Bantry Bay Farm

2012-01-09T13:41:00.003-04:00

Happy New Year All!

Well, it is 2012, only 3 years since our last post...and that was by Scott but I'll still count it:)

Last year was our 5th year of running the CSA. It was possibly also our best season yet. We for an even better one this year. So far we have had a fairly mild winter which may help with the bugs but who knows at this point. The lack of snow cover definitely has me a little bit worried about the garlic but the amazing thing about garlic is how resilient it is. Well, that's not the only amazing thing about garlic but it's one of them.

This year brought a fun surprise. Our friend Chris came by to drop off some of his wild mushrooms and told us he has the best crop of Shittake mushrooms they'd ever had. We had innoculated about 20 logs 3 or 4 years ago but nothing ever really came of it. When we heard him talking about how he'd had the same experience we thought we'd better check our logs, just incase. Well they were booming, some of the mushrooms were as big as my face! It was amazing. We quickly harvested them and enjoyed a few delicious meals with fresh from the log mushrooms. I wonder what will happen this summer? Wild mushrooms are really fun to hunt and eat but be sure you or someone you are with knows what to look for. Chantrelles are an easy one to start with and have a flavour unlike an other food I've tasted.

New this year?

We are hoping to get artichokes into our bags this year. It is a crop we have been working with for the last couple of years in the hopes of eventually getting it into the CSA. Fingers crossed!

We will be doing a lot more mulching this year after a poor haying season last year, we acquired a large amount of small square bales of hay. The biggest challenge with mulching is making sure you add enough mulch to an area. Mulching can do wonders, it keeps the soils moist(less watering), it keeps some pests away(but the cool dark underside is perfect for slugs), and best of all, if you get a good, thick layer on your plot, it can keep all your weeds at bay.

Well keep updating you through the season and let you know how things are going. Good luck to all of you reading who are experimenting with your own garden, flower pot or window box!

At the farm

2009-09-16T21:11:00.003-03:00

My dad and I flew out to New Brunswick on Monday evening (overnight flight) to visit the farm. We both wanted to visit Mike again and thought it would be great to spend a bit of time out on the farm as well. I was out previously in the spring when they were mostly prepping. So this will be a good contrast to catch some of the harvesting.

Neither of us slept much on the flight so when we got here Tuesday we were both tired and didn't even get out onto the farm. The time change here is only 4h, but with my schedule change (I normally go to bed around 2am and that's switched to 9pm) it makes the time change almost 10h. I mostly slacked off today, but ended up getting a few photos and picking / "processing" some onions for their CSA tomorrow.

I'm out here until Monday and my dad for about another week after that. So it should be good times. And it'll probably be nice to have a couple extra hands on the farm.

This is also re-posted on my personal blog.

Cinnamon Rolls Recipe

2009-05-24T14:35:00.003-03:00

Cinnamon Rolls Recipe

Ingredients:

Dough:

4 3/4 to 5 1/4 cups unbleached white flour

1 package active dry yeast
1 cup soy milk
1/3 cup buttery spread
1/3 cup golden sugar
1/2 tsp salt
3 fleggs (see notes at the bottom)

Filling:
3/4 cup brown sugar (also see notes at the bottom)
1/4 cup unbleached white flour
1 Tbsp ground cinnamon
1/3 cup buttery spread

Glaze:
1 1/4 cup sifted powdered sugar
1 tsp maple syrup
1/2 tsp vanilla
1 - 2 tbsp soymilk

Directions:

1. In a large mixing bowl combine 2 1/2 cups of the flour and the yeast. In a saucepan heat and stir the milk, 1/3 cup butter, sugar, and salt just until warm (120 to 130 degrees F) and the butter almost melts; add to flour mixture along with the fleggs. Mix with a wooden spoon (or if you really need to you could use an electric mixer on low) for 30 seconds, scraping the sides of the bowl. Then beat vigorously for 3 min. Stir in as much flour as you can.

2. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Knead in enough of the remaining flour to make a moderately soft dough that is smooth and elastic (3 to 5 min total) Shape dough into a ball. Place in a greased bowl; turn once. Cover; let rise in a warm place until double (about an hour).

3. Punch dough down. Turn our onto a lightly floured surface. Divide in half. Cover, let rest for 10 min. Meanwhile, lightly grease baking pans or sheets and set aside. For filling, stir together brown sugar, the 1/4 cup flour, and cinnamon; cut the 1/3 cup butter into the flour mixture with a pastry blender or a fork or your favorite cutting implement until the mixture resembles coarse crumbs or the butter isn't in big clumps anymore.

4. Roll each half of dough into a 12x8 -inch rectangle. Sprinkle filling over dough rectangles. If desired, sprinkle with nuts or raisins (i was always sad when i found raisins in my cinnamon buns so i discourage the rasinage) Roll up each rectangle starting from a along side. Seal the seams by pinching. Slice the ends off each roll, then cut the remaining log into 12 pieces. Place in greased pans or sheets.

5. Now you can chill your buns for 2 to 24 hours if you don't want to cook them right away. If you are going to chill them cover loosely with plastic wrap. Then take them out of the fridge and uncover and let the buns rise 30 min before baking. If you don't chill them just let them rise for 30 min.

6. Bake in a 375 degree F oven for 20 to 25 min or until light brown. While the buns are baking prepare glaze by stirring together 1 1/4 cup sifted powdered sugar, 1 tsp maple syrup, and 1/2 tsp vanilla. Add enough soymilk to reach a drizzling consistency. Remove from the oven and drizzle with glaze before consuming.

Notes:

(1 Flegg = 1 Flax egg = mix 1Tbsp ground flax with 3 Tbsp water and let sit for 10 min or so till it thickens up)

(Brown sugar can be made by adding 1tsp to 1 Tbsp of molasses, depending on how dark of brown sugar you want, to 1 cup of golden sugar and smushing the mixture with a fork until the molasses has been thoroughly distributed.)

I Hope you all enjoy this recipe!

Brad

We're Back! :)

2009-05-21T23:22:00.002-03:00

Hey Folks! It's been sometime indeed. Thanks to Scott's visit and the high speed Internet install today; the farm has been given a kick in the pants into the 21st century.

The installers had some technical difficulties, but all in all they did a bang-up job and with mike's trip to the US to drop his brother back in Bangor, he also had time to pick us up a wireless router, so now the farm is connected and wire free :) I am in heaven again.

Sadly there is a cap on max downloads per day, but it's not a big deal, i will just have to scale down my web tv habits that i gained in fredie over the past 12 months. So i guess i should go into that.

I am back on the farm! Yay, I have a part semester left and then i will be graduating with a Honours Major in Computer Science and a Minor in Math (If all goes as planned). I will be commuting up to fredie to finish that up this fall, and as such i needed transportation, so i purchased a 2004 Ford Ranger from some friends of ours!

All in all i have been busy since being back on the farm, and i haven't really done much farming, i am more of the lunch chef and errand runner. As well as Chief Moral Officer (or Neelix, for the HC dorks out there).

Well now that we have high speed there really is no excuse for not blogging it up so i will try and get those farmers inspired to post a farm update. Many things have changed since i have been gone, but it is soooooo gooooood to be back.

Hope everyone out there is having a great time and now that we have finally upgraded, i look forward seeing most of you online or in person again soon.

Brad

ps...
The farms is now viewable (at least how it was in fall of 2007) on googlemaps here.

Cinnamon buns

2009-05-20T13:52:00.003-03:00

Brad made 84 cinnamon buns this morning... there's 8 of us, need I say more?

Building Jumby

2009-05-19T10:35:00.008-03:00

Glassy and Feastly just weren't enough... so as of yesterday Jumby is now fully covered and just about ready for planting. Since I'm sure you're wondering, these are the names of their greenhouses... I'm just out for a few days for a vacation and labour on the farm ;-). The blog was mostly comatose so I thought it necessary to put up a quick guest post

I was last out on the farm almost exactly 3 years ago at the start of their first year. They had 1/4 acre and were still in the panabode at the time. A few weeks ago they all moved into the farm house. If you've ever watched a horror movie that takes place in a remote location... this is probably the house they used for it. Windy dirt road approaches through the woods to a two story needs-another-paint-job white 100yr old house with a rackety porch.

Weather's suppose to be nice over the next few days, so hopefully we'll be able to get the greenhouse totally finished and planted before I leave Thursday, but that may be optimistic.

The Monday morning meeting:

For the whole album: http://www.flickr.com/photos/hadsie/sets/72157618474840806

Whizbang Garden Cart

2008-10-28T20:01:00.002-03:00

Hey everyone, we finally stained our Whizbang Garden Cart. Here it is in parsnip-top action.

Mike

VIRTUAL TOUR!!!!

2008-07-07T20:40:00.010-03:00

Welcome to your Bantry Bay Farm VIRTUAL TOUR.

I've taken some pictures starting at the top corner of our field and working down to the bottom. It may be difficult for those of you who have never been here to have a frame of reference but hopefully this will give you an idea of scale at least.

I've included an overhead shot as well that a friend took from a small 2-person plane a couple weeks ago.

Bags of Veggies!

2008-06-30T09:34:00.004-03:00

Today is our first CSA pick-up day! We just finished harvesting and putting the bags together. Because of our spring cutworm problems, we had been a little nervous about the first weeks of the CSA. But things are actually looking better than we had thought. At the very least for the first week. We had planned for July to be smaller, simply because there is much more variety in the the later months, but after 150 feet of lettuce seedlings disappeared(and smaller amounts of almost everything else) we had thought we would have a meager July.

But looking at our first bags, we are very happy. Lettuce, broccoli, arugula, radishes, and sugar snap peas. The broccoli and peas are much earlier than our first two years, which has helped fill out the bags for now, but of course we're just stealing from the later weeks.

Anyway, this is where some of the fun of the CSA comes in. We have a plan on the computer, but of course life doesn't work out like that. The great thing is that we can hopefully still make it all even out by the end of the year.

We did miss our first ever farmer's market last thursday(in order to be sure we'd have enough for the CSA) which was only a little sad(since we could sleep in!). We hope to be back this week, because now we just have too much of some crops to put in the bags. So it's too much of some, not enough of others, which again is great with a yearly membership program.

But the real hero of the story: strawberries. Now, we don't sell strawberries(yet), but we planted a fair amount for ourselves last year. They've fulfilled all expectations, such that we've been gorging, and still freezing some for a fruitless day. If I had to pick a favourite fruit, it would probably be strawberries, so they really have done wonders in curbing cutworm anxiety.

The runners up for hero of the story: The Midnight Hunters(mainly Mike and Kath, guest starring Luke and Sarah(a friend from town)). Cutworms come up to the surface at night, crawl along the soil, nibbling our seedlings, and sometimes chopping down the larger transplants like miniature lumberjacks. With the help of crank flashlights, and keen eyes, the cutworm hunters move down the rows, hunched over, stalking silently through the night(for an hour and a half or so). The cutworms are helpless, caught red-handed! The rest is too gruesome for this website.
The first few hunts were plentiful, but being human, we just couldn't help but over-hunt. Eventually we were going out only to find a few lonely cutworms! Well, I don't think we need to put them on the endangered species list just yet(better to wait until next year).

The Guitar hero of the story: Brad. Brad came down this past week, and brought his playstation avec guitar hero. Needless to say, we rocked.

Happy Summer Everyone!

2008-06-16T06:53:00.003-03:00

Well, it's market time again so I've put up a few pictures of our first market(which was may 30th). We've had 3 markets so far this year with spinach, radishes and pac choi at each one, along with some lettuce mix for our most recent market. So far we've pretty much sold out at each market and have picked up a lot of names for our next year's CSA waiting list.

Work on the farm has been busy. All our warm weather transplants; tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, melons, cukes, winter squash and zucchini's, were set out over the last couple weeks and we seeded many more. So far most of our crops our doing well, although we've had a few big setbacks as well. Some of our early crops have actually come in earlier than we would have liked and some other crops haven't come at all. Our CSA doesn't start until July (meaning our members don't pick up any veggies till July) but both our peas and broccoli are looking like they'll be ready in the next couple weeks. This is quite good in the long term, as we'll probably be able to start our CSA earlier, but for now it leaves us in a bit of a quandary.

Also, we've had some issues with seedlings of various crops getting munched away by unknown culprits, the main suspects being hares, voles and cutworms. The hares tend to nibble away our greens and the voles get some pepper and melon seedlings but we the main damage has been caused by cutworms(http://www.acornorganic.org/cgi-bin/organopedia/insectdisplay?351) or some other insect eating all our lettuce. So far several lettuce plantings have seemingly disappeared while the lettuce is very very small, only a 1/4" or less in size.

Other than the lettuce losses things are really going quite well, our goal of getting crops as early as we can is going splendidly. We'll probably be getting peas, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, carrots, beets and tomatoes several weeks to a month earlier than we had them last year. Also, our transplants this year have looked so much better than the past two years its remarkable. I suppose they get a wee bit more light than they did when they were in our living room :)(check out the April 4th post for a few pics of the greenhouse).

I hope all your gardens are growing well, and for those without time for a garden, plant asparagus ;)

mike

Peas and Carrots

2008-05-18T15:41:00.002-03:00

Well, our tiller had a flat for a week and a half or so. We got a new tube shipped in, and since then we've been rocking. We're happy to be caught up with our planting schedule. Hard to believe the farmer's market starts in a couple of weeks. We won't have much(never have) for the first weeks, but it's still exciting.

This weekend we have the rest of the gang here on the farm: Lori, Tony, Sofie, Sasha, Brad, and the third McCord sister, Nicole, here for her birthday! Fun times.

I got the scythe out last week, and cleared a bit of our front lawn. It was good to wield the blade again.

I(Luke) am also cutting down my hours of tree work with our neighbour Kevin so that I can spend more time working on the farm. The next four weeks are our busiest of the year, but so far it's feeling good to be outside in the garden. I weeded onions for a few hours on thursday and found it was better than I remembered. It's funny how the seasons do that to you. I'm sure that by autumn I'll be happy not to weed for quite a while.

So Bantry Bay Farm plods along through the spring. This weekend is a nice pause for friends, family, and fun. Hope that y'all are finding time for the same.

Luke

'em Farmer's are Busy

2008-05-15T20:22:00.003-03:00

Well I (Brad) thought that considering there hasn't been an update in awhile, and the farmer's are super busy with all that farming stuff, I'd fill people in on what I am doing. It may not be farm related, but perhaps it will fill the void between farm news.

I got back mid-April from my trip out west to spend time with my folks and bro, and whoever else was nearby. It was a nice but long four months, and i felt the urge to get back into school.

I researched how long my degree was going to take to complete and how i could get into the education department of UNB. I have discovered that by July of '09 i will be done my CS degree if i take classes straight through from now till then, so that is what i am doing. Sadly, i also discovered that the UNB education faculty hates Computer Science students and told me i would have to take an additional years worth of courses to be even eligible for their program, which i didn't like hearing. Luckily there are many options. So for now completing my CS degree with as high grades as possible is my priority; hence, my current station as Non-Farmer.

I am living in Fredericton, and taking one course at the moment: Japanese. So far it is going great i have learnt part of the writing system, and am on my way to being able to greet and ask questions in Japanese. So far so good, and watching ridiculously amounts of Japanese Anime probably doesn't hinder my learning.

The flooding was crazy in Fredericton, there were people kayaking and canoing down streets in some parts of town. I helped Tony and Lori (Kath's Sister and Brother-in-law) and their neighbours, relocate some of their basement contents to a less risky location. The left their house for a couple of weeks and stayed in a hotel, i believe they are planning to get back home before the weekend.

I hope to visit the Farm, Luke, Kath, Mike and Bailey as much as possible through the summer and i hope i get to see some of the visitors we are expecting, but we'll see how the summer goes. So far things are going great, and i hope the same for everyone else!

Brad

Here we go!

2008-04-23T19:34:00.003-03:00

Well, it's hit! We've had a couple of weeks of warm dry weather, and we are going full tilt. Tilling, bed prepping, and planting. We'll include some pictures, but I must say our transplants generally look better than they have in past years. This is most likely due to the light there receiving in our new greenhouse. Last year we had them in our living room, looking starved and spindly. They are probably also helped by the afalfa meal and soybean meal we added to our soil block mix, something we didn't do last year.

Today, we spent all day planting onions, broccoli, parsnips and carrots. It felt great to be out in the field working hard.

Yesterday, I broke the manure spreader(it's a trailor with a conveyor belt along the bottom, and spinning paddles at the back that fling the contents out the back) when I was using it to haul compost over to the field. It's an old piece of farm equipment that's been sitting behind one of the barns for many years. With the help of Kevin and Carole, our neighbours, we hooked it up to the tractor, and voila, it still worked!.....for a couple of hours. I(Luke) tried to do something stupid with it, and snapped a couple of old chain links while it was unloading. Then we had to get in to unload it with a shovel, and I fell through one of the floor boards. Must be all the winter weight I put on.
So, we're going to get some new parts, and try to fix it, as it is quite a handy piece of machinery. It'll be especially handy for spreading compost on our new field that we'll be expanding to next year.

Earth day also came and went. The local chapter(of which Mike is the chair) of the Conservation Council of New Brunswick organized a town clean up, a potluck, and a hike. I got out to the clean up and the potluck; both we're great. Sounds like the hike was beautiful as well.

Hopefully our blog posts don't get too choppy and spread out as the busy season gets busier. I'll try to stay on top of it.

Lastly, I'm not sure if it's been mentioned on here, but all 50 of this year's CSA shares have been filled! It's really great to be in a community with so many people that are interested in what we're doing. We haven't hardly advertised.

Happy Belated Earth Day, everyone!

2008-04-04T11:06:00.007-03:00

A few pics of our Greenhouse in operation, some Garlic poking up through the soil and our new homemade garden cart.

Spring?

2008-03-22T08:49:00.003-03:00

Well, so far spring has been freezing winds. We'll get there.

We've missed a few posts because we've been quite busy (and I forgot to put reminders in my workbook. I don't have any reminders for reminders!). Katherine and Mike went to the Atlantic Canadian Organic Regional Network(ACORN) conference, for a weekend two weeks ago. They went to workshops, talked and met with other farmers, and even brought back a big box of apples from the silent auction.

Since then, Mike and I built a garden cart. Now, we didn't really know how to build a garden cart, but there was quite a bit of information on the internet, including a guy with his own blog and manual on how to build a good garden cart almost entirely from common building supplies. He calls it the Whizbang Garden cart. We ordered his manual and built ourselves a whizbang. I'm glad we did, because it's really a great cart. I doubt it would have been as durable or balanced had we built it on our own. We'll post some pictures at a later date. If you're interested in building your own, or just learning more about garden carts, here's his link: gardencartblog.blogspot.com

Most importantly, we bought a wood pellet stove for Glassy. That's the greenhouse we built last spring so we could have something sturdy and well insulated to hold our transplants. So far, the stove has done well. Why wood pellet? Good question. We looked into wood, wood pellet, oil, propane, and natural gas. We basically asked four question: What will the economic cost be? How reliable will it be for our needs(how well will it perform)? What will it take to operate? What is the environmental cost?

I'll just summarize for those that are interested. If that's not you, skip to the last line of the post. For more discussion, feel free to email us.

The greatest economic cost over time will be fuel. From the information we could gather, combining fuel cost and the capital cost, after 10 years the costs would be, ranked from most expensive to least: Oil, propane/natural gas, wood pellet, wood.
The next two questions are actually quite similar. A heater's ability to keep the temperature of the greenhouse steady is pretty much directly proportional to the amount of human operation it requires. Propane/natural gas has a thermostat, which means that it is easier to operate and will keep the temperature steady. Wood pellet and oil can be set to a steady rate, so therefore require some attention in order to keep the temperature in the greenhouse steady. Wood stove is obviously the most hassle and the most likely to fluctuate in temperature.
The last question is environmental cost. We deemed the wood pellet to be best here. It's carbon neutral(after production and transport of course.....and the igniter which is electric), it burns cleaner than an ordinary wood stove, and it is a local and renewable resource.
So, to summarize the summary, we chose wood pellet because it seemed to be a good balance of the four concerns. It would have been nice to have a heater that was the least expensive, best performance, least hassle, and least environmental cost. Apparently said heater does not exist. Anyway, right or wrong, the decision has been made(phew!); our heater is cooking away in the greenhouse, keeping thousands of transplants warm:)

Hope you're also keeping warm and well!

Luke

Exciting Stuff!!!!

2008-02-29T08:16:00.002-04:00

Hello Everyone,

Despite the fact that it is STILL Winter, we are managing to remain entertained and somewhat busy.
The guys have done THE BEST basement clean up this house has ever seen. We have been on the search for the best set up down there as we use it all throughout the season. In the spring we make our soilblocks(see last post) down there, then in summer and fall we use it to clean and package all our veggies. Like a New Year's resolution, we've made valiant efforts to keep the basement clean but slowly let it slip as we got busier and busier, but this time, it's gonna be different!

Christmas came late this year to BBF, when Mike went to pick up a bunch of items we ordered! It was very exciting to see our new Salad Spinner which holds 5 gallons of leafy greens. Talk about speeding up the salad process!!! We also received some serious amounts of slitted row covers and floating row covers. What's the difference? Slitted row covers allow us to give a bit of extra heat to our plants whereas the floating row covers are more often used to protect our plants from those pesky insects that try to gobble up our veggies(eg. Cucumber beetles and flea beetles). Mike, as our watering captain, bought a water timer(so we can set a time when the water will turn on and off! This is going to be our morning saviour as those early morning watering were somewhat dreadful last year) and a spray bottle to mist our transplants. We got a new bed rake which I am really stoked to use. It is super light and wide so bed prep will hopefully be much easier. Then there were a whole bunch of little tigglies like tomatoe clips, knives, etc that were pretty great too.
Also very exciting, we decided to use organic cotton cloth bags in our CSA to hold veggies like tomatoes, green beans, lettuce, etc. We found last year that we were just using too many plastic bags and weren't satisfied with that. We are also going to use non-toxic, biodegradable plastic bags at the market for now and see how that goes. Would you pay for a reusable cloth bag instead of a plastic bag at your local market?

This coming weekend is my(Katherine) birthday and the guys are up to something but I don't know quite what it is!!! They told me I have to leave for a good long walk. Bailey will be happy!
The following weekend is the ACORN conference that Mike and I went to two years ago. This year some of our friends are part of the workshops so that's pretty exciting. Maybe next year we'll be part of a workshop! It's a pretty nice conference but like most conferences the best part is just seeing old faces, new faces and funny faces! We learn so much just from talking to other growers that sometimes I think that's really why they put these events together!!!

So far we have had a great response for our CSA. Roughly 25 people have signed up and it's only been 2 weeks since we've advertised it. Almost all of last year's members have signed up so that's pretty great. Have any of you ever gone to a farm event? Would you recommend any such fun event to us for our members?

Lastly and probably most importantly, Luke and I accomplished a long awaited task this week. We made the happiest snow fort ever,complete with secret snowball compartments. We then proceeded to ambush Mike when he came home from picking up all our packages!!! He was not expecting it at all but we suspect he's planning his retort quietly and mischievously.

Hope you are all well and keeping the fire in your hearts a burnin'

Yours truly,
Katherine

BBF Artichokes

2008-02-22T10:39:00.003-04:00

The farming season has officially begun, albeit in a very small way. On monday we started our first seeds of the year. Artichokes!

Our miniblocks, so little and cute. Only 3/4" by 3/4". We start many of our seeds in miniblocks for a few reasons. We can fit more of them on our heat mat, which raises the temp of the blocks to optimal germination temperatures and any that don't germinate don't take up as much space. The 100 miniblocks here would take up about 7 times more space if they were in our regular 2 inch blocks.

Our regular stand up soil blocker makes 2" blocks with a small indent for placing seeds. However it can be converted to punch out blocks with 3/4" by 3/4" holes in the top, perfect for recieving the miniblocks.

The regular dibbles and the 3/4" attachment dibbles

Like a little package, the germinated miniblocks fit right in to the larger 2 inch blocks. Check out the eager seed in the bottom left!

An Indoor Week

2008-02-15T11:03:00.003-04:00

Well, this week was a little slow, as Kath went to Fredericton to visit her Mami who was visiting, as well as Lori, Tony, Sofie and Sasha(Who's making all sorts of funny noises now, which I got to hear on the phone). Mike went to Fredericton for an Organic Farming workshop on crop rotation(as well as a visit with those mentioned). I chose to stay and hermit the farm with Bailey. Fun was had by all, and we even got an important piece of work done. We finished our CSA info/application pamphlet and sent it out!

For those who would demand an explanation at this time, our 'CSA' is our Community Shared Agriculture program. People pay at the beginning of the season for a weekly bag of fresh, veggies throughout the season. We did it last year with a group of 18 couples/families and it was a lot of fun.

This year some changes we're hoping to make:
-at least double the members(possibly triple)
-more variety of veggies including more peppers, melons, tomatoes, and spinach, as well as hopefully some appearances from others like artichokes, cauliflower, and brussel sprouts which didn't make it last year.
-a couple days where members come out to the farm for a potluck and/or harvest day.

Needless to say this is very exciting for us. The CSA fits very well into all our goals for the farm, especially that of having healthy relationships with our customers and community. Last year, we all noticed that it was a lot more fun harvesting when we knew who was going to be eating the food. It really makes us want to do a good job:)

So far we've had about 10 shares fill up, which we're very happy with. Last year we had a fairly large waiting list, so hopefully it won't be a problem filling up the spots by May. Then we have to do the real work, which is slowly becoming more appealing as the winter goes on.

Hope everyone is keeping toasty warm and dry wherever they are. Here we had freezing rain and wet snow.

Luke

pictures

2008-02-08T13:21:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to post some photos as the most recent pictures on the blog are from July:

These are from our last market of the year, Sept 27th. We continued selling produce to some of our CSA members until the end of Oct.

Our friendly market neighbor Bob. How appropriate that the vegans get placed right next to the hot dog/sausage vendor :)

A few shots of our greenhouse that busted in late October due to some pretty intense winds. All was well though as we ended up rebuilding it quite quickly in a much easier and better way.

For those who may not know, we plowed up another acre of land last fall. Here are some shots of Kath starting us off.

Some cute pictures of Sofie(Kath's niece)

Happy Anniversary!

2008-02-01T10:58:00.000-04:00

Hello Again Everyone,

We are proud to announce that today, February the 1st, is our 2 year anniversary on Bantry Bay Farm!!! Yahoo, balloons and streamers are flying everywhere! Things have certainly changed since we first arrived back in 2006. We've become 3 instead of 4(Brad is in BC now, but will grace us with his presence in the spring hopefully), grown in field size, focused on better crops, gained a new niece(Sasha), lost friends to bigger and better opportunity and made new ones! All in all it has been a pretty wild ride that all of us are completely in love with.

We recently finished our planting schedule and seed ordering so hold on to your seats while I fill you in:

At the beginning of the year we set up a schedule for ourselves to tell us when we need to plant all our different crops. This includes starting them indoors and getting them ready to be planted outside(there is a process to get them adjusted to the great outdoors called 'hardening off'). This year we will beginning in the middle of February with Artichokes(which Sofie loves!) and finish with Garlic(which I love!) in October. It's a full time task trying to stay on schedule but we did pretty well last year.

Now this is where it gets really exciting! This year we have decided to hone in on really good seed. The last few years we have been more whimsical in our seed selection and chose really cool sounding items instead of reliable ones. We are glad we did because we found some really great varieties but now it is time to find the kind that will produce more consistently.
Some of our oldies but goldies are lemon cucumbers, multi-coloured carrots, and really delicious Blacktail watermelons, which is a dark green round melon with bright red flesh. We also had a light green watermelon with a yellow flesh that was also quite tasty.
Some of our new recruits are super early sugar snap peas. These babies grow only a few feet high but they do it quickly for an early delicious treat. We also welcome a whole new world of cherry tomatoes! We haven't really grown cherry tomatoes before(just our yellow currants) so this will be fun. We are going to have an array of colours(red, orange, yellow, black, green, and maybe even purple!). A few other newbies are cylindrical beets(long and skinny and sooooooooooooooooooooooooo delicious!) and ace, lipstick and apple sweet peppers. We are constantly looking for sweet peppers and eggplants that will grow in this climate. They are finicky little things!

So there you have it folks! These are the day of our lives. What I forgot to mention was that I spent the earlier part of this week in Fredericton with my nieces. They are a riot. Sofie goes to school in mornings so I spent some time with Sasha and man can she smile! She loves to be tickled and lets out the best laugh when you get her going. When Sofie got back from school, we would get whisked away into one of her magical lands where she sells lemonade to customers walking by or go to her friends birthday parties around the block(which is really just in the next room over). She has an incredible imagination that is keeping her, and her family,well entertained.

Hope you are all planning your trips to come visit us,
Love Katherine

Dogs!

2008-01-25T11:12:00.000-04:00

The farm is being overrun by dogs! Two days ago there were ten of them in our front yard, and Bailey was delighted. There are now six living on the farm(5 of them with our neighbours), and our friend Julie comes to walk her dogs as well as her friends' almost every day. It's a nice break from the sleepy winter to see ten dogs racing around in the front yard(well, actually a couple of them are quite old and mostly supervise.)

Yesterday we had a great lunch with Chris and Graziella, of the Rossmount Inn(our favourite restaurant). Some of our readers may have been there, and others may be aware that we grow veggies for their restaurant through out the year. So January is a good time to talk about the coming season, especially to see if there are any strange treats that they would like us to grow this year. More importantly, it gives us an excuse to have lunch at a Chef's house. It was delicious, and after lunch it was exciting to go through the seed catalogue with them, and fantasize about the growing season.

Our growing plans are coming together now, and perhaps when we're finished we'll give you a list of the most exciting things we're growing this year.(exciting for us, not necessarily for you). It's very cold outside, toasty inside, and my biggest worry is my dismal record against Mike in speed chess. Winter is lovely.

Luke

What do you eat in January?

2008-01-18T14:07:00.001-04:00

Question

What do you eat in January when you are trying to eat as locally as possible?

Answer

A wonderful many things of several different colours, tastes and textures!

After a bountiful season, we stored away about 250lbs of potatoes, 150lbs of onions, 50 lbs of squash(which didn't survive in our storage space) and 10lbs of sweet potatoes(a tester plot).

We canned green beans, corn,chili, and loads of tomatoes.

Once we realized we could, we froze broccoli, green beans, blueberries(not from our fields), watermelons, pesto, soups and black currants(intended for jam).

And as a test we left our leeks out in the field to see how long they could last out there. Mike and I harvested them just the other day and made Leek and Potatoe soup, YUM!

Now I know you are all probably pretty excited by this marvelous amount of bounty in January but it's not over folks.

Not only do we have stored goodies, we also have fresh treats.

Yesterday Luke and I bundled up nice and warm to head out to our greenhouse to plant our first lettuce of the year(to be harvested in March) and harvest a multi-coloured bowl of salad. You might not think it possible to harvest lettuce in the dead of winter but let me allow you in on a little secret I've only just discovered after years of disliking lettuce salads...there are so many other things to put in a salad!!! We've been eating salads with greens called names like claytonia, mache, hon tsai tai, tat soi, arugula, and of course the well known kale and spinach. These are all really winter hardy greens, especially the mache and kale, the former of which will survive under a blanket of snow. They have been complemented, in our bowls, by other delicious eatings such as carrots, radishes and green onions.

Once you've set up a little cold frame you too could be the proud harvester of a plethora of lovely green, orange, red, black(winter radishes), and purple things. It doesn't take much more than a few pieces of wood and some old windows or plastic. Or if you are more into curves you could build a little hoop house. The possibilities are many. For those of you are not into the growing part, if you know a local grower in your area, ask them if they can do it! We love suggestions from our customers.

So other than eating, we have also been busy planning the year, deciding what seeds to buy, what projects we have for the year, and finishing up our meetings. The guys spent a snowy day splitting wood with our neighbour Kevin while I was researching the possibility of offering a share to low-income families with a gov't grant.

All in all, a pretty great start to the year. We are all very glad to have this time to rest, plan and re-energize for the coming season. We are going to need it!

Hope you are all well and finding lovely ways to keep warm,
Love Katherine

Mission Statement

2008-01-11T09:58:00.000-04:00

Well gang, I(mike)have been back for about a week now and most of our time so far has been spent talking about the future of Bantry Bay Farm and looking at goals and aspirations for years to come. We spent some time before Christmas creating a mission statement for the farm and we are now setting goals to try and realize that mission statement to its fullest extent. Here is the finished product so let me know what you all think of it:

Mission Statement

1)Environmental Responsibility:
-To create a business that shifts our food system towards environmental sustainability

2)Healthy Relationships:
-To foster healthy relationships with our members, customers, and community

3)Quality Food
-To provide the healthiest, tastiest, and freshest food

4)Workplace
-To create a place where workers feel fulfilled

___

At the beginning of last growing season we sat down and made a list consisting of all the major jobs on the farm. The idea is that the list would get divided up among the farmers and that each farmer would be 'in charge' of his or her particular job. Now being 'in charge' didn't mean you had to do it, it just meant you needed to make sure that all pertinent aspects of that job would get brought to the table and done.

Now, the dividing up of this list is actually quite a fun process. First we privately grade each task A, B or C. A rating of 'A' would mean it's something you really want to be in charge of, 'B' means that you don't particularly WANT that job, but you're certainly happy to take it, and a 'C' would mean you don't want it at all.

So of course the fun comes in discovering which things you received outright (eg. having an 'A' when the others put 'B's) and wrangling to get or not get the jobs where you tied with others(eg. all 3 people putting 'B's). Its like a Christmas where you know what all the presents are and which ones you want, just not which one's your going to get.

Anyways, I received such exciting gifts as Tool Care, Planting, Bed Preparation and Finances. I know you're all thinking, "how lucky can one guy get!" , but believe it or not, these are aspects of the farm which I am genuinely interested in being in charge of. We're quite lucky in that our interests are diverse enough that almost every task on our list gets a rating of 'A' by at least one person.

In fact, we had only two jobs on the list that received a grade of 'C' from all three people, Trellising and Watering. So if there are any potential farmers out there who are just super pumped about being in charge of those two tasks, I'm sure we can find a place for you at Bantry Bay Farm.

-Mike

Happy New Year!

2008-01-04T11:40:00.000-04:00

Hello Everyone!

It's been a long time(six months?!). Well, with a new year comes a renewed commitment to keeping the farm blog up to date, so allow me to summarize the last six months.

The summer was bountiful, and our trial CSA program went great. Most of our members seemed quite pleased with their bag of veggies every week, and it was very meaningful for us, knowing who was going to be eating the food we were harvesting. We were very thankful to have a community of people that were willing to commit to us for three months, especially knowing that we hadn't done this before.

To help us out on the farm last summer(help us read Harry Potter 7!), we had my brother and his wife, Ben and Sara, for almost two months! Needless to say the book was great, and Ben's narrating/voice acting was as wonderful as ever before.

In the fall, things slowed down a bit, but a few CSA members kept coming back every week for more veggies even after the program had ended. We had some visitors in the form of Sara's parents, Wally and Sue, who were having a cross North America vacation, and stopped at the farm for a couple of days. The most important events were the dinner Sue made for us(peanut sauce and tofu veggie wraps) and the chess matches between Mike and Wally, both avid chess fans. The first game was quite an upset(Mike victorious) and a rematch was necessary for Wally to set the record straight.

Other visits included Audrey and Paul, complete with old uncomfortable chairs for us to store, and later Naomi Allard, whom we hadn't seen in far too long.

Also, during the fall, Katherine was dog sitting for some friends of ours for two months, so we had the pleasure of getting to know Ginger. We look forward to seeing her on the farm next year when she comes to pick up her CSA bag.

Perhaps most important of all, we had the pleasure of welcoming a new Farmer to the world on Oct. 26. Lori and Tony had their second daughter, and she's just as unique and wonderful as the first! Her name is Sasha Renee Mais, and we can't wait for Sofie and her to take over the farm when we retire.

We tried to get all of our important work done, and managed to squeeze in a short but fun visit with Zach Lee(an old Vernon friend). On Nov. 19, Katherine and I set off to BC, to visit my family there. We arrived just in time to see Ben play the part of Fagan, in a stage production of "Oliver". He was fantastic and we were thoroughly entertained. Then we proceeded for the next few weeks to visit with family, get beaten by big padded swords my brothers had made, and we even got a chance to make it to Vancouver to quickly visit some old friends(and a new one in the form of Daniel Thomas Brunelle, Lane and Sofia's new son!). Mike joined us in BC in December and stayed there for Christmas, whereas Katherine and I made our way back to Toronto to have Christmas with her family and some of the Davar family. My second McCord Christmas was a delight(like the first), and I even got a birthday lunch complete with birthday presents! I also got to see my Auntie Terry, which was fun and timely, as she may have moved back to BC by the next time we're in Toronto.

And now we're home! whew! And it's good to be back! I've probably forgotten a few important things but perhaps they'll appear in later posts,(hopefully sooner than later). One of the things we wish to improve in this year is organization, and that includes scheduling a time for updating the blog! So for those of you who are reading this, you may be hearing from us more regularly....

07 Pictures

2007-07-07T10:13:00.001-03:00

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

2007-07-02T15:35:00.000-03:00

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!

Changes(word up 2Pac)

2007-05-17T08:49:00.000-03:00

Well as we learned from our good pal we need to start making changes! That's just the way it is, things will never be the same. Here on the farm Luke has morphed out of his hibernation cocoon into a farmer, Mike is up early every morning, Brad is back and I felt the spring shift from idle, cold, quiet to movement, sunny warmth and an overwhelming sense of already being behind on farm work! Oh the beauty of spring.

While Brad was away Luke, Mike and I were all assigned to different tasks. Well really we voted for our favourite ones and then wrestled anyone who wanted the same ones. Lucky everyone was pretty balanced. Mike ended up with items such as watering, planting, tilling, weeding, etc. Luke got winter gardening, season extension, composting, harvest, etc and I got market, seed saving, CSA, fruit, etc. When Brad got here we figured he was a baking, computer maintenance, website, and all around farm help kind of guy! So far it has been working pretty well.

We are starting out a new endeavour this season with our CSA. There will be a webpage on our website about it soon but I'll tell you a smidgen about it here.

The basic concept is a bunch of people get together, the farm figures out the cost of their food, they divide that amount up between all the people who got together. All the people(aka members) pay the allotted amount at the beginning of the season so the farmer doesn't have to worry about making money during the growing season. In return the members get a box of fresh produce each week. Depending on the set up of the CSA the members will likely have a say in what gets grown and what happens on the farm. Many farms will have work days throughout the season to get the members out in the field and to relieve the work load a bit. Mostly I think it is to get people closer to their food!

We are doing a small test run this year with 10 full shares. Many people asked for 1/2 shares so we ended up with about 18 families! Last Saturday we invited everybody out to the farm to see what we are doing. It was great to meet everyone and see so many excited faces.

This model is relatively new. It began in Japan in '65 and made it to North America some time in the 70's I believe. Since then it has been growing. It is a very basic model so it can be molded and shaped to fit each farm quite a bit. I think we will see this method sprouting up more and more around the world as more and more people learn and recognize what is happening to our food in the conventional growth system.

When I say conventional I am not talking about conventional versus organic. I am speaking to the large scale, far removed mono cultures that many people believe to be more economic. With the move to globalized organics I think you will see a lot of organic large scale, far removed monoculture that will certify under the national standards.

This is part of why I love the CSA model. The certification of this system lies in the members themselves. There is no third party who gives us a sticker we can put on our produce saying it's safe to eat. Everyone who is eating the food can be out here observing the growing methods themselves.

Another part of why I love it, is that the money that these members give ends up mostly back into their local economy again, instead of travelling to wherever it would otherwise. Most of us understand that rural living is fading out of fashion very very quickly and small local businesses are becoming a tourist attractions instead of a resource. However, there are still a lot of people who value rural living and want to keep the tradition alive. This is one part of the solution!

OK, so stepping off my soapbox I noticed that some of you are wondering, "so what's actually happening on the farm". Well Luke is learning how to program computers so he can make awesome games. Mike is the constant farmer. Sometimes we have to have interventions and make him play a game or two! Brad has been doing baking prep to get ready for Market which is only a few weeks away!!!! As for me I have been getting some practice in with massage and debating where to take a correspondence course in biology from.

Last weekend we started our first set of mushroom logs which is exciting. We inoculated them with spawn and then next year they will grow Shiitake mushrooms!! Yum Yum. It's pretty easy and if any of you want to try it check out this website http://www.fallsbrookcentre.ca/forestry/mushrooms.htm

Well I think that's muchos nuchos,
Hope y'all are one with the changes that are happening in your life!
Love Katherine

A Post School Post.

2007-04-27T10:22:00.000-03:00

Well it's the time of the year in Fredericton, where all the for rent signs start popping up in the windows of shady looking houses. Yes it is the end of the school year for those that aren't taking intersession. I have to say I fully enjoyed my time here, I had a great landlady and the fact that my cousin was going to school as well, I was able to hang out with him and his engineering friends. Now you may think that why would CS (computer science) student hang out with engineers, well it is easy CS students are an anti-social kinda crowd.

So all in all this semester can be summed up as a good time. I just got some of my grades back this morning and I am quite sure I am off academic probation, which I was put on because I dropped out of sfu with a sub-par gpa. I think it was a good call to go back to the school, my grades definitely show I can handle it. So my future academic plans are to possibly get an education degree along with my CS (which supposedly only takes another year), and maybe become a teacher and farm in the summers.

As for some current farm news: On earth day we all joined in for an early morning bed race accompanied by our vegan friend Cedar Sky. Basically a bed race is a race where you push a bed like cart with one person sitting in it and four people pushing.

Our Bed sadly didn't have steering and it took a long while to figure out how to do it without someone getting maimed. Cedar got caught up in our steering rope and ended up getting run over by the cart in the process. That is when the rope was retired. All in all i realized i was extremely out of shape. After the bed race Katherine headed back to the farm to do some baking and farm maintenance work while Mike Luke and I stayed back and picked up trash in town.

I got some good sun that weekend and before i headed back to Freddie for my last week here. Katherine, Bailey and I joined some others for a walk in Ganong park with a bit of a tour of future plans there, and also to get a look at the "Great Scar" aka the bayside Quarry.

Well Soon enough you will be getting some good quality farm updates things have been very busy this past week and a lot of things in the mix. Not just peat sand and soil :P

Brad

Winter, Spring, Winter, Spring...

2007-04-13T07:20:00.000-03:00

Well, despite the 4 inches of snow outside, year 2 of Project Organic Farm is under way. We've had more snow in the last 2 weeks than we did all of November, December and January combined(and possibly February too). It's a little bit maddening at times, as we go from having a beautiful clear sunny 10 degree day to having a blanket of snow when you wake up the next morning. I've just been looking at the forecast for the next days and it looks like cold, rain, snow and a symbol I've never seen before labelled as 'ice pellets'. Yippee.

Despite the non-cooperation of the weather, things are moving along nicely here. We've got all our materials and are ready to start building our glass greenhouse once the snow melts. The idea is that we will build this greenhouse quite air tight and then place our transplants in it in the spring. We'll heat this greenhouse with propane most likely, which actually ends up being more environmentally friendly then using electric heat(which is very inefficient). The need for this greenhouse is threefold. For starters, our house is currently holding our transplants, but it is simply not big enough to hold them all(we will probably have nearly 60 2ft x 1ft trays by the end of it). The other major problem is that none of our plants inside, even the ones in the best spots, get enough light for optimum growth. Lastly, our other 2 greenhouses are either too small or too poorly sealed to make heating them a smart move. Here are some pics of what our living room currently looks like.

We have about another 8 trays or so in our living room since I took these pics. Check out the poor plants craning towards the window for light, the sooner we build our glass greenhouse the better :)

We're ready to get started on some serious farming out here, but it seems we'll need to wait a few more weeks before we can get really started up. Hope things are well with all of you.

"An Ode to Parsnips"

2007-03-28T15:57:00.000-03:00

You've lasted the winter, and the ground has now thawed,
I withhold my thumb's up, but perhaps a slight nod,
for carrots and radishes are much more of a treat,
But you take so little work, and therefore I eat.

If you were to appear, another time of the year,
I might leave you out, and not even pout
But you shout "spring is here, or at least it's quite near!"
And stir more excitment than many a sprout

So, for all of you who read this and are thinking, "Hey, I love parsnips!", well let me at least say that Katherine made some the other night with potatoes, turnips, carrots and tofu, and some spices and it was actually delightful. So I figure it's mostly in the preparation. And they really do hold a special place in my heart, and stir more excitment than many a sprout.(Not a hot pepper sprout though, which is in our living room right now!)

Did you hear that?

2007-03-15T08:20:00.000-03:00

Well, it's beginning to look a lot like spring! Not just a living room full of transplants, but the snow melting as well, and new birds seen and heard. Most exciting were a pair of bald eagles we saw perching in our backyard a couple of days ago. Well, it's time for year 2 I guess. We're finishing up our plans, and we're starting all sorts of transplants: leeks, some tomatoes, onions, broccoli, cabbage, and even a few artichokes.

It hopefully also means we'll start posting somewhat regularly again. Because there might actually be something interesting to say.(Even though my aunt says it doesn't have to be very 'newsworthy' for aunts to be interested)

Something else that's exciting is my new homemade riddle blog, called Homegrown Chestnuts. There's a link on the right, and an introduction on the page itself.

Also, due to the anticipated arrival of the final Harry Potter book(#7) this July, we have 'begun' reading them together. I'm reading aloud to Kath and Mike(alas, Brad is at University reading books of a less friendly nature) and of course when I say "begun" I mean we're on book 4. If all goes well I'll pass the torch over to reading/voice master extroardinaire, Ben McLean, when he and his wife Sara hopefully visit in the summer. Crossing our fingers!

Also of note: our homemade greenhouse survived the winter! Believe me, we were all scared at some points. It gets very windy here in the winter. One vent broke off but Mike easily fixed it yesterday. We're still getting carrots from it, and Kath picked a very small salad the other day for lunch, because most of it is either eaten(by us) or frozen to death. Hopefully next year we will cover up all the cracks, thus insulating it a little better, and we'll have even greater bounty. Also, we'll be building some new cold frames this spring and they will add to the winter bounty as well. Root cellar? still not sure if we're going to build that one this year, but it looks like it may be postponed.

Another project: some very friendly neighbours donated us some big new windows(they had planned to build a sun deck, but had recently decided not to) and we're going to build a small greenhouse with them for transplants. Very cool(or warm hopefully).

Well, that's what's on the mind these days. We'll keep you 'posted'!

Luke

just checking

2007-03-06T16:44:00.000-04:00

I just want to make sure that I'm doing what I'm trying to do

A Breaking of the Fellowship...

2007-01-18T11:58:00.000-04:00

Okay, so maybe it isn't a breaking of the fellowship... Just a hiatus. Last I mentioned on the blog was that I was waiting for the decision from UNB, well they decided and I was accepted. So about a week before my parents came I enrolled in a few classes and started to look at a few places in Fredericton.

The place search was a bit horrific, I went from place to place feeling like only a sadist would willfully shack up in these places: one place had 5 ft ceiling! how in the world could someone live in a situation like that; another place had a sooo many small rooms in this house it looked like a sardine can; one landlord was sooo proud of his walls that they were R?? something certified... the place sucked, but them walls were great; and the last but not least, was a landlady who acted either like a mom or a prisoner guard... no people after 10, you have to do be in bed with the lights out at 12... no talking after 12. Anyways Lori (Katherine's sister) saved the day, yet again. She sent an email out to her friends mentioning that one of us were looking for a place to stay while going to school and a friend of a friend of Lori's responded.

So now I living in probably the best place I could find. I have a great, trusting, and environmentally conscious landlord. The place is a century old home, about a 30 min walk from school, and a 2 min walk from the local organic food stores. I live close to the bar district of Fredericton, but that fact hasn't come in handy yet...

My classes at UNB consist of: Linear Algebra, Computablility and Formal Language Theory, Procedural Programing and Developement, Roman Art and Architecture, and Symbolism and Ritual. So far my classes are going well except for the Roman Art and Arch. course, my prof keeps on canceling classes and not telling anyone, so it has wasted more of my time than I want, and I have feeling she will rush to play catch-up later in the term.

All in all, the change has been good, I miss the Farmers and the Farm, but I do enjoy the changes as well. I just hope that someone doesn't join the cult and replace me :P Thanks to everyone that has supported my going back to school. And I will keep the blog posted with any fun stories.

Brad

Pagan Holidays Taken Over

2006-12-30T12:40:00.000-04:00

Well thank the good lord Jesus that the sun is starting it's return and hope is in the air! For those of you who don't know, there was a winter solstice a few weeks ago and that means the sun dipped down as low as it goes and is now on its return to the high sky!!! YAhoo. For us that means it's getting close to starting the growing season all over again!

Exciting things to look out for this year from Bantry:
1) MUSHROOMS! Tony Mais has become the head of the BBF mushroom committee. We expect to see results by the spring of 2008! Shiitakes here we come.
2) Continued growth of our orchard! More fruit trees for everyone!
3) Bees!!! One might ask why a bunch of vegans would keep bees? Well the simple answer would be that we are a bunch of phonies and just pretend to be vegan but the actual answer might be...so that we have pollinators to pollinate all the fruits and veggies in the garden, YAHOO!!!! Also, I want to be a bee charmer, look for me in a National Geographic years from now when I am covered in bees from head to toe!
4) This maybe the most exciting one!!! Are you ready! Our first trial run of a CSA!!!! YAhoo. St. Andrew's very own membership to BBF veggies. We may even hook up with some friends of ours who do fruit to add a special little bonus to the event.
5)This one may also be the best!!! Bike Trailer!! This year will be our first year using a bike to take our veggies to market. We are also going to be using the bike trailer to deliver the CSA food boxes to our members! Oh baby! It is an exciting year here on Bantry Bay Farm! We may not know what we are doing but we do it with vigor!
6)The last thing to look for is the number of new veggies we'll be trying:sweet peppers, eggplant, asparagus, artichoke, and raspberries are among the ranks!
Hope everyone is having/had a wonderful holiday season. I hope to see you all this year!
In the year of the pig may you find many truffles in the forest!

Love Katherine

Of Farmers, Yogis, and Samurai

2006-11-28T09:04:00.000-04:00

Well, well, Mike and Brad are back, fully enlightened and all. In the meantime Katherine and I have been relatively busy. I worked last week for Kevin(our neighbour on the farm and arborist) and learned to tie some cool knots and how to take down a tree safely when it's threatening to fall on a house. It was a beautiful week and a beautiful beachfront forest property that we worked at. Katherine and I moved a big pile of seaweed up from the beach and put it on our next year's beet and turnip beds. But most importantly we still haven't posted any pictures of our scythe in action so here's one, we got a samurai to come in and weild it for the picture.

Also, Katherine was on the front page of the New Brunswick Reader, and there was a story about us and the farm in it. That was a lot of fun to see; the story was written by our friend Larry, who lives in St. Andrews. So we're really winding down here for the winter, still have some work to do, but really moving into the next year planning phase. Mike will be arriving in B.C. on Dec. 11 and will be staying until some time after christmas. Brad's family is coming here December 15, and Katherine's family will be coming to(or staying in) the maritimes for Christmas.

Lastly, we are fully tasting the insightful words of one great visionary, "being warm isn't sustainable", as winter is approaching and we are perhaps a little to sparing with the firewood. We got lots of layers but guests seem to be visiting less and less often.

A Boston Post

2006-11-14T21:50:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone,

I figured while i had this 20 min window on the computer to do a post. Mike and I (Brad) are in boston, staying at the backpackers hostel, on our way to the Vipassana meditation center. It is relatively hard to think while a bar is beneath you blaring up some music so i will keep it short. Our new website is up and running, it was built to look good in mozilla firefox and i just checked it out in Internet explorer and it didn't look so hot. So if you don't have mozilla get it and then check out our website at http://www.bantrybayfarm.ca.

As for an update on the farm: we have finished the greenhouse, started our post frist year / winter planning talks. I am still waiting for the decision from UNB to whether i will be going to school in January or not. My family arrives to visit the farm and my mom's family for christmas on dec 15. So as i said before, quick post, but i will leave you with a beautiful picture :)

Picture Post

2006-10-20T20:52:00.000-03:00

Well, here are some pics to add color to Luke's post.

This is a pic of our final market booth. We've basically sold out of all our produce in this shot but managed to make the booth look nice for the pic.

A shot of our bike trailer which we'll be trucking to market in the spring.

Gorilla-Man Luke moves the greenhouse

Our delicious corn, ready and waiting to be harvested.

But wait!! Whats this large bear print doing in the middle of our field??

NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pictureless Posts

2006-10-19T10:05:00.000-03:00

Well, I still don't know how to add pictures to the posts. But that doesn't mean exciting things aren't happening! We are further along on finishing our greenhouse(hopefully pictures will be coming). A bear ate all our popcorn and left it's 'tag' all over our field. We just gave a farm tour to the New Brunswick Organic Farming Apprenticeship program a couple days ago. It's always fun to have new people out on the farm.

But most importantly, we got a new scythe! It's super awesome, and I've been cutting the lawn and field with it. For more scything info go to www.scytheconnection.com(that's where we bought it from). Brad's been working on a new bantry bay farm website, so hopefully that will be up soon, so far it's looking great. There's still lots of odd jobs to complete before we can sit back in a chair and give a big long sigh of relaxation. Then we have to plan for next year, which I'm really looking forward to, because now we know so much more than we did last year, and there is oh so much to plan.

One last exciting project in the works, is our human powered vegetable transport project. A.K.A our new bike trailer! We still haven't done much testing, but we're hoping we can take our veggies to market next year with a bike trailer(or maybe two). How fun is that? (I know you're all picuring me laying in the ditch with veggies all over the road and a runaway bike trailer heading down the hill towards St. Andrews) More on that in the future, and hopefully a picture as well.

Long time no bloggy

2006-10-01T16:10:00.000-03:00

Well, we've been quite busy, and forgetful. Hopefully there will be a couple updates in the next week or so because I don't think I'm going to cover everything right now. We just had our last market last Thursday. It was really great. Mike and I had been away in the U.S.A for 2 weeks, so Katherine and Brad had held down the fort while we were gone. We attended a vipassana meditation course near Boston, MA. 10 days of silence, and 10 hours a day meditating. Yikes! It was quite difficult but very healthy. My second course, and Mike's first. Mike liked it and we've both been meditating once or twice daily since we got back.(We'd like to make it twice but it's still difficult to find the time) For more information go to www.dhamma.org

After our course we helped out at the centre for a few days, and then got a ride and hitchhiked to Unity, Maine for the Common Ground Fair. It was positively marvelous. It's a fair put on by the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association. And it's huge! like 20,000 people a day. Mike and I volunteered setting up because we got there a day early and then Brad and Katherine came down on the weekend for a day and we got a ride back home with some friends.
While there, we went to workshops on: growing grapes, growing raspberries, growing strawberries, growing and storing root crops, crop rotation, tree pruning, seed saving, finding your spirit guide, solar energy, solar cooking, scything demonstration, scythe sharpening, homeopathy, homemade bike trailers.
There were also lots of booths with info, and books for sale on all sorts of subjects. We bought books about homemade earth-ovens, yurts and tipis, sustainable architecture, a unique village in columbia that is a major environmental/sustainability success story, and one about the Buddha and Angulimala(a terrorist/serial killer that become a monk). And needless to say, there was delicious food, and a farmers market!

So. now we are back home and still have a bazillion things to do and work on for the coming winter, next spring and beyond. The most important one: reading Lord of the Rings! I started reading Lord of the Rings aloud to Mike, Brad, and Katherine last week, and it has been a lot of fun so far. We just visited Tom Bombadil and are now staying at The Prancing Pony in Bree.

Hey dol, merry dol, my hearties!

Peter Picked a Peck of Perfect Pickles

2006-08-14T09:22:00.000-03:00

Well yes i know there is no Peter on the farm... But there certainly is alot of perfect pickles :P. We have started looking into ways to feed ourselves off the land in the winter, which has ended up in projects such as another greenhouse, root cellar, and our winter garden. Another fantastic way is to Preserve stuff.

We were lucky enough to have a whole bunch of mason jars given to us by my mom's step-mom, Marie. So that was the main insentive to start canning, along with the abundance of cucumbers being produced. So the first day of canning kath wanted to make Garlic Dill pickles, and I wanted to make Mustard Pickles.

So with a little bit of research and some prep work the pickles went off without a hitch, well as far as we can tell because we haven't tried any yet. After market this week we had alot of cucumbers left over (20 lbs. in fact!) so i decided to make another batch of pickles and this time curry pickles were chosen. After all was said and done 11 quarts of curry pickles were produced.

So far I think that is a good start to some Winter Bounty.

What does a farmer do when she/he isn't working in the field???

2006-08-11T16:57:00.000-03:00

Well I thought it was about time to dispel the myth that farmers have no life...Ok well maybe it's true but we have gone "out" to a few events in the last little while.

Last night we went to the Grand Opening of a new Nature Trust site. Yipee!

A week ago we went to a benefit show for the Dragonfly center, which is the local Autistic Camp!! For those of you who know nothing about Autism, I will tell you.
Autism is WAY more prevalent today than it used to be. It affects aprox. 1/4 to 1/2 the population. It affects males more than females(not unlike other developmental conditions) "During childhood, autistic children may fall behind their same-aged peers in the areas of communication, social skills, and cognition. In addition, dysfunctional behaviors may start to appear, such as self-stimulatory behaviors (i.e., repetitive, non-goal directed behavior, such as rocking, hand-flapping), self-injury (e.g., hand-biting, headbanging), sleeping and eating problems, poor eye contact, insensitivity to pain, hyper-/hypo-activity, and attention deficits."
From: Overview of Autism
Stephen M. Edelson, Ph.D.
Center for the Study of Autism, Salem, Oregon

It is an interesting topic that I am only beginning to understand but the woman I have met through the center have been sensational. All very sensitive, loving being with an attunement to what matters in this world. The children they work with live in a different world and sometime they get to be a part of it. Wonderful. We need not search outer space for another world, for it is right here, we just need to see.

In the last few months we have gone over to Terry's(Tony's Sister) house for some live music. She has the perfect setting for it and Luke even played a little piano at the intermission, alright:)

The last of our adventures, which was actually farm related was up to Woodstock, NB for a marketing workshop put on by the Fallsbrook Centre(www.fallsbrookcentre.ca). They are a very cool group of people who do a lot of work on organic food, alternative energy and community projects. Check out the website.

So folks things may sound dull off the farm but that's just 'cause the party is happening on the farm! Our tomatoes are ripening and the beans are coming in! Oh Baby. YUM. Luke and Mike have been working on a green house. Brad's been working on turning the computer into a Linux/Microsoft hybrid and I have been weeding and hanging out with my D-O-G. Hope you are all enjoying warmth and love.

THE GIRL

The Fruits of Our Labour

2006-07-30T09:45:00.000-03:00

I said back in february when we were starting this whole endeavor that if we grew a single tomato i'd call this year a success. Well, we've grown a whole lot more than that so far, but here it is.

We weren't sure if we'd be able to grow peppers here, but we've since come to the happy conclusion that we most defenatly can.

Here are some other shots of a potato, cabbage, crookneck squash, sweet keeper squash and... CUCUMBER!!

Farm Update

2006-07-28T12:20:00.000-03:00

Well, things here are going great. Market has been exceptionally well these last few weeks, mostly i suppose because alot of our crops are finally coming in. Last market we had carrots, beets, turnips, radish, cabbage, brocolli, peas, zucchini, summer squash, parsley, cilantro, sage, lettuce, spicey greens, kale and onions. Really the only major things we're missing are tomatoes, cucumbers, cauliflower, beans, brussles sprouts, corn and winter squash. Within the next week or two we'll probably have everything but brussles sprouts, corn and winter squash. Needless to say this is all very exciting. Plus we have 3 markets next week which is gonna be crazy but we should sell a ton of veggies.

So, as promised heres an update of what's been keeping us so busy these past weeks. Basically we have 4 major projects on the go right now. Tilling up the bottom half of our field, building a mobile greenhouse, constructing a root cellar in the bottom corner of our basement, and... CHICKENS!! That's right, as of several weeks from now we may possibly have a few extra friends here at the farm. A local woman who is moving away from St Andrews has about a half dozen chickens + chicks and can't take them with here when she moves. She doesnt want to slaughter them or just leave them for the racoons, so she's looking for a place that will take them. We still haven't decided whether we will take them or not(as we only found out about this yesterday), but there IS already a chicken coop on the property, so who knows.

The other really exciting project is our mobile greenhouse. The idea behind the mobility is that you avoid the build-up of pests and diseases in the greenhouse by exposing it to the elements, as well as getting much much greater versatility in a crop rotation. The mobility in question is provided by a 2x6 rail secured to the ground and a 2x4 sled that slides on top of it. The greenhouse will either be 40ft long by 25ft wide, or two greenhouses at 12ft by 40ft. The advantages of the smaller greenhouses are that we're almost positive we could move it and that we would have greater versatility with rotations, heating, etc. However, it costs almost the same amount to make one big greenhouse as it does to make one small greenhouse. We, havent decided what to do yet, but rest assured we'll have a picture of it once its up.

Speaking of pictures, here are some before and after shots of our field.

Hard at work, Time flying by

2006-07-23T11:31:00.000-03:00

It has been a couple weeks since our last post, as Jason pointed out. We've been busy! Lots of weeding, best market yet, building compost, Brad cleaning out the basement, Mike re-organising our crop rotation, planting green manures and crops, planting winter veggies, and much, much, more!

Food is growing, so that's good. Last market we had beets, carrots, lettuce, radishes, kale, peas, and onions. What a party! Deer came for a visit a couple of weeks ago, and chewed a few beet tops, so we're making sure we have someone out there checking on the field past dusk, and someone else before dawn. So far that has been effective and there has been no crop damage, and a few deer sightings. We've also had friends of ours and of Lori and Tony come visit the farm for the tour, so that's been a lot of fun. One time, one of their children said, "Mom, can we save all our extra containers and grow food in them." And also, "Mom, can I turn my bedroom into a garden." So we are already starting to brainwash, which is definitely a highlight.

There is a few new pictures in the photos section of our website. Also Mike claims he will make a post about upcoming projects and possibly some photos as well. Perhaps a picture of our very first hot pepper in our greenhouse!! It looks like a hot pepper! In our greenhouse!

Canada Day and Beyond!

2006-07-07T13:57:00.000-03:00

Hello Beautiful People,
Thank you all for taking an active interest in our lives. Someone did a study somewhere proving the need for love and attention in order to grow into a well developed human being. We farmers feel loved and attentioned! That's farmer lingo.
Believe it or not Luke is currently hanging his laundry outside, Brad is putting his in the washing machine and I am here to bring you the latest in Bantry Bay Farm news. MC Hadfield has left the premises for a few days to see his Mummy and Daddy.
Our weekend entertainment(Sofie/Lo/To) returned full force this past weekend with friends from Halifax. We had a booth at the Canada Day market but it was in an unfortunate spot that wasn't great for selling our stuff but was a great picnic area for all the kids! Mike took on the rototiller we borrowed from a local gaffer. That took a little time off our hands!
The guys have started an ultimate frisbee group on Thurdays after our markets and are pumped about that. That leaves me with a couple of hours at the farm to myself which is oh so nice!
Markets have been going well. We are situated between a woman named Liz who sells dainty treats that look so cute and a gaffer named Bob who sells sausages, pop and fudge but plans on selling his business and retiring soon. There are two other farmers who sell produce but we all have varied items and not too much of it either. We've had quite a number of people come to the booth and tell us about how Margo would have loved to have seen what we are doing. I wish she was around for it! I guess she is:)
Our veggies are doing really well. We've been eating peas off the vines, salads, basil, kale, swiss chard and the latest and most exciting!!! BROCCOLI!!!!! We have a cauliflower head coming out and some really tiny tomatoes popping out!!! There are also little baby summer squash poking their bums out at us. The potatoes are flowering so that means new potatoes soon!! Yeehaw! In a couple of weeks our market table will be more varied than a pick pocketer's pocket!
I tell ya folks it's really freakin' exciting to watch all these little critters pop out everywhere. I highly recommend you try growing something. Maybe just a few peas in a pot or a tomato or whatever you really love to eat. You can do it inside you house even! Try it, you'll succeed!
Farmer out~

Back In Business

2006-07-05T21:23:00.000-03:00

Hey, the problem has been fixed the website is back up and running! YAY!

I promise an actual post tomorrow night.

Website Down =(

2006-07-04T10:22:00.000-03:00

Hello Everyone,

It seems that our website is down for the time being. I do not know when it will be up again, so i am sorry if anyone has been trying to link to it during these past few days. I will post again when the website is restored.

Vegis?? Oh yeah!!

2006-06-30T11:33:00.000-03:00

I've been meaning to put some pictures up on the blog, but up until recently i haven't actually been too sure on how to do it. Making thumbnails, uploading, html, etc. However, Brad made a handy dandy tutorial for us, so now the pictures and posts should be a little quicker to come. In fact, i think i might do a kind of 'Pic of the Day'. So, as a first, here's a shot of our field taken last week.

All our Vegis are doing nicely out in the field. So nicley in fact, that we took a whole bunch to market this week!! It was our 5th market overall but we had yet to actually have any vegetables to sell(We had baking however). The harvest started at about 4:30 in the morning, and Luke, Katherine and me went to work. By this time Brad was already well underway baking muffins for market. It took a little while to pick, wash, dry and bag but byt the end we had enough for about 20-25 bags of greens, 10 bunches of kale, 10 bunches of radishs and about 5 bags of spinach. It wasn't a huge amount, but it was exciting none the less.

Cleaning and bagging the last of the lettuce, as well as trying to stay covered up so the bugs dont eat me.

Our heirloom radishs, including: Easter Egg, French Breakfast, Cherry Belle and White Icicle. We also have a Black Spanish radish on its way.

The market went really well despite the fact that it was pretty fogged in. We managed to sell all the vegetables we brought which was pretty encouraging, although we are starting to look for more places to sell our produce, like restaurants. Here's some shots of our booth at market.

Some Exciting Times on BBF

2006-06-24T12:01:00.000-03:00

OK, it's been an exciting couple of weeks here on the farm. My brother Scott and sister-in-common-law Arianne arrived in St Andrews on the 11th. They hung out at the farm for a few days and then as Arianne's allergies got fairly bad so we packed up and headed out to visit my Aunt, Uncle and 3 cousins who live in Charlottown. Katherine, who also has an Aunt and Uncle who live on the island, decided to tag along and visit with them for a few days. Charlottown is quite a beautiful city and has a nice walkable downtown/harbour area. It was great to be with all of them as they were the first family I'd seen since coming out east. However my parents are flying into Quebec City on the 1st of July so I'll see them in a couple weeks too.

So while me and Kath were out on PEI this left Brad and Luke to hold down the farm and take care of Market while we were gone. What could go wrong? Well in fact, nothing went wrong. Hurray! Well, at least nothing went wrong that was their fault, per se. Although, while Brad was baking the muffins for market the oven broke and ended up burning the bunch, so... no muffins for market :).

Yesterday, the four of us took a trip up to Cornhill Nursery which sells tons of different trees, shrubs, flowers and.... FRUIT! We picked up 2 Apple trees, 1 pear tree, 2 Blueberry bushes, 4 grape vines and get this, KIWIS!!! Bet you didn't know that kiwis could tolerate winters as cold as -40C. In fact all the trees we bought and in fact, everything that Cornhill sells is cold hardy enough for NB weather. So now we have to both find a spot and plant our fruit... and then BAM!! Magical fruit for years to come. If you find these types of things exciting, which I do, then these are very exciting times.

The Com-POST

2006-06-10T18:50:00.000-03:00

I'm writing a post about compost. What compost? The compost we built today. It all started when a man named Brian drove a dump truck full of horse manure onto our field today and....dumped.

So we got started. We laid down a bunch of pine boughs just to give it a little lift off the ground for drainage and aeration. Then we started making layers. Like a wedding cake of poo. We started with hay for a few inches, then horse manure, then seaweed(which had been sitting in a big stinky pile for the last two months, as our dedicated readers will remember) then sod(cut off our field a couple of months ago) then hay, and all the way through the cycle again and again until it was about 4 feet high. The end result was a big pile of delicious waste, ready to break down into delicious humus(delicious for our plants next year hopefully). Who would have thought shoveling crap could be so much fun!

We still have lots of manure, so more compost piles will be coming soon, and we may get more too, from other local horse owners with big piles of poo, and no one to turn them into veggies.

In other news, Katherine will begin reading "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho to us tonight. Should be a hoot. Also, Mike and I have started up daily juggling practice again, after our inspiring first market experience.

And more! Thursday night, Mike and I went to St. John for a conference on "Atlantica" where we saw Maude Barlow and a couple of others speak about/against Deep Integration and Free Trade. It was very moving at times, and it's also always nice to be in a room of 500 or so people who really care. To quickly introduce the issue, big business in the maritimes is hoping to diminish the border between us and New England even more than NAFTA already has. So basically all of the problems associated with free trade apply. For those of you unfamiliar with such issues or wishing to learn more, please visit www.canadians.org. and click on the section called "deep integration"(on the left menu) All in all, an inspiring event, and perhaps a slight kick in the butt to be a little more educated on current events. But it can't beat shoveling poop!

Our First Fantastic Farmer's Market!

2006-06-09T11:16:00.000-03:00

So this is the Farmer's Market of St. Andrews, it is held every Thursday starting at 8:30am. We do not have any vegetables or greens ready for sale, so we decided to take organic vegan baking to market till we have sufficient vegetables to fill up our booth.

To sell prepared foods at market someone needs foodsafe, so I elected myself to take the course in St. John, and visit family in the area as well.

The Course was all about salmonella, Ecoli, Camplyobacter, and other high-protein (meat) food-borne illnesses, so being a vegan I found most of this information wasn't a huge benefit, but ah well, makes me happy that I won't have to worry about all those fun little bacteria.

On Wednesday night, the night before market, I baked Raisin Oatmeal Cookies, Fruit-Filled Oatmeal Bars, and Peanut Butter Macaroons. I got finished up at about 11:30pm and was in bed and asleep probably around 12:30am. I woke up at 4:30am to start baking Muffins, I wasn't sure how long a quadruple batch of muffins would take to bake so I left a lot of time. I was done in plenty of time before market to relax before we drove into town.

One of our benefactors, Terry (Tony's Sister), lent us her car for the day. It was great having a car for market because we got to drive all the way into the market square and pop open the trunk and setup right there.

We didn't have a lot of things to setup a booth for market. So it was my mission in St. John, with the help of the Auntie Trudy Taxi Service, to find a canopy and some containers to sell stuff from. So our booth consisted of our newly bought canopy a plastic table that we were using in the greenhouse, a couple of bed sheets as table clothes the plastic containers full of vegan baking, terry's trunk as s seat, and a very old "Bantry Bay Farm" sign we found near one of the barns.

The day didn't look super nice but we had our first customer fairly quickly.

It was rainy and windy off and on throughout the day, so a few vendors packed up early and left we stayed strong until most of the baking was sold out and it was down pouring, then we packed up and called it a day. It was a great experience and nice being a crappy day so now we know that I can bake a lot more and on a nice day expect it to sell. All in all it was a fantastic day.

Wwoofer #1 & Wwoofer #3

2006-06-03T13:00:00.000-03:00

Another successful Davar visit. This past week my dear old friend/sister Myia Davar and her beautiful partner Mike Liston came to experience the FARM. They were a little gift sent from the time fairies and made everything seem smooth and luxurious. They arrived on Monday and on Tuesday we put them to work planting tomatoes, squash and beans. We introduced them to some of the local lasses and lads and they even got to see the market which we will be at starting this coming Thursday. There visit ended for too soon but they did find a ride back to Fredericton with a wonderful gentleman who played harmonica. He played us a diddy and then wisked them away and now they are off in the abyss of Montreal, back in the city life! It was so great to have them here and share in the excitement of making dreams come true. Myia always reminds me how important it is to play! Everything is joyful, we just have to keep our mind open to that. Thank you for your therapeutic laughter! And thank you Mike for spending some time with me and making delicious soup!

Carry ON

P.S. We have decided since having Mike and Myia that we are going to sign up to have wwoofers come help us out in ther following years!

Dandy Burger Recipe

2006-05-18T22:40:00.000-03:00

Well I figured i should post the recipe, for ben at least (who has asked for it) and anyone else who wants to try them. Also to clear up, mike posted that my aunt sent me the recipe, it was in fact my cousin April who supplied the deliciousness.

Dandy Burger Recipe

2 cups packed - freshly opened dandelion blossoms

1 cup - crushed saltine crackers or bread crumbs (I used Whole wheat flour)

1/2 cup - onions finely diced

2 Tbsp - dijon mustard

1 flegg well beaten (flax egg... egg could be used, but do it vegan style 1 tbsp ground flax + 3 tbsp water + 15 min of standing around or so = 1 flegg)

dash - hot sauce I used Cayenne pepper here
to taste - salt and pepper

1 Tbsp - oil for frying

Trim off bitter green stems from dandelion heads. Cut into quarters. Mix
with remaining ingredients except for the oil. Shape into patties. Fry in
oil over medium heat until golden brown on both sides (approx. 4 min. per
side). Serve hot. They go well with rhubarb chutney, fruit salsa, etc.
Have fun!

I couldn't get the dandy burgers to bind together that well so i added a couple tablespoons of peanut butter and some maple syrup to take away some of the bitterness of the dandyness, this brought them to the point of somewhat cohesive patty shapes, and then i fried them. mmmm Yummers...

Yield 4 medium-sized burgers.

Sorry to post so close to mike's post, everyone who is reading this and have not read mike's post, scroll down to be pleasantly delighted!

The FARM!!!!

2006-05-18T17:43:00.000-03:00

OK, we've been pretty slack lately in our postings about the farm and how everything is going. Now, in our defence, we've been really really busy since moving into the Panabode and i guess the blog has been pushed to the serious backburner. However NO LONGER!! I'm gonna try for a post a week updating our progress and anything interesting and exciting thats happened(of which there is lots). So anyways, heres a big ol' list of whats been going on(in no particular order).

We got a greenhouse!! Its not ultra big, only 10x16, but big enough for us to put our transplants in. We realized we just couldnt keep moving dozens of trays of transplants in and out of the house everyday. We have a little kick heater in it right now that runs at night just to keep it a little bit warm. However we're really trying to get it to the point where we don't need to use the electricity to heat it at night. So far we've been putting rocks and jugs of water in the greenhouse to try to retain some of the heat. The idea being that the water and rocks store the heat and release it slowly during the night. Pics of the Greenhouse forthcoming.

It's official, we're a commune now. The straw that broke the hippies back was a little thing we like to call Dandyburgers. Brads aunt sent us a recipe for these and i must say, they pass the test. Who would have ever thought that dandylions could be so delicious. A recipe and possibly a pic or two forthcoming

Heres an exciting list: spinach, radish, fava bean, pea, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, onion, leek, lettuce, swiss chard, beets, mizuna, carrots, kale, mustard greens. Can you guess what this list signifies? No one? Its what we've planted!! Its really exciting. Our peas are about 3 inches tall right now. Our early brassica crops are looking pretty nice as well. Tasty food forthcoming.

Our Tomato transplants are about 6 inches tall right now and looking really really nice. Im really really really excited about them.

OK, its time for a little farm math. What does all of those crops in the ground + no fence + lots of deer equal? It equals Mike, Brad, Luke, and Kath staying up all night in shifts. We've fiddled around with them a wee bit since we started(about 3 weeks ago) but heres the current breakdown.

9:00-11:45 Luke
11:45-1:30 Kath
1:30-3:15 Brad
3-15-7:00 Mike

In addition Brad is out there from 7:30-9:00 at night and Kath shows up at 7:00 till 8:30 in the morning. We basically just worked them out by everyone picking their favorite shift, then we just change them until everyone has their favourite.

So theres the inaugural weekly farm update. Dinner for me forthcoming.

mike

Some More Great Visits

2006-05-02T21:44:00.000-03:00

Some more visits that deserve mentioning are visits from my family immediate (my Dad), my mom's siblings (My Aunt Trudy, Aunt Debbie, and My Uncle George), Joyce (George's Wife) and a cousin of mine (April, George and Joyce's Daugter). We have been sooo busy here that I forgot that I had some great visits! It's been really nice having positive input from my family and I really appreciate the interest, I apologize to the lack of acknowledgment on the blog about the visits, but I promise future visits will be mentioned :P. It has been nice seeing the people that I haven't seen in awhile, the time gap between seeing my dad has been about 2 months, but I haven't seen my cousin in a LONG time. I hope there will be more opportunities to visit with them in the future a long with everyone else out here.

A Seemingly Surprise Visit

2006-04-30T09:20:00.000-03:00

Well the day finally arrived where we moved into our new abode...the panabode! And on that day came a great gift to me. Friends Naryn and Lesley from good ol' Clear Lake Manitoba came to visit for a couple days on their way through to Fredericton. Now for those of you who say wait a minute, St. Andrew's is on a peninsula, there is no "passing thru", this is true. So they came, they saw and they made delicious food for us and a spiffy new sifter. (Thank you very much Madame et Monsieur. I hope you had a great rest of your trip.)

Our biggest lesson on the farm to date...constant vigilance with the cold frames. They are like freakin' babies! We have burnt our plants twice and possibly froze them once due to lack of attention. So our non-farmer minds are slowly turning into multitasking farmer minds.

For all of you who don't know we are in the company of Kevin and Carol(the farm managers. They are our saving grace when it comes to being newbs. Carol hooked us up with a sod cutter and even if it was just out of pity for our sorry sod digging selves, it was still very kind! Kevin has been the know-it-all(in a good way) go to guy. He has helped us out with so many things, even pulling the porcupine quills out of Bailey's mouth at midnight! Bless their souls my oh my.

Well folks, there is a lot more to say and Mike still has a blog to write so I'll leave it to him. Just be aware that if we sound delirious or strange it is because we have started our night watches and are slowly becoming werewolves...owwwwwww.

A Farmer's Meme

2006-04-30T07:34:00.000-03:00

I AM: An Organic Farmer in the East Coast
I WANT: things to grow. Everything! (including our crops hopefully)
I WISH: for the deer to not eat our crops
I HATE: the word hate
I MISS: the ease of big city transportation
I FEAR: that we will be mocked (they call that farming! hahahah)
I HEAR: the noises of a natural symphony
I WONDER: if someone will ever cross the stars I stare at
I REGRET: our societies pillaging and plundering of this planet
I AM NOT: perfect
I DANCE: rarely, but I did last night to keep warm
I SING: even less frequently than I dance
I CRY: when emotionally overwhelmed
I AM NOT ALWAYS: focused
I MAKE: or at least try to make yummy food for us
I WRITE: not as often as I would like
I CONFUSE: deer, by standing out in the field for a quarter of the night
I NEED: to sleep better
I SHOULD: make some breakfast now
I START:ed trellising yesterday
I FINISH: this blog by thanking everyone else for their memes, they were delightful
I TAG: Everyone that didn't tag me!

p.s.
A picture of our new digs, and a picture of us standing in front of it.

2006-04-25T12:48:00.000-03:00

Hello Everybody,

We just moved into our more permament home this last weekend. The Panabode! It's a lovely little rustic cabin right next to our field. So now we're actually at 80 Bantry Bay Farm Rd, instead of 62, for all of those lovely packages you're wanting to send. We will be posting some pictures of the panabode and things on our website and perhaps with a later blog post. We're are all really excited to be in our new home, and just trying to get everything unpacked and sorted out, while trying to dig the field, and plant vegetables. It's a very busy time.

We went to Earth Day in St. Andrews on Saturday, and we had a little display about Food Choices and the Earth. We met some more people there that were very encouraging about what we were doing, and got a chance to talk more with people we already know. We also saw a presentation on Fair Trade, one on marine litter, and another one on climate change. All very good. It's amazing to see how many people here in this town care about these issues, and are interested in making a change. I think we all felt a renewed enthusiasm for farming/gardening, and providing people with sustainable(and hopefully delicious) food choices.

A Delightful Ditty...

2006-04-10T15:10:00.000-03:00

Kath's Sister Nicole sent us a poem. And Kath figured it should go on the blog so here it is:

Ode to Bantry Bay Organic Farm

Yo Yo, How's the gang at Bantry Bay
I hear you're cooking, digging and laying hay
Having bonded with Shandy, Belinda and Bailey
I'm sure you're saying "this ain't bad, I guess I'll stay"

Spring has arrived on the shores of St. Andrew's-By-The-Sea
And your onions are shouting, "Plant MEEE, plant MEEEE!"
The peppers and tomatoes are eager as well
When all the seeds are planted, a 'garden party' it will be.

The team is armed with passion, zeal and zest!
Ready to work hard and play hard with little time to rest.
With all the love and energy the Organic Four* invest
The Bantry Bay Farm is sure to be the Best!

Xo Nic

*The Organic Four may you use your super powers to spread grassroots health, wisdom, strength and pure silliness.

We thank you Nic for such a delightful poem! And we challenge some others to write some of your own!

An Update!

2006-04-03T13:45:00.000-03:00

Well it seems that we haven't done a post in awhile so I am here for an update. Since Kath got back we have been enjoying the nice weather by being outside preparing the fields. We have chosen a main location that we would like to farm, but we are listening to the advice of our network of experienced farmers and we aren't putting all our eggs in one basket and trying some mini-gardens on some other chunks of land.

For now are removing all the sod, from last years hay crop, on the main field. We are attempting to do as much of the work as we can by hand, but after doing a fair amount of sod removing we have decided to take some more advice and get a sod cutter. So we have rented it for next weekend and it will be a sod cutting party.

These past few days have been mostly planning stages, we are making sure we have a game plan for everything we do and there is lots on the go.

As for things that are actually growing we have a fair amount of onions, brasicas, and a wee bit of celery growing in soil blocks. There is also a few containers growing some tomatoes, some flowers and some rose bush clippings.

I think that is pretty much it as it goes for farms stuff. Bailey is doing well, always wanting the ball thrown while we are working in the fields. Pretty soon things will get very busy very fast and we are excited!

What do you get when Kath leaves for a couple days? A Soysage Party!!!

2006-03-21T19:36:00.000-04:00

Well this is a unique post from Bantry Bay Farm. Kath has gone back to Fredericton to spend some time with her sister's. So this is BBF - 1. Today I (Brad) decided to make soy milk. I heard that this was quite a lengthy endeavor, so I began early in the morning...

I will go through the recipe and I hope to inspire others to follow along!

The recipe is found on pg.95 of "The Farm Vegetarian Cookbook: Revised Edition" which was given to Luke by Lucy.

preparation:
Rinse 2 1/2 cups whole soybeans and soak in 5 cups of water. Following one of the methods described below. After the beans are soaked, transfer to a colander and rinse again.
Soak Method I: Soak rinsed soybeans in a bowl or pot of cold water for 8-10 hours or overnight. In hot weather the soaking beans should be kept in the refrigerator to prevent souring. Slightly soured beans will make a thinner milk.
Soak Method II: For quick soaking, pour boiling water over rinsed soy beans and allow to soak 2-4 hours. Beans will double in size and be free of wrinkles when done. They will have a flat, not concave, surface when split in half.

Grinding the Beans:
Method I: Combine in a blender 1 cup soaked soybeans and 2 1/2 cups water. You can use either cold water or nearly boiling water in this step. The advantage of using hot water is slightly milder flavour and a shorter wait for your mixture to come to a boil. Blend the beans at high speed to a fine slurry (about 1 min). Pour contents into a large heavy pot or double boiler (it won't burn as easily) [Brad recommends a large pot double boilers take forever!]. Repeat blender process until all beans are blended.
Method II: Grind the soaked beans using a hand grain-mill or a food grinder (use the plate with the smallest holes). When using a hand grain-mill, set the grind pretty tight, so that it easily allows a fine but slightly gritty bean paste to pass through the stones. With finely ground beans, more protein will be released into the milk. However, if the grind is too fine, it will be difficult to strain and will cause a pulpy soymilk. Add the ground bean paste to a pot of 13 cups boiling water.

Cooking the Soymilk:
Cook the soymilk in a 1 1/2 - 2 gallon heavy bottom pot or double boiler. Set over a medium-high flame and bring to a boil, stirring occasionally. Watch the pot carefully. When the soymilk first starts to boil, turn down the heat immediately and simmer at a low boil for 20 min. It;s important to be right there with your pot at this step. Soymilk will foam up and boil over quickly, so watch it carefully. If you use an electric stove, remove the pot from the burner when it comes to a boil while you adjust the heat.

Straining the Soymilk:
Set a cloth-lined colander (thin cotton or nylon)[Brad used an old cut up thin white shirt] over a pot with at least 1-gallon capacity. After the soymilk is cooked, pour or ladle it into the colander, catching the pulp in the cloth and the milk in the pot below. Twist the cloth tightly closed. With a wooden spoon or a jar, tract as much milk as possible. To rinse through any milk left in the pulp, re-open the cloth, stir in 2 cups boiling water, twist and press again. Set pulp aside to be used later.

Cooling the Soymilk
You can drink the soymilk hot or you can cool it by placing the pot in a sink of cold water, replenishing the cold water as necessary. When cooled, transfer into covered containers and refrigerate or freeze. The quicker the soymilk is cooled and the colder it is kept, the longer it will last. It has an approximate shelf life of 4-5 days. If it starts to sour, use it for baking in cakes, biscuits, or bread.
Unlike cow's milk, soymilk contains very few natural sugars. For drinking, most people prefer to add a sweetener, vanilla or cocoa, and a dash of salt. Soymilk can be made thicker or thinner by adjusting the proportion of beans to water in this recipe. Soymilk can be used to replace cow's milk in any recipe.

So that is the end of the soy milk creation, but I was disappointed that the soy pulp was going to be wasted so I found a recipe (which is on pg 146 if you have the book, I hope some of you do!) for Soysage: a vegan sausage facsimile. So here is the recipe for that!

NOTE: You have to steam the soy pulp for an additional 1 1/2 hours, before making the soysage, so it can be easily digested! [I steamed it within the shirt and really squeezed it hard after to get as much of the moisture out as possible]

Soysage!

4 Cups Soy Pulp [the stuff leftover after straining the soymilk out]
2 1/2 cups whole wheat flour
3/4 cup oil
1 1/4 cups soymilk or other liquid [Brad used water]
1 cup nutritional yeast flakes [If you don't know what this is DO SOME RESEARCH :P]
1 tsp. Black pepper
1/4 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp oregano
2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. cayenne
2 tbsp brown sugar
2 tbsp garlic powder
2 tbsp yellow mustard
2 tsp allspice

Mix ingredients. Oil an oven-proof bowl or empty tin can. Fill it, and cover with tin foil. [I rolled makeshift logs up in tin foil]. Steam on a rack in a covered pot for 1 1/2 hours, or in a pressure cooker in 5 cups of water for a least 30 min. Let sit until cool then slice it and pan fry it in some oil. Yum!

So There you have it that is the soysage party! Here are the pictures of the spoils of soymilk (there is another full container of soymilk not in the picture plus an additional log and a half of soysage not displayed as well). Yes Brad and Luke are trying to grow facial hair (or is it just not caring about shaving), we are somewhat failing hahaha, but Mike has a nice beard a brewin. Luke can fill you in about the rest of the day and week.

Luke here. What a party! So all you out there who are justa itchin to sink your teeth into that soysage log(Ben, that's you), I highly recommend getting Brad to make you some. Yesterday we started more onions, and some celery. Today Mike mad a super cold frame for our growing number of transplants to go in once it warms up a bit. I carried seaweed up from the beach today. Up the stairs of cirith ungol(the stairs that go down the cliff to the beach), into the wheelbarrow, and up, up, up about half a kilometre onto our field, where I'm raising a tower of seaweed, which will hopefully reach heaven, provided our communication skills stay sharp. Then, we're going to use it as a mulch on our fields. It's suppose to be very beneficial. Then I crushed clam shells for a while during the soysage party. Still using the rock on rock method. Very time consuming. I like to think of it as character building work. Mike and I saw a skunk today! It was strolling across the field, and really didn't seem concerned with us(only about 25 feet away). Well, we didn't get sprayed, and he/she checked out our coldframes. Can't say he/she looked impressed though. Just kept on walking and sniffing. Tomorrow: up and down the stairs, into the wheelbarrow and up to the field.
P.S. Mike is watering our plants with a turkey baster.

The Miracle of Life

2006-03-13T15:42:00.000-04:00

Hello La Gang!

Well take a look at the picture in the blog entry before this and then take a look at these sweet babies which grow before our very eyes every day.

Folks it is really amazing to see this kind of thing live and in action 24/7!!! I highly suggest that everyone get a pot, some soil or potting mix, water, some of their favourite flower/veggie/herb seeds and prepare to have a constant reminder of how cool life really is! This is especially great for kids in the city who may not get the chance to see things grow.

We have three different cold frames that we are experimenting with and so far they are great. Mike fears my eagerness to plant with the forcast of light frost but I say what are cold frames for? You can look for the battle between the rash and the rational in future blog entries!

Brad and Luke took on the Soil Depth Discovery Project on the weekend and found we have on average about a foot and a half of soil!!! This was really thrilling as we expected only a few inches. They even planted a dead 50 foot tree while they were at it. Their dead tree raising abilities were astounding. (This was a tree that had fallen over in the wind, which Brad freed from the grip of the brush)

Mike went to Harvey Station(that's a town) to Mr. Ted Wiggans farm for an MCOG meeting. MCOG is a certification body. He went to find out what we might have to do if we get certified. Canada is in the process of developing a country wide standard for the term Certified Organic and it seems as though it may be in effect by next year. I have yet to decide whether or not this is a good idea but as long as our standards aren't as low as the States' than that's pretty good.

St. Andrew's for those of you who have never been here is a really neat town with artistic flare and small town history. We have been meeting all kinds of interesting people and stories of all kinds. There is enough history just on this piece of land to last us the year, so look out for those tid-bits on future blog entries too.

Well beautiful people I hope you are all sufficiently suffonsified,
May you feel the power of every choice you make!

Love K-dawg

P.S. Bailey says he's having a great time with his girlfriend Shandi!

Oh What A World!

2006-03-10T12:29:00.000-04:00

Well The transplants are going well, a couple of days ago we took these pictures. And they have grown considerably since.

Other than that the week has been mostly been planning. Today is a rainny foggy day, but it still has beauty beyond that of any urban sprawl.

A week, or so, ago I placed the plants we are purposing to grow on our website and a friend suggested that there was a typo on the number of tomato varieties (21! :Þ). Well I would like to inform you all that there is no typo, and now there is plenty of information on the varieties in the seed page of the website. (Which is located under the farming info page)

Katherine and Luke's New Home

2006-03-03T18:39:00.000-04:00

Katherine and Luke decided to invest some of the farms monetary reserves into a new home.

Soil Blocking: Oh yeah!

2006-02-28T23:47:00.000-04:00

Well today we made soil blocks! For those of you who are not familiar with any of this. I will walk you through a short explanation:

First you need a soil blocker!

Then you need a to make a batch of soil blocking mix (it is like making cake batter) which is also featured in the picture above. Then you need to press the soil blocker into the mix.

Then press the soil blocks out of the blocker onto a tray.

After that all you just place some onion seeds and you have officially started your transplants!

So that was our delightful day! We also had a little B-day celebration for Kath, because it is her birthday tomorrow and her and Mike will be at an ACORN (Atlantic Canada Organic Regional Network) Exhibition in Halifax, from Wednesday to Saturday or Sunday.

Things always happen for a reason

2006-02-27T22:19:00.000-04:00

Today was a great start to the week for the gang at Bantry Bay Farm. We are working on being better people at the same time as learning how to farm so sometimes things take a little while to get going. We sifted some sand for the soil block mix, Mike made some plans for our future solar dryer and Brad made some DELICIOUS bread, right now he's working on Blondies(a cake-ish thing)!

The day was long to start so we worked into the evening until we got a call from a new friend of ours Madeline. She is our neighbour across the highway and is very beautiful. She and I were going to search for some grants together but unfortunately she had a meeting to go to.

The meeting was the Conservation Council of New Brunswick and "was it open to anyone" I asked. Well that was it Mike, Luke and I were off to meet new townsfolk and find out what it was this group did. We sat and listened to the new idea of chapters in all the counties of NB and heard of all the issues the members were concerned about and was it ever sweet music to our ears! Compost, recycling, waste reduction, anti-lawn pesticide bylaws, etc. the words were just like beautiful pieces of art flowing through a dream where everyone is passing you chocolate treats and freshly squeezed juice!

It was another exciting day on Bantry Bay Farm and folks let me tell you, they happen everyday!!!

This One Goes Out To The One We Love

2006-02-24T18:05:00.000-04:00

Johnny Leroux! The New Brunswick Turnip Growers Association sends their love.
We wrote this riddle for you O' Captain our Captain:

Riddle me this,
and riddle me that
I'm delicious,
but low in fat.

the sun may shine
and the rain may flow
but i won't grow
when the boron's low

I'm kinda cute,
but not a fruit.
Now mind your boot
or you'll squash this root!

If you're looking for me
I'll be in the dirt.
But if i'm not there
I'm on a pink shirt.

We're Rooting for you Johnny!
-NBTGA

Farmer's log, Farm date: 02.24.06

2006-02-24T17:38:00.000-04:00

Today we decided we were going to build a little greenhouse for our transplants. So the first thing we needed was lumber for the frame. Well, there just so happens to be a barn with a whole bunch of lumber in the form of walls and feeding troughs and stuff like that. Well actually I should say there use to be, before we came with a sledge hammer and got medieval on it. So now we have what seems to be enough lumber for a greenhouse frame, but we still need the plastic for the walls. So if anyone has any idea where we can find some recycled or used poly, we'd like to hear suggestions.

Farmer's log, supplemental: Mike started reading a book to us last night called "The Giver". So far it is excellent.

Here is a before and after of our work today

Getting ready

2006-02-24T07:54:00.000-04:00

We set to work building trays for our transplants today. We're makin them out of an old countertop that we came across in one of the barns. Its not the perfect material, but i think it will work well for our purposes. Heres a shot of Luke cutting the first piece while a mysterious lumberjack looks on.

We soon discovered that while dull hand saws are great for slow cutting and sore elbows, recipricating saws just work sooo much better. Heres a nice pic of the lumberjack adjusting his glasses before going in for the kill.

The guestbook is fully functional!

2006-02-21T10:01:00.000-04:00

The guestbook on bantrybayfarm.ca is now up and running I encourage everyone to leave comments :) we would love to hear from you.

Cold Frame

2006-02-18T14:56:00.000-04:00

YEE-HAAW. Our first experimental hay-bale cold frame. Very low-tech, very inexpensive and very effective(we hope). We're gonna put some thermometers inside and outside and test the difference in temp.

The concept is simple. Let the light in, keep the heat in, and protect against the wind. When we build our real cold frames we'll also slope the ground about 5 degrees to maximize the sunlight. Also, Luke says hi.

Yay! Website

2006-02-16T18:40:00.000-04:00

Well I figured I would announce that the official bantry bay farm website is up and running and I invite anyone to go check it out, it is a work in progress and I am learning as I am going so don't be too harsh with your comments :P. It will change and evolve hand-in-hand as my skill, and the farms' ideas do. Soon there will be a guestbook/comment page on the website, once I figure out CGI-scripts. Until then use this blog to comment.

Another Day =Þ

2006-02-15T00:50:00.000-04:00

Today we went to a town meeting and a lot of things were discussed and we all had different opinions about what transpired, but we all know something happened today and things do happen for a reason. I will leave more discussion about this and the town meeting for a group post.

Now that, the meeting has been touched on i would like to show you guys a east coast sunset, we see a similar one everyday, and it is so beautiful a picture can barely do it justice.

Hard at Work

2006-02-13T20:13:00.000-04:00

[Everyone] Last Night We Had a Blizzard. The snow wasn't falling too fast, but it snowed for a long period of time. Once it was dark out we decided to go for a BIG expedition to the windy fields and sheltered forest to play a game of tag! Sure glad we got those scarves (Brad's Knitting). It was a great feeling to be coming inside after some exercise in the snow.

Prior to the game of tag we played a fat game of Bantry Rico (a mike's homemade special of Puerto Rico). Mike won... But we all had fun! (So Everyone WON!!!)

This morning we woke up to a beautiful sunny day with snow on the ground and sparkling ocean just a few feet away. We got down to business, after a nice breaky. We planned out the rest of the week and searched the barns for tools, measured the fields, and worked on the website. Brad made vegan cookies that were delightful.

All in all it was an excellent first day at work. Hope everyone is doing great.

Love Brad, Mike, Luke, and Kath!

On The Farm!!!

2006-02-11T23:48:00.000-04:00

Well Today is a Red Letter Day!!!

We are on the farm now, it is 11:09 right now and everyone is in bed and i decided to use the extremely fast dial-up service (just kidding) to update everyone. Well it has been ten days of us in NB and so far I am impressed it is everything i have been craving. The first thing i did on the farm was setup the internet service :P the next thing was call my mom, but sadly she was not in.

We had a delightful meal to celebrate the first night here and then we had a business talk. Pretty soon after that everyone hit the hay, and i began to surf the WWW for the first time in 10 or so days, Dial-up is rediculously slow! so i got bored fast, but luckily Ben (Luke's Bro) was here to save the day and we played around with the webcam he got luke for chirstmas. Sadly it didn't function up to the level it did on highspeed, which wasn't too shocking.

Tomorrow we will all organize a group post again. And I will be Sure to Put some paragraphs in there so that it isn't too intimidating to read.

Hope everyone is doing well. We will be online speradically because we will want to be outside rather than inside considering we have a farm to explore. Other than that, goodluck and love to all!!!

2006-02-06T16:06:00.000-04:00

Hi everyone! We rock! We are actually making some headway on all the things we need to get done and we are keeping Sofie(my niece) busy while we're at it! For all of you who wonder about what other people are doing check out the Council of Canadians website www.canadians.org they are working on a whole wack of things. Also, PEI was recently deciding whether or not to become a GE Free zone. In the end they decided not to but if you go on to their website(which you can find thru the above web address, you can read the hearings and see some good whole hearted community discussion about the issue and if you read right to the very end you'll see a familiar name in the contributions!!!(Hint: Look under M)
Until next time, keep fit and have fun!
Ciao

Busy Days! Dial-up is no fun!

2006-02-06T15:35:00.000-04:00

Hey Everyone,

We have been having a busy few days, we have somewhat been neglecting our blog because we don't have the greatest internet access and won't for awhile, but I decided that I would do a quick update so that others can be informed as to our progress. We are still in Fredericton, which is about an hour and a half from St. Andrews, till this Saturday. We went for a visit to the farm on Sat. and it was absolutely beautiful the sun was shining, the ground was surprisingly not frozen, which was great because we had to dig 6" into the ground to get a soil sample. So far we have been having near Vancouver weather a.k.a. lots of rain, but that is supposed to change into snow pretty quick. Even though there isn't much to write home about there is a lot of stuff we are doing to get ready for the farm. Everyone we have met so far seems very excited to see us taking on this adventure and it looks like we will have lots of support and volunteers if we need them. :P Well Katherine and I are at the library now and we should get going because we have more stuff to do today. I hope everyone is doing great and things are going as well for you as they are for us.

The First Post

2006-01-31T17:08:00.000-04:00

[Brad] So for all those that don't know the story of Bantry Bay Farm we will start from the beginning which is how we all met. [Luke] I first met Mike when we were about 7 years old in little league baseball. We became good friends many years later at the end of high-school. When I moved to Vancouver in the summer of 2003, Mike decided to move in with me and Lane(friend from high-school). We have lived together in Vancouver ever since then. I met Jason (Brad's Brother) on the SFU football team in 2001. One of the things we first had in common was that we didn't like SFU football, so we both quit that year, but stayed good friends while we lived in residence for the first two years of University. A couple months after Mike moved in with me and Lane, Jason got back from his trip to Australia, and moved in with the three of us. [Brad] I moved down to Vancouver around the fall of 2003 to go to school. I lived with my parents in Surrey and commuted an hour and a half to SFU. When Jason got back, I started to hang out with Jason, Luke, Mike, and Lane. Around November 2004 Lane told us that he would be moving to Guatemala at the start of January to spend time with Sofia (who he was going to propose to that Christmas). So because he was leaving and Luke Mike and Jason wanted to keep rent cheap and knew that I was hating the long commute. They offered to let me move in with them in Coquitlam. So I did just that in December of 2004. [Kath] Hello folks, sit back and let me take you on a little journey. In August of 2004, after graduating from school, I took a little trip out to Vancouver to visit my friend Naomi. The night that I arrived she invited her two friends Jason and Luke out for a night of Flamenco. Well I must have felt a wave in the Matrix because something told me that their arrival was important. A couple of days later we bumped into them on the bus in downtown Vancouver(like that ever happens-another wave in the Matrix). Naomi had to go back to work and I wanted to check out Salt Spring Island so I rang the guys and invited them to come along. Jason kindly declined and after some deliberation Luke accepted. Off we went to the Island having no idea that we were about to fall in love, or for all you disbelievers, we were about to become such fools. I returned to Halifax(where I was living) but soon realized a big change was needed in my life. Luke and I kept in touch and after a couple of months I decided to move out to B.C., a place I had wanted to live for some time. I moved in with him and the rest of the gang in April after Luke's brother Ben got married to Sara. The wedding was in a barn and it was sweet! In May Luke and I took off Wwoofing for the summer and the seeds of farming were planted. We are very thankful to Richard & Diana, Jennifer Abbott, Helen and John, and Ron, Erin, Shanoa and family, all of whom housed and taught us about the world of organics and shaped our future. At last, after we learned about the current state of our world food supply, Luke and I went to visit my sister and brother-in-law(Lori and Tony) and it was then that they jokingly proposed we farm the land on Bantry Bay. Rather quickly the joke became a legitimate idea and then a real plan. Luke went back to Vancouver and asked the guys who eventually made their choices(Brad=Go, Jason=Stay, Mike=Go). I don't think they ever thought we would take them up on the offer but here we go!!! Thanks mi Hermana and Undacuvabratha [Mike] That brings us to tonight. We just ate din din here at the Aune's. Our last supper in BC for a looong time. We also said our goodbye's to Jason, our lone roommate who will remain here in Vancouver. Each of us had a moment alone with Jason to talk with him and say our goodbye's. It was really great, and I think it finally hammered home the idea that we're leaving. Up until that point it has all seemed a little surreal, the idea that we're just picking up and leaving to go start a farm. We've been working and planning and studying for the last 3 months but tonight may be the first time it's really felt like its happening to me and not some other person. It feels like there are so many wonderful things in front of us that I can't even imagine. In about 6 hours we'll be on a flight to somewhere I've never been, to stay with people I've never met. But I can't wait to get there, and I can't wait to meet them. I speak for everyone when I say thank you to every one of you who has given us your support and love over the past few months. [Brad] And so begins Bantry Bay Farm! Soon we will have our website up and running which will have lots of information about us and the farm, and the location of the farm. Pictures will be added shortly after the website is up. Well T-minus 4 hours till take off if the weather coincides :P So Adios, and in case I don't see ya good after-noon, good evening and good night.

The Legend

2006-01-31T15:52:00.000-04:00

Before You start to read this post and perhaps the following posts. I will set up a sort of legend. This blog is for Bantry Bay Farm which has 4 members as of yet. Katherine, Luke, Mike and Brad. We will all be posting; to prevent confusion and allow people to know who they are reading, we will put our names in "[ ]" for example this is brad posting right now so you will see [Brad] at the start of the post and you will know who it is and if someone else writes some in the post you will see a new name in the brackets and from that point onwards it will be that person writing. So without further ado, the first post...