HilltopFarms.org - Sustainable Membership Farm

	HilltopFarms.org	Certified Organic Produce Farm in Willow Springs, NC
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News from the Farm :

Closed for the Year!
Posted 11/17/2008

Thanks to all who supported our local organic farm this season. All in all it was our best year so far and we appreciate you being a part of it. We'll do it all again next year, even better! But for now the CSA dropsites are done, the farmstand is closed (soon to be remodeled) and the Moore Square Farmers Market idle until next spring. Time to stoke the fire in the woodstove and wait on those seed catalogs for next year!

Thanks!

2009 CSA
Posted 10/5/2008

If you are interested in joining our Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program for next year, 2009, please send us an email from the "contact us" page of the website and request a spot on our waiting list for new members. We are offer existing members first opportunity to renew their spot through the month of November. We will open it up to new members on the waiting list starting December 1st on a first come first serve basis. We will send out the new 2009 membership form to interested parties at that time. Please do not send in the old 2006 form from the website. It will be removed shortly and replaced with the '09 form.
The 2009 season will start April 14th and run through November 7th. We have not announced dropsite locations yet but will look to secure sites in Raleigh inside the beltline, north Raleigh, Cary and of course Saturday mornings at the farm in Willow Springs. The subscription price for next year will remain the same at $525.

Hilltop Farm Shirts!
Posted 7/14/2008

We have just gotten in a new batch of Hilltop Farm T-shirts that are made from 100% organic cotton. They come in Biodiesel (gold), Mutts Blue and White and feature the Hilltop Farms' logo as see at the top left corner of this home page. The print asks the message, "Do you know where food comes from?" on the front, and displays " Hilltop Farms, Cetrtified Organic Produce, Willow Springs, NC". on the back.
They look great and are made of 100% organic cotten. They come in Adults sizes small through XXL, ladies cap sleeve S,M and L, and even youth sizes S, M, and L (youth in white only). Adults and ladies shirts are $15.00 each and youth sizes are $12.00 each, and we can ship them to you!
If you are interested in one, please shoot us an email from the "contact us" page and I'll send you a picture and an order form.
Show your true colors by supporting a local farm and the organic industry and wear a great looking Farm Tee that will tell everyone that you know "Where Food Comes From"!<

Farm Tours
Posted 2/27/2008

We are Wake County's first and ( to my knowledge still the) only Certified Organic Produce Farm, located in Willow Springs, NC. We also operate a horse boarding business with a new 2,500 sq. ft. stable. We love to host farm tours for any age on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays and welcome homeschool, pre-school, church or civic groups, ag classes, garden clubs and more.
A tour of our 30 acre farm consists of a trip through the horse barn where tour members get a up close, hands on education about equine care including feeding and grooming one or more of the nine resident horses.
Next, we load up for a hayride out to the fields where they get to see and taste organic vegetables in production and learn about how things grow and why organics is important. We'll pass the beehive and visit the greenhouse where participants can plant their own seed in a peat cup to take home and watch grow. We even have the "Practice Field" where you do the farming, by planting seeds or transplanting young seedlings from the greenhouse.
Our focus is on education and relaxation, but the fun comes naturally as there is something to be learned by everyone regardless of age. The tours last about two hours and you can plan to picnic on the grounds, under the shade of 100 year old pecan trees, before or after your visit!
The charge is only $7 per person, 3 yrs. and up, including all adults. During strawberry season, there is an optional package of $10 per person and that includes a Pic-Yer-Own basket of organic strawberries! Strawberry season starts May 3rd and runs to about mid-June, depending on the weather. If you'd like to spend a day in the peaceful setting of a working farm please email us at info@hilltopfarms.org or call 618-5601 to schedule your group's visit! (minimum 10 paid participants, maximum limit, 40).

Thanks and See you Down On the Farm!

For Your Reading Enjoyment
Posted 8/23/2004

A couple of months ago, in my spare time, I wrote down this story that came to me while working in the fields one day. I entered it in a short story contest at the local book store and much to my surprise, I won! I thought you might like to read it. It's about farming! Go figure.

21 EVERLASTING
by Fred Miller

No one ever asked me about Silas Winston. So I never told ‘em. I never told ‘em how back in 1949 while I was tending my fields day after day I would see Silas ride by, up the dirt path to his house. Up and down the path that bordered our properties in his tattered blue Dodge pick-up with no tailgate and one or two Border Collies riding in the back.
I would always look up from my work and waive, and Silas would always look over to me and waive back. But one day he didn’t waive. He didn’t even look my way. But that’s not what bothered me. What bothered me was that Silas stared straight ahead as if he didn’t even know me, and through the haze on the hot summer day and the dust from the road, I’m not sure I knew him!
I mean it looked like Silas, but then it didn’t. Actually, it looked like a young Silas. Like he may have looked when he was 21 before joining the Army and going off to war. Not the 62-year-old neighbor I knew now. He looked like he could have been Silas’s son. But Silas didn’t have any sons. He had three daughters, but no sons. It was Silas’ truck all right. 1942 Dodge, blue, with dogs in the back. I’d seen it a hundred times. Maybe a thousand.
This time, no waive.
I guess it all started several weeks earlier. Silas had left home one morning like he did every day with his dogs in the back of the old ’42, headed to a field he leased about three miles away. He kept a small herd of breeding cows there and used the dogs to round ‘em up for feeding or moving from pasture to pasture, or to separate them from their calves when the calves got to be about a year old or so. He would call out commands to them to head them in the right direction, “Way! Low! Come Up!"
His favorite dog was Rip. Local legend has it that Rip once fetched a bucket for a famous politician to sit on when he stopped in the Service Center politicking on the campaign trail. Smart dog. He’d been with Silas for years.
On this particular day, as soon as Silas pulled the Dodge off the dirt road into the field, Rip jumped out of the no-tailgate truck and took-off across the pasture. They had come to feed-up but to also check on one of the momma cows, a roan, which was due to calf any day.
Rip speared through the tall fescue and effortlessly jumped a small waist high barbed-wire fence that separated the pasture into two fields. He was quickly out of site. Silas called to him with his trained commands, “Way now! Way!"
Just then he heard a loud bellow that he knew was that of a protective and angry new momma cow. He heard Rip barking his own commands to move the roan back to the herd. Another loud bellow from the momma and then a sound that made Silas’s heart sink and his steps quicken. He heard Rip yelp in pain. Even as he ran he heard branches breaking and an unmistakable thud as Rip hit the ground.
When he reached the scene he saw the roan and her newborn standing on the edge of Terrible Creek that bordered this back pasture. He rushed to the edge and looked over the cliff to the creek bed some 20 feet below. There lay Rip, feebly trying to get back to his feet. Without thinking, Silas began to traverse the steep embankment. He grabbed hold of a low hanging branch of a gum ball tree and swung down to a dirt mound ten feet below. From there he spilled through the saplings and onto the bank of the shallow creek.
Rip was hurt. He’d broken somethin’ for sure. Silas scooped him up and with the vigor of a young 21-year-old man, started to scramble back up the cliff. He reached the dirt mound and then the gumball branch and swung the both of them back to the ledge. He never even stopped to think about what he had done or how a 62-year-old farmer with a crooked back and stiff legs could have done it, but as soon as he hit the ground he started jogging back to the truck with Rip cradled in his arms.
When he got to the small fence, he shifted Rip to one arm and placed the other hand on a shaky fence post and leaped over the barbed-wire. Without even thinking about it!
He reached the dirt road just barely out of breath but certainly exhilarated. As he ran around the truck and carefully laid Rip in the front seat, a young, well-to-do lady in a new Ford Thunderbird slowed down and called out her window to Silas. “Is everything alright? Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked.
“He took a fall and I think he broke his leg or hip or somethin’” Silas called back. “I gonna carry him up to Doc Cotton right now!”
Dr. Cotton put a splint on Rip’s leg, and Silas carried him to the truck. Then everyday he carried him to the truck. Everyday they would go out to the field with Rip in the front seat riding shotgun and the next in line Border riding in the back doing all the work. From then on Silas felt different in the fields. He worked the cows and calves with a renewed zeal. He mended fences, he cleared fallen trees, and he cut the fescue when he got too high. His fields never looked so good. He felt young and strong again.
After a few weeks Rip was back on his feet and he and Silas would run back and forth in a game of chase like a young boy and his pup. Silas never felt more alive!
One day while Silas was picking up some groceries at the Service Center as his wife Sarah had asked, he fell in line at the check out behind the Thunderbird woman.
Silas spoke up, “The old dog’s doin’ fine Miss. He healed up nicely.” The woman glanced over her shoulder at Silas but didn’t say a word. She looked back at the check out boy and rolled her eyes back at Silas as if to say, “what’s wrong with this old guy"? She obviously didn't remember or maybe didn't recognize Silas. She left the store without speaking.
“Rude city folk”, Silas shrugged to the checkout.
Then one day the strangest thing happened to Silas. He and Rip where leaving the field in the old Dodge after a long, hard days work. Silas look in the rearview mirror as he began to back out onto the road. He saw someone in the back of the truck! He whirled around to see but there was no one there. He looked back in the mirror and there he was again! It was a young man. A young man that looked just like Silas had at 21. There was no one in the back. There was just Silas in the mirror and his youth staring him in the face.
It happened everyday. He would leave the house, Silas, 62, and arrive at the field ready for work, Silas, 21. By the time he drove home and passed me standing in my field waiving he had transformed back to his old self.
This had been going on for weeks when he returned home that day that I waived, but he didn’t but he didn’t waive back. Instead, he stared straight ahead. He reached his house and pulled into the driveway and as usual checked his look in the mirror. But on this day he saw the young Silas. He had not changed back! What would Sarah say? He couldn’t let her see him like this.
About that time, Sarah called from behind the kitchen screen door. “Silas, what on earth are you doin’? Come in the house before supper gets cold!” He shot a glance back to the mirror. Still no change! He hadn’t heard the screen door slam, when Sarah was suddenly standing at the truck’s window. “Silas, come on now, I said suppers gettin’ cold.” She turned and walked back to the house without another word. Hadn’t she seen him? How could she not have noticed?
Days later he was sittin’ on a Co-Cola crate down at the Service Center, chewing the fat with the local gentry, when another farmer, Danny, shouted over to Silas, “Hey Silas, who was that young man I saw cuttin' your field the other day? You got rich and hired some help or sumthin’?” They all laughed. Silas’ heart pounded. He had to think of something quick. “You must be getting old, Danny. Your eyes ain’t as good as they use to be!” They all laughed again now and Silas as loud as any of them. He took advantage of the distraction and waived goodbye and slipped out as fast as he could.
The weeks went by. The months. The years. Silas and Rip kept working. He and Sarah lived a long time. Staying to themselves mostly. But people would always say when they saw ‘em at church or places, “ My, those two sure look good for their age.” They were always happy.
Silas was almost 90 when he died. He was still tendin’ his cows everyday. Out-workin’ the youngest man around. He was backing onto the familiar dirt road when another car slammed into the passenger side of his truck. A businessman, in a hurry. The businessman jumped out and ran around his car and over to the drivers side of the truck. There he saw a young man with his dog, holding Silas’s bleeding head in his lap.
“Help mister! You got to go get help! Go to the store and call the doctor! Now! Please hurry!” the young man pleaded. The dog barked feverishly. The businessman remembered he had a mobile telephone in his car and ran back to call 911. When he returned to the side of the truck the young man was gone and there lay Silas, alone, dead, smiling and content. The dog was gone, too.
He looked up and down the long straight, dirt road but could find no sign of the young man. Not even any dust. He wasn't in the fields, either. They never found him. The businessman told the Sheriff later that the young man looked like he could have been Silas’ son. But Silas didn’t have any sons. Three daughters, but no sons.
No one ever asked me. No one ever asked if I had ever seen the young man. No one ever asked what I had seen everyday, standing in my fields, watching and waving to the young and old Silas Winston as he came and went.
No one ever asked me why the woman in the Thunderbird who had seen a young Silas by the side of the road had not recognized an old Silas at the store. Nor did anyone ever asked me why Sarah hadn’t notice the change in Silas. I would have told them it was because she had always seen him as her 21-year-old soldier returning from war. The man she married. I guess love is truly blind.
Maybe the heat of the day and the dust of the road had that hot afternoon so long ago had blinded me too. Maybe I had figured out things the way I wanted them to be. Maybe it was all just a way for my mind to get my body to the end of the row. There’s a lot of time to think about things out here. Time and work are everlasting.
There are a lot of things, too, that no one ever asked me, about Silas Winston. And I never told anyone, until now.

Pics From The Farm
Posted 4/12/2002

This is what you missed last summer!