07 Pictures

Hey gang, i wanted to finally put some pictures of our field up onto the blog. Things are growing nicely and we have our second CSA pick-up in a few days. The market has been going quite well and we've basically sold out every market so far this year except for this past Thursday(it was pouring rain and everyone packed up early). So we ended up going to the St Stephen market yesterday(another town near to us) to sell some of our extra produce.

Here are some pics from last Monday(our first CSA pick-up)



Everyone last week got Salad Mix, Head Lettuce, Arugula, garlic scapes, radishs and either spinach or kale



Brad, Kath, Mike, Ben and Luke


Early this spring me and Luke put in a lot of time building ourselves a greenhouse to house our transplants for the spring. The idea was to build a greenhouse that could be very well sealed so that we can put heat into for our transplants. This will be our 3rd greenhouse, but our other two are either quite poorly sealed or too small. We were donated 6 large (6'x 6') double paned thermal insulated windows by a friend who was happy to get rid of them which made the greenhouse a lot cheaper.

We ended up only building the frame this spring before decided that we would wait until mid summer to put all the finishing touches on it.




We actually ended up wrapping a large piece of plastic(also given to us) over the entire structure this spring so that we could put our transplants and a heater in it.






Here are some shots of our field. It's about half again the size of what we did last year.













Also, very exciting is the fact that we have tomatoes in our greenhouse that are nearing maturity

CSA #1 and The Story of June

Luke:
Well, it's been a quick and busy 6 weeks since out last post. We've had 5 markets since the end of May, and we were quite pleased that this year we actually had greens to sell at our first market(that's a month earlier than last year). We've sold out at every market, although that probably isn't quite as impressive as it sounds, as we don't have a whole lot to sell(but we're still very pleased).

Work has included planting, weeding, trellising, tilling, bed prep, and a whole assortment of other little tasks. Mike is also the assistant Farmer's Market Manager, which basically involves being there when the manager isn't, so that he can 'put out fires'. Thus far, no fires.

Brad went to BC, had a good time, and came back. So we have out bread baker back, and last week he added a nice caraway rye bread to our booth, along with some bags of granola.

Katherine went to Toronto for a weekend to watch he sister Nicole's dance show. Magnificent by all accounts. The highlight was when Sofie,(Katherine's 3 year old niece) unprompted, shouted "Arriba!" in between 2 dances, while the theatre was silent.

Last weekend I went to a Scythe workshop. It was fantastic. I learned how to wield my scythe, sharpen it, build a new snath(handle) for it, and a little bit about hay making. Scything is a lot of fun. With a well designed blade and snath, you can stand upright(back straight) and with a well sharpened blade and good mowing conditions, you can hardly notice the blade cutting the grass. I was very impressed that it could feel more like meditation than working.
And when I returned, my brother Ben was here! And he is staying until mid August! His wife Sara comes in a couple weeks too! So we've been having a lot of fun, and we've put him to work. He even freed up enough time for us to write a blog post!

Now I will pass it over to Katherine so she can say a bit about our first CSA day:

We finally sent our happy campers home with their first CSA bags of the season! In the bags we had garlic scapes, salad mix(with edible flowers), arugula, spinach or kale, radishes and a head of lettuce. Also included was a little newsletter with info of what is going on on the farm, a bit of info on the salad mix, and a recipe for Tahini Garlic dressing which will be up on our website soon.

Almost everyone came on time and some people picked up bags for their friends. The beauty of living in a small place is that everyone is already friends!

We had a great time putting the bags together and greeting everyone as they came to the farm to pick up their goodies.

In a few days we should have a special page on our website set up for all the members so that they can converse about their veggies and share ideas on what to do with them. Keep an eye out for it!