Our Farm
We lease our land from Jeff & Katie Belflower, owner/operators of Belflower Farm in Sunshine, NC. Belflower Farm raises the healthiest looking grass-fed cows and sheep you’ve ever seen on 80 acres of organic, intensively managed pasture and native oak woodland. We consider ourselves very fortunate to be able to carve out a little section of the healthy, thriving farm ecosystem that the Belflowers steward, and contribute to it with our vegetable enterprise.
Our name is inspired by a line of oak trees that stand between our two main growing areas and is a nod to the native ecosystem that makes this area so beautiful.
We are as passionate about building healthy soil as we are about growing healthy food! Our goal at Seven Oaks Farm is to maintain and further improve the natural balance of our growing areas by using techniques that minimize soil disturbance and increase biodiversity. Our focus is on keeping the soil covered (with living roots and vegetation or mulches) and adding organic matter so that we may nourish and feed the soil rather than mine and deplete it. We never use synthetic fertilizers and we never spray any type of pesticides, herbicides, or fungicides on any of our crops.
Here are examples of a few of the tools and methods we use for minimizing soil disturbance and promoting soil life:
TARPS
Silage tarps (large, durable, 5mm thick plastic sheets traditionally used for covering animal feed) are a great, low-impact way to prepare an area for growing. We do this by mowing the existing vegetation to the ground, pulling a tarp over the area, weighing it down with sandbags, and waiting. The tarp serves to starve the plants of light which terminates them.
COVER CROPS
Cover crops, such as the buckwheat and rye grass seen here, help us to keep soil covered before, after, and between crops. Termination of cover crops adds nutrients and organic matter to the soil.
FLAIL MOWER
The action of a flail mower chops crop residues into a fine, mulchy material. Flail mowing allows us to terminate a crop while leaving roots intact so the organic matter may break down and feed the soil without disturbing it, a win-win!