I'm Janine Davis. I'm in the Department of Horticultural Science at NC State University.
And today we're at Gaia herb farm in Brevard, North Carolina. This is in the western part of the state. We're south of Asheville,
beautiful 200-plus acre farm with organic vegetables and medicinal herbs and
we're here with the farm manager. You want to introduce yourself? I'm Alina miles. I am the farm manager here at the Gaia herb farm.
Tell us a little bit about what you're growing here on the farm?
Great. Well, we are we're growing medicinal herbs. We grow about 25 different medicinal crops
annually here on our farm and then we also grow a
good variety of vegetables and that is part of our employee vegetable program. So we provide vegetables to our
employees three days a week during the season. Is it all certified organic? All of the medicinal herbs are certified organic.
Right now, we are using organic farming methods across the board on all of our crops including the vegetables.
But we're not taking the time right now to
certify the vegetable crop because it's going to our employees
and also it would be very complicated to do the hundred and fifty-five varieties
to document all of that for our certification. We have just been
certifying our medicinal herbs that, then go into our products that we manufacture here and
Transylvania County has a reputation for being quite a rainforest.
Yeah sure, so that presents some challenges
But could you tell us a little bit about, what some of the biggest challenges are to growing herbs and vegetables
organically in this region? Yes.
Well.
You actually named, I think the one that I would put on the top of my list just in this little
the microclimate that we have. We can get up it up to 90
inches of rain annually here.
It's very wet that can damage crops or produce
conditions where diseases or pests come more easily. So that is one of the
challenges as well as dealing with the weeds.
I think that most organic farmers have a challenge with keeping the weeds
down because that's something that we mostly have to do either by hand or
we do use a mechanical tractor cultivation
but it's very difficult to do a thorough job in an organic method.
Our insects very much of a problem in this region
Yes, we do have different pest problems for instance with our ashwagandha that we're growing and we grow on a large scale
here.
In addition, we have the problem of having to deal with the 15-acre problem rather than you know,
Just a small little plot that we're dealing with. So right now we have a flea beetle issue there, we have had other
beetle problems and also fungal leaf issues.
Are there a lot of organic sprays and such free to you to use for these problems or do you have to rely on
other kinds of more mechanical type measures? well,
fortunately today we do have a lot of options for
organic use pesticides and fungicides that can be used on an organic farm and that are all
armory certified for use. So,
We do have options. We use those products. Could you tell us a little bit about how your farm
complies with the new gaps and FISMA
Regulations that affect all farmers now? 
 right. We are definitely aware of all those
regulations.
We comply with all of the Organic Standards and with those with gap and FISMA.
However, we're in a little bit of a different situation because we send all of our product directly to our own manufacturing facility
for
production into our herbal supplements.
So, the main facility Gaia production does take on the responsibility for
those
regulations, we make herbal extracts. So there's a
automatic kill step involved there. And also we test every product that comes off the farm just as we test
every ingredient and every herb that we purchased from outside vendors
Were also tested. So, we test it for micro and all the whole range of quality issues.
So if it doesn't pass the specs and then it gets rejected just like any other
vendor does. The Food Safety Modernization Act regulations?
Because you are selling your product directly to a manufacturer that allows you to have an exemption then it puts that
responsibility for food safety on them.
Exactly, of course, if your products don't meet it are there and then you're gonna have to go back and redo things anyway.
But you're not going to do all that paperwork part on your end. Exactly. Yes. That's true.
I also wanted to ask you about your use of cover crops and compost on the farm? Yes.
Well, we did originally. When we started the farm 20 years ago.
We had a very large compost operation for five years as well as
This farm naturally has a very high amount of organic matter. So we got a good start.
We no longer have that operation, but we do from time to time purchase some compost and use it on the farm.
We use organic fertilizer and we do cover crops. So every year all of
all the areas,
not with perennials planted, we
seed with cover crops. We use a winter mix during the winter
and in fact, right now, we're getting ready to do some summer cover cropping for
some spots that we've already harvested for this year. Very good.
So one of the things that I find very unusual on your farm is that you use overhead irrigation.
That's not something we usually see on organic farms. We usually recommend drip irrigation to help keep the foliage dry.
Could you explain why you do overhead here?
Well.
It's, to be honest as we were mentioning before, we get so much rain here that we
actually hardly need to use irrigation.
So, we have been farming here for 20 years and only needed to
put in an irrigation system a couple of years ago when we had that year of drought and so right now we're using that
mostly when we're planting the new transplants.
Just to get them started but beyond that unless we really have a long dry spell. We typically get enough rain.
I also notice then, that you don't have black plastic mulch like so many other farms. Could you talk? Yes.
Yes, we've just chosen not to really use plastic on our farm in our fields.
That's also a consideration. And you make it work? Yes, we do.
How could an extension agent be of most service to you here? And do you use your local Extension Service? Yes, we do in fact,
Craig money at your local
affiliate has really helped us quite a few times this season, both with
a fungal issue that we had in our greenhouse and a beetle
problem we had on our vervain. So he came out right away and was able to identify,
what exactly the problem was and then help us to know what
Organic products we could use and target that. He's very helpful
and so certainly I would foresee us continuing to use that service more and more as well as
we have plans to
do soil testing and
possibly
get some support and issue soil health and
development for amendments. Okay
and is there anything that you think that we could do as a
service
maybe something more that we could provide to you and maybe the growers in this region that we're not doing at the present time.
I know I've kind of hit you out of the blue with that question.
Well.
Yeah, I would have to think a little bit more about that one, but that is a good question
I mean, I think that right now there are a lot of services that we
are not taking advantage of that we could so because we kind of get buried and in the day-to-day of you know
trying to get the plants out and whatnot. But I think there's so much to offer and we really appreciate all those services.
It's a really good point. It's been probably us, an extension
don't do a good enough sales job with what we have to offer at the University. Well, thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you.
