Six Figs Farm LLC

Planning for the new year starts with looking back over the previous year. What worked, what didn’t?

The good: We harvested asparagus, garlic scapes and garlic, wild blackberries, gooseberries, figs, elderflowers, elderberries, pears, apples, muscadines, beautyberries, and honey. Our ducks, geese, and chickens thrived. Our soil improved. We built our barn, enabling us to stop using our garage as a barn. We’re now working on a renovation to our 800 square foot farmhouse that will bring us a bit of much needed space for our growing up kids.

The bad: As with any new business in the beginning, we worked too many hours, too many days. Work-life balance is something we’ll be looking at. Our beekeeping year wasn’t the best. We learned so much about beekeeping, but as with many things, we lost a lot in the process.

The ugly: The weather continues to be unpredictable, with wild swings. We started out 2022 with a long false spring in late winter. It was a long enough warm spell that our figs and blueberries woke up and started leafing out and making a crop. When we had a return to regular winter weather, our fig trees were damaged, and we lost most of our blueberry crop. Injured, stressed plants bring disease and pests. The figs regrew, however, in April we were hit with Ambrosia Beetles. We ended up cutting 42 fig trees to the ground- the beetles will kill the tree otherwise. The figs regrew from their roots, but we didn’t have the crop we were hoping for.

In December, we had an unheard of early freeze. It went down to 8 degrees. We worked hard and kept all of our animals safe. We will sustain losses from this, but we won’t know the extent until Spring. Some of our fig trees have died. We’ve lost most of our two year old trees. We don’t know if the ones that have died will come back from the roots, or if they’re absolutely and completely dead. We also don’t know what the rest of the winter has in store.

This is year 5 of our figs freezing back to the roots each and every year. Our dream of a mature fig orchard is gone. What will that be replaced with?

The amazing:

Our customers. We have amazing customers, both in our local area and in the Atlanta area.

We started going to Atlanta for markets, and have been met with open arms, friendliness, and support.

Our high tunnel. We were able to keep temps above the danger zone during the December freeze. Everything in our high tunnel is alive.

Our dream of providing seasonally available delicious, nutrient-dense fresh and value added fruits and vegetables, grown regeneratively, without the use of pesticides, is working. With the exception of elderberries, which are still available, we sold out of every crop this year, much more quickly than we expected.

Our family has gone through some stress, some loss, some hard times. We work hard together. We cheer each other on. We’re closer than ever, and we feel so blessed that we’re able to live our dream.

What’s next? What’s on the table, what will we change, continue, etc? Stay tuned, we’ll have a blog post coming up shortly with our plans for 2023!

Here are some of our favorite photos from 2022