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

Notorious G.O.A.T

 Moca, Blackie and Fennel

Blackie, the male goat kid, met his end this week; and I’m not all that sure how to write about it.  It’s been a highly significant event for me during my stay here, but also a very intense and quite traumatic one.

We’ve talked about eating the goat for a number of weeks, and last week Kylah came to us and said that Tuesday would be the day.  Blackie had reached sexual maturity and was trying to mate with his sister and also he was of the age where he would need to start being wormed, and the meat can’t be eaten once they are given worming treatment.  

It was good timing as Ebe, Zach’s brother, was due to leave on Wednesday.  He’d been here for a month helping out on the farm, so the goat roast was a nice farewell dinner.

So, despite having been a vegan for around two years, I said I was happy to eat the meat.  Being vegan hasn’t been an ethical choice for me, I simply feel and function better when I don’t eat meat and dairy, so on this occasion deciding to eat meat was easy.

Tuesday came around and I was adamant that I wanted to watch the goat being slaughtered, I felt that if I was going to eat the goat then I should be able to watch it being killed; and watch I did.  Jackson did the deed, he’s had experience with slaughtering sheep, and he was confident in doing it.  He did it with minimal stress to Blackie, with respect and without hesitation.  What I was not prepared for was the blood curdling scream that Blackie cried out as Jackson cut his throat.  It was humanely done and over very quickly, but was still far from being a nice way to die, but is there ever a nice way to die?  I wanted to experience and fully comprehend the cold hard reality of eating meat, watching the animal being killed, and it was one of the most intense experiences of my life.

The rest of the day was very enjoyable, it takes quite a lot of preparation, work and time to spit roast a goat.  Leah and I made the fire that provided the coals for the roasting pit, and proud we were of it!  Jackson skinned and gutted the goat and then stuffed the cavity with a tonne of veggies and herbs, before it was placed on the spit and roasted for five hours.

Woman made fire, ug ug.

Jackosn shovelling coals and Ebe constructing an oven like contraption around the roasting pit.

Roasting away, the crowd is getting hungry.

 We eventually sat down to eat at around 9pm, by candle light, and Jackson’s dad (Jim) who had come up for the day with Jack’s sister said a very nice thanksgiving before we tucked in.  the meat was delicious and the atmosphere was wonderful.  After eating we sat around the fire late into the night, singing, playing music, and drinking beer as the milky way spilled across the night sky above us.  A wonderfully memorable night spent with wonderful people.

Night falling, Jim strums the ukulele by the roasting pit.

The aftermath for me has been the replaying of Blackie’s slaughter in my head a lot, I didn’t realise at the time just how deeply I would be affected.  It’s particularly difficult as I knew Blackie, I’d spent time with him and that’s what plays over in my head. Seeing him alive and then seeing his dying moments. I will spare you the (literal) gory details, but I wont be eating meat again, as I don’t want an animal to have to go through that just for me to be able to eat something that isn’t necessary for me to live.

Bon appѐtit

Becky x

Food heaven and thunderstorms

I’m sitting in the barn kitchen by the doorway watching an on-coming thunderstorm and relaxing after what has been one of the most physically demanding and busy weeks so far.  I feel like I’ve lifted and carried tonnes of stuff this week and I’m definitely getting stronger, I can lift much heavier things than I could two months ago.  I’m gonna have biceps of steel! 

The garlic harvest continued for most of the week and thanks to the help of volunteers we pulled the last bulbs from the ground on Thursday afternoon.  We still have hundreds if not thousands of bulbs left to hang for drying, but that’s fine; our priority was to get all the garlic out of the ground as many of the stems had started to rot from the short burst of rain we had on Sunday evening.  It can rain all it wants now and we can get on with the task of hanging the garlic knowing the crop wont be ruined. 

  

And how we need the rain!  I’ve written about the drought in previous blogs, but we are now in a serious situation, it’s now the driest it’s been in a hundred years, with little sign of a let up.  many farmers are in crisis.  As I sit here typing the storm is rolling in fast, and I think it’s going to be a biggie…

…So, I’ve just come back to the computer after standing in the rain watching the storm for the past half hour.  The tension in the air so thick it makes the hair on my arms and back of my neck stand on end.  The lightening is truly spectacular, the tiny thunderstorms we get back in the UK are nothing in comparison. Here the lightening comes bolt after successive bolt, forking across the sky and down to the ground and the thunder rumbles deep and low and often so loud it sounds like the sky is cracking in half.  And we even got a little bit of rain.

Back to the farm, this week I’ve been in utter food heaven.  We picked the first aubergine and watermelons, my favourite vegetable and fruit.  The watermelon was so good, fresh, sweet and warm from the sun as we all scoffed it Thursday lunchtime. 

Delicious and sweet yellow watermelon

Getting my chops around a slice!

 We’ve had some really good veggie feast dinners this week, making good use of all the abundant veggies. We made pasta on Thursday with a really simple tomato sauce made from scratch and aubergine and courgette.  Simple food, but was one of the best meals we’ve made so far.  When you grow your own food and eat seasonally the appreciation for the food on your plate is huge, and you enjoy it so much more.

Much love

Becky x

Garlic Fever

The garlic harvest has commenced!  We started pulling the first bulbs on Tuesday and this week we have made it through around a quarter of the total garlic crop; it’s a very time consuming task when there is 24,000 bulbs to pull by hand!

The garlic wouldn’t normally need harvesting in one go, the different varieties grown here would mature over the space of a few weeks. However due to the heat and the drought ALL the garlic has matured at the same time. 

How we harvest is in teams of two – one person forks the soil to help lift the garlic free, then another follows behind and pulls it from the ground.  The ground is so dry that it takes a lot of effort to get the fork deep enough into the soil;  the boys have literally been jumping on the forks in order to drive it in enough.

Once we’ve filled up the truck with garlic we take it up to the barn to be hung in the loft for curing.  We started hanging them in bunches of five from the beams, but Jackson devised a quicker and more efficient method by tying up two strings together from one rafter to another and then twisting individual bulbs in between the two string so they are held in place.   Hopefully that makes sense!

 Matt and Jackson starting on hanging the garlic

The barn slowly getting fuller

Zach stringing up garlic bunches

Jackson's new improved hanging method

So it’s been an epic week of harvest as of course we have been doing our routine harvest for market and CSA alongside the garlic.  Leah and I are the CSA produce organisers; we spend Wednesday mornings in the root cellar dividing up the harvest equally between the CSA members, while the boys go out and harvest whatever else is needed.

 Sorting produce for CSA in the root cellar

Kylah put out a plea in her newsletter for volunteers as we need help with the garlic harvest and weeding.  Despite the drought the weeds are still going crazy and we are pressed for time to deal with them.  Somehow CBC radio got wind of our need for help and they came out to the farm on Thursday to interview Kylah and CBC TV also came on the same day to film for a news slot on the drought.  Thankfully we’ve had 7 people so far come and help out, one lady saying she is going to try and get a big group of people to come and work on the farm for a day next week, which would be fantastic.  We need to get the rest of the garlic harvested, and with just us interns and Zach that could take a long time, we need more people power!

The hot weather has continued throughout the week, then on Sunday evening we had a small thunderstorm and it rained for around half an hour.  The first rain in over a month!  We were all together having dinner, then we ran outside to go stand in the rain, deeply appreciative that it was finally raining and for the break in the heat!

After yet another long hot day on the farm on Saturday, Jackson, Leah, Ebe (Zach’s brother) and I went for a dip in a pond that Jack discovered last week.  It’s like a hidden oasis in the middle of the barren dry pasture on Bob’s farm, it was so nice and refreshing to jump in.

 check out the pond!

Much love

Becky x

Rain dance

I’m sitting with the goats on a mild Sunday afternoon, and when I say mild, it’s still 25˚C, but after getting (sort of) used to the unrelenting heat of the mid to high 30’s over the last couple of weeks 25˚C is a welcome break.

We are in a severe drought here, everything is dry, the land is parched, the grass is yellow and I’ve seen trees wilting. Bob was telling me this morning that there are reports that we are in a one in fifty year drought.  Bob has had one cut of hay from his pasture, but the grass isn’t growing back so he has had to start feeding his cattle hay already, he wouldn’t normally start feeding them until September,  that’s how dry it is.  Normally he would get a second cut of hay and in a good year a third cut too, but it looks like he wont even get a second cut at this rate.

Thankfully on the veg farm we have irrigation which is keeping things afloat, but the irrigation pond runs dry frequently,  if we don’t get a good amount of rain soon I’m not sure how things are going to fair.  Despite the irrigation the heat is affecting some crops, the peas in particular have pretty much run out of steam and many plants are dying off now, after only two weeks of production!

So what’s been going on down on the farm since I last posted?  We’re now in a pretty regular routine of tasks; Wednesdays we harvest for CSA, Friday’s and at least Saturday mornings we harvest for market.  Then Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays we harvest crops that produce a lot quickly, such as courgettes and patty pans, peas and string beans, and starting to come more regularly now are cherry tomatoes and peppers.  It amazes me just how prolific the courgettes are here, they are revelling in the heat and producing like crazy. We probably get maybe 40kgs every couple of days!  , The patty pan plants are enormous, I’ve never seen them so big, some coming up to my chest!  They have been the least affected by the voracious cucumber beetle, while the outdoor cucumbers have been really badly affected, particularly the fruit which have badly damaged skins. Fine for us to eat, but no good for market or CSA.  They have practically become sacrificial plants now.

The big cucumber, courgette and squash garden.  you can see the barn in the background

A couple of weeks ago Jackson and I did the finally planting until the autumn.  We planted red and green cabbage, winter kale, coriander and basil.  We are still doing successional sowings of some crops throughout the summer, such as lettuce, hakurei turnips and spinach.  The spinach really is a bit pointless as when there is more than 12 hours of daylight it naturally bolts (goes to seed quickly).  We picked some spinach for market and CSA this week after having none ready for the last couple of weeks and it was of a distinctly poorer quality than that we grew in the spring.  Not as tender, but tough and slightly bitter; spinach season is done in my mind, it’s not a summer crop.  Same goes for radish, people are still asking for them at market and CSA, but we’ve had very few as they are a spring crop, and like the spinach, bolt in hot weather.

We planted more potatoes in the last couple of weeks and we will very soon have our first harvest of our early plantings.  The foliage is dying back which means the tubers are nearly ready.

The potato beetles are out in force now, so we’ve spent a good amount of time going over the plants and knocking the bugs into buckets and then drowning them, creating rather disgusting potato beetle soup!  It’s interesting that the beetles prefer certain varieties.  It seems to be the same with most pests.  The cucumber beetles have left the patty pans and squash and favoured the cucumbers and courgettes, and back when we were checking for leek moth certain varieties weren’t affected, such as Korean Purple.

New crops we’ve been harvesting the past week or so are broccoli, which has boron deficiency, which causes sunken heads and a hollow stem.  They are still perfectly good to eat, just looks a little less perfect.  We pulled our first baby rainbow carrots this week and have started harvesting string beans.  There is so much variety of food to eat right now, it’s wonderful. We work hard for it, but it’s still such a privilege to be able to eat so much fresh organic produce. I’m still eager for the aubergines and melons though!

delicious yellow cherry tomatoes ripening, even sweeter than the red variety we have.

Next week we’re doing the big garlic harvest, 24,000 bulbs, I’m going to smell of garlic for days!

 That's a whole lot of garlic!

Much love

Becky x