Deckle Edge Farm

11/10/2026

Tuesday Nov. 10: we bottled the hard apple c***r! We got so much more juice than we expected from pressing the previously pressed/frozen pulp that we had to give it a couple of extra days to continue fermenting back down to a gravity of about 1.003 before bottling, to make a dry c***r with some carbonation without making bottle bombs, and without needing to pasteurize it. We ended up with a little over 10 gallons of finished product, what with racking off the lees and taste testing during bottling, so now we have 24x 1 liter bottles, 9x 750ml bottles, and 18x 16oz bottles that need to age another couple of weeks before we store it in the fridge for drinking.

The math on homemade apple c***r is pretty good: we spend $100 on apples and got 10.3 gallons of finished product. That's just under 8 cents per oz of finished product (128oz per gallon), so a 16oz bottle contains about $1.25 of finished product, and a liter bottle about $2.65. That's right in the pricr range of Miller High Life b**r!

The other costs are, of course, grinding and pressing equipment, freezer storage and electricity, reusable swing top bottles, and time. And while I could put a price on all of that, the more often we made something that uses those tools and reusable bottles the lower our total investment cost goes down when we enjoy homemade c***rs, kombuchas, and other drinks. And then we also use those same tools to make farm products to sell, such as vinegars and preserves. Who knows, maybe we're farmers just to pay for our c***ring activities!

11/09/2026

Monday November 9: a little video showing winter weeding! All the grass that is growing under these blackberries is proof that we don't use herbicide around our fruiting plants. I'm grubbing it out with a small garden mattock on this beautiful fall day.

11/08/2026

Sunday November 8: today is a good day for comfort food! Marsh Hen Mill Carolina Gold rice risotto without out log grown shiitake mushrooms, and a few bites of flank steak on the side. Paired with cheap retsina w**e, a combo to make this farmer happy. Take care, y'all: big new coming soon!

11/07/2026

Saturday November 7: we are set up at 306 Flora Drive for the Carolina Artisans and Farmers Market Fall Festival from 10 until 4! Come see us for your favorite local preserves and raw vinegars, and pick up a hotpad by Theresa to support Camp Joy!

11/06/2026

Friday November 6: I wanted to give folks an update on the hard apple c***r project. The initial 5ish gallons had fermented just about dry so I put it in the fridge for a couple of days before racking it off the lees (dead yeast that falls to the bottom). Then I added the extra 2 gallons of c***r that I held back to give the batch enough sugar to continue fermenting in the bottle and make it fizzy, but then remembered that I had put all the pressed pulp in the freezer to get more juice. I was thinking I might get another gallon, but let me tell you: never underestimate the power of freezing to break cellular walls and release liquid! I got almost 4 MORE GALLONS of c***r, bring the total volume of liquid to 11 gallons from 4 bushels of apples! Certainly not bad for pressing an orchard blend of fresh eating varieties. The lesson here is that if you are making c***r on a small scale it probably pays more to invest in a freezer than it does a better fruit press. The one we have now is a quite expensive one that we picked up insanely cheap from Facebook marketplace and is basically the gold standard for home c***r pressing. The next upgrad to get more jiice would be a hydraulic press and I can't justify the cost. Instead, just freeze your fruit before grinding and pressing, 4 bushels of apples will easily fit into a cheap chest freezer. Just make sure it's empty in time for apples season!

11/06/2026

Our first holiday market is tomorrow, November 7! Come out and stock up on preserves and vinegars to add a local flourish to your table.

Can you believe it, tomorrow is the big day!!! We will have our first ever fall festival with Richland County Wellness Center located at 306 Flora Dr. There will be food trucks, over 70 vendors. And so much fun! Come out support local and get some early shopping done! Can’t wait to see you tomorrow 11/7/26 from 10-4.

11/04/2026

Wednesday November 4: we will be at the Blythewood Farmers Market this afternoon from 330-7pm with our full range of preserves and vinegars! We are running low on the latest batch of of Wild Orange Marmalde and I want to save the fruit I have left so we have marmalde for the 2027 market season, so if you want one more jar be sure to come on out.

I also wanted to post a picture showing the full pile of logs we are going to inoculate starting next week with shiitake and chestnut mushroom spawn. Almost 100 sweetgum logs! These will provide us with fruit for nearly 10 years.

10/30/2026

Friday, October 30: today at the farm we are especially thankful for the cooling temperatures. Trying to do any physical labor during the summer felt like climbing Mount Doom carrying Frodo and the Ring at a full run! Or something like that.

Now, however, while Kate prunes, I can work with the chainsaw, carry firewood out of thickets, and drive t-posts along the property line all afternoon, and it feels like wholesome exercise rather than the end of the world.

Speaking of t-posts, they say that good fences make good neighbors, so we hired a surveyor to come out and stake the property line with a GPS unit so that we can clear for the field right up to it. Today I went back and drove in t-posts 1 foot inside our property spaced every 20 feet. Sometimes being a small farmer means that not all of your neighbors will appreciate what you're doing, and you have to take steps to protect yourself and your crops!

10/29/2026

Thursday October 29: it's that time of year when customers at the farmers market lean in after they have bought a jar of jam or bottle of vinegar and ask, slightly conspiratorialy, "Edward, now that the market is almost done, what do you actually DO during the winter?" When this question starts popping up, that means it is also the time of year when farmers roll their eyes at each other and swap notes on the long, long list of projects they need to do before the next market season.

Because let's face it: blackberries don't prune themselves. They don't mulch themselves to control the weeds that want all that sweet pond irrigation water. Fences don't build themselves. Land doesn't clear itself. New garden beds don't build themselves. Jam doesn't cook itself. Making vinegar requires constant care of a living organism that eats alcohol and poops acetic acid.

It might be hard to believe, but a lot of small farmers - those who you see weekly at your local market - are about to enter their busiest season. Market gardeners will start tomato seeds in greenhouses on heat mats in January, repair and replenish beds in February, and plant spring crops in March.

This year we are doubling down on sorghum and have hired a company to clear nearly 2 acres of our woods, in addition to the other clearing I have been doing on the berry farm side of the property. Before clearing starts I am harvesting some sweetgum trees that we will inoculate with sh*take and chestnut mushroom spawn, so that we will have more mushrooms available for sale in 2029. Many of the other logs that are taken down we will split into firewood or mill on our sawmill.

Work on a small farm doesn't stop during the winter. We don't take 3 month long vacations (although we do spend a lot of family time around the wood stove). You don't normally see the work we do in the "off" season, but I guarantee that we are doing it. If you made it this far, thanks for reading. I'm going to keep posting throughout the winter so that you can all see exactly what goes on at our farm even when you aren't here to see it!

10/26/2026

Monday October 26: just in time for fall we have a new product available - Watermelon, Tomato, and Blackberry Vinegar! Raw, unfiltered, and unpasteurized, we wanted to capture the essence of summer, and we think we have succeeded! With front notes of strawberries and a long finish of perfectly ripe tomatoes, this will add a flavor of locally-grown summer goodness to you winter table. This is a limited edition as we already have plans to tweak the recipe next year to make it even better.

If you follow our farm page at all you know that we generally try to make value-added products with fruit we either grow ourselves or forage in the woods. That being said we didn't grow the watermelons or tomatoes used in this vinegar. The melons come from the Clemson watermelon research farm, where we attend a field day once a year and they give away extra melons to participants. We couldn't resist the idea of watermelon vinegar and boiled down the juice of 12 large melons to increase the sugar concentration. The tomatoes come from 2 Creek Farm and are certified organic! The blackberries, of course, come from our own field. This blend was fermented, cold crashed to clarify, and slowly converted to vinegar using traditional methods right in our farmhouse, and aged for a few weeks to clarify. As far as our taste buds are concerned the watermelon juice is too mild to stand up to tomatoes and blackberries, so next year we are doubling down and it will just be tomato + blackberry at about a 4/1 ratio. Until then we know you'll enjoy this version!