The Barefoot Farmer (Jeff Poppen) uses his farm (Long Hungry Creek Farm) as an example in demonstrating good farming principles. The landscape and atmosphere of the 21st century is leaning away from a small farm economy, bucolic scenery, sustainable agriculture and homegrown meals. The health of ourselves and our environment can only be enhanced by a reliance on local small farms for our needs. To learn more about these principle join Jeff Poppen with his weekly column - Barefoot Farmer.To e-Mail Jeff - Click Here

Last year I made the raccoon families happy. This year our club of 200 families rejoices instead. Four stands of electrified wire encircle the entire sweet corn patch within a foot of the ground. Baited with a dab of peanut butter in aluminum foil hanging on the wire, the fence was a shock to the…

Potatoes here, potatoes there, potatoes everywhere. This is what happens when you plant 1300 pounds of seed potatoes into a well-composted field. With a lot of help from our friends, 300 bushels are out of the field and ready for their next stage sorting.

Dark clouds have a silver lining, and there is a bright side to everything. As gas prices rise, so does the cost of produce grown elsewhere. The demand for locally grown food dwarfs the supply, especially if the fertilizer has been cow manure. For the first time in my short farming career (35 years), the…

Five years ago I produced a TV show about carrots, in which I made a “carrot box”. This was for home gardeners who had trouble raising carrots in heavy, clay soils. The box was filled with sand, compost and good soil. I took the opportunity to explain rock dusts, such as rock phosphate, granite meal…

I’m notoriously known to disappear during bean picking. It’s easy to find something else to do. But there were many long rows for the workers to harvest so I jumped right in there, in an effort to keep myself from planting more beans. It didn’t work.

Blueberries are a wonderful crop for Tennessee. They were virtually unheard of here when we started fooling around with them 30 years ago. Times change, and blueberries are here to stay.

The onion makes the meal. It’s one of the oldest domesticated plants, and the many different varieties of alliums are4 all easy to grow. Garlic, the strongest member of the onion family, can be seen hanging around the drying shed, while the storage onions cover the floor.

We love to plant many different varieties of each vegetable, in an effort to find out which does best. Lettuce is a good example, and I like the summer crisp, or Batavia, kinds. While the romaines and others are bolting, during the first week of summer, the summer crisps are still crisp.

Hilling the rows helps the plants to grow. By throwing dirt up on the base of the plant, small weeds are smothered and soil moisture is conserved. The ridge also holds the stalk upright so it doesn’t bend or blow over with the weight of the crop.

Sweet potatoes are the last of the summer crops to get planted. The soil was prepared a few weeks ago and had turned green with weeds. I was so glad it wasn’t planted yet. A run through with the re-breaker and harrow took care of them.