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Green growing

By DANA SAPP/Correspondent

OK, imagine this. You’re tired of your life in sunny California, so you sell the house, pack up the fifth-wheel camper and start traveling East.  You tour national parks, climb a few mountains and keep moving.  In the back of your mind you are looking for a place to settle down and plant your roots (literally).  Your goal is to find that perfect place to start an organic produce farm.  Along the way (40 states and 50,000 miles later) you stop at a small rural community in Southwest Virginia, and it captures your attention. Friendly people, seasonal climate, you like it here but keep moving on.  Traveling Northeast into New England you see beautiful country but tough, cold winters. All the while a small voice inside you keeps whispering “Virginia.” You know, that nice place, Wythe County I think it was called. 
Sound crazy?  Bill Parry and Suzanne Capone will tell you that for them it was fate.  Today, their Omega Lane Farm off Old King Road in Rural Retreat features hundreds of naturally grown plants, a greenhouse and even bee hives.
“We like the culture and history here.  It’s a homegrown culture, it’s authentic,” Bill said. 
“We came from the most temperate zip code in America,” Suzanne added.  “It varied very few degrees from 72 year round.  Our two seasons in California were ‘Sunny’ and ‘Cloudy,’ but between the increasing population in our once sleepy little surfer town and the wildfires we were ready to look for something else.”
“I need the four seasons,” Bill said. “I am from Indiana so I grew up with them.  I remember that as a boy we had this ornately carved wooden chair that was handed down through the generations. The lore in the family was that my great, great, great, great grandmother brought it over the Cumberland Gap, so I think that by coming here I am following my roots.”  An acupuncturist for 20 years, Bill was also an organic farmer in the 1970s. 
Even when Bill and Suzanne came back to Southwest Virginia they still needed to find property that suited their needs. 
“We were staying in our fifth-wheel camper at Lee Highway campground and attending a three-month organic farming apprenticeship in Abingdon through the Appalachian Sustainable Development program.  When we had time we would drive around different counties looking for land,” Suzanne said.  “Then one day I was online and this property manifested and at the same time my Realtor called me and she was looking at the same property.  So we both feel it was meant to be.”
When they finally saw the property it faced south, and had heirloom trees, ponds and bottom land—important features they needed to grow their plants.  “We spent two hours sitting on the porch and a dog wandered up to the house.  So it even came with a ‘built in” pet!’ Bill said.
This summer the bottom land is filled with a big, beautiful garden that is being irrigated with water from one of the spring-fed ponds.
Most of the garden plants began their life in a passive solar greenhouse built on the hill behind the house.  Bill designed the structure after attending an Organic Growers Conference in Flat Rock, N.C.  It sits 25 degrees east of south in order to catch the morning sun.  Inside, the back wall is lined with blue and red honey cans filled with water that can reach 80 degrees on a warm, sunny day.  Fifty-five degrees is usually as cold as it gets inside the greenhouse when the day is warm.  Even on a cold, cloudy day 40 degrees is as cold as it gets inside the greenhouse with no other heat.  Still experimenting with the greenhouse plants, 28 varieties of tomatoes were started inside the building this year along with many other plants.  “We have 700 tomato plants in our garden and are hoping to have a Pick Your Own Tomato Day,” Suzanne said.  “We are hoping to be able to grow tomatoes and lettuce in the greenhouse throughout the winter months.” 
In a bathtub in the back corner of the greenhouse red wiggler worms do their part for the garden project by eating kitchen scraps, and well, pooing in the rich dirt.  Their “worm tea,” which is the black liquid that runs out of the worm beds, is collected and used to pour over the plants for fertilizer.
It seems that at Omega Lane Farms everywhere you look something is growing!  Herbs and vegetable plants line the raised beds around the house, rain water is caught in whiskey barrels placed at the end of the gutters, and just down the hill is the tremendous garden. 
Cucumbers, carrots, parsnips, brussel sprouts, okra, beans, broccoli, greens, eggplant, squash, peppers, sweet potatoes, corn, garlic, potatoes, onions, watermelon, tomatoes, flowers, and more are found in the large garden bed.  And each kind of vegetable has many varieties.  Many old heirloom plants and even seeds from different countries have been planted in neat rows. 
“We want people to eat things that they haven’t eaten before and want them to try things they didn’t think they liked.  Organically grown plants do not use pesticides so a lot of the bitterness normally found in some vegetables is not there and there is a natural sweetness in many vegetables that really come out without the sprays,” Suzanne said.
“We want to use seeds bred for taste and flavor and not the seeds that were bred for shelf life and shipping,” Bill added. 
So how do organic farmers keep bugs and other garden hazards out of their plants?  “Organic farmers believe that a healthy plant will resist bugs.  Our goal is to supplement the ground and nourish the plant,” Bill said.  “We do the green manure, which is plowing in cover crops such as buckwheat, winter rye, winter wheat, vetch and crimson clover plus use a lot of compost to keep the soil rich and healthy.  Fish emulsion spray, pepper spray, and marigolds are used for bugs. We have chilies planted in the garden that are hotter than habaneros so they can be made into a spray and sprayed on the plants to deter the bugs.  I also hope to go no-till next year.”
Bill has built every row in the garden without machinery.  A shovel and 3-foot-wide rake were his main tools.  Not far from the garden stands a few bee hives. 
“Well I am a bee ‘haver’ right now,” Bill laughed. “I hope that I am going to keep them.  I have two tiers now and they seem happy.  Hopefully I can keep them around.” 
It is amazing what Bill and Suzanne have accomplished in their first year.  Suzanne stressed that they have done a lot of experimenting with different things.  “We hope to have more fruit trees and some blueberries,” she said. “We wanted all of this our first year but we had to be realistic and pace ourselves.” 
Visitors to Omega Lane will quickly discover that everything at the farm is definitely a labor of love.  The farm is open to the public Tuesday-Saturday for farm tours and to purchase vegetables.  “Pick Your Own Tomato Day” will be held today, Aug. 20, from 4:30-7:30 p.m. and Sunday, Aug. 24, from 2-5 p.m. 
For more information on Omega Lane Farm, call (276) 686-5843.
Dana Sapp is a freelance writer from Elk Creek.