jefferson’s wonderful house, the focus of the trip was a harvest festival that featured Monticello’s extensive two acre vegetable garden and adjacent orchards. Jefferson was an innovative gardener and was without a doubt a forerunner in what has become today’s local sustainable agriculture movement. While the gardens were a little past their prime, their scope and variety were still amazing.

Predator and Prey

Animals, Butterfly, Farm

Our backyard has been alive this summer with life such as this rare fritillary butterfly. With so much abundance, however, nature evens things out as the mantis lurks in the shadows waiting for an opportunity,

Magnolia Seeds

Farm, Trees

Crimson seeds burst out this time of year from the seed pods on our 100 year old magnolia tree in our yard in Grays Chapel, North Carolina. This year they are particularly plentiful.

Southern Lights Bistro

Food, Greensboro, Restaurant

Images from a recent website redo at Southern Lights Bistro in Greensboro, North Carolina. Located at 2415-A Lawndale Drive, Southern Lights is an award winning restaurant owned by Chef John Drees. For reservations and more info, go to http://southernlightsbistro.com/. By the way, the scallops are to die for.

Pears on the Picnic Table

Family, Nature, Randolph County

It’s late summer and we start picking up fruit that falls from our trees, and it ends up lining our picnic table in the back yard. In addition to providing us with food, some of them provide sustenance for the wasps and hornets that share our farm.

Moving Hay

Agriculture, Family, Portraits

Neighbor Kent Atkinson spent the Labor Day weekend moving hay. Kent farms chickens, cattle and hay in Grays Chapel, North Carolina.

Monday Portrait

Greensboro, Portraits

Portrait of Chef John Drees, of Southern Lights Bistro in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Fire in Franklinville

History, Mill

I visited another mill yesterday in Randolph County, but this time the circumstances were more unfortunate than usual. The Franklinsville Manufacturing Company, also known as the Franklinville Mill built in 1838 and the oldest water powered cotton mill left in North Carolina was heavily damaged by a fire, probably caused by arson. I met Mac Whatley of the Randolph Heritage Conservancy who owns the mill and had hoped to preserve and restore the most historic parts into a museum. Mac showed me around and the damage was pretty extensive. A very old 3 story part of the structure was destroyed. Fortunately, a portion of the mill housing a large number of historic textile artifacts was saved and they are being moved to safer storage. Old buildings like this probably don’t seem important to most people, but the cotton textile industry was at one time the backbone of the local Randolph County economy and Deep River was lined with similar facilities. The most historic of those mills deserve to be preserved and the loss of this one in Franklinville is particularly painful. For more information on the history of the mill, go to http://www.cottonmillmuseum.org.

Mill Machinery

Greensboro, Mill

I made a trip out to the Old Mill of Guilford yesterday to pick up some stone ground grits for my son in New Hampshire. He’s in school at Dartmouth, and evidently grits are hard to come by in Hanover. I pick some up for him every couple of months. I enjoy going by the mill and looking at the old milling machinery. I come from a family that had about four generations of millers, so there must be some flour in my genes. And, you can fit 14 pounds of grits nicely in a USPS Flat Rate Box.

Mixing Feed

Agriculture, Farm

Saturday afternoon is no day off on a dairy farm. While son Michael was cutting silage this past weekend, brothers Rick and Greg Williams of Williams Dairy in Grays Chapel, North Carolina were busy packing down their large trench silo and mixing feed for their herd of Holstein cows. Rick mixes corn silage with alfalfa, cotton seed meal and minerals to produce a feed with the protein needed to produce milk.