Week 22 and the Season is Through

The end of the season is always bittersweet. We love growing food and working with the Earth and we’re also ready for some rest when the nights get longer and the days are colder, or in the case of today’s weather colder and wetter. We also miss the routine and seeing familiar faces every week as we also look forward to spending more time with our families. Before we can rest we still have a lot of Garlic to plant for next season, and a lot of beds to put to sleep to be ready to plant next year as well. The season doesn’t end when the veggies do.

As this is the last week we thought it was time to make an announcement about changes for next year. Farmer Rashel is taking a leave from farming. As some of you know a small child came in to our care just before the growing season started. As a family we’ve all made sacrifices and worked very hard to keep the farm afloat while also raising a baby, we did what needed to be done. Some days and weeks it felt like all we were doing was treading water but we managed to keep the plants alive and delivered every week. It almost feels like a miracle. In no small part due to farmer Andrea, who we are happy to announce, has decided to continue running a CSA from the Tremblay Family Farm in 2017! Please keep an eye out on this blog and/or on Facebook for details about Andrea’s CSA plans for next season. Farmer Rashel will continue to grow food for and with their family, and continue to experiment with sustainable farming techniques and sharing that joy on this blog and on Facebook.

Now on to the final Vegetable list of the season:

We’ve had a bumper crop of Peppers this season and we’re offering Green Peppers for only $4 a pound and as a 2 for 1 deal – 2 lbs of organically-grown Peppers for only $4!

We still have a lot of Scallions ready to go so we’re offering those as a 2 for 1 deal as well!

If the frost holds off we’ll have Hot Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes,  and Heirloom Tomatoes.

There will also be Green Tomatoes (to use for fried green tomatoes or to let sit and ripen, other recipe ideas on Veggies!), Sunchokes, Salad, Kale, Chard, Broccoli, Garlic (for planting or for eating), Celery, a variety of fresh and dried Herbs, Shepard’s Purse tincture, and bee pollen.

A big THANK YOU to all of our loyal and appreciative members – you keep us going when things get difficult and we couldn’t make this happen without YOU!

Only these 4 Pears grew on 16yo Lennon’s baby Tree this year, each 1 the same relative size as each of the 4 farm children ❤

 

 

 

 

 

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Week 21 and We’re Almost Done

Produce anticipated to be available this week at ShopEco in Windsor: Sweet Bell Peppers, Green Peppers, Hot Peppers, Cherry Tomatoes, Green Tomatoes, Scallions + other Onions, Celery, Salad Mix, Kale, Chard (lots and lots of it!), Squash, Garlic, fresh herbs, dried Herbs + Teas, Sundried Tomatoes, Shepard’s Purse Tincture, and small amounts of Broccoli and Eggplant. New this week we’ll have available SUNCHOKES (link to a previous blog post).

These are a short seasonal delight and highly sought-after in France. They are indigenous to our Carolinian zone and can be found in wild areas. You can plant the root for your own supply of these edible tubers, or as perennial Sunflower. Eat them any way you would eat a potato – roasted, fried, in soups, or raw – experiment with them! Recipes can be found on our Veggies! page, our previous blog post on Sunchokes, a blog post where Chef Ben from the Iron Kettle used Sunchokes to make a soup and a bread, or on this link we came across this week.

Photo by Ben Leblanc-Beaudoin

2 new Herbs we have available in small quantities are Mugwort and Motherwort.

Mugwort can be burned as a smudge, sewn into a sleepy dream pillow, or drunk as a tea. More information (including warnings) –http://happyherbcompany.com/mugwort ; http://www.witchipedia.com/herb:mugwort ; http://www.susunweed.com/herbal_ezine/May09/wisdomkeepers.htm

Motherwort can be added in small amounts to tea when you feel like you need a hug from a mother. Information (including warnings) – http://www.susunweed.com/Article_Motherwort.htm ; http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-126-motherwort.aspx?activeingredientid=126&activeingredientname=motherwort

Celery

A shout out to Black Cherry Tomatoes – not only are they always the hands down favourite for flavour but every year they produce the largest amount of tomatoes and they keep on going until a hard frost kills them. These are the best tomatoes ever!

One more week left – weekly vegetables end on Saturday October 22nd for farm members and Wednesday October 26th for ShopEco Windsor members.

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Week 17 and We’re Bouncing With Beans

We picked so many Beans on Tuesday that all we could see when we closed our eyes was Beans …. and that’s a lot of Beans! We made some canned dilly beans, froze some, all to our heart’s content but still harvested close to 150 lbs of Beans this past week. And there’s more to come!

Lennon bringing in the Bean harvest

Since Beans have already been veggie of the week (and we don’t see the point in duplication for a simple and well-known veggie) we’ve decided to feature ….

Watermelons and Cantaloupes!

We thought they were all dead but we’re still picking a few more every week and will be until there is a frost. The most productive Watermelons have been Blacktail Mountain, Cream of Saskatchewan, and Baby Doll. The most productive Cantaloupe has been Oka (which has personal family significance and great Canadian historical significance).

‘Oka’

Tomatoes are still looking beautiful these days ….

Striped German, Nebraska Wedding, Bosque Blue, Oxheart, and more.

We now have Sun-dried Tomatoes available for sale, superb snacks! Those who’ve tried them can’t put them down, something like healthy chips 😉 We also now have Ghost Peppers for sale until the frost hits. We’re going to try pickling some this weekend!

Other veggies available this week include: Kale + Chard, Salad Mix, a variety of fresh herbs, Sweet Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, Scallions, Garlic, and some surprises.

Salad Mix

A note for farm members – we are open at the farm, rain or shine; starting next Monday Morris Rd will be closed as crews do work on the bridge, we’ll post details for the detour next week.

One of our CSA members has started a new business called Trust Our Gut, check them out on Facebook. They use all organic ingredients in their bone broths, including veggies from the Locally Germinated farm.

This week they got all the Celery tops that others didn’t want, great way to share the bounty!

 

We’re offering dig-your-own Maple Trees from the farm for $5 a Tree, dig as many as you can. Fall is the perfect time to plant Trees and these have been generously fertilized by our pastured chickens. Available until October.

Until next week …

 

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Week 16 is the Hands Down Queen!

While we were finishing up for the day, farm child Lennon was still busy picking BEANS and came back with SO MANY BEANS that he couldn’t even pick them all! It’s amazing what a couple of good rains and prolific pollinators will do!

Photo by Jessica McCracken

This is the perfect week to try your hand at pickling beans, we have them in bulk!, and Jess is joining us at the farm again to do a demonstration for an easy way to pickle a multitude of vegetables. Stop by tomorrow between 9 and 10 am for the pickling demonstration and until 2 pm for the farm market!

VEGGIE OF THE WEEK IS

CELERY!!!

This is our first attempt ever at growing Celery and it’s been a resounding success! This is a very advanced crop to grow, so we only planted a small amount, in our richest and fluffiest raised bed, we watered it every other day, planted it densely, and voila! Beautiful Celery! This is a member exclusive as we only grew a small amount. To make sure your Celery last as long as possible in the fridge please make sure to store it in a sealed plastic bag. We’ve kept the big beautiful top leaves on as they are perfect for freezing, as is, and using later for vegetable/soup stock.

Eat The Rainbow!

Another new (ish) crop we tried this year was sweet corn but it turns out it needs it to rain to produce large cobs, a failed experiment. We’re giving what we harvested away for free (some of you have already received these). The dried beans we planted with the corn did well and you’ll see those later in the season once they’ve fully dried out and we shuck them.

Results from the Tomato Taste-Test Fest confirmed that our favourites are indeed the best and let us know which new varieties to keep growing.

Top rated heirloom tomato varieties were: Lemon Boy, Black Cherry, Yellow Pear, Chocolate Stripe, Banana Legs, Bosque Blue, Black Plum, Nebraska Wedding, Oxheart, Peach, Missouri Love Apple, Sweetie, and Elfin.

Thank you to everyone who tasted and rated our tomatoes!

Some dear CSA members shared with us another of their family dishes made with their weekly CSA veggies. “So I had all these little peppers that I got from you and decided to make stuffed peppers! I cut them open and made little boats that were fantastic! I also roasted your tomatoes and used that to cook them in! Your kale made it to the plate as well! What a great dinner tonight! Thanks!”

 

Another lovely surprise this week was that not all the cantaloupes and watermelons were dead and we found a basket full of melons, with more to come!

Veggies available this week …

Week 16, September 9th, Leafy Greens, Tomatoes, Sweet + Hot Peppers, Spaghetti Squash, Cantaloupe, Watermelon, Parsley, CELERY, Winter Squash (sweet potato, acorn, butternut), Scallions, Patty Pan, Eggplant.

Not pictured: BEANS, Basil, fresh Mint, Corn, Fennel, Kale, GARLIC.

What an abundance we’ve received with Summer’s last hurrah!

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Time To Delve In to Week Twelve

It’s August 12th and we’re on our 12th week of fresh, local, weekly vegetables. It’s also the halfway point of the season – peak time for Summer goodies.

“Beans, beans, the magical fruit, the more you eat, the more you toot. The more you toot, the better you feel, so have some beans with every meal.”

Can you guess what the veggie of the week is?

Farmer Rashel waits every year for the first bean to be ready, it’s a rite of Summer to eat Beans, and they’ve always been Rashel’s very favourite thing to eat straight out of the garden. It’s no wonder we grow such a large variety of them every year! We are growing bush beans, snap beans, string beans, pole beans, dried beans (to come later in the season), purple + yellow + green + red + of course multi-coloured beans, and mostly heirloom + historical varieties. These resilient creatures grow despite drastic drought and no irrigation. Many thanks to an old friend who introduced me to Rattlesnake beans when we made a friendly exchange a number of years ago – they are a super producing and tasty pole bean. Every year we grow more varieties because we just can’t get enough.

Knock Knock!
Who’s there?
Bean
Bean who?
Bean a while since I last saw ya!

Q: What’s a tailor’s favorite kind of vegetable?

A: A string bean!

When it comes to certain veggies we are at a loss about what to tell people how to use them because we eat them in the car before we even make it home! Beans are one of those. The farm baby has been cutting their little teeth on beans (under close supervision, in case of choking), and lightly cooked beans are a great baby food for children who want to feed themselves. They can be canned and pickled, and they are great in salads. Some other ideas include:  Vegan Chinese Green Beans, Fermented Dragon Beans, and 13 Fresh Beans Recipes (that include a number of other seasonally available veggies), Spicy Pickled Beans.

Every Bean is hand-picked and super chilled for longer freshness.

To go with many of the bean recipes above we still have GARLIC. This is a great keeper and a great way to use up some of your credits. Us farmers eat the damaged Garlic and it keeps well until June so stock up for all your Winter needs. We came across this interesting Garlic recipe that we think you’ll like, too – Garlic Confit is the Magic Secret to Loving Any Vegetable. We’ll have Portabello Mushrooms and mini-cucumbers for a short time only.

Now is the time to send us a message letting us know if you want hampers of Tomatoes for canning, making sauce, or for sun-drying. This is another great way to use up credits. We’ll be hitting peak tomato time in the next 2 weeks. We have a wonderful and delicious variety of heirlooms this year, in preparation for the Heirloom Tomato Taste-Test Fest!

You must try our ‘Candy’ Cherry Tomatoes, their sun-ripened goodness cannot be beat!

Sweet Peppers and Hot Peppers will be available in bulk quantities as well, please let us know if you’d like a large quantity of either for canning or freezing.

These “glow” orange peppers have really caught our attention this year!

If you’ve been wondering what these strange “umbels” are in your Salad Mixes it’s the forming seed head of Parsley. We took a taste and found them quite pleasing with a mild Parsley taste. We’re making a lot more seed than we need so we thought we’d throw them in for a taste punch in the salad mixes.

 

We have small quantities of Kale and Chard and mixes of the two; also small quantities of eggplant and summer squash. Our trusty staple, Scallions, as well as Fennel (bulb and fronds), Basil, fresh Mint, assorted fresh herbs, and our gorgeous Sunflowers and other fresh flower mixes. Dried Nettle Tea is also available again.

Styled and Photographed by farm child Faenin (11) – Fennel, Beans, Garlic, Kale, Lunchbox Sweet Peppers, Scallions, Cherry Tomatoes, Beefsteak Tomatoes, Portabella Mushroom, Salad Mix, mini-Cucumbers.

 

 

Good things to come … things we hope and dream for in these unbearably hot days ….

 

The Coriander crop is ready and has been harvested. All that’s left is stripping the seeds and letting them dry before they’re ready to be sold.

So far our first year growing Celery has been successful. Though we must take care to water it every single day. They still have some time to go but we can’t wait to take a bite out of this forest of crunchy goodness. Or maybe that’s the heat talking ….

 

 

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Opening Day and Update for May

By the time many of you read this we’ll have officially opened for the season! Our first market is Saturday May 28th and it also marks the beginning of the Community Supported Agriculture – CSA – weekly member basket program!

Our veggie of the week is CARROTS!

Carrots originally and naturally came in colours such as purple, red, and white. Some are red on the outside and purple on the inside, or purple on the outside and white on the inside. So many Carrots to choose from! These Carrots have been happily living and growing all Winter long and in our experience the best keeping carrots are the purple ones, the orange ones didn’t fare so well.

These Carrots are best suited for cooking so here is a collection of recipe ideas to spice up the humble Carrot ~ http://www.rachaelraymag.com/recipes/20-carrot-recipes/16/ – these recipes also use other seasonal veggies such as kale, parsley, and garlic, and includes easy pickled carrots ; http://damndelicious.net/2015/01/17/garlic-roasted-carrots/ – also uses thyme and parsley ; http://www.therawtarian.com/raw-carrot-refrigerator-cake-recipe  ; http://www.theroastedroot.net/raw-carrot-pasta-ginger-lime-peanut-sauce/ ; http://www.carrotmuseum.co.uk/recipes.html Carrots have their own museum website!

Jokes of the week (a new weekly item that the farm children wanted to start) :

Q: What did one carrot say to the other carrot?

A: Is it orange in here, or is it just me?

Q: What did the other carrot say back?

A: Hang on a minute while I root around for the answer!

 

 

What’s orange and sounds like a parrot?

A carrot!

 

How do you make gold soup?

Put 24 carrots in it!

 

What’s a vegetables favourite martial art?

Carrottee!

Carrots make for the funniest pictures

 

Since we’re being joined by the Cheese Bar for our opening day a cheese joke:

What cheese is made backwards?

Edam!

One last joke for one more seasonal item we have this week:

What is small, red, and whispers?

A hoarse radish!

(We have horseradish root available!)

Other seasonal veggies we have available for Week 1 (items vary depending upon location: Scallions (green onions), Baby Garlic (we’re debating calling it Scarlick or Gallions as it’s a mix of Garlic and Scallions – a truly unique product! an experiment that we tried that turned out perfectly!), Parsley, Salad Mix, Baby Kale, Arugula, Chives, Fennel Fronds, Leeks, Portabello Mushrooms, Potted Basil, Dried Herbs and Herbal Teas, Seedlings (including Sweet Peppers, Ghost + Scorpion Peppers, Kale, Chard, Scallions), Potted Coneflower, Flower Bouquets, and Maple Trees.

Walking Onions, Salad Mix, Baby Garlic, Spinning Lettuce, Fennel

 

Local honey products and pickled products

The farm children are inviting you to come this way ….

Updates on what we’ve been up to ….

We’re trying a new pest control method this year – Nematodes. They are soil dwelling creatures that prey on other creatures while not harming beneficial insects such as earthworms. If this shows success we’ll switch to this method of insect control completely.

Scanmask organic pest control ~ http://www.biologicco.com/products/scanmask/lawn-and-garden-scanmask

We had a busy weekend planting most of our heat-loving crops. First we have to lay down the plastic mulch…..

Then we can use the water wheel planter…..

Squash Seedling, Cooperation, Baby Watching us work

This year we’re going to focus on harvesting more medicinal and beneficial herbs to share with our members and out community. We’ll be drying them for teas and making tinctures and salves.

Nettles + Motherwort hang as though in an art gallery

 

Mint + Lemon Balm hanging to dry

Even our Plantain is a magickal purple colour ….

Plantain will make it’s way into healing salves

We’re adding new herbs to our gardens as well …

Lavender, Sweet Grass, Yarrow, Bee Balm, and more

On Mother’s Day we found the time to hold ceremony with some very special local Knowledge Keepers (Elders), and to plant Trees. We planted over 100 different native species.

 

We held our first Seedling Sale at ShopEco on Mother’s Day weekend and it was so successful that we’ll be holding it again next year! And this time we’ll be ready for the hordes of folks interested in organically-grown seedlings for their home gardens.

Photo courtesy of ShopEco

New this year, we’re trying to grow Celery, if we’re successful it will be for members only. So far they look great!

Every blog has to have an amazing photograph of the simple beauty of the farm as captured by our amazing farm friend Andrea.

Bumblebee and Magnolia Tree

And last but not least a cool panaromic view of our HUGE Garlic patch….

 

 

 

 

 

 

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