Winter on Full Circle Family Farm NC

Beside the out-door kitchen there is a flowering fruit tree called the Japanese Plum (ume) Tree. On warmer sunny days the Russian bees from Full Circle Family Farm are heard buzzing around the tiny pink flowers. They love it! The Une tree is very popular in Japan, where is can also been seen in winter with pink flowers covered with frost and iscles. Ume is a species of fruit-bearing tree in the genus Prunus, which is often called a ume but is actually more closely related to the apricot. When the friut is ripened the plums are made into Umeboshi a type of tsukemono, or traditional Japanese pickled food. Umeboshi is literally "dried ume" are pickled ume fruits.

Cover crops on the vegetable beds are of rye, clover and peas. Freezing temperatures can occure as low as -4C will kill these crops so they can be dug back into the beds in the spring before transplanting the plants that have been started in the green house. The garlic was planted in the fall and are already growing in the straw-covered beds. The garlic has been in the ground since fall and have been covered up with straw.


In the green house there are lettuse, cabbages, leeks and brussel spouts, collards.






The tea plant does not lose it's leaves and remains green all winter.

The red and white corn fields are bedded down with straw and green cover crops. The harvested corn was milled into grits and corn meal.

A lemon tree is growing in the living-quarters green house. These organic lemons take a year to develop and ripen. It can flower anytime of year and is now in full bloom.

The remaining summer vegetables are still in the plastic cover. In the new green house that is built on the south side of the barn is full of healthy lettuse, collards and leeks. They will be ready for harvest in the spring.


The ginger was dug up, stored in pails of soil and brought into the green house that is in the family home. Their tops will die off and the ginger roots will then be taken out of the soil and washed off to be used.

Even if the leaves have fallen from the trees, the hemlock, rhododendron and bamboo are still green. It is so nice to see green all winter,. The snow has not come yet this winter, but when it does it will not last long.