Category Archives: Spring

Our farm’s first honey bee hive

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Thursday was a life-long dream come true as we brought our first honey bee hive onto the farm. That’s Vince carefully placing them with Scot Smotherman, a new partner with our farm. Scot’s great-uncle is bee keeper Dr. Ed Perryman of Shelbyville who taught him and countless people across the state how to keep and care for these amazing insects. We are so grateful for Scot sharing his knowledge and getting us this path.

This first colony is a hive of Carniolan bees. With all the rain and cold snaps, we wondered if they’d make it. A day or two later the sun came out, and they got oriented and went to work!

We know it’s a lot of work and commitment, but our goal is to collect as an inspected honey house to make our farm’s first organic hemp-infused CBD honey and share some extra healing love from Woodbury!

3rd Annual ‘Feed the Bees’ Sunflower giveaway

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Stop by our stores Saturday April 14 in Woodbury, TN (map) or in Bell Buckle (a registered Bee City USA participant) at the Wellness Emporium (map) and pick up a free organic sunflower from Half Hill Farm!

Each sunflower that made it through the Spring frost will grow between 7-12 feet tall and was inoculated with mycorrhizal fungi to network your garden with a little Earth magic. This is our third year sharing our sunflowers as part of our farm’s commitment to spreading sanctuary for native solitary and honey bees. Our sunflowers are available with every purchase while they last.

Save the bees – diversity is key: You may not realize it, but there are several varieties of native bees that each have their own specialty when it comes to pollinating the landscape. Planting a variety of flowering plants is the best way to attract them, and hosting them in bee condos is a great way to encourage them to come back year after year. Solitary bee condos are also a great way to educate children and neighbors to respect the fragility and diversity of bees without the worries or hassle of keeping a hive of honey bees.

Discover the diversity of native bees:

1. Macropis nuda.
2. Agapostemon texanus.  US sweat bee
3. Peponapis pruinosa. Squash & gourd bees
4. Bombus impatiens. The Impatient Bumble Bee
5. Osmia lignaria.  The Blue Orchard Bee
6.  Hylaeus sp.
7.  Habropoda laboriosa. The Southeastern Blueberry Bee
8. Xylocopa varipuncta. The Valley Carpenter Bee
9. Bombus morrisoni.  Morisson’s bumble bee		 10.  Perdita minima.
11. Xylocopa virginica. Eastern Carpenter Bee
12. Bombus vosnessenskii.
13. Bombus affinis.
14. Megachile sp. Leafcutter bees
15. Andrena cornelli. Miner bees
16. Anthophora  centriformis. Digger bees, or anthophorids
17.  Nomada sp. The Wandering Cuckoo Bee
18. Augochorella pomoniella. Sweat bees

 

Half Hill Farm opens Wellness Emporium in Bell Buckle

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left to right: Vince Oropesa, Christian Grantham, Heather Williams, Scot Smotherman, Jenny Hunt

We are very grateful for everyone who made it out Friday to the grand opening of our farm’s second store in historic Bell Buckle, Tennessee. The Wellness Emporium of Bell Buckle features all the products our farm proudly makes in Woodbury, TN plus other health & wellness products like industrial hemp products, extracts and local honey.

Special thanks to our new team member Scot Smotherman (business development), Lori Smith and Jessica Cimon for the wonderful flowers, for Heather Williams with the Chamber for bring the giant scissors, and Mayor Jenny Hunt for the very warm welcome. We look forward to bringing many years of better health & well being to our new friends and neighbors!

Half Hill Farm’s new seasonal kombucha flavor: Blood Orange

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Half Hill Farm's Blood Orange Kombucha

NEW FLAVOR: Our farm’s new seasonal Blood Orange kombucha is now on tap at Half Hill Farm at the The Arts Center of Cannon County in Woodbury, TN (1424 John Bragg HWY Woodbury, TN 37190) and Wellness Emporium in Bell Buckle, TN (13 Webb Rd. E Bell Buckle, TN 37020) – it’s sunshine in a bottle made with all organic ingredients: blood orange, local honey, cardamom & clove!

Half Hill Farm’s Ginger Lemonade Kombucha

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Slay the potluck with our new seasonal Ginger Lemonade Kombucha – made with all organic cold-pressed ginger and lemon and sweetened with local honey. Available on tap by the cup or growler starting today at our Woodbury store in The Arts Center of Cannon County (open Thurs-Sat 10a-4p)!

Half Hill Farm opens retail store in Woodbury

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Half Hill Farm’s Apple Ginger Kombucha hanging out in the Stones River.

Come and get you a half gallon growler of our organic Apple Ginger Kombucha starting this Saturday April 30, 2016 at our new retail store in the Arts Center of Cannon County (here’s a map)! We’ll be open Saturdays at 9 am so you can get your $5 growler refilled for $10.

Kombucha is organic sweet tea fermented and carbonated with yeast and probiotics and flavored with organic juices. This raw, vegan, live culture food detoxifies, helps with digestion, and helps keep blood sugar levels in check. It’s just one way we’re looking out for your health & well being.

This Saturday’s opening will also feature over a dozen Middle Tennessee jewelry makers in the 2016 Jewelry Showcase, selling a wide selection of hand-crafted silver, copper, leather, stone, and beaded jewelry – perfect gifts for Mom!

Every Saturday, we will also have our Nature’s Remedy line of mushroom dual extracts featuring the immune boosting power of the Red Reishi, Chaga and Turkey Tail mushrooms. You can also pick up some fresh made tempeh from our partners at Short Mountain Cultures and enjoy crafts from the art and soul of Tennessee!

Nature’s Remedy: Chaga mushroom dual extract

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Half Hill Farm’s Chaga Mushroom Dual Extract is available in 100 and 200 ml bottles.

Chaga mushrooms (Inonotus obliquus) have been used as folk medicine for immune support and gastrointestinal health in Russia for centuries, more recently in treating cancer and the side effects of cancer treatments. Chaga is not an edible mushroom and must be extracted to be consumed. Extracts are made from the sclerotium, a fungal mycelium outgrowth that occurs mostly on Birch trees prior to a rarely seen fruiting body. As the Birch tree mounts a decades long defense against the advancing fungus, the Chaga mycelium creates a host of compounds to fight for its survival, and this is why many call Chaga the “King of the Herbs.”

Uses: Studies show extracts of Chaga mycelium reduce oxidative stresses that lead to many diseases. It has one of the highest antioxident values of any herb and high concentrations of melanin (visible on the sclerotium’s crusted outer surface), ergosterol (vitamin D2) and anti-aging enzymes Superoxide Dismutase (SOD).

Studies of Chaga also show antifungal, antiviral, antibacterial, and anti-inflammatory properties. Chaga’s adaptagenic effects help balance overactive auto-immune responses while naturally triggering needed immune responses. Chaga is often used to treat eczema, psoriasis, and dermatitis and to normalize cholesterol and blood sugar levels. Compounds from both hot water and alcohol extractions, including polysaccharides and terpenes (betulinic acids, phytosterols), have anti-tumor growth properties making Chaga a candidate as an adjunct therapy. Betulinic acid has been shown to help break down LDL cholesterol.

How to Purchase: Half Hill Farm is pleased to add the healing power of Chaga mushrooms to our Nature’s Remedy line of mushroom dual extracts that include Red Reishi (Ganoderma Lucidum) and Turkey Tail (Trametes Versicolor) mushrooms. Our Chaga extract processes responsibly wildcrafted sclerotia (fungal mycelium) of the Chaga mushroom through a lengthy hot water (distilled water) and alcohol (USDA Certified Organic pharmaceutical grade USP) extraction process. Our full spectrum dual extract is manufactured in our FDA registered manufacturing kitchen for our USDA Certified Organic farm and bottled in premium Miron ultra-violet glass for superior preservation (shelf life of 1 year).

Take Chaga daily in morning coffee or evening tea or in combination with any of our mushroom dual extracts. There are no known contraindicators. Below are a few studies of Chaga mushrooms for deeper understanding of this powerful mushroom.

Research on Chaga (Inonotus obliquus) mushrooms

*These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. Please consult your physician before using any of our products for health purposes.

Getting the most from your Shiitake mushroom log

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Shiitake mushroom logs in the woods at half Hill Farm

Last night looks like the last of forecasted freezing temperatures for early Spring here in Middle Tennessee. If you have one of our Shiitake mushroom logs marked SP15 (Spring 2015) or earlier, now is the time to prep your log for an early Spring flush.

Shocking logs: Get a five gallon bucket and fill it with rain water or water from a nearby creek and then soak your log for 24 hours. Place the log in a wooded area with roughly 80% shade. You can place it under a bush near your house’s North side if you do not have woods. If you have more than one log, use a larger tub like the one pictured above. The water should not be chlorinated tap water and should be very cold. This hard soak and cold temperature followed by the gradual warming of outdoor Spring temps will “shock” the mycelium into “pinning,” the beginning stages of mushrooms.

Pinning: Each pin that forms pushes through the bark as you see pictured above and will develop into the beginnings of a mushroom within 2-3 days followed by a rapidly growing mushroom over a five day period. Depending on the weather throughout Spring, you could experience 2-3 natural cycles of mushrooms with roughly two week resting periods between each flush.

Harvest: Once you start to see the mushrooms unfurl their outer edge (typically tucked under the mushroom cap), it is time to pick mushrooms. At this point, the mushroom is in the early phase of releasing its spore. Simply cut them off at the log, brush off any debris and either eat them fresh, store them in the fridge for up to two weeks, or dry them to use for months to come.

How to purchase: Each Shiitake mushroom log from Half Hill Farm produces up to 90% of the log’s dry weight in mushrooms over a 3-5 year period. You can purchase your own inoculated logs from 15 lbs. one foot logs up to 50+ lbs. four feet logs at our farm here in Woodbury, TN. Just give us a call and let us know you’re coming!

Spring planting 2015: seeds of change and progress

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Spring is about 6 or 7 weeks away. Time to get the popup greenhouses out and get these seeds going!

Progress: Last March, many of you helped us raise funds to open our farm to more mushroom workshops. Although we fell short of our goal, a little hard work made up the difference. Thanks to your help, the workshop pavilion pad is getting poured next week (somewhere in the photo above) along with the entrance to our farm! We’re excited about what this means for accommodating growing interest in our certified organic mushroom production and farm practices.

This year is our official harvest of Tennessee’s first certified organic crop of hops on our farm! Most of this year’s harvest will be dedicated to a new product coming out this Fall with some hops available to local brew clubs. Follow us on Facebook to know when these items will be available.

Change: This year we will not be regular vendors at the Woodbury Farmers’ Market due to demand for our mushroom products. We’re still figuring out what days we’ll be there. This year will be our first official apple and blueberry harvest, and we’re excited to make these available through local restaurants or at our local market.

Seeds: We’re planting a lot of our favorites for salsa making this year from newly purchased certified organic seeds. Like our Shiitake mushrooms, whatever vegetable produce doesn’t turn into Raw Salsa will be available direct to local restaurants.

Spring planting 2014: farming by the numbers

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We spent most of the beautiful weekend (ahead of predicted rains) getting everything planted. Due to the frost two weeks ago, we are about a month behind on everything we had to start over from seed. Of course, the dandelions made it just fine!

Based on having produced a little over 600 lbs. of food last year (our first year), it looks like we may do more than three times that much this year, and that doesn’t include mushrooms, apples and blueberries.

What we planted: (watermelons) Chelsea and Sugar Baby, (peppers) Anaheim, Poblano, Peperoncini, Beaver Dam, Cubanelle, Golden Treasure, (tomatoes) Roma and Lemon Drop, (herbs) Sage, Lavender, Basil, (cucumbers) Zimmerman, Sumter, and some Danver carrots.

Where and how to buy: You can find us this year at our local Saturday farmers market in Woodbury, Tennessee (located at the Arts Center of Cannon County) beginning July 5.

We will also have our 1 foot Shiitake, Reishi and Turkey Tail mushroom logs that should produce 10-15 pounds of mushrooms over 3-5 years. Look for our mushroom extract infused chocolates and other unique seasonal products hand-crafted with love on our farm at the market as well. Be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to see when we’ll be there.