About Local Food

Qualla Berry Farm is part of a loose community of growers and marketers throughout western NC who are seeking to provide locally grown food to people who live and visit  the mountains. We are helping to develop ways to keep our rural land in agricultural production. We are listed in the Local Food Guide produced by the Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project. For more about U-Pick farms, tailgate markets, and community supported agriculture growers, see their website: www.buyappalachian.org

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Pollinators and a new view

Posted 4/20/2013 4:16am by John Clarke & Karen Hurtubise.

Its a busy time in April. Seed starting, transplanting, and soil prepping for season. John is putting solar louvers in hoophouse to help with heat release. Francis told me Cedar Valley farmers mkt is full tilt open in Murphy.

Celebrate Earth day all week and support your local pollinators by creating habitat by planting native trees and shrubs. Donna McAuliffe is donating 10% of BodySense store profits Saturday, April 20th to our Three Sisters Apalavhe Agriculture. We are going to do a special community event showcasing Pollinators,local food,and farms.

The winter food class was a complete success. Grinding and cooking corn for polenta, using local winter squash for soup, roasting rutabagas, stuffing porkl with dried fruit, steaming winter greens...it was a fun morning and delicious lunch shared together. We hope to do offer a class each season but time flies and we'll aee what we organize. 

on our farm we  just finished inoculationg over 300 shiitake logs, now carefully stacked in the shade. Thank you helpers who dropped by to assist...Linda, Tom, Annie Fain, Olivia, Robert, David, Susanna, Julie, and Brenda. We will wait 6-9 months and see what mushrooms appear.  Tulips are gorgeous but were too short stemmed at correct cutting time for good bouquets this year. We cut some tulips for the fun to give the folk school one Saturday for short vases. They are gorgeous to look at and I love their bold color and stately form. I found out tulips are one of the more  challenging cut flowers to grow commercially. Originally they came from Turkey. Like the tulip nd the honeybee, many fruits, flowers, vegetables and grains did not originate here but have been imported and cultivated by humans over centuries. Discernment is important here becausecwe also imported chestnut blight and thevrecent Drosophila suzuki fruit fly in our raspberries.  I have begun to change my view anout insects overall, seeking to creatie healthyhabitat for beetles, native bees, butterflies, and even species of flies and wasps I never knew were helpers. I allow more space for the wild side of life, messy edges, watch our mowing schedule. Joined the Xerces Society and The Pollinator Project. Ongoing study and amazement of web of life...

Join us and inform yourself and get outside with friends and family to catch the waves of spring ephemeral wildflowers. The forest and garden is bursting with roots, shoots, leaves, and flowers. Loveliness exists amidst a world of human sorrow. Celebrate and cultivate the Good in us, in the home of our Earth. I will be teaching a class in gardening with pollinators this week at the Folk School. Hope to see you in fields and forests and on the farm.

Spring Forward.