mulching madness

The Heat returned this week, so we are still in the throes of summer after all; I can tuck my woolly hat away again for another day.

Just a quick post this time, here’s a short round up of what’s been going on

I feel we’ve had a productive week on the farm, we’ve cleared one of the veggie blocks, doing a mass harvest of carrots and beets so now the block can be tilled and a green manure of rye sown for the autumn.  The block was super weedy and was becoming increasingly difficult to harvest from for market, as trying to see the beetroot plants in hip high weeds  is no easy task!  The carrots were also very mature and needed to come out of the ground before root eating pests devoured the whole crop.  It feels good to have cleared the bock and be done with it for the season.

so there's veggies in here somewhere...

We spent a morning this week mulching what was the pea beds with straw to supress the weeds and add organic matter to the soil.  I really enjoyed it, I feel like I’ve not done any intensely physical hard work for a few weeks, so it was good to get stuck in and move my body and sweat plenty!  I really felt like a proper old fashioned farmer, carrying mounds of straw with a pitchfork.

Matt has mad pitchforking skills

Leah and I cleaned the floors of the cabins in preparation for them to be painted.  We’ll be moving in next week which is really exciting, I’m looking forward to living on the farm.  It’s going to be so interesting experiencing off grid communal living.  I’ll write more about this probably next week as daily life is going to be a bit different than how it is now what with the limitations in available power.

 soon to be home!

We started the big onion harvest this week, it’s going to be one of the dominant on going tasks over the next couple of weeks.  It’s actually pretty quick, compared to garlic at least; the onions pull out of the ground pretty easily.  Leah and I each pulled a row of onions while Zach followed us up the bed with the tractor and we placed the onions into the tractor bucket.  Then we took them up to the barn where they are being laid out to dry. Later on we’ll do a bit of onion braiding, I just hope I’m better at it than I was with the garlic!

So it begins...

Other than that we’ve pretty much been doing our regular harvest routine and there are a few new crops coming in now.  CSA this week had the first leeks and red cabbage, which look really beautiful.   Apple season has begun here now which seems early but may have something to do with the drought.  There are apple trees dotted around the farm some bearing more fruit than others.  I think most of the trees are just what has grown from seeds dropped by birds years ago and it’s nice to sample the different varieties and find which tastes the best.  There are so many delicious apples and on Thursday I ate seven or eight.  I love how the season moves on and as one crop comes to an end, such as watermelon, another comes in like apples,  there is always some new to get excited about.

 Beautiful red cabbage

 Delicious apples!

Today (Monday) we had a tour at the farm.  Rainbow is a member of the Craft Network which is an organisation that farmers in the Ottawa valley can become members of in order to network with other farms.  So the tour was open to other craft members and we had people from five farms come for the tour.  It was lovely to meet other farmers and their interns and we had a pot luck dinner together. 

Zach talking about the curcubit bed on the tour

  

I was talking with one farmer who has an urban farm in Quebec and she’d spent some time living at a retreat in my home town. I never thought I’d come to Canada and meet someone who had heard,  let alone been to my town!  It’s uncanny, it seems no matter where I go, there is always someone who’s heard of Newton Abbot.

I’ve had a few pangs of missing home this week, so it was nice to have that little connection to back home today.

Much love

Becky x

Pow Wow

It’s a Monday morning in the middle of August and I’m sat here wearing thick socks, a scarf, and a bobble hat; the season must definitely be on the turn.  Either that or I’ve just been too mollycoddled by the summer heat and any drop in temperature feels icy in comparison.  But, it’s August for goodness sake, August is still summer isn’t it? Still, I’d rather take the cooler temperature over the blazing hot 40˚c days.  Anyway, I’ll stop whingeing about the weather like a typical Brit and move on…

There’s plenty to write about as I didn’t blog last week, so I’ll bring you up to date.  The second weekend of August was Garlic Fest at the Carp market  which was on both Saturday and Sunday.  It’s a significant event in Rainbow’s calendar, and one we’ve been building up to for a number of weeks; sorting, cleaning and braiding garlic and also learning about the different types of garlic.  So while we were at Carp all weekend, we were also at the usual Ottawa Farmer’s market on Sunday.  Three markets in one weekend meant A LOT of harvesting and processing on the Thursday and Friday, so it was a busy week to say the least!

All six of us went to Carp on the Saturday – Kylah, Zach, Matt, Jackson, Leah and I.  Zach and Matt manned a booth totally dedicated to garlic, while the rest of us ran a veggie booth double the size we normally have at Carp.  The market was fun and was really nice to do a market with Leah and Jackson, as I’d only been with Matt previously.  It was pretty busy and we sold a good amount of produce on the Saturday.  On Sunday Leah and I ran the veggie booth by ourselves while Zach ran the garlic booth and Matt and Kylah went to the Ottawa market.  Sunday wasn’t as busy, a lot of people who came just seemed to be browsing or just wanted to chat, which was nice too, I really like sharing enthusiasm for the veggies with others.

The four of us at Garlic Fest on Saturday

It was kind of a strange feeling when Garlic Fest was over as we’d been building up to it for so long, and it always felt like it was so far away, but now it’s been and done.  This past week has been a bit more relaxed, we’ve still continued to sort a lot of garlic and on Thursday we cut down the last bulbs that had been curing; which was a good feeling.  We still have a lot of garlic to go through, clean and sort into sizes, but now we’re pretty much ready for the next big even which will be the onion harvest in the coming weeks.  Those thousands of onions we planted on my first day of work need to be pulled from the ground and brought into the barn to dry.  If the weather is good onions can dry in the field, but we’re now getting regular rain (the grass is actually green again), so bringing them into the barn is a better bet.

Me looking ridiculous modelling a huge Tropea onion, an Italian Hierloom variety

This Saturday just gone, Leah and I ran the booth at the Carp market by ourselves again, which was fun.  It was freezing in the morning and is so dark now when I get up for market, I ended up putting my T-shirt on inside out, doh!  it soon warmed up to a perfect temperature by late morning and was beautifully sunny, great weather to draw the people out to market, and I think we did pretty well.

Yesterday (Sunday) was one of my days off and in the afternoon I went to a Pow Wow at the local native reservation.  A Pow Wow is the coming together of native and non-native people to drum and dance or just spectate.  I really enjoyed watching the dancing and feeling the drum beat thrumming through my bones, sending tingles down my spine.  The ceremonial regalia that the dancers wore was spectacular, beautifully intricate and so colourful.  There were also market stalls selling traditional native crafts and lots of other lovely things.

Apart from that what I’ve mostly been doing is eating lots and lots of watermelon, we’ve nearly harvested them all now and it’ll be a sad day when the last melon has been gobbled up. Yum yum

 I love the beautiful swirl pattern inside the watermelons

Until next time,

Much love

Becky x

Fruity feasts

I’m sitting down to write after eating a hearty breakfast of pancakes with local seasonal fruit; peaches, blackberries, cherries and plums, delicious.  I love eating seasonally and the excitement it brings when I get to taste the ‘firsts’ of the season, it makes me appreciate food so much more.  This week we picked the first grapes which have been growing in a tucked away corner of the farm, I didn’t even realise they were there until recently.  The grapes are small, but sweet and delicious, a wonderful treat for a hot Saturday afternoon.

It’s been a very fruity week, we harvested watermelons for CSA and have been feasting on the extras. I could eat watermelon all day long, and I never in a million years thought that they would grow here, they are one of the food highlight’s for me here.  It’s so nice to see a crop full circle too, I planted the watermelon seedlings in the first couple of weeks of being here, and now we’re eating them. It struck me the other day just how quick that has been, maybe three months might feel like a long wait for some, but I’m still amazed by just how quickly a plant can go from a tiny seed to a harvestable crop.

Watermelon harvest. so much delicousness!

Talking of time, how did August come around so quickly?  I remember thinking when I arrived that it would be ages before summer was in full swing, but here we are now already in summers gradual decline and soon the fall will set in.  I’m really looking forward to autumn, cooler more comfortable days, (hopefully) less mosquitos and the trees turning to fiery  hues.

We will hopefully be moving up to the farm in a couple of weeks (we’re still on Bob’s farm).  The intern cabins are finished, we’re just waiting on the bathroom and the kitchen to be complete in the main building and then we can relocate.  It will be nice living on the farm and I’m excited about moving, though I think it will be strange sleeping inside a cabin after spending three months in a tent.  I’ll miss sleeping outside, the cabin feels so much more closed in than the tent despite being twice as big.  I feel very connected to nature, her rhythms and the elements with just a canvas canopy over my head.  However I’m sure I’ll be grateful to be in the cabin when the weather gets colder!

The August full moon.  It's so bright here it light's up my tent at night.

This coming Saturday and Sunday is Garlic Fest at the Carp Framers Market, so we’ve spent a good amount of time this week processing the garlic we hung for curing.  Zach taught us how to braid in different styles according to the type of garlic.  Soft neck garlic gets braided in a traditional plait, where as hard neck garlic has more of a stacking method.  Braiding soft neck is tricky and my few attempts were pretty shoddy.  I much prefer braiding hard neck garlic, and thankfully that’s what we have the most of.

'Korean Purple' variety garlic braids; made by fair English hands.

Here’s to a busy and garlicky week ahead!

Much love

Becky x