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And we are enjoying the snow and colder temperatures that this season has brought us. Our Blog is used mainly for distribution of our newsletter during the summer months, so if you’d like to hear what we’re up to in the winter, and see some pictures from last summer, please check out our Facebook page, by clicking on the link to the left. See you in the summer! Hello Everyone: We were very excited to bring you your last share yesterday. In all the excitement and confusion, none of us remembered to send out the newsletter, sorry about that!! It’s been a very good season, and we have all had a great time meeting you all and growing your vegetables. We are looking forward to a much improved year in 2011. We have already opened up nearly 5 more acres, and generously applied manure to the fields. We are planting a quarter acre (!) of garlic, and we plan to have a greenhouse erected before [...] We are a ball of legs and arms and irrigating, weeding, harvesting, planting, and marketing. Farming is a challenging and diverse lifestyle that never leaves you twiddling your thumbs. Our days normally start with a couple hours of harvesting and/or weeding. Sometimes both at once. If we’re not selling or delivering veggies in the afternoons, we are hand picking potato bugs or dragging irrigation lines from field to field. We also check the tomatoes about thrice a day, hoping , hoping for a bright red yum. I found a handful of cherries just last week! Robin [...] Happy first pickup day, everybody! This is your first newsletter installment. We have been busy at work getting ready for the first CSA delivery. All the crops are jumping out of the ground, due to the profusion of rain and sun, creating ideal growing conditions for both crops and their antithesis, the weeds! This week the shares have the following: green onions If you’re not sure what to do with some of these things, here are some helpful hints. First of all, if it’s green and not lettuce, [...] I just wanted to let you know how good your radishes were that I bought on the weekend at the market. Seriously. Just wanted to let you know that I posted a entry on my blog about my radish greens soup recipe and sometime this week I’ll be writing about the radish pickles I made. http://www.apronstrings.ca/2010/06/radish-greens-soup/ Hope to see you next Sunday! Lana Our lunch is being stretched out by the rain. It came suddenly and we barely had time to hide the couches under tarps. A great reason for a brew, which is tea in British. This past week we had thirty ml of rain!! The tomato field was flooded in spots. It’s a low field and we’re all crossing our fingers, hoping that this year will not be like last, especially after all that trellising! The greens are loving the rain, but those little things are easier to grow and move [...] Last week we layed our biodegradable plastic over rich black soil that, according to Rozzy and Meagan, occasionally smells like graham crackers. After making the bed’s and pulling out the plastic with our sexy farmall we tucked in the sheets using our shovels. In the afternoon we planted approxiamately 950 tomatoe plants and we felt good about it. The next day we came back to check on our little transplants and were horrified to find most of them with browning leaves and some with damping off. Damping off is a fungus related ailment that results in the [...] . . . but having the worst photo of yourselves of all time on the front page of a major newspaper kind of hurts all the same. . . Anyway, its a pretty good story, check it out here : Citizen Story (this was on the cover!) In other news, most of the tomatoes are in, peppers and eggplants are going in on Monday, plastic is being laid, and irrigation is all set up, though the water source is underwhelming. The three point hitch on my massey came loose and required some heating, banging and grinding [...] This post is a little haphazard, as we’re on our way out the door to set up some form of irrigation for our delicate little crops; nonetheless, here we are! Robin will be speaking about the industrial food system and local sustainable alternatives at the Arbour Environmental Shoppe, Wednesday May 26th, from 7pm. Come one come all, to learn about the history of our food system, and what we can do about it! Date: Wednesday May 26th Today we planted onion sets. Jess and I have been having a bit of competition recently on various farm tasks, to see who’s fastest. She’s been pretty much faster on anything requiring manual dexterity, and I am faster at raking and raking alone. This galls me, as I am a competitive spirit, and I am usually the fastest at farm related tasks (which usually means I’m competing against people who don’t even know there’s a race on, I know, lame). So, I like to develop techniques, change up my style, find creative ways to get [...] What the Romaine Recall Says About Industrial Food | The Big Money. An interesting article submitted by David V, one of our sharemembers. Photos are on their way, but in the meantime, just imagine, hundreds and hundreds of feet of prim and trim beds (except the ones that “curve like a Canadian chicane”, as Danny puts it) all seeded, and covered with row cover to keep it warm and insect free. The beets, carrots, spinach, peas, asian greens, lettuce and radishes are up, pushing against the row cover. The clean seeder has been a success, though a mishap with the beets has had us seeding in between the sparse Chenopods by hand, with Jess muttering “i suck, this sucks, [...] At Danny B’s place, listening to vinyl and drawing out our market booth plans. Jess is drawing appropriately pretty but simple designs for vegetables to adorn our banners. Its been hot and dry, perfect for tilling up earth and getting the ground ready for veggies. We’ve planted 9 beds so far, mostly for market in early June, and it was getting dry out there, so the rain is welcome, though the snow and freezing weather is less so. I spent the last afternoon removing my loader from my tractor and refilling all the hydraulic fluid, [...] The dubois order is in, which is always a bit of an exercise in reassurance – see at Dubois they sell all these fantastic systems for irrigating your crops, which, if you change farms every year like I do, leads to all sorts of different permutations of valves, driptape, header hose, etc that could possibly be used to get water to the crops. This year, at the bakker farm, there isn’t a really solid source of water for the crops. The household well runs dry at full pressure in a half hour, which isnt gonna cut [...] So it is early April. .. things have been very warm and dry for the last few weeks, which is making us very eager to get into the fields and start planting. My friend Alex, who has very sandy soil on his farm in Quebec, has already planted carrots, spinach, beets and lettuce – super early! Normally we don’t get to plant before the 20th of April outside. Our plot for early veggies is still too wet to work up, so we are still waiting. Hopefully the upcoming rain wont delay things too much! This week [...] |
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