Each week we round up the latest N.C. agricultural headlines from news outlets across the state and country, as well as excerpts from the stories. Click on the links to go straight to the full story.

• “NC has no drought area for 1st time in 3 years,” News & Observer: For the first time in three years, no area of North Carolina is experiencing a drought or abnormally dry conditions. The chairman of the N.C. Drought Management Advisory Council credits Tropical Storm Andrea and several other storm systems for the relief from the dry conditions. …

• “How sweet it is: Columbus County businessman finds new ways to market homegrown potatoes,” Fayetteville Observer: Some people call him Mr. Sweet Potato. And in the state that produces half of the nation’s sweet potatoes, that’s saying something. “Whatever talents God gave me, it’s in sweet potatoes,” George Wooten said, wearing a shirt just the right shade of orange to match the core of a sweet potato. …

• “More food now traveling less to get on students’ plates,” Salisbury Post: During a recent school lunch this spring, kindergartners at Isenberg Elementary School bit into sweet, fresh strawberries. They smiled in surprise when they found out that the fruit they were eating was picked just days earlier at a farm less than 15 miles away. Some of them had even visited there.  …

• “Cogongrass discovered in Stanly County, N.C.,” Southeast Farm Press: A small patch of cogongrass, considered by many experts to be one of the world’s worst weeds, was discovered recently in Stanly County by the North Carolina Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. This is the second confirmed infestation in North Carolina; the first was in Pender County in May 2012. …

• “Cool spring weather slows tobacco crop progress,” Southeast Farm Press: Tobacco farmers in most of the areas where tobacco is grown in the United States were hoping for a hot spell in mid-May after experiencing cool spring temperatures that resulted in delays in planting and in-field development.  …

• “Blueberries thriving in Southeastern N.C.,” Wilmington Star News: Today, blueberries are North Carolina’s most valuable fruit crop – and since 2001, by act of the General Assembly, they’ve been the Tar Heel State’s official berry. (Legislators hedged a bit, also recognizing the strawberry as North Carolina’s official RED berry.)  …

• “For Lewis, growing blueberries a labor of love,” Wilmington Star News: Cal Lewis kicks at the dirt in one of his Rocky Point blueberry farms, turning the sandy top level over to expose the soil beneath. “This soil here is an acidic … soil. It’s not good for growing strawberries, tobacco, peanuts, corn, cotton or anything else. It’s good for growing blueberries,” Lewis said. …

• “Farm Fresh Produce making a name in summer vegetable deal,” The Produce News: Take a young couple with strong roots in the produce industry and a determination to build a business that evolves and expands with every season, and you have Farm Fresh Produce in Faison, NC. Husband-and-wife owners Steven and Bethany Ceccarelli may be young, but they know their business and they are packed with energy to build what has already become a well-known supplier of summer vegetables. …

• “Record rainfall squelches strawberry harvest,” Hendersonville Times News: More than 7 inches of rain has fallen at the Asheville Regional Airport so far in June, about 5.84 inches above normal, according to the National Weather Service. More than 3.4 inches of rain fell Friday, breaking a daily record set 144 years ago, followed by 1.48 inches on Sunday that broke another record for the date.  …

• “June is a rain maker so far,” Greensboro News & Record: It’s not your imagination. It pretty much has rained all month. The gauge at the Piedmont Triad International Airport has recorded some level of rainfall every day since June 2. Thank Tropical Storm Andrea — which dropped a little more than an inch last week — and old-fashioned luck. …

June 14th, 2013 By: Jen Nixon | Category: Field Notes | Leave a comment

WRAL reporter Brian Shrader and our own Lisa Prince feature seasonal recipes in their Got to Be Good Cookin’ segment using ingredients grown and available right here in North Carolina.

This month, Brian and Lisa are exploring new salad recipes using fresh produce that is coming into season across the state this month. Today they tackle a new way to eat a salad, atop a grilled pizza crust. The pair used tomatoes, asparagus tips, fresh baby greens, basil and shallots on this pizza.

Lisa says this pizza is perfect for spring and summer,  and would be great for an appetizer or a meal.  The pizza crust in the segment was provided by Stick Boy Bread Company in Fuquay-Varina.

June 13th, 2013 By: Jen Nixon | Tags: pizza salad, recipes | Category: Local Dish | Leave a comment

Puppies in an evacuation shelter.

Last week’s tropical storm may have caused mostly minor headaches, but North Carolina is no stranger to weather events that cause substantial damage and uproot lives for days, weeks or even months at a time. It’s important to prepare your home and your farm for disasters. It’s equally important to plan for your furry and feathered family members. Planning ahead makes the entire process of evacuating less stressful for everyone, especially in cases where quick evacuation is needed, such as flash flooding, tornado or wildfires.

The N.C. Veterinary Medical Association recently talked with NCDA&CS Emergency Programs Division veterinarians Jimmy Tickel and Mandy Tolson about hurricane preparedness for pets. Take a listen to their podcast below and start planning an emergency kit for your entire family.

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You can find more great animal-related podcasts and videos from the NCVMA’s website.

June 12th, 2013 By: Jen Nixon | Tags: hurricane preparedness, hurricanes, NCVMA, pets | Category: Field Notes | Leave a comment

Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler sits down each week with Southern Farm Network’s Rhonda Garrison to discuss “Today’s Topic.”

For many children across North Carolina, this week marks the beginning of summer vacation. And summer is a good time for kids to learn about agriculture.

Commissioner Troxler says children today are further removed from farm life. It’s important for them to see farms so they can understand where their food and fiber come from.

There are hundreds of agritourism farms across North Carolina, and many of them offer summertime opportunities for kids and their families to see how our food is raised. Right now is a good time to check out farms where you can actually go into the field and pick your own produce. These farms are especially popular during the strawberry and blueberry seasons. Apple and peach orchards also will be popular with visitors as summer continues. Other farms offer dinners and other special events for a variety of ages. To find an agritourism farm near you, log on to www.visitncfarms.com.

If you’re in Raleigh this summer, you can check out a couple of special exhibits at local museums. Once again, the N.C. Museum of History has planted traditional North Carolina crops in its outdoor gardens. These include corn, cotton, tobacco and sweet potatoes, among others. The staff has even added some nursery crops this year. And Marbles Kids Museum recently launched a new hands-on exhibit called “On the Farm.” Located in the museum’s Around Town section, “On the Farm” is designed to provide kids with an understanding of agriculture today. The exhibit features a silo and feeding trough, cows, pigs, hens, an egg run, and soybeans, sweet potatoes and corn. It’s sponsored by the N.C. Soybean Producers Association and the N.C. Pork Council.

Click on the audio player below to listen to Commissioner Troxler and Rhonda discuss opportunities for children to include a little agriculture in their summer plans. Do you have a favorite agriculture-related summer outing? Share it in the comments below.

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Southern Farm Network is a division of Curtis Media Group.

June 11th, 2013 By: Brian Long | Tags: Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, agritourism, Marbles Children's Museum, N.C. Museum of History, Rhonda Garrison, Southern Farm Network, Today's Topic | Category: Today's Topic on Southern Farm Network | Leave a comment

June is National Dairy month. North Carolina has a thriving dairy industry that is growing with value-added processors, such as cheese and ice cream. Here’s a look at the latest numbers and facts about our state’s dairy industry:

• There are about 290 dairy farms in North Carolina. The average size of a N.C. dairy farm is 160 cows and 500 acres.

• Nearly all, 97 percent, of N.C. dairy farms are family-owned.

• North Carolina cash farm receipts for the sale of milk was $205 million in 2012.

• North Carolina dairy accounts for more than half a billion dollars in economic activity.

• North Carolina has seven Grade A milk processing plants, one large commercial cheese processing plant and 10 homestead cheese operations.

• North Carolina is one of the leading states in the Southeast in organic dairy production with six organic dairies.

• In 2012, North Carolina ranked 31st in the nation in both milk production (112,364,946 gallons) and number of dairy cows (46,000 total head).

• In 2012, the average N.C. dairy cow produced 2,442 gallons of milk, placing the state 16^th in the nation and first in the Southeast for average milk production per-cow.

• An average dairy cow consumes between 80 and 100 pounds of feed per day and 20 to 30 gallons of water a day, drinking more in the summer and less in the winter.

• No growth hormones (rBGH) are given to N.C. dairy cattle, based on cooperative agreements between farmers and processors.

June 10th, 2013 By: Jen Nixon | Tags: cheese, dairy, milk, organic dairy | Category: Field Notes | Comments (1)

As much as strawberries signal the start of the spring harvest to many people, watermelons are the calling cards of summer for many others. The sweet and refreshing flavor of watermelon just seems to go hand in hand with the heat of summer.

On a late April visit to James Sharp’s farms to see strawberries and Romain lettuce being grown for the N.C. Farm to School program, we happened across a greenhouse full of watermelon seedlings and workers planting a commercial-sized field of watermelons. It is definitely on a much larger scale than your average backyard garden.

Here’s a video of workers planting the watermelon seedlings on black plastic.

North Carolina’s watermelon season runs from June through August, so consumers should soon be finding local melons at stores, farmers markets and roadside stands.

June 7th, 2013 By: Andrea Ashby | Tags: James Sharp Farms, N.C. watermelon | Category: Field Notes | Leave a comment

Each week we round up the latest N.C. agricultural headlines from news outlets across the state and country, as well as excerpts from the stories. Click on the links to go straight to the full story.

• “Andrea prompts flood, tornado alerts,” WRAL: Tornado watches and flash flood warnings have been issued for parts of North Carolina as Tropical Storm Andrea approaches, soaking the state with rain. A flash flood warning has been issued for Franklin, Johnston, Nash, Wake and Warren counties until 10 a.m. Friday, and other surrounding counties are under a flash flood watch until 6 p.m.  …

• “Heavy rain could ruin remaining strawberry crops,” Salisbury Post: Strawberry farmers could lose thousands of dollars in the last weeks of harvest if heavy rains come as forecast, some local growers say. Torrential downpours are expected to continue through the weekend as Tropical Storm Andrea heads north. …

• “Sturgeon and caviar farming in Western N.C.,” Independent Weekly: It’s noon at Crippen’s Country Inn and Restaurant in Blowing Rock, where two chefs and their teams sit anxiously at the table waiting to discover today’s mystery ingredient.  …

• “Strawberry breeding program receives national sustainability initiative grants,” FreshPlaza.com: Dr. Jeremy Pattison, strawberry breeder and geneticist with the N.C. State University Plants for Human Health Institute at the N.C. Research Campus, recently was awarded a $158,391 grant from the National Strawberry Sustainability Initiative, and is a co-investigator on a second grant in the amount of $127,168, led by Dr. Brian Whipker, also with N.C. State.  …

• “Editorial: Getting busy at ag center,” Lumberton Robesonian: “If you build it, they will come.” We took a bit of liberty with the famous quote that we plucked from the movie “Field of Dreams.” In actually, the voice that Kevin Costner’s character, a novice farmer, hears in a field says “he” will come, not “they,” but the point is the same — and it’s flawed.  …

• “NC Council of State approves wood-pellet facility for Wilmington port,” News & Observer: A proposed lease approved Tuesday will allow construction of a $35 million wood-pellet storage and shipping facility at the state port in Wilmington. Maryland-based Enviva Holdings is expected to build and operate the biomass fuel export facility to ship as much as 1 million metric tons of pellets a year from forests in southeastern North Carolina, starting in January 2015.  …

• “Asheville area tailgates overflowing with local honey,” Asheville Citizen Times: The Appalachian Sustainable Agriculture Project in June celebrates honey as its monthly Get Local product. The most bee-beneficial trees and bushes — blackberries, tulip poplars and the like — bloom in early May. That means beekeepers are now heading to local tailgates, restaurants and groceries with the first of the year’s honey. …

• “Mountain valley environment a blessing for North Carolina grower,” Southeast Farm Press: Consistently growing 70 bushels of soybeans per acre and 200 bushel corn isn’t unique in the Southeast, but doing it in a high mountain valley on the western tip of North Carolina is quite a fete. Andrews, N.C., farmer Ed Wood humbly says the dozens of state and national yield awards hanging in his farm office are much more a result of rich mountain river valley soils and plentiful moisture in most years, than to his skills as a farmer. …

• “Will petting zoos return to fair?” Shelby Star: The Cleveland County Fair may not include a petting zoo when it returns this fall, fairgrounds officials said Monday. But a team that spent six months studying health safety at the fair does not recommend petting zoos be banned from the fairgrounds following a 2012 E. coli outbreak that sickened 100-plus event patrons and led to a toddler’s death. …

• “Backstory: Vintage Bee spins creamy honey into a national brand,” News & Observer: On paper, Vintage Bee, a wholesale honey company, is less than a year old. So when some of the company’s five national retailers started doubling and tripling their orders earlier this year, seeking a traditional bridge bank loan wasn’t a viable option, representatives of the company said. …

• “Home-schooler lands full ride to NCSU,” Davidson Dispatch: Both of Alex Loflin’s parents graduated from North Carolina State University with degrees in agriculture education, and both taught in public schools for years, so her plans to major in natural resources at NCSU came, well, naturally. But winning a full-ride Park Scholarship to attend for four years was the icing on the cake.  …

• “More than 1,000 Venus’ flytraps stolen,” Wilmington Star News: By late May, white flowers from blooming Venus’ flytraps should have covered the boggy bottom of Wilmington’s Stanley Rehder Carnivorous Plant Garden. “It literally should be just white everywhere,” said Jerry Bell, a city horticulturist. But it wasn’t.   …

June 7th, 2013 By: Jen Nixon | Category: Field Notes | Leave a comment

Two employees received NCDA&CS Employee of the Month awards recently in Raleigh. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler honored them for their dedication to the department.

Greg Smith receives the March Employee of the Month award from Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler.

Greg Smith, district forester in Western North Carolina, was honored as the March Employee of the Month. Smith is responsible for overseeing and implementing the N.C. Forest Service’s programs in eight counties and ensuring that fire protection is afforded to more than 1 million acres of woodland within his district. Other duties include providing reforestation services and forest management services to landowners managing their properties. In nominating Smith, his supervisor wrote:

District Forester Smith leads his District forward in increasing the reforestation and management of the private forest lands so that our children and children’s children will be able to enjoy all that our forests provide for us.  Without this leadership in promoting forest management, many acres would sit idly on the wayside, unproductive for timber, barren of wildlife habitat, and not protecting the watersheds that provide all of NC clean drinking water.

Andrew Meranda was honored as the April Employee of the Month.

Andrew Meranda was recognized as Employee of the Month for April. He is a Forest Service pilot in Western North Carolina, providing aerial observation and situational awareness to ground units who may not be able to see dangerous conditions often just a short distance away. In nominating him, his supervisor wrote:

Andy took on the (Automated Flight Following) development and implementation with the end user in mind. He immediately recognized the end user was not just pilots but all of NCFS. By planning ahead with the end in mind, he has near single-handedly developed installation specifications for all aircraft, detailed operating procedures, and in-depth training materials. He has trained three lead trainers, one per Region, to facilitate on-site training at statewide operational units. He remains the lead administrator of the system and the primary point of contact for training and functioning as the ‘AFF Help Desk.’

Recently the base station radio at the Hickory Hangar failed. Andy used a number of surplus parts from essentially scrap to build a replacement station from scratch. The base station he built has a greater radio range than the older one, not to mention it has saved the Division roughly $2,000.

June 6th, 2013 By: Brian Long | Tags: Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler, Andrew Meranda, employee of the month, Greg Smith, N.C. Forest Service | Category: Field Notes | Leave a comment

WRAL reporter Brian Shrader and our own Lisa Prince feature seasonal recipes in their Got to Be Good Cookin’ segment using ingredients grown and available right here in North Carolina.

For a quick and easy breakfast, check out this recipe for a Blueberry Smoothie. This recipe has is simple, just blend blueberries, juice and yogurt. For a sweeter version, just add sugar.

Lisa says that you can add strawberries, bananas or other fruit to give it more flavor. And if you want to make the smoothie thicker, use frozen blueberries or add some ice, which will take additional blending time.

June 6th, 2013 By: Jen Nixon | Tags: blueberries | Category: Local Dish | Leave a comment