Category: Agriculture

Monticello Vegetable Garden

Agriculture, 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.







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.






(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)

Cutting Silage

Agriculture, Family, Farm


The image above is rather poignant to me, which I guess seems rather odd, because its a shot of farm equipment in a field. The photo is of cutting silage corn, and I truly love to cut silage. I grew up on a dairy farm and every year in late August we cut silage. We did it with another dairy family, the Williams, with whom we shared a cutter and all the labor. Two families, fathers and grandfathers, sons and brothers would all get together and work together to harvest the corn on both of our farms. Things have changed a lot over the years. The Williams brothers (who still dairy farm) cut more silage in two hours on Saturday than we did in a week, but the feeling of that combined labor is still there. This year the brothers had a major breakdown on their equipment, so Frank White from Liberty brought his cutting equipment in to finish the harvest.

I talk about the image being poignant. The time I spent in the corn fields with my family and neighbors was probably some of the happiest moments in my life. It was very hard work, but something about being part of this community effort made it something special. Hard work doesn’t seem so hard when you have a close-knit group doing it together.






(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)

Burley Tobacco Farmer

Agriculture, Farm, Tobacco


Neighbor Gary McMasters along with daughter Elizabeth and another neighbor Jerry Ferguson gathered and sticked burley tobacco this past weekend in Grays Chapel, North Carolina in preparation to moving it to a drying barn. Unlike flu-cured tobacco where leaves are removed as they ripen up the stalk, burley is harvested by cutting the whole plant, and it is air dried rather than being cured by heat. Gary raises about 1 1/2 acres and does pretty much everything by hand. Traditionally, burley tobacco was grown in the mountains of North Carolina and flue-cured in the Piedmont. New varieties have made it possible to grow burley in warmer areas.

Gary lives on land that has been in his family for several generations in Randolph County and besides farming tobacco and other crops, he runs a small custom saw mill and raises horses and mules. He produces sorghum molasses every year on a mule driven cane mill.


(Photographs copyright 2010 by Dan Routh)

Zimmerman Vineyards

Agriculture, Wine


I stopped by Zimmerman Vineyards this past weekend. Norman and Leslie Zimmerman run Randolph County’s first and only winery. They produce a variety of very fine red and white wines on their property near the Uwharrie River. Norman is passionate about his grapes and his wine. You can purchase wine on site and they have a tasting room. For more info, check their website at http://www.zimmermanvineyards.net/.