It's February Already!!

It's February already and that means planning for the 2011 is fully underway. Seed orders, greenhouse prep, labour decisions, CSA member lists, garden planning and even seeding has started.

Trays of green onions and bulbing onions have been seeded and placed in our newly built germination chamber. We have built the germination chamber to hold 20 seed trays. We are hoping to get higher and faster germination with our trays.

Some of the berries we offered our CSA customers in 2010.

Getting greens ready for a Wednesday CSA.

Neighbour brought 19 hives to the farm in June.

3rd Week of CSA!!!

We picked strawberries from Brown's U-pick farm for the bags this week.... they are red, juicy and tasty!!
Our garlic scapes were ready for the bags this week...... so curly and tasty too.
Derek and Sarah pulling weeds in the giant squash field. If all goes well, there will be plenty of squash to go around and then some. We've planted lots of varieties including Buttercup, Butternut, Delicata, Acorn, Spaghetti, and Baby Pam pie pumpkins!
We've been putting green onions in the bags every week so far. They look and taste good and grew well in both the greenhouse and outside.
Last Saturday was our first week at the Kingston Market. The table looked very good and full for the 3rd week of June. We brought the first carrots of the season and sold out of everything very quickly! We hope to be at the market every Saturday from now on.

Packing bags just in time for pick up and deliveries.
Greenhouse is looking good for the 3rd week of June.
Derek is experiencing the magic of the lettuce spinner!

Summer is coming!!!

CSA FULL for 2010
Our CSA is now full for 2010 but we will be selling at the Kingston Farmers' Market so you will still have an opportunity to taste our produce. We thank everyone who expressed interest in being a member of our vegetable delivery program this year. If you did not get a spot for the full 20 weeks this year we may still be in touch later this summer for a partial season share depending on this years production. We will also be adding more memberships to our CSA in 2011.

Digging the new cold cellar!

Jodi is giving Sarah a lesson on how to use the seeder....

Joel and Derek transplanting onions

Carrots, radish, turnips, onions...... yummy!


Andrew is teaching Sarah how to dock the lambs' tails

Joel and Derek have discovered the fun of burning the weeds!

Putting parsnips into storage for now...


We have been bottle feeding 2 of our lambs because they were rejected by their mother...... they are always hungry!

We experimented with low tunnels this spring as an addition to the greenhouse to try and get a headstart on the season!

Derek is busy weeding the new carrots...... it definitely paid off... they look awesome now a month later!

Here are a few pictures of our apprentice cabin (a work in progress).

The Cabin has a full washroom with toilet, sink and shower. The tonge and groove 1" boards are 90% complete in the bathroom with only the ceiling and just above the shower left.

As it can be seen from this photo a loft has been constructed over the entry and washroom area. Once the floor is install in the loft it will make an ideal spot for a matress and sleeping quarters leaving the entire main floor area available for a living room. The picture also shows the insulation and vapour barrier that has been install in the rafters. The walls in the main living area still require the application of insulation, vapour barrier and tonge and groove boards. Tonge and groove boards are also planned for the ceiling. The insulation of the washroom was previously completed prior to installing the tonge and groove.

The next picture is the best one I could get of the main living area as it is hard to take good pictures of smaller rooms. Where the table is located now we could see installing a small wood stove with a flat top which would allow for heating the cabin as well as making coffee, tea, or cooking a small meal.

Here is a picure of 10,000 sq.ft green house now under construction.

Lark is our draft horse which we are planning to use on the farm this year.

Week Three of CSA.

The third week of CSA deliveries has come and past. There have been some set backs that we have had to overcome and are still dealing with. We have been slowly regaining control in the vegetable gardens. We could not get in the fields to cultivate because of all the moisture. It was stressful not to be able to see what was growing withing the weeds. Now with a lot of the weeding done we are more confident with the progress of the gardens. Because the weeds grew so fast we are now discovering what seeds were smothered out and are doing some reseeding. We have not started selling at the Kingston Farmers Market yet because we are focusing on the CSA and making sure that we have what we need each week for the bags. The potatoes are doing much better than last year. We will be offering new potatoes this week in our bags.















We have been making some final decisions about the open farm day. August 15th will be the day. The time will be between 1pm and 4pm. We will be putting more details in the August newsletter.

Week 3
Spring Turnips
Green Onions
Mixed Lettuce

Carrots

Beet greens

Garlic Scapes

Snow peas

Tatsoi

At least we have rain...

The weather hasn't been too cooperative this year. With all of the rain it has been hard to get on the fields to even weed. The weather has been great for the slugs unfortunately. The slugs ate a whole bed of lettuce in the greenhouse. The temperatures have been cooler here as well.

Thinking back to last year this year is a lot better already At least things are growing even if not as fast as we would like them. Last year there was no rain for irrigation and the irrigation spring on the mountain couldn't recharge itself fast enough. We dug two new irrigation holding ponds on the mountain.

July 8th was our first CSA delivery day. Because we took on more customers this year it takes a full day of non-stop work to get the bags ready for 4:00pm. It will take a couple of weeks to get the systems going smoothly. The most trying part of the evening deliveries was finding street names and house numbers but we found everyone.

Because of the wet weather we were just able to get the lime and pelletized chicken manure spread on the fields. The oats and clover will be sowed this week.

KINGTSON FARMER MARKET

If you have been to the Kington Farmers Market you would have noticed that we have not been selling our produce yet. We are aiming to start in August. We have put off going to the market to concentrate on the CSA bags.

In the above picture there is Mizuna with honey mustard, balsamic vinegar and alive oil. Tangy but good. Andrew made up some club sandwiches using our lettuce, chicken and bacon. We had swiss chard, spring turnips and tatsoi sauted with chinese cabbage and garlic.