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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Important Information – Please Read

Week #19 begins with a few updates.

For farm members: Saturday markets will start at 9 am (not 8 am) starting tomorrow, October 1st. Saturday October 8th will be the last market of the season and The Cheese Bar will be present – they helped us open the season and they’ll be there to close the season. Facebook event details. After that we’ll be emailing out a weekly list of the veggies we’ll have available and will be packing up individual orders that can be picked up at the farm. Check your emails for more details and please talk to us about these changes when you see us at the farm in the next 2 weeks.

For ALL members: Before the season began we had hoped to run for 24 weeks – until November – but that is no longer realistic. The CSA will end on Saturday October 22nd for farm members and Wednesday October 26th for ShopEco/Windsor members. If you have a basic, pre-packaged bag, we will be emailing you if your bag is to end sooner than the above dates. Please talk to us at the next few markets if you have any concerns or questions. We are letting folks know in advance because if you’re on the credit system you’ll want to make sure you use up your credits before the last week. There is a small chance we’ll be able to go longer but that will be a bonus rather than part of the core CSA program. The CSA has always been 20 weeks long, this year we were hoping for 24, and we could have started even earlier (we started 2 weeks earlier than ever), but these are all things we learn from each year as farming is always a work in progress.

October Vegetable Share from 2015

We have ordered bulk potatoes, carrots, and beets that will be available on Wednesday October 5th and Saturday October 8th – in time for Thanksgiving! There are other options for using up credits as well – dried herbs and herbal teas, sun-dried tomatoes, tinctures, pickled asparagus, honey, and *fingers crossed* seeds to get you started on next year’s garden, dried beans (eg, kidney and black beans, for cooking), salves, hot pepper sauce, and pesto. Or simply stock up on all the veggies we have available and fill your freezers so you can make nourishing meals all Winter. We’ve found that the Scallion Roots make a very delicious stock! We came across this link for vegan “bone broth” that gives you lots of ideas for using up veggies ~ http://cleanfooddirtycity.com/recipes/healing-soup-with-vegan-bone-broth/

If you haven’t been convinced to start canning than maybe this comprehensive link (download included) will help ~ https://wordpress.com/read/feeds/135558/posts/1172189242

Preparing a Digestive Herbal Tea

We’ve been lucky in many ways with this season so far. It’s been the most productive and the longest tomato season ever! The drought has given incredible bumper crops to every commercial Tomato grower, so much that we, and others, are letting the fruits rot on the vines because the demand isn’t there. I guess folks don’t want Tomatoes as much as we thought they would. We’ve also got more Melons + Squash to harvest, that’s exciting! But, we weren’t able to plant new crops to tide us over for the rest of the season. There is an insect in the soil in all parts of our gardens that eats every root crop, crops that we rely on to extend the vegetable season well into November. Other insects (due to no Winter kill) have decimated every seedling we planted and despite using organic insecticides we could not beat them this year. Every season is different – different highs and different lows – and we must go with the flow and cross our fingers that there will be enough for everyone. CSA’s – community supported agriculture – help farmers remain viable because they value community and take the risks as well as the benefits.

VEGGIE OF THE WEEK IS EGGPLANT + SUMMER SQUASH

We’ve had these 2 vegetables available for many, many weeks now, but never in enough numbers to be an “official” veggie of the week. But as staples of the garden they deserve recognition. Every year since we started being market gardeners we hear that there is too much Eggplant and Zucchini (a type of Summer Squash) and every year we plan to plant less and less of them so that we have a steady supply versus an over-abundance. Eggplant are ready to harvest early in the season and give a steady supply until frost comes. We started growing smaller sized Eggplant a few years ago so that no one is stuck with large amounts of large Eggplant. This website is chock-full of recipes – hundreds of them – for both Eggplant and Summer Squash. We actually planted over 200 Summer Squash (mostly Patty Pans) this year but the seedlings were eaten by Striped Cucumber Beetles, the seedlings that managed to grow couldn’t produce fruit because the Cucumber Beetle ate the flowers. Even growing a large variety of this prolific fruit didn’t help us to have very much of this garden staple.

Q: Where do chickens come from?

A: The Egg-plant.

Huh?

Produce available this week (may vary depending upon location and availability): Salad Mix, Kale + Chard, Scallions, Beans, Sweet + Hot Peppers, Tomatoes (slicing, canning, cherry), Broccoli, Mushrooms, mini-Cucumbers, Savoy Cabbage, Kohlrabi, Eggplant, Summer Squash, Winter Squash, Garlic, and fresh herbs.

Spotted at the farm this week, Several Swallowtails munching on the same Wild Carrot plant, so many that they couldn’t all be photographed at once!

How many Swallowtails can you spot?

 Stay dry everyone!

 

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Squash Squad

The Autumnal Equinox – the balance between the light and the dark, the day and the night.

A perfect time to highlight the Super Squash Squad.

L-R: Acorn, Honeynut, Butternut, Long Pie Pumpkin, Thelma Sanders (Sweet Potato), Heart of Gold

Autumn’s sweetness seems to come with Winter Squash. Check out the Veggies! page for storage tips, recipes, and variety information. Our Heirloom have been the best performers with all the problems plaguing the Squash this year (no Winter kill = more insects to eat all your blossoms + fruit + stems, for example).

“What game do Elephants like to play with mice? SQUASH!”

While the Equinox has come, the weather doesn’t feel like Autumn quite yet and we’ve been blessed with a long season of Summer’s fruits – the longest season we’ve ever had Tomatoes a’plenty (we can still squeeze you in for a last chance at a hamper of tomatoes for canning!!!) … we can still Eat The Rainbow ….

We took the time this week to preserve the bounty and we pickled Beans and Ghost Peppers and Ring of Fire Peppers.

New this week we’ll have available Shepard’s Purse Tincture. We gathered the fresh leaves in April to make a tincture for ourselves but we made so much that we wanted to share! Available in 120 ml glass jars, you only need to take 1 ml (1/5 a teaspoon) per day, and the tincture will keep for 2 years in a cool dark area. Shepard’s Purse is used to reduce bleeding. Take 1 to 2 days before menstruation and up to 3 days during menstruation. Also helps with nosebleeds. To find out more, including safety information, precautions, and dosages,  please check out this article on WebMd and detailed info from Herbalist Richard Whelan.

After filtering out the tincture.

We also have small amounts of Yellow Dock Tincture but only if requested. If you want to know if Yellow Dock would be beneficial to you please read this article.

We’re very excited to be having local company The Cheese Bar at our farm market this Saturday September 24th! 100% Canadian Artisanal Cheeses! They will be at the farm from 10 am to 2 pm tomorrow, don’t miss it!  Facebook event and The Cheese Bar info here. We are still offering Dig Your Own Tree at the farm during market times on Saturday’s 8 am to 2 pm.

This is what Fall looks like to Rashel …. the gorgeous hues of Goldenrod, Purple Aster, White Aster, and the ripening goodness of Rosehips that will be harvested after a frost ….

Tremblay Creek bank, while looking for the Heron.

And just for fun …

A Melon blessed by our local Heron 😉

 

 

 

 

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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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Week 15 and the Eatin’ is Clean

VEGGIE OF THE WEEK IS SAUCE TOMATOES

If you want to can your own tomatoes, make tomato sauce, or salsa, this is your last chance! If you want to try some of the varieties of heirloom tomatoes we grow come out to our Heirloom Tomato Taste-Test Fest this Saturday September 3rd! We’ll be doing a blind taste-test where you’ll rate tomatoes and at the end of the market we’ll announce the winners on Facebook. Try varieties such as Striped Chocolate, Black Cherry, Brandywine, Japanese Trifele, Eva Purple Ball, Banana Legs, Sweeties, Coyote, Black Plum, Oxheart, Lemon Boy, Peach, Nebraska Wedding, Yellow Pear, Elfin, Bosque Blue, Bing, and Missouri Pink Love Apple. From 10 – 11 we’ll have an educational presentation on tomato canning, with hand-outs.

A CSA member getting ready to can tomato sauce!

 

Why did the tomato blush? Because it saw the salad dressing!

From one of Rashel’s favourite movies, Pulp Fiction, the Fox Force Five joke: “three tomatoes are walking down the street- a poppa tomato, a momma tomato, and a little baby tomato. baby tomato starts lagging behind. poppa tomato gets angry, goes over to the baby tomato, and smooshes him… and says, catch up!” – Mia Wallace [Uma Thurman]

How do you fix a broken tomato? With tomato paste!

Why did the tomato go out with a prune? Because it couldn’t find a date!

A dear friend reminded us that vegetables with holes in them are healthier for you. Plants can “hear” when other plants are being chewed on by insects and they are able to protect themselves by creating anti-oxidants. Blemished, “ugly” produce is healthy produce! Find out more at the Huffington Post.

Rainbow Chard from 2014.

Fresh-picked produce available this week includes: Salad Mix, Sauce + Beefsteak + Cherry Tomatoes, Sweet Bell Peppers + Sweet Snacking Peppers, HOT Peppers, Spaghetti Squash + Delicata Squash, Broccoli, Beans, Eggplant, Summer Squash, Parsley, Fennel, Mint, Scallions, Garlic, Kale, Chard, and always some surprises! We still have Rondeau calendars from PAWS Nature Nuggets as well!

The crystal event was had last Saturday was a huge success and we’re talking about doing it again. Andrea from Neo-Vintage Artistry created necklaces on-site for folks after they bought a crystal from Jackie of Another Way. Wonderful, creative energy all day!

ShopEco is such a beautiful store and we’re so blessed to be bringing our produce to their store each Wednesday. Some shots from a recent market day ….

Pictures by Marie Woodliffe.

Does it seem like Fall is around the corner? We’ll see soon, have a great week everyone!

Next week we’ll be having another educational canning presentation, this time about peppers and chard, from 9 am to 10 am at our on-farm market. Here are some of the canned veggies that Jess has made and can help you to make for yourself!

Pickled Carrots, Salsa Verde, Roasted Peppers, and more.

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Week Four Takes The Floor

VEGETABLE OF THE WEEK IS …. GARLIC SCAPES!

The Farm Children keep a close eye on the Scapes, it’s one of their favourite things to harvest on the farm.

For those familiar with Scapes they wait all year for this limited time item, it’s a high demand luxury! As you can see in the picture the Scape is a curly-cued part of the Garlic plant that would eventually turn into seeds. In order to make our Garlic focus it’s energy on creating large and powerful bulbs we must remove the Scapes. For our efforts we get to enjoy a very versatile but limited time only special treat that we call a Garlic Scape.

Each Scape has a unique curl.

 

Garlic

These are fabulous roasted or grilled, they can pickled, they can be frozen, they can be dried, they can be made into Garlic powder, they can be made into pesto, and they can be used in any way you would use Garlic. Check out these 7 recipes from The Crisper Whisperer. More info on our Veggies page and if you search “garlic scape” in the search index on this blog site or click on the “tag”, along the right-hand side of this blog site. Past posts with amazing recipes include this beauty from 2012 and this one, also from 2012.

Jokes from the farm children:

How did the garlic get out of the garden?

It eSCAPEd!

Why did the garlic book travel tickets online?

It needed an e-scape!

Yuk yuk yuk 😉

Farm baby helping to carry the bin full of Garlic Scapes.

Last week at our Saturday on-farm market we had a visitor ….

 

As you can see from some of our pictures you’ll know that we love babywearing and we came across a lovely post that showcases various every day dad babywearing while cooking or grocery shopping and thought it would be a good share for other babywearing lovers out there ~ http://www.thekitchn.com/10-sweet-photos-of-baby-wearing-dads-in-the-kitchen-232143

Other produce available this week (may vary depending upon location and availability): portabello mushrooms and button mushrooms, Radnips, Rainbow Radishes, Wild Rainbow Salad Mix, Green Smoothie Mix, Cilantro (almost done for the season) and other Fresh Herbs, Rainbow Leafies (various Kale varieties + Chard), Scallions, Broccoli, and new this week – also for a limited time – Snow Peas and Sugar Snap Peas (they melt in your mouth!) We’re also getting larger amounts of Calendula for anyone who wants to order them on their own to make their own healing teas or salves – please let us know if you’re interested.

Mushrooms as big as your head! Or a plate!

Every Pea picked by a hand, our hands.

Our artistic rendering of this week’s veggie offerings ….

Pictured: Cilantro, button Mushrooms, Arugula, Radnips, Wild Rainbow Salad Mix, Scapes, Sugar Snap Peas, Portabello Mushroom, Scallions.

Our event with Wheatley Woods is still on for tomorrow – a foraging walk and plant sale. See the details on Facebook.

Native Service Berries

You can also see the details for a foraging walk next Saturday June 25th (we may be having another special guest that week, check out Facebook for that announcement!). We’re currently taking registrations for Session 2 of the Kids Gardening Club, you can find out more at this link and on Facebook. We post every new event we’re hosting on our farm on this website as well, check back on the Foraging + Market Events page for update.

One last announcement …. a new CSA member has started a twitch live feed that will feature foods they will be making with their CSA veggies each week. You can find it at twitch.tv/margaret_haddad . This is a new live feed, they’re only in their second week, and comes with a warning that the language might not be appropriate for all ages 😉 The schedule is Mondays at 3 pm for art, Wednesdays at 8 for Community Sourced Cuisine (featuring veggies from Locally Germinated and eventually their own garden), and Friday at 9 for Food with Friends. Looking forward to seeing how this progresses!

Harvest day pick list; new beds for perennials

 

Funny accident, panoramic picture

 

 

 

 

 

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Week 3, Tasty and Lovely

As we’re going into Week 3 we’re amazed at the variety of veggies we have so early in the season! Considering that every year we’ve been in operation we didn’t start until mid-June it’s so lovely to see the fruits of our labours from last year paying off.

Week 3 – Rainbow Chard, Parsley, Garlic Scapes, baby Garlic, Broccoli, Radnips, Cilantro, Wild Rainbow Salad Mix, Rainbow Kale, fresh Mint, Chives, Rainbow Radishes.

The Vegetable of the Week is ……Salad Mix!

Otherwise known as Wild Rainbow Salad Mix, each bag is unique and pops with flavour! We love a salad with flavour and colour and so unique you can’t find it anywhere but our farm. We use a combination of salad greens such as Gourmet Salad Mix, Red Planet, Sulu, Vulcan, Lovelock, a large variety of Romaines (to come later), Salanova, and some other secret varieties 😉 We also include baby spinach, fennel, dill, purlsane, wild spinach, arugula, mustard greens, spicy Asian greens, vivid choi, parsley, baby bok choy, edible flowers (arugula, chives, nasturtiums, calendula, clover, and more), and other seasonal surprises. In our opinion our salads are best enjoyed with a light vinaigrette dressing and on sandwiches, wraps, and burgers (veggie or meat). Farm child Faenin’s favourite dressing is olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, garlic powder (made with garlic scapes), and nutritional yeast. We also enjoy eating the salads straight out of the bag. Salads can be made more delicious using more fresh parsley, fresh cilantro, fresh dill, rainbow radishes, radnips (the tops are also a salad green), broccoli, kale, chard, garlic, scallions, or grilled mushrooms.

Couldn’t decide which picture I liked best!

Make sure you wash the salad mix again – we try our best to get out the grass, woody bits, bad parts, and dirt, but we mainly wash the greens “to take off the heat of the field” so that the greens stay fresh. If your salad greens seem too wet in their bag you can try spinning them again or removing the moisture with a towel and then returning them to their bag so that they stay fresh for as long as possible. Our salad mixes will stay fresh for up to 2 weeks as they’re picked within 24 hours of market + pickup and we do our best to chill them as quickly as possible. Salad is available almost every week of the CSA (it’s sometimes too hot during Summer to get the seeds to germinate or to grow).

We have been tossing around the idea of creating Green Smoothie mixes again – is there any interest in this? Please let us know if this is something we should offer again. This would be a mix of wild, foraged greens and flowers to be used in green smoothies.

Broccoli, Calendula, baby Garlic, Cilantro, fresh Nettles, Horseradish, Leeks.

Courtesy of the farm children …. Jokes for the week!

Q: Why did the Kale blush?

A: Because it saw the Salad dressing.

Knock, Knock
Who’s there? Lettuce
Lettuce who?
Lettuce in and you’ll find out.

and the classic …

This week marks the return of bunched Rainbow Kale and Rainbow Chard. Garlic Scapes and Broccoli are just starting to come on. It will be the last of the Rainbow Radishes and Radnips for a week or two. This is the last week for “gallions” / “scarlic” / baby garlic. Fresh herbs available this week: sage, oregano, dill, chives, mint, parsley, arugula, cilantro, and thyme. We’ll have portabello mushrooms available this week for those that enjoyed them on special last week.

A reminder that fresh flowers can be used with member credits when picking up at the farm.

Join us at the farm Saturday June 18th for a Foraging Walk and Plant sale with Wheatley Woods. Details at Market Events and on Facebook.

We had some lovely rains this past week and with the rain came some “aliens” ….

Cedar Rust

After an unfortunate start and troubles with a supplier we finally managed to get our Tomato + Watermelon seedlings to size and planted! The farm children were falling over themselves at the chance to plant their favourites, Watermelons! Better late than never.

Thanks to ShopEco for these lovely pictures of our market day ….

And thank you to Andrea for these lovely farm pics to end things off for this week …

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Early June Offerings

VEGGIE OF THE WEEK IS ….. PORTABELLO MUSHROOMS!

Certified organic Portabello Mushrooms from Highline Mushrooms in Kingsville.

This week and every week to come make sure to check out the VEGGIES! tab on the blog for updates and recipes for every vegetable we grow and sell. We also update with all the varieties we’re growing in 2016. This week we added fantastic and easy recipes for Portabello’s including Grilled, Vegan Pizza, and 24 ideas from Canadian Living. This week only we’re offering a reduced price on these super fresh and local goodies.

After the last 2 very hot weeks I was inspired by this link for No Heat Summer Potluck Dishes for all from thekitchn.

From the farm children – Jokes of the week:

Q: Why was the mushroom invited to lots of parties?
A: Because he was a fungi to be with!

Q: What do you call a fast fungus?
A: A mush-vroom.

 

Produce available this week includes: the last of the Alliums for a couple of weeks (leeks, scallions, baby garlic), Portabello Mushrooms, the last of the Rainbow Carrots until later in the season (perfect for making Soup Stock), Potted Basil for the home garden, Radishes, small amounts of Broccoli, our unique Salad Mix (includes a wide number of lettuce varieties as well as arugula, parsley, fennel, and sorrel), fresh herbs (Cilantro, Sage, Thyme, Chives, Oregano, Parsley, Arugula, Fennel, Mint), herbal teas (mint, lemon balm, nettles).

French Breakfast Radishes are the fastest growers!

We get a lot of our fresh herbs from Union Herbs, a local small-scale start-up located in Ruthven. Check them out on Facebook to see what they’re up to! In exchange for herbs they receive a share of our produce, here’s a picture from Union Herbs of last week’s offerings ….

Radishes, Salad Mix, Rainbow Carrots, Baby Garlic, Leek

For our farm market members and customers – it’s the last week to pick up your certified organic vegetable seedlings, maple trees, and potted purple coneflower.

Artwork by Andrea Nickerson of Neo-Vintage Artistry

Our first market day with The Cheese Bar went very well! Some pictures….

We’ll regularly have fresh cut farm flowers from seasonal blooms ….

ShopEco took a great little video of our first CSA Member Pickup and Market day, you can find it on their Facebook page.

This Saturday we’re joined by MFA Tavis Lea of Petropunk for a “plein-air” landscape painting class. See event details on our Facebook page. Keep updated on all our market events on Facebook or on the tab “Foraging + Market Events“.

Tavis Lea, MFA, of Petropunk

Around the farm this week ….

Harvesting Wildflowers from a nearby wild space.

Frog Friend we found on our wildflower adventure.

The largest Fox Snake we’ve seen in many years. It thought it was well camouflaged in this location.

 

 

 

 

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Signs of Spring!

Happy Springtime everyone!

We are still accepting new members for 2016, check out the “Membership Info” page for all the details. We are always adding new information to the “Veggies!” page and the “Foraging + Market Events” page as well.

After a lovely family gathering this past weekend we decided to go out and photograph the gardens in very early Spring. Here’s what we found popping up, peeking out, and springing up:

On the banks of Tremblay Creek……

…..Ramps (Wild Onion/Garlic/Leek) are making their appearance.

Tracks found in the field.

Identified as Wild Turkey.

Frank the Tree is ready to greet farm visitors.

Garlic

We’re growing a HUGE amount of Garlic this year to try and keep up with demand.

Experimental patch of perennial Garlic that was planted in 2014.

Overwintered Carrot

1 bed of overwintered Carrots that was left uncovered and became snacks for Rabbits. Luckily there are 2 more beds of Carrots that will be early season treats for members.

Overwintered Kale, the sweetest of the sweet!

More Kale peeking out.

Collard greens overwintered beautifully.

Siberian Squill is always the first to flower.

Strawberries

Tansy coming back to life.

Perennial Onions, also known as Walking Onions or Egyptian Onions.

Lettuce that accidentally overwintered.

 

Farm child Oddy peeking into a covered bed to see what’s inside.

Experimental bed; Lettuce left to go to seed that will hopefully re-seed itself for an early crop.

Sweet overwintered Parsley.

Chives are out, providing a much-needed nutritional powerhouse for the buildup of  mucous-producing Winter illnesses.

Overwintered Leeks are making their appearance.

Maple keys trying their best to take root.

Scallions in the greenhouse, almost ready to plant outside! Photo by Carther Plants.

What is now a large expanse of empty, muddy soil will soon be turned into a lush garden of veggies!

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