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