Dance at Sod House NW of 36-27-10

Dance at Sod House NW of 36-27-10

It is really fortunate that we have such amazing records of familial history on both sides. This is a small story with huge heart of my husbands' people who came to Canada in 1903 with lots of hopes and dreams to build a good life on the wide and wild prairie.

 

They arrived from England in 1903. In April of 1905 they set off by ox team from Saskatoon to their newly claimed land section in the (then) N.W. Territories. The province of Saskatchewan did not get established till later that year. They lived in a tent until they could build their sod house. Although great grandfather was a very good carpenter he did not know that you built the sod house first and then could lumber line it from the inside. He built a frame first and then put sod around it. Well it worked but wasn't as efficient as the usual way.

 

These were amazingly efficient homes when you consider it. A floor was dug down below the frost line and filled with chips and then a thick layer of packed clay. The temperature of the earth stays fairly constant once you dig below the frost line. The best sods were cut from dried out slough areas as the roots were much thicker and therefore held the house together much better. The sods were usually about 100mm deep by 0.91m wide by 1.5m long. These were then layered to the height you wanted and a roof put on. It was solid sod on three sides with door and windows only on one side, away from the wind. The high density of the earth changes temperature very slowly and so provided a fairly consistent temperature even when the temperatures fluctuated between -40C in winter to +40 in summer.

 

Great grandparents' home became the centre of the social scene. A dance was held in their sod home every two weeks and a Club was formed. Music was supplied by several bachelors and Mr. Bert had a gramophone. Great grandmother would clear the room of beds and stuff and put them in the shed. Dances started at 8 pm and carried on until morning. Great grandmother and grandmother Flo served two lunches. One at midnight and the other before the dance ended in the mornings. The Club would all contribute to these goods. At the end of the season the Club presented the family with an armchair and a rocker to thank them for their hospitality and the express how much the community appreciated the fun.

 

It is easy to think that times were tough in those days and they were, but it is sure wonderful and inspiring to know that they took the time to enjoy friends and music and dance the night away on a regular basis. It must have been great fun.

 

Everyone had arrived in Canada with similar hopes, dreams and aspirations. Everyone was a stranger and yet they formed tight and solvent communities in a very short time. Everyone pitched in, helped each other out. They worked hard together and then they played and rejoiced in their accomplishments.

 

I had the pleasure of knowing Grandmother Flo for a short time. She was a woman ahead of her time. She was the forerunner of the woman's movement let me tell you. She was great. Still took the stairs instead of the elevator at 98, liked to beat men at cards and liked her finger of rye each night.

 

Don't make them like that anymore.

KNIT WIT

It is the time of year where the pressures of the farm are on low dial for now. It gives me the luxury of fiddling around and about the house. About a month ago I was looking for Christmas paper to wrap something and it started something really big. I got very upset and angry with myself as I began to realize how much stuff I had accumulated and saved for all the rainy days. I am one of those, " I might need this one day" kind of people. Well I just don't have room anymore for all the "one day" things.

 

It is now at least a month later and I am still sorting and organizing and ruthlessly throwing out those "one day I'll use it things."

 

My biggest load of stuff has turned out to be all the knitting and crochet paraphernalia I have accumulated over 30 + years. I have thrown very little out to be truthful but it was truly all over the place. It is now organized and all in one place. It is labelled and sorted and I certainly don't need to purchase yarn or patterns for, well, almost forever.

 

Of all the creative things I have learned to do and love to do in my life this has got to be the one I enjoy most. It gives me endless hours of quiet pleasure. All the studies that tell you to do crosswords and stuff have nothing on learning and creating a challenging pattern of stitches. Plus you get something lovely you have created and can give yourself or someone else.

 

So the clutter is down to a minimum. Its a good feeling. Probably the only one who needs to fear me once I am through with sorting my things is my husband. Workshop. Watch out !!!  "ha, ha. Only kidding honey."



A Story of Soup

Today I made soup. One of my favourite foods. I grew up on a lot of soup. The Germans have a word for creating soup. EINTOPF, it means one pot. At the end of the week everything leftover goes into one pot and it becomes soup. The origin of the word soup is suppa.  An old word, before Latin even. In German the word for soup is still suppe. It means "to sop".

 

Until bread was invented there was NO soup. Only a thick kind of gruel at best. Made from pounded grains or plants with maybe some meat cooked into it.( It doesn't sound good.) The "sop" part of soup is the thick slice of bread that was placed on the bottom of the bowl and then the soup ladled over it to sop it up.

 

Soups could be very, very nutritious when cooked over a length of time to extract the goodness of the marrow in the bones and stuff. The soup became a staple food in most medieval homes. They could afford to make soup from basically the scraps of leftover food, especially the bones which couldn't be eaten and were until then thrown to the dogs.

 

What is most interesting is that the invention of soup also beget the first restaurant. The word comes from the root "to restore". A Frenchman had the brilliant idea to make a nutritious soup and sell it to the weary travellers who needed something with sustenance to restore their energy.

 

Now you understand my little drawing. No criticism please. Drawing on the tablet isn't the easiest thing to do but I am trying. As good as it gets folks.

 

A little bit of fun - "oui?"

 

Types of Soup

Bouillon -concentrated

brown stock

Consomme -clarified

brown stock

Broths -clear

Jellied -made from

bones and clarified

Vegetable -prepared

with or without meat

Puree -with/without

cream

Bisques -shellfish based

cream soup (my fave)

Chowders -thick, fish

meat and vegie base

Fruit soups - huh???

what ?? (if you are

European you know.

I grew up on this.

Delicious !!! )

Pie in the Sky

Today I was preparing a turkey pie for our supper and my stream of thought took me to thinking about pie crusts and their purpose. Preserving food was a very difficult task before refrigeration, freezers and canning. These are all very recent methods of keeping our foods fresher, longer. Food had to be dealt with quickly and eaten within a very short time. 

Pie crusts became a way of keeping the food within them a few days longer. They were made with lard and usually in a heavy, deep dish. The crust would be thick and heavy as to envelope the food and protect it. It was most often a meat dish. Usually hunted game or pork. It was baked in a wood fired oven and then set to cool. 

Pie cupboards were created to keep the vermin out of the food. They were made mostly of wood with holes (vents) drilled into the sides to allow air to flow through. The vents were tacked with bits of metal grating so no creatures could get in. 

These pie safes, as they were called, are very collectable now and often found as decorative furniture in some homes. 

My mother tells of a story when she was young. The pie safe was full of goodies as Christmas was near. My grandmother had a lock on it. She was out and so my grandfather conspired with the children to enter the cupboard from below and remove some of the tasty morsels. He was positively delighted to be conducting this prank with the children and all anticipated how my grandmother would react once she discovered the theft !

I don't think you have to imagine too hard how my grandmother reacted. At first she just couldn't figure it out but once she did she was angry. Problem was, she couldn't get mad at the children because their father had set them to it. 

Needless to say they didn't try it a second time. Its always interesting to me how food got to be presented the way it is. There is always a story, usually practical and makes perfect sense. 

By the way. Our turkey pie tonight was delicious. 

A Wortcunner - to know plants

I learned a new word recently. "Wortcunner"  A wortcunner, a simpler . Wortcunners were those that lived with and understood plants on another level. These were the folks, the wise women who truly understood all the ways of plants. Not just what they were useful for but the magick of them as well. They learned and knew how to engage the "spirit" of the plant and see beyond what was seen by the naked eye.

I have always loved and been forever enamored with plants. I grew up in the city but we had a lovely garden and our neighbour, Mr. Wilson, had a double lot and grew flowers for the florists in Vancouver. Chrysanthemums by the hundreds of every colour and variety. Our home was always full of flowers. My mother always had spring flowers and lots of roses in the garden. We had a weeping cherry tree in the front yard and I can remember countless hours spent lying under the graceful, bent down branches. It was like a living tent that hid me in the garden and allowed my spirit to roam free.

My mother has often told me what a "vivid" imagination I had. I was always communicating with living things and telling my mother the stories they were telling me. Lucky me that my mother never told me to "stop that nonsense !" My mother has always thought that I would become a writer and I guess in a way I have. I have many stories inside me.

It is interesting that as I become older I am also remembering and retrieving memories of "simpler" times. As an adult I went to school and studied herbal medicine and have taken countless courses to learn as much as I can about plants and how they can help us. But my "true" love has always been the "magick" of them. What they can tell us if we move past the physical reality and see beyond, into the ethers.

Plantago lancelata - Ribwort plantain 

Plants are SO much more "connected" than we are. Of course they are ! They are "rooted" into the earth and grow under the influence of planetary forces and so much more. They are here to help us this much I know. We cannot live without them. 

grows under the influence of Venus. 

I have spent a lifetime trying to figure out what I really want to be when I grow up. "EUREKA" I have found it, in the definition of this very appropriate word, wortcunner. I am an aspiring wortcunner and still have a lot to learn. The plants will teach me and I am doing  my very best to be a worthy student. 

Stay tuned :-)

Plan Now, Reap Later

By now many of you will have ordered seeds or even begun working in your gardens or greenhouses. It is a great time of year, before it gets much busier, to do a little planning.

Plan on paper. Draw out your area. Label the beds and rows and determine what is going where according to your crop rotation cycle.

Plan for your needs. Order/ purchase seeds/ plants. Look at your tools. What needs fixing, sharpening, replacing? Can I get something new ? Have a look at your irrigation needs. Are hoses, pipes, sprinklers in good working order ? Has anything changed with water tables, wells ? Is the pump in good repair ?

 Plan to assess and walk your garden more this year. There is an old saying "THE BEST FERTILIZER IS THE FARMER'S SHADOW." This could not be more true ! Walk through your garden regularly at every time of day to properly "SEE" and inspect what is going on. Are the plants thoroughly watered ? Are there too many weeds? Are the plants disease free ? Are there any pests evident ? By walking about on a regular basis you will notice what needs to be taken care of and dealt with quickly before it becomes a problem.

Most of all PLAN to enjoy every moment you have in your gardens and they will reward you abundantly !

Spring is Teasing Us

Snowdrops along the creek

The weather has been spectacular and warm and sunny the past three days. We have recorded a high of 12C during the day but it went down to -1C last night with hard frost this morning. It was even colder up in the open fields. The weather in general has been above normal since late January. The propagation greenhouse is bursting with seedlings but they are afforded the warmth and protection of a more controlled environment. We can close the doors and put covers over the heated propagation tables. It is all too tempting to try and plant something out too soon. Our records show that we have received frosts as late as the final week of May. I have a few videos from the last 3 years alone that show all too clearly how quickly a hail storm can wreak havoc here. We always have plastic covers ready to put over plants just in case. More than once we have been found scrambling to get tender, precious seedlings under cover out of the weather. A good guide is to prune your roses when the forsythia bloom. Forsythia are one of our earliest blooming shrubs with their bright yellow flowers. Branches can be cut and brought indoors for a forced bloom. What this tells you is that this plant will only bloom when the temperature is of a reliable warmth. Some plants are genetically predisposed to bloom at a certain time irregardless of temperature and some can gauge when is the right time. Forsythia is of the latter. Roses can still die if they are pruned back too far too early. So as tempting as it is to get started with clearing and cleaning and planting and pruning be wary of what time of year this still is. It is only mid-February folks.Go out, stroll through your gardens and take a peek at all the lovely plants bursting forth to spur on the coming of spring. Turn the compost, clean up the yard, order seeds, plant seeds indoors. There is lots to do. It feels good !

Aconites

Sweet Violets

Blissing Out On A Glorious Day

Today was a spectacularly glorious day. The first day of this new year that one could see, smell, sense the spring in the air. A fine day to be part of. I sat at the beach across from the farm. The tide was out and Waterloo Creek was burbling it's way to meet the sun sparkling sea. The sounds, the sights, the mood, all was good and felt good. Bliss.

A Two Day Montage of Activity at the Farm

Not going to write too much to go with this video montage. I think the photos will speak for themselves. I will say that fall has always been my favorite time of year. As much as it is a time for slowing down the pace it is the best time of the year for me to be inspired and creative. Maybe its the cooler weather but my head always feels clearer and brighter as fall approaches. As much as I love the warmth that summer days bring I really love the shorter day lengths as it means we don't have to be out working so early and so late. Farming is really ruled by the rhythm of the days and nights and the weather. As long as there is daylight there is always something you could and probably should be tending to. I appreciate the changing seasons and the different day and night lengths.  From the photos I think you will see that there is lots to see and do and observe at this special time of year. Enjoy and be kind to each other.

Video and Farm Update

It is the time of year when everything needs attention and doing. You hardly know where to begin first. The video is of our upper field and gives a concept of the scale of Ironwood Farm's operation. There are two other fields down below closer to the house. This is also where the hoop houses and chicken yards are. Hope to get a video of these areas done soon.

The first of the chickens went to the processor last week and Bryne is on the road as I write taking the last of the birds in. One job that is finished for the time being.

The weather is simply not its' usual self this year. We have had some very hot and sunny days but they are few and far between. The video happened to be one of those few days. In between we have experienced some incredibly windy days and nights. These winds which we call the "Qualicums" occur throughout the summer during our hotter weather. They usually start in the afternoon for a few hours but this year have been relentless and long. We even had some power outages due to their strength. They dry out the fields in very quick order, thus the need for irrigation.  Thought summer was finally coming and now we are looking at another week of cool, damp, cloudy weather. Its not cold though.

This is what I mean when I talk about one of the advantages of being a diverse, multi crop farming operation. There is always something that will do well in every kind of weather. The swiss chard, spinach, spring onions, brassicas,radishes, lettuces, parsley, cilantro and even potatoes are doing well. The few hot days got the zucchini and patty pans off to a good start and there are already lots. We had a good first flush of strawberries but it has all but stopped now. Too bad. The snow peas have been outstanding !

My dahlias are blooming and present some spectacular colour in the garden which makes me feel bright and happy ! Flowers are great for raising the spirits. Nasturtiums in the salad mix really perk thing up too.

Well the rain is really coming down now. There is still nothing like a good rain to keep things hydrated and growing. Saves a lot of physical and manual effort on our behalf to move irrigation pipes and sprinklers around. Going to do some work in the hoop houses today and stay dry.

Stringing the Tomatoes and Setting Up the Hoop House

Want to show you all some of what we have been doing. Yesterday it rained enough to call for a job that kept us out of the wet weather. Tomatoes needed pruning and stringing so that is what we did. I went ahead of the others and pruned each plant, Bryne tied the strings from the wires and the gang attached the clips and carefully wound each stem around the string.  After it was all done each plant was watered. Its always a tedious job but so important to get done. Every week we will prune and wind the growing point of each plant around the string. You want the energy of the plant to go into developing fruit and not growing more stems.

There are about 300 plants in this hoop house and about 12 varieties. Black Krim, Black from Tula, Black Prince, Black Cherry just to name a few. Looking forward to a good tomato harvest.

Early last week we reassembled our original hoop house into another field. We have planted it full of basil. The location gets the very last rays of sun for the day. Good for basil. Those are my dahlias on the right side of the hoop house and snow peas on the left.

Bryne putting the finishing touches on the hoop house before the planting begins. We planted first, watered the transplants in with the sprinklers on and then put the plastic on the next day. I will post some photos of the basil soon. Here on the west coast you really can't grow large amounts of basil successfully without cover. Made some pesto for supper last night. What a great smell and flavour.

Principles of Plant Health

The past few days have been full of questions and discussions about health and herbs. I love it when I get to talk about plants and their uses in our lives. I studied herbal medicine and nutrition and believe that food should be a substantial portion of our daily medicine. Plant foods that are grown conscientiously and with good, sustainable practices are some of our most powerful allies in maintaining good health. I remember my naturopath doctor telling me long ago that "ideally" his job was to help me maintain my good health and not to wait till I got sick before seeking guidance and assistance. I should prevent disease not wait till I was diseased. So much about health and growing plants go hand in hand. Organic growing follows the same principles, prevent disease, not create conditions for disease.

With 16 years of certified organic growing and countless programs and courses under my belt I have learned a thing or two about maintaining my health, my families' health and the health of the plants and the farm. The number one question people ask is "What do you do about pests and disease ?"

I say you have to first ask what you consider a pest ? a disease ? Everything alive on this planet is food for something else. If you keep taking the so-called pest away you are taking away food from another living thing. Even diseases are alive and have to eat. Take away what they normally feast on and the system becomes unbalanced and open to attack. Its all about balance.

That is the beauty of bio-diversity. In nature you never see anything living in isolation, on its' own. It is a great community that operates on co-operation and balance. No one, nothing is an island.

Plants and foods grown using the "industrial model" have been manipulated to the point of having no natural defenses of their own anymore. We have taken their ability to look after themselves away. Many crops are grown in enormous quantities, essentially in isolation, and do not have the benefit of their plant communities to help them out. They have been altered and hybridized to grow in a specific way with predictable results and rely on chemical applications to feed them, force their growth and protect them. If "anything goes wrong" in this model the results are often disasterous !

Science is beginning to show and understand that plants "think" and "communicate" with each other and their surroundings through chemical interactions. Stands to reason that they adapted this ability. I have often thought about this. A plant,a tree, cannot move to get away from something the way we can. They are forced to stay in one spot for the duration of their lives. They are at the mercy of the wind, weather, insects, animals, whatever comes their way and they have shown the many ways they have made brilliant adaptations to their environment. They have had millions of years to figure things out. A lot longer than we have.

Some of the most important practices we use at Ironwood Farm are crop rotation, green manures (cover cropping)and companion planting. By NOT using any types of chemical controls the farm attracts and thereby hosts all manner of insects, birds, wild life and most important, beneficial bacteria and micro-organisms. Together this bio-diversity creates a balance and feeds everyone.

We need to get back on track and let nature take the lead. By using and implementing practices that ensure soil health and vitality, bio diversity and mindful handling and care we not only help the planet but we help ourselves too.

What's For Supper ?

One of the main features of participating at Ironwood Farm is the food. The guest books are full of "adulation" about the food. We have a lot of mouths to feed at any given time and everyone is hungry after a day of physical labour. You have to consider that most of them are 19 to 25 years of age, many are still growing into their bodies and they need sustenance.  At the moment we have seven farm stays as well as ourselves. Three to four farm stay participants is normal but we have a cross over of comings and goings at the moment. What to feed a hungry crowd ?

Over the years, like anything, you acquire a feel for quantity and what you can reasonably prepare for a hungry gang. There is a budget to consider as well. Cooking for 10 is not unreasonable in a household kitchen. An ordinary kitchen stove with regular sized pots can accommodate most quantities to feed up to ten people. One thing we did purchase a number of years ago is a substantially sized wok.

Our kitchen is never without certain staples. Brown rice, potatoes, pasta , bread, onions, celery, carrots, frozen peas and various cuts of meat. When cooking and preparing the evening meal we always try to cook enough rice, potato or pasta to have leftover for the next day. This way we can quickly prepare a stir-fry of some kind for lunch or supper.

Of course having our own supply of seasonal vegetables and produce is one of the highlights to any meal. Early in the season we rely on items we have frozen or canned during the previous season. I freeze lots of rhubarb, kale, corn, squash, tomatoes, basil, apples, blackberries etc. to have through the winter and spring. Freezing is the easiest way for me to make use of abundant produce during the growing season. I simply don't have time during the busy farming season to can a lot.

An interesting aside story. We have had a young Japanese man with us for a number of months. He is an Italian chef by trade. That in itself is interesting. He has prepared a number of outstanding meals for us. I remember when I asked him which colour of tomatoes he would like to use out of the freezer. He was amazed at the selection and even more astounded at the taste ! Even the frozen tomatoes from last season had more flavour than anything he had ever experienced. He had NO idea tomatoes could have so many different colours and flavours. He was in heaven ! He is SOLD on organic food.

I must have instinctively  learned through observing my Mother how to manage and manipulate ingredients that are on hand. I usually finish my part of the farm work at 3 p.m. I indulge myself with a fresh cup of coffee and try to take an hour for myself to relax. In the back of my mind I am starting to think about supper and what I might prepare. By 4 p.m. I get at it. By 6 p.m.. supper is on the table. I know lots of you out there don't or won't use microwave ovens but it is a very useful appliance in our household at times for defrosting something if I haven't thought about taking it out the night before.

I REALLY enjoy baking bread for us and have incorporated it into the work flow of the day. Usually on Monday mornings I get the dough prepared and go out into the fields while it is rising. Come into the house and punch it down once and go out again. While I am preparing lunch I shape the bread and/ or buns and let them rise while we are eating. By the time we are doing the lunch dishes the bread can go into the oven I have remembered to preheat. NOT ALWAYS (lol)

We have some kind of dessert almost every day. Fortunately my Mother (who is soon 88) still can and loves to bake. She surprises us many times a week with some German style confection. I have a number of favorite recipes that are quick and easy to prepare for dessert. The top favorite for votes over the years is definitely any kind of "CRISP especially rhubarb and apple topping the list. CRISP with blackberries is a close second. Over the years my dear friend and neighbour Kate, who has since passed away at age 92, shared many wonderful recipes with me. She loved to bake as well and I remember many happy hours drinking tea and writing down her time honoured recipes.

Tonight Bryne prepared the main meal which was a wonderful stir fry with lots and lots of vegetables. A big pot of brown rice. Breaded, baked halibut. A banana bundt cake with peanut butter, cream cheese frosting. This was for the birthday of one of our farm apprentices who turned 20 today.

I have always enjoyed cooking and baking for my family and friends. I read once in an Ayurveda cook book that in India there are songs that women sing for preparing food. These songs infuse the food with love and good thoughts. This is how all food should be prepared. Much like the food we grow here on the farm our energy and thought patterns are transferred to the plants and into the crops we lovingly care for. The same thing applies to the food we are handling and preparing for a meal.

Everything we eat was once alive in some original form. It makes me wonder sometimes at the alarming statistics in rise of chronic illnesses if there is not some correlation between how industrial complex food is grown versus food that is grown with thought and care and hand held. I know from my experiences here on the farm that the difference is significant. The produce is positively brimming with vitality and energy.

Good people, good energy, GOOD FOOD !

Growing Dahlias For Market

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Today we planted out the dahlias. I love, adore, have to have, flowers. Flowers are truly the showpieces of Mother Nature. Dahlias are one of my most favorites and they are relatively easy to grow and will give you years if not decades of pleasure if you take proper care of them. Dahlias are also one of the easiest to grow for the cut flower market. Dahlia bouquets sell themselves for their colour and variety. We have always made flowers part of the diversity of product we bring to the farmer's markets. They make your stand, stand out !

Dahlias are native to the mountain areas of Mexico and Guatemala. They are the national flower of Mexico. They were originally a 20 foot or more tall plant and were used extensively by the Aztecs for food as well as practical purposes. The tubers are like a potato, starchy, and have a similar taste. The stems are hollow and were used as irrigation type pipes to transport water from a distance to the crops in the field. When growing they are also full of water and could be used as a source of water to drink.

Today dahlias come in an amazing array of blooms and spectacular colours. I have read that there are 50,000 or more types. WOW ! Once they start blooming they keep on flowering for about 3 months here on the west coast.  You get a LOT of SHOW for a small cost and the tubers if properly cared for will last decades.

We usually start them in gallon pots in late March, early April. Earwigs and slugs love to eat the first new growth that appears above ground so we have learned to start them in pots and avoid disappointment. We get them into their permanent summer spot by late May. By this time they are 2 feet or more in height.

We dig a good size hole, at least as deep as the size of the pot, add a shovel of compost and mix it with soil. Next I put a tomato cage into the hole. I tap the plant out of the pot and GENTLY remove it and lower it through the ring of the cage into the ground. Finally the soil from the dug hole is filled back in and the plants are watered.

Other than weeding around the plants during the season and watering them the main work is done. Once they start blooming it is important to keep the flowers cut off so they don't go to seed. You will want to keep them picked and enjoy them in your home and in bouquets to give.

I make sure to have a bucket of water with me when I am cutting them. The sooner any flower gets into water, the better. At the house I put them into a vase of relatively hot water. They take up the water much quicker if you use hot water. NOT boiling water, just hot tap water. To keep your vase water from getting "skunky" you can put a tiny bit of bleach in the water. It also keeps your vase cleaner. The flowers will last a good week or so this way.

At this point I will not discuss digging up and storing the tubers. This will be another blog in the fall once the tubers are dug up. I have had blooms till November some years here on the coast. Normally its till mid October or Thanksgiving here in Canada.

If you like having flowers and growing them then give dahlias a try. They give me enormous amounts of pleasure and beauty and really show off at our market stand.

Growing for Market

Things are finally beginning to heat up around here in more ways than one. The weather is co-operating although the nights are still pretty cool. Down to 2C and 3C the last two nights and up to 23C during the day. Pretty wide extremes. We are well into May and getting what seems like usual April weather. Everything is a month behind.

Was being interviewed for an upcoming magazine article yesterday and some of the questions got me thinking. She asked how we determine and decide what to grow any given season. Well after pondering I realized how interesting the answer to that question could be.

The answer is a combination of things. Trial and error being one of them and weather plays a role for sure. After years of crop rotations and trying many different things we have a pretty clear idea of what does well and what sells well and what gives you the most bang for the effort.

We have three main growing areas. Field A, field B and field C. Field A has become our perennial type area over the years. It has the best drainage. High water tables in the winters here on the coast are trouble for perennials. You do not want to have roots sitting in water all winter. A main reason people lose some of their perennials is that the roots have rotted from below the ground from sitting in water all winter. You need to put things like rhubarb, rosemary, strawberries, raspberries, overwintering vegetables of any kind in the area with your best drainage. Plants can handle quite a bit of cold and frost but not soaking, wet soils. These conditions suffocate and rot away the plants winter storage system, their precious root systems.

So Field A has become the location of our rhubarb bed and vegetables we want to get an early start on. Along with the rhubarb we have snow peas, sweet peas, brassicas(broccoli, cabbage etc) and early lettuces transplanted into this field within the last 2 months. We had a bit of warm weather during this time and the plants looked like they were doing well and THEN it got cold and wet again. Things didn't look so good for a time and we thought that we had jumped the gun and were paying for it BUT true to their resilient nature, the plants held on, went into limbo mode and waited. The last week or two they have transformed and are happily growing . The rhubarb is looking amazing and we are harvesting 100 lbs or more each week. Rhubarb thrives if it gets some consistent cold weather. Last year we didn't have that and our rhubarb harvest was pitiful last year compared to this year.

My point is that the beauty of being a market garden farm allows us the flexibility to be diverse and creative. We seed an enormous variety and amount of vegetables etc. One can never truly know how the weather will go during any given season. By covering all the bases and planting a diverse and varied amount of crops we are sure to have certain crops do very well. Something suffers but lots does great. In other words, ALL OUR EGGS ARE NOT IN ONE BASKET.

The other area that deserves attention is to what the market will bear and buy. One thing we have learned over the years is that the personal preferences for specialty vegetables are just that. People try to convince you that you MUST grow lemon cucumbers. "Everyone will buy them." So you do and the only one buying them is that person.  For sure you should try new things and each year we do but in small, small quantities. Consumers for the most part are very traditional and not easily convinced to try any new or different kind of vegetable even when it is similar to the original. A case in point is purple beans. We have grown purple beans for over 10 years now. Every season we have countless numbers of customers who exclaim " I have never seen purple beans," WOW ! Are they any good ? Will I like them? " Whats truly amusing about this is that I recognize some of these people and they tell me every year.  They see them every year but every year they claim they have never seen them. What we do now is GIVE customers who are truly curious a healthy sample to take home and try. Interesting how most won't try anything new if they have to pay for it but they will if you give it to them. Fine by me. I SO want people to eat more vegetables !

The variety and colour and shapes of vegetables is endless. We eat within such a narrow scope of what is possible and available out there. As market farmers we have the luxury of introducing the public to those varieties. We have the ability to guide and influence food trends.  Many of these vegetables are not new but old, heritage varieties that are sensitive and fragile to handling and keeping qualities and only a local farm can manage to harvest and get the product to market in a time sensitive manner and with hand managed care.

I can speak from personal experience that I would rather be here working the farm any day of the week. For all the work and effort it takes it still allows me a lot of flexibility in my life. Farming pretty well demands that you be flexible and adaptable to changing conditions whatever they are. You also need to be able to dig your heels in when the going gets tough and "git er done" when that is required of you. There are definite windows of opportunity for planting out certain crops and when that time presents itself that's what you are going to be doing until its done.

Today is a Friday. Time to get out there and harvest and get ready for market. I love market days. Market day is the day of appreciation and reaping the rewards for what you are bringing to the nations' tables. You are contributing to what is still fundamental to every life, FOOD, good, nutritious, ethically and sustainably grown food. Can food have a conscience ? You bet it does ! otherwise why would we care how anything is done.

Later  :-D