Piedmont Farm Tour Farming First For Many

The 17th Annual Piedmont Farm Tour hosted by the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association took place this past weekend in the Piedmont region of North Carolina. Audrey Lin & Debbie Donald, Two Chicks Farm joined the ranks of 40 sustainable family farms for the first time this year. Two Chicks is a small farm near Hillsboro, North Carolina, specializing in growing vegetables for the value-added chain, namely pickling and fermenting. Lin reflects that it was a rewarding experience:
 

“Well, we really had no expectations, we were hoping that somebody would show up. We stayed busy the entire four hours, we gad grops of people, just as soon as we’d finish up…both Debbie and I took people around, explained things, and we stayed busy the entire time. So, we were relly pleased with the number of people that showed up, and the interest level that people had, and especially the interest that people had because we were doing tastings of our fermented products. And I think just about every one had a taste of some, so it was an introduction to them of fermented foods.”
 

Lin explains that there were a lot of questions from those that visited their farm:
 

“A lot of the questions we got were ‘there are just two of you?’, so we had a lot of interest in our verma composting pile, just how we had it set up and how we maintained it. We had a lot of questions about the hoops, we have two hoop houses that we grow year-around in. We had a lot of questions about our root crops, we have raised beds and things, so people were interested in finding out more about how we grow in our raised beds and things like that.”
 

The type of people that stopped by Two Chicks Farm were varied, and many had no experience with or on a farm:
 

“We had a lot of our customers show up, just because they wanted to see our farm, and they were actually glad to see stuff growing, because now they can relate to it when they buy it at the market. So, I would say there were a lot of people there, maybe a little more than 50% that hadn’t had any experience farming.”

Audrey Lin of Two Chicks Farm near Hillsboro, North Carolina. Visit their website here.

For photos of this years tour, check out the Carolina Farm Stewards Face book page.