Small farm suits couple

Members of the Dutch Buffalo farm-share get a wooden box made with native Eastern cedar in which to collect their weekly share of vegetables and eggs. The boxes were built by Farrell Moose, one-half of the Chatham County farm's operators.

It's a little touch, but it shows how much care Moose and his fiancée, Emily Lancaster, put into their small-scale farm operation. We do mean small. They sell at only one farmers market: the Carolina Brewery Farmers Market at the corner of U.S. 15-501 and U.S. 64. They have only 16 members in their summer CSA, or community-supported agriculture, which is where people pay for a weekly share of produce from a local farmer. The fall CSA has only 10 members.

The small group lends itself to a close-knit atmosphere on Friday nights when members stop by to collect their produce and eggs.

Chris Bush of Bonlee jokes that the couple's bacon should be listed by federal authorities as an addictive substance. When another CSA member, Carolyn Karpinos of Chapel Hill, realizes she has overpaid for her fall share, she says, "I'll take my credit in bacon."

One member, William Donovan, is even catering the couple's wedding later this month at the Moose homestead in Cabarrus County. (Their farm is named after a creek on that land where Moose's family has lived since the 1700s.)

Both Moose, 29, and Lancaster, 25, have day jobs to support their farming. He works at Mellow Marsh Farm, which specializes in native wetland plants. She works for the Animal Welfare Institute, a nonprofit focused on reducing the pain humans inflict on animals. The outfit certifies farms and processing plants for humanely raising and slaughtering farm animals.

The two have known each other since they were teenagers and have dated for almost nine years. Lancaster thought she might be a botanist after graduating from UNC-Asheville. She ended up moving to Pittsboro and attending Central Carolina Community College's sustainable agriculture school.

Moose attended Boston University to study painting, but by the end he realized he wanted to live in the country and have a garden. So he moved to Pittsboro to be with Lancaster. He teases: "I glommed onto her dream."

That was three years ago, and now they have a long-term lease on 10 acres west of Pittsboro. Moose built a small barn out of scrap wood from an older barn. They have a cow, pigs and chickens. They grow peppers, tomatoes, tomatillo, watermelons, collards, kohlrabi, broccoli, micro greens, cilantro, chard, purple hulled field peas, turnips, edamame, onions, okra, bok choy and even popcorn, or small ears of corn whose small kernels can be popped.

As far as the couple are concerned, they don't have big farm dreams. Moose explains that they want to grow in such a way that they don't accumulate debt or become overextended. "We're just going to produce a good product and continue to be a small farm," Moose says.

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