Week Six!!!

Yukon gold potatoes, snow peas, beets, carrots, fennel, three varieties of head lettuce, broccoli and summer squash.

Beans next week!!

Garlic Scape Purée

We cut the rest if the garlic scapes today. We used all I'd the garlic scapes to make a purée that we can use all winter. One if our girls favourite treats is garlic cheese bread made with garlic scapes. We chopped the scapes and put them in the food processor with a small amount of olive oil. We froze the purée in ice cube trays. We ran out of ice cube trays so we moulded the purée into cookie cutters and then froze .

Getting ready for fall!!

Getting greenhouse ready for fall planting already. We flail mowed the snow peas today. There are now two large bays ready for fall planting.

Honey!!

We have a friend keeping thirty hives on the farm. This is great for our blueberries and squash fields.

If your honey ever crystallizes all you have to so is put it in a pot of water and put or on low heat. The honey will go back to its golden syropy consistency.

Two sunny days in a row!

After having so much wet weather over the last three weeks we have had to really focus on getting the rest of the gardens planted and seeded this week.  Hopefully the colder weather will be done soon so we can get more trays out of the small greenhouse so we can transition it into cucumbers and eggplant.  Our eldest daughter transplanted some cucumber transplants into her garden only to have them die from the cold nights we have been having.  

More rocks!! 

Lily's favourite part of our morning.

Getting ready to attempt to use the earthway seeder to seed more peas.  The earthway worked great for pod peas but not for the snow peas.  The seed plate kept getting jammed and cracked.  We had tried modifying the seeder with a pvc cap but it didn't work for us.

Spring greens

Large greenhouse is fully packed with spring greens. Almost time to transition to more heat loving crops.

Harvesting!!!

This week we sent a large harvest to Real Food Connections in Fredericton. We harvested arugula, mizuna, mustard mix, Choi and spinach.

Potatoes, Jerusalem Artichokes and Greenhouse

Still alittle wet....

Our Anatolian making sure everyone is where they should be.

Transplanting bulbing onions.

The puppy making "friends" with the rooster.ion

Spring Greenhouse Pictures.

Arugula and weeds...

Getting the seed potato ready for planting.  We get our seed from Good Spring Farm in Keswick every year.

Early Wonder Beets

Spinach

Head Lettuce Transplants

Greenhouse Preparations

Greenhouse Spinach

Soil health in our large greenhouse has greatly improved since the beginning of last season. 

We have been preparing for transplants to go into the large greenhouse. 

March Madness!!

Making sure we have everything ready for the large greenhouse.

Thumbs up!!

Chris making a batch of potting mix.

Constantly babysitting the transplants.

Andrew trying to find room for more trays.  It is time to start potting up many of the transplants.

The 2013 season has started!!!

Last wednesday we replaced the plastic on our small greenhouse.  It was one of those things that should have been done two or three years ago but never got done.  There just seems to be so much to do!!

 

80 Trays and Counting!!

We are starting out own sweet potato slips this year.  We bought Certified Organic sweet potatoes in Fredericton.  We were going to eat them but thought trying to grow our own slips would be better.   I think I may have started them too early.  They did not sprout at all until we put heat mats under them.  Each potato has an average of 15 slips each.  As the slips get to 4 inches tall I cut them off and root them in water.  When they grow roots I have been putting them in pots.  We are hoping for the best.




Organic Sweet Potato Slips

Organic Sweet Potato Slips

Time to Sign-Up for 2013 CSA Program!!!

Certified Organic CSA vegetable box program for Saint John and surrounding area.   Everything we offer each week is grown by us on our farm on the Kingston Peninsula.  Pick-up for 18 weeks $558.00. 

□ Pickup at the farm in Kingston on Wednesday between 4PM – 8PM
□ Pickup at 40 Ashburn Lake Road in Saint John on Thursdays at 5:00pm
□ Pickup at The Junction in Quispamsis on Thursdays at 5:45pm
□ Delivery to your home Wednesday evenings (Additional $5.00 fee per week)

All additional information on our website. www.chestnutacreslimited.com