Umbrella Blessings Vegetable and Flower Farm and CSA

Umbrella Blessings Vegetable and Flower Farm and CSA OUR MISSION IS TO PROVIDE HIGH QUALITY PRODUCE TO CSA MEMBERS, FARMER MARKET PATRONS, PRESENTLY FOR 20 TO 26 WEEKS OF SPRING THROUGH FALL

03/14/2026

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:
Did you know that the average American is 3 to 5 generations removed from the farm?

In the early and middle 1900s roughly 50% of Americans lived on a farm and that number has dropped to below 2% today!

Why is this important? It means people today having never set foot on a farm, let alone worked on one, have no understanding of:
1. Where their food comes from;
2. How their food is grown;
3. How pure it is;
4. The effort and costs of farming;
5. How little of the cost of their food at store the farmer gets;
6. Dangers of farming;
7. How fragile the food supply is;

There is so much more but I want to leave you with some sobering statistics. Since 2017 over 170, 000 farmers and ranchers have gone out of business. Over 1000 farmers and ranchers will go bankrupt this year. The rate has been increasing by 40+ percent year over year. With population of the USA at 350 million and only 1.4% of that farmers of all sizes, so 4.9 million farmers and ranchers are bringing you food to the table yet bc of bankruptcy and aging out (ave age 64, with more over 75 than under 35) that means 2000 farmers and ranchers will no longer be growing your food by year end 2026. Sounds like a small number.... but this is expected to continue to climb by 50% yearly now. This land will be sold, 95%+, to developers so taken totally out of farming forever. It is developing into a cascade effect due to age, costs and lack of income causing few young people to farm now. Average take home pay is not fully known but data shows it lies between 28,000 between 68,000 and thought to be on the lower side if this range with low data as low as 11,000 per year.
Would you work 7 days every week, 12 to 16 hours a day for that?

03/11/2026

Wow have we been busy planting shrubs and transplant cells. Will try to get a chance to list everything soon. We are hoping to build a farm store soon too and add greenhouses for extended production season.

02/15/2026

I know I post a lot about agriculture problems. But please always bear with me. I do it to help non ag people understand thd danger they could soon face in food supply.
This next fact was sent to me in an article by a friend about farm loss as a result of children not following the farm tradition any more.
"In 2025, 315 farms filed for bankruptcy, up 46% from 2024, U.S. court data shows."
Let that sink in. At that rate by 2027 nearly 1000 farms will file for bankruptcy! You might say that is small compared to the 1.3 million farms and ranches in the USA. Let's look it it. That is a number of actual working farms that can no longer pay their bills. And will likely be forced to sell to pay creditors. They will get nothing from the sale!! They cant even get a mortgage for a new home.
That farm no longer contributes directly to it local county and town economy. It is 95% more likely to sell to a developer than to another farmer especially at auctions. So that will never produce agricultural products ever again. Trickle down economics says this will hurt local businesses. Also it is more like that in that location that it would not be the only farm failed or failing so trickle down becomes exponential quickly.
Trends like this tend to stay a while so in five years over 2000 farms will file bankruptcy!! 20 years ago the average farm in Tennessee was over 250 acres. Today 146!! What that data shows is that more large farms are failing or being sold out by children not wanting that life style. In the last 2 years we dropped from 159 to 146. I am a farmer that raises vegetables and flowers for sale at farmers markets. I stopped big farming many years ago bc no profit so I lost money every year. Even though I had acres of to***co, sweet peppers for moody dunbar, sweet corn at huge garden we canned from and sold a small amount on the side, i did not cover all expenses. We switched to all farmers markets. Good at first... Market days we were swamped but now we sell 1/4 of what we did bc not many people shop at farmers markets like they did.
We are back to just getting by like a lot of market farmers are doing here. By the way, WE DON'T GET GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES OR EVEN CROP INSURANCE! PLEASE COME TO THE MARKETS WHERE YOU LIVE!!!!!!

02/02/2026

A question/complaint i regularly see is why are beef prices at the grocery so high and climbing rapidly.
A lot of posts lately are about how many hamburgers McDonald's sells a day wondering where all the beef comes from.
Let's look at the math.
A standard McDonald's burger is only 2.5 ounces. 1/4 pounder is 4 ounces. If they were all smaller burger that is a little over 1 million pounds of hamburger. With average cow dressing out at 500 to 700 pounds of meat (more or less) that is roughly 1400 to 2000 cattle a day. The meat is not just grown in the USA. So yes it is possible the world grows enough beef to some extent. But this does not include other burger joints and mom and pop restaurants. So this does show how supply and demand leads to higher prices at the super markets. Also the middle men compete for these cattle. They bid at auctions for them so the price is not uniform. Then they sell to brokers who then sell to processing plants that sell to grocery groups. The farmer or rancher only sees about 14% of all this. On average their expenses are half that. So they feed and card for their family on 7% of retail. A pound of hamburger sells for about $6. Therefore the rancher/ farmer gets about 19 cents from every pound. Remember the dress weight? Let's take the average of 600 pounds times $6. If that were all hamburger or $3600 they'd get roughly $252 to care for their family. Don't blame them!!

01/27/2026

GMO? Sorry this is long.
What is this, why it is different from selective breeding and why it is not Good for batter and MAN ?
A fellow has argued with me that man has always been doing GMO crops. That is not true. Here is why. Man has been selectively breeding crops and animals for eons. Selective breeding is choosing traits and breeding to have those traits occur more often in the gene pool. Eventually the trait becomes dominant and a breed is established. The base DNA is the same, just the DNA traits are now more concentrated and they desired traits will occur more often. Notice i said more often. The old traits are still there just now recessive. They can still occur and often do. I have raised rabbits for meat. Some breeds are small, some large and some very large. Even long breed large rabbits will sometimes have a smaller or even larger rabbit. IN selective breeding the genes are not altered, the desired ones are more prominent.
Genetically modified organisms, GMO, are plants or animals where man has modified the dna by splicing. Genetically modification is where man ADDs a trait(s) from one another organism or multiple organisms to another or alters the dna to resist a chemical bc that chemical is now in the dna. Today commercially grown corn is the most widely genetically modified organism, although nog the only one. It has a gene from the bacteria, bT, added to kill corn worm. The bacteria bT was used for years, and still is, by organic farmers to spray on and protect sweet corn and green crops. This bacteria does not harm humans or other worms such as earthworms only caterpillars, mosquitoes and such by destroying their digestion. We are careful not to spray on flowers as it will kill honey bee nymphs. However in corn it does kill honey bees bc they visit the tassle (top) to get the pollen. Monsanto lied to congress saying since honey bees dont pollinate corn, it would not hurt the hive. This was a lie bc while they dont visit the silk, bees still gather the pollen for the hive. Hence the epidemic of hive collapse has worsed.
The other gene splice in commercial corn allows it to survive glyphosphate (roundup)weed killers. This modification allows farmers to spray the corn after it is a certain height to kill weeds eliminating machine weeding and hoeing. Again Monsanto told congress this has no affect on nature.
What we have learned!!
GMO affects a lot of nature. First in many areas where the corn is raised, basically the corn belt, bT is no longer effective on caterpillars as they have by nature selectively bred to withstand it. So for many other crops like broccoli, cabbage and others, bT is now useless. Also bee hives are decimated as it kills the nymphs.
The glyphosphate has caused nature to selectively breed resistance in weeds. This causes the need for more and stronger sprays to combat them. We have also learned these sprays like roundup weaken the adult bees allowing the Verona mite to kill them easier further causing hive collapse.
Man should leave nature to selective breeding. This is how the creator designed nature.

01/25/2026

So I promised a discussion on gluten today.
First what is gluten? Well it is not present in grain. It is formed from two proteins in grain when making bread. These proteins are found in most grass grains but not all. So wheat, barley, rye and such. Not in corn, rice or oats. The older the variety of wheat rye and barley the less of these proteins are in the fruit/ berries everyone calls seed. So types like Emmer, Khamut, and other old world wheats contain less. Khamut the least.
Why was more of the proteins breed into the grains. The more final glutien protein in bread the more elasticity in the dough when cooked. This cause fluffier, lighter, less dense easier to chew, less crumbling breads when yeast is added. Also increases speed commercial bread can be made. So there itc was all about esthetics and money. Btw way only people with true celiac disease are fully allergic to gluten. A sensitivity to bread is bc it is one of the hardest foods to digest, absorbs a lot of water bc of the fiber, hence bowel problems. IBS you will have problems with bread as well as leaky gut syndrome.
So how can you include "bread" in your diet. If you dont have celiacs, bread made from the older wheats, rice or corn. BTW store bought corn bread mixes have wheat flour in them, so a problem. You can find these alternative flours on line or buy seed and grow yourself. A 10 by 100 garden bed of these grains will make enough bread for a family of 3 for a year. Plus good exercise harvesting it. Inexpensive grinders online and You tube on the whole process.
One last thing follw Thomas Jeffersons advice to walk a mile after dinner fir jou constitutional. Blood flow increased good for heart and brain but also true is blood flow crucial to digestion.

01/24/2026

For people with some food allergies like milk and wheat.
Humans are not able to digest the milk protein A1A1. This is in most commercially produced milk bc the heaviest milkers like holstien that is their milk protein. Even though there are dairies that harvest from Jersey, Guernsey and Ayrshire milkers, the processing industry combines all milk into one tank basically contaminating to good milk. A2A2 milk protien is easily digested by humans! This protein is ground in Jersey, Guernsey, and Ayrshire dairy cattle as well as multipurpose cattle like Dexter and Devons and old breeds. It is also in all goat and sheep milk as well as water buffalo, bison and others. So if you can get anybof these milks, guess what, you may not be lactose intolerant! BTW these are better for baking and such bc they are higher in butter fat. Tune in later on gluten and types of wheat you may be able to eat.

12/31/2025

A tradition about new years day is eating certain foods to bring peace, prosperity, and strength to you and your family.
Consider another one too. That i know works. Around the table, each person Pray for others and their needs. If your friends/loved ones have suffered calamity they need a new years day prayer. Harm or abuse, a divorce, lost loved ones, children taken by DCS, financial upset, illness, cancer, incarceration, homeless and orphaned, and so many other bad happenings they need your prayers. Maybe they have had a good thing happen, marriage, a new born, or milestone of another sort they need your prayers.
And do this, BLESS them and your family. Actually say lord bless ..... with.....
This also starts your year off with God and Jesus around your table and in your thoughts. For tradition states, the first day of the year sets the pattern for the rest of the year.

Feel free to share this.

Wow!! Winds are howling and temps dropping!! We are get 20 to 30mph winds taking the 34 temps to a wind chill of 10 plu...
12/29/2025

Wow!! Winds are howling and temps dropping!! We are get 20 to 30mph winds taking the 34 temps to a wind chill of 10 plus or minus 5 degrees. I dont have a cab tractor for protection so dont drive work much like this. Just feeding chickens I come in like a popsicle!! So wish I had my greenhouses repaired so I could do some planting in them on days like today. I turn 69 bext month so i am slow getting things done so always behind. Wish I had volunteers. Ivwill fix youf own garden plot gor you and shiw you the ropes fir helping. Just let me know. Have a nice day.

12/17/2025

Seed starting starts this month, but i am so far behind on getting ready bc of all this severe cold and other distractions. Plus budget constraints as I must run lighting and heating where I start seedlings. Farmers always ride a thin budget line this time of year. On top of household expenses, seed costs, energy and other expenses eat into start up funds and wear us down bc not like when i was young and we could get "production" loans from banks, banks won't even talk to us, especially small farmers like me. I stopped doing CSA boxes that would bring in winter capital bc they were just to difficult for just me to manage each week during summer.
So I hope, and have faith. You see those are the only true source of keeping on in farming. We who raise for farmers markets, in other words you, work all year around to earn income 5 months a year to have for the other 7 months.
Maybe I can somehow get these used hoop house frames up and covered this year so I can bring you fresh vegetables and flowers earlier next spring and then later next fall.

12/12/2025

Todays tidbit! Why do farmers need snow? It is the way the lord designed for nitrogen to be replenished in the ground. Snow and ice crystals capture elemental nitrogen from the air. The snow cover melting slowly causes deep saturation of the ground preventing loss back to the air. So yes we pray for snow as well as rain. Not to stick on the roads but to lay heavily in our fields.

Address

1675 Liberty Hills Road S
Limestone, TN
37681

Telephone

+14232927513

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