Garden – Page 27 – Dan Routh Photography

Plover

I walked out into the newly planted part of our garden and ran into a plover, a small wading-type bird. The poor thing was obviously hurt, for it flapped it’s damaged wing and called out in pain. All of this was a hoax of course, as the bird did everything in it’s power to lure me away from four small eggs camouflaged in the recently planted soil. I marked the spot and we’ll work around the nest till the eggs hatch and the young scurry away.

Saturday Afternoon

Farm, Garden

My son Tristan’s potatoes bloom in our garden in Grays Chapel, North Carolina.

Fava Beans

Flowers, Garden

Fava beans bloom in my son Tristan’s garden in Grays Chapel, North Carolina.

Planting Potatoes

Agriculture, Garden

A stop by the CSA plot at Goat Lady Dairy in Grays Chapel, North Carolina caught farm manager Daniel Woodham spending some seat time on the John Deere covering the 750 pounds of potatoes a crop mob of volunteers had planted earlier in the morning.

Goat Lady CSA

Agriculture, Farm, Garden

Goat Lady Dairy in Grays Chapel, North Carolina started a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) garden in 2010 and it was a great success. They are beginning to get ready for the 2011 season, but in the meantime Daniel Woodham (farm manager) has been harvesting winter carry over vegetables which the dairy sells at the local farmer’s market. He is assisted regularly by Chram Rode and his wife Broih Fnu, a Montagnard couple originally from Viet Nam who are training to help run the day to day gardening operations.

Mixed Greens

Farm, Garden, Vegetables

Fall is the time when greens, a staple of the Southern diet, are growing in the garden. Shown is a detail from my son Tristan’s patch of turnip, mustard and kale.

Spider Through the Door

Garden, Spider

A garden spider works her web and protects her egg case outside of our back door in Grays Chapel, North Carolina.

Bee Keeping

Bees, Garden

Bees have been under a lot of pressure over the past few years, and their numbers have dropped, but they are beginning to make a comeback in our area. More people are keeping hives for honey and to help pollinate their gardens. My son Tristan checks his hive at our home in Grays Chapel, North Carolina, and the bees are starting to fill out the racks with honey. Tristan’s hive is a commercial type. Below, an older style top bar hive stands in the garden at Goat Lady Dairy.

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.