I snapped the above photo this morning, just after we pulled the plastic off our greenhouse - with warm temperatures and calm winds, it was the perfect day to take on the long-delayed task of replacing the cover on our greenhouse. Thankfully, we got the new plastic on late in the afternoon, just as the breeze was picking up, so we should be set for about another five years!

The reason I'm posting the photo here is because it shows a few of the many plants we're growing for sale to others this spring (these happen to be "Rose de Berne" heirloom tomato seedlings). We've got almost 20 varieties of tomatoes for sale, along with peppers, eggplant, winter squash, summer squash, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, and broccoli. 

The first chance to add some of these to your own garden is coming up this Saturday, March 19th, when we'll be selling at the Main Farmers' Market on Main St. in Ottawa, from 9am to 2pm. We'll be bringing as many plants as we can and will try to guess which will be most popular, but if you want to be sure to get exactly the varieties you want, check out our on-line store (just move your mouse over the "Order On-line..." menu item on the left side of your screen and click on "Organic Plants" to see all the details). By placing your order in advance, we'll know exactly which plants to bring and can even assemble your order in advance (though you'll always be free to select the plants that "speak to you" if that's your wish!).

Can't make it to the market on Saturday? If you live in the Pontiac and would like to come to the farm to pick up some plants, please get in touch. There's also the possibility of making deliveries into the Ottawa area in the next couple of weeks, too.

We're really looking forward to the market on Saturday, and with this beautiful weather, don't be surprised if the plants pictured above are much larger by then -- things are really jumping this time of year! Hope to see you there!

P.S. Our greenhouse beds will also be yielding a succulent supply of tender young greens (mesclun mixes and arugula) for Saturday's market, too!

Hi everyone,

We're back! (Well, we never really went anywhere, but there hasn't been too much to report, farm-wise, over the past few months.) That's changing quickly - the greenhouse is filling up with tender seedlings, the fields are being cultivated in preparation for seeds, cover crops, and transplants, and we were even able to do the earliest spring seeding last Friday, consisting of peas, carrots, spinach, Swiss chard, mesclun, dandelion, faba beans, turnips, radishes, and parsnips. (With the return of colder weather this week, though, there's still not much sign of life out there, but a little warm rain this weekend should give everything a nice boost!

For the latest news from the farm, "like" Songberry Organic Farm on Facebook or follow @songberryfarm on Twitter (I'll try to post regular updates here, too, but it's hard to compete with the convenience of tweeting or posting right from the field or greenhouse!)

Now on to the really big news. After much reflection and debate, we are doing things a little differently this year when it comes to selling our vegetables. Saturdays at the Main Street Farmers' Market have been the highlight of our weeks for the past two years: we love the chance to get to know the people who eat what we grow face-to face. But as a family with two young children, family and friends spread far and wide, and a diversity of personal interests, acheiving the right balance in our lives is an ongoing challenge. In light of this, we are going to be scaling back our market presence this season. Instead of attending every week, we plan on selling at the Main Market once a month, hopefully in conjunction with the harvest of some of our most popular items.

Our first market, for example, will be on Saturday, May 19th and we'll have all of our transplants ready for sale, including a wide variety of the heirloom tomatoes that were so popular last year. We'll also be "opening" our on-line store in a couple of weeks in order to give you a chance to order items in advance, and we may explore other ways to use this on-line store to get vegetables to our fans as the seaon progresses.

The bulk of our vegetable production will be marketed through our loyal friends at the various stores, restaurants, meal services, and box programs that we've been working with - some for almost 10 years now! These include Life Organic, the Herb & Spice on Bank St., Red Apron, Bridgehead, Zen Kitchen, and Rainbow Natural Foods.

We hope that you continue to support us in whatever way you can, and other local organic farmers, too! Feel free to get in touch by leaving your comments here, on our Facebook page, or by emailing me at rob@songberry.ca

Until next time! 

P.S. Julie has written more (and more eloquently!) about our market decisions on her blog. Check it out!

Wow - it's hard to believe that it's been four weeks since my last posting! My apologies. It's been a blur of harvesting around here, made even more hectic by the fact that our summer students have returned to school, leaving us a little short-handed on harvest days. Actually, the harvest has now stretched out to include pretty much the whole week - crops like tomatoes and squash don't really lose much in terms of quality and freshness over a day or two, so for the market, we harvest these crops on Thursday and leave the tender crops like lettuce and other greens for Friday morning. They get cut in the cool of the morning (and mornings lately have definitely been cooler!), rinsed, and refrigerated immediately, so they arrive at the market in the best possible condition. 

As the title suggests, our market offerings are starting to come full circle now that our fall plantings are ready to harvest. We've got fresh plantings of arugula, mild spring mix, baby lettuce, beta mix, and baby spinach ready to cut - they really enjoy the cooler days and nights of late summer. Peas will be making there return to market this week, too: snow peas are ready this week, with shell and snap peas to follow over the next couple of weeks. 

I had the first taste of our last planting of beans today, too, and they are superb. We'll have lots of green, yellow, purple, and dragon tongue beans  from now until frost strikes. 

Tomatoes, of course, are coming out of the field by the crate full. Our big red and orange beefsteak tomatoes make excellent slicers; the red and yellow paste tomatoes are great in sauces; and there's a motley crew of unusually shaped and coloured heirloom tomatoes guaranteed to provoke conversation as well as your taste buds. Cherry and grape tomatoes are in abundance, too. If you like to preserve tomatoes for winter enjoyment, please contact us about bulk orders - we offer a discount on tomatoes that are beautiful and tasty on the inside, but a little blemished on the outside. 

For the more adventurous, check out our sunberries, ground cherries, and tomatilloes.

Zucchini, patipan squash, and cucumbers  all start to slow down at this time of year, although with our staggered planting schedule, we've still got a really nice supply of these items: the baby zucchini in particular have been a big hit at the market this year, and once people try our lemon cucumbers, they're usually back for more.

We're just starting to harvest one of the farm's biggest crops: winter squash. The dark green acorn squash and the orange, white, and green striped "Celebration" squash have been the first to ripen. I suspect that I'll find some spaghetti squash in the field tomorrow, and the other half dozen or so varieties will be along shortly. 

For all the details, and to avoid missing out on anything, check out our on-line store!

Here's hoping that everyone has had a great summer and that the transition back to school and work has gone smoothly. Hope to see you at the market soon!

The bounty has begun! From now until the first frost, we'll be in full harvest mode here on the farm. We've enjoyed the first ripe tomatoes from the field this week, and we're ready to share them with you at the market starting Saturday. Some of the more interesting heirloom varieties will take another week or two to start ripening, but we'll be harvesting both red and orange tomatoes tomorrow. The first few pints of cherry tomatoes flew off the table last week, but we'll be back with even more this time. We actually grow 11 different varieties of cherry tomatoes and 8 different varieties of grape tomatoes to create a unique blend of colours, shapes, sizes, and textures for each basket. The colours range from bright reds and deep pink to light yellows and dark oranges, even "black" and "white" if the variety descriptions are to be believed! Last week, we brought them to the market in one big bin, and Jasmine and Gabriel took great pride and joy in filling with a rainbow of fruit, one by one into the pint baskets (also a great way to keep the kids busy while we rushed about setting up the rest of the stand!)

Another unique fruit that we're really enjoying this year are "lemon cucumbers". As you can see in photo at the right, they probably gained the name from their size, shape, and colouring. They are a heirloom variety with tender skin, tiny seeds, and a mild-flavoured flesh that is supposed to agree with even those who have difficulty digesting regular cucumbers. Check them out! Of course, we'll also have regular field cucumbers available too!

While we're on the topic of fruit, it's worth noting that we'll be picking the first sunberries of the year for Saturday's market, too. These little dark purple fruit are related to tomatoes but have a flavour similar to huckleberries - a tart, fruity taste that we enjoy in yogurt  and mixed berry compotes.

As I noted on our Facebook page last week, the kids ate the few green sweet peppers as soon as we found them in the field last week, but we'll have green and yellow sweet peppers at market, as well as yellow Hungarian hot wax  and dark, glossy green jalapeno peppers to spice up your cooking. Our greenhouse is also yielding some gorgeous dark purple, pink, and striped eggplant, too.

Pattypan squash continue to sell like hotcakes, too. One customer reported her horror at running out of them mid-week last week, insisting that they were as addictive as narcotics. Baby zucchini are something else that people just can't seem to get enough of - there's something about the size and tenderness of these little summer squash that gives them a delicate, complex flavour that sets them apart from their larger, more mature siblings. 

But if zucchini grilled on the BBQ, stuffed and baked in oven, or grated into muffins, cakes, breads or sauces is your fancy, never fear - we have bins of medium and large zucchini to satisfy your needs! 

One brave customer has pledged to consume 10 zucchini per week for the duration of the season. When he checked in last week, he hadn't made it all the way through 10 yet, but he gamely purchased 10 more, in hopes of being able to catch up before this Saturday rolled around. We'll see!

Speaking of yellow and green fruit, we'll be back with both yellow and green beans this week. Plus, we'll have a few purple beans to add to the mix. These are great on veggie trays or as an enticing snack. Or, amaze small children with your magical skills as you turn them from purple to green as they cook!

Moving away from fruit, we continue to offer three kinds of baby kale. Kale, if you haven't heard, is the new arugula, according to some - the Globe & Mail even recently published suggested wine pairings for kale in a recent issue! Of course, we'll continue to offer arugula, too, for those not quite ready to make the switch!

Our head lettuce is one crop appreciating this cooler, wetter weather, although I have to say that I was very impressed with how both our red and green Batavian lettuces stood up to the heat. We've also got some really nice heads of romaine, too. The mesclun is another fan of more moderate weather, and it will make it's return to market soon - tomorrow morning's quality check will determine its presence at the market this week.

Don't forget to check out our on-line store if you don't want to miss out on anything! Julie has posted some mouth-watering photos this week, so you'll have a better idea of what will be waiting for you if you order in advance!

It may seem a little odd to title this post "Changing Seasons." It's the peak of summer, after all, and the midst of a heat wave no less. Yet here on the farm, there is a very real sense of something turning. With the first frost about six weeks away (give or take a week or two), the days growing shorter and the nights cooler (soon we hope!), there are very few crops that could be planted now and expected to mature before a killing frost. And so, with the exception of a couple things we may try to squeeze in over the next couple of days, seeding is done for the year.

Our successes and failures this year will depend on what we make of the crops that are in the ground now (with the notable exception of the cover crops that we'll use to prepare the ground for next year). Although we've been harvesting crops since the first week of May, now is when we really start to literally see the "fruits" of our labour (rahter than just the leaves!). So the focus of our efforts now shifts almost entirely to harvesting, irrigation, weed control, and pest and disease monitoring and control. "Control" being a relative term, of course - there are often things on a farm that are beyond our control.

The weather, for example. Heat (which was largely responsible for the absence of a blog post last week), torrential rains (which has flooded out portions of our crops this year), and sometimes even worse. The thunderstorms that struck the area two weeks ago this coming Sunday had several lasting impacts on the farm. A large white pine tree just up the road from our barn, which often offers shade to our cows, came down across the road just before dark. Our home telephone went dead, and stayed that way for 8 days (making a phone call or checking messages meant driving down to the corner where cell reception is reliable!). And when we went to the field to harvest Tuesday morning, most of the zucchini and cucumbers had a couple jagged round pits in them, about the diameter of a marble. At first, I couldn't fathom what they were - some strange curcubit-munching insect? Peckish birds? Then my mind went back two previous nights to the drumming sound on our roof - hail. The holes in our zukes and cukes were craters left by hailstones. Here's a photo:

Fortunately, it was a bountiful harvest and we were able to find enough unblemished fruit to fill our orders. And we also found a few restaurants and caterers willing to accept some damaged zukes at a "scratch and dent" price. As for the rest - did you know that cows love zucchini? Our cows do, anyway - they'll fight over anything that's too large or too ugly to sell.

The other great thing about zucchini, of course, is that they just keep on growing! By the time we were harvesting for market on Friday, there was a whole new batch of new, pockmark-free fruit ripe for the picking. By now, it's like the storm never happened (for the zucchini and our phone line, anyway, not for the pine tree, or any one of the hundreds of other trees brought down by the storm).

Speaking of zucchini, we'll have a good supply for market again this week. Many people really appreciate our baby zucchini while other prefer the larger ones - for the real fans, we offer a stand full of all shapes and sizes of green and yellow zucchini to choose from: pick one, three, or even ten! Pattypan squash are also very popular. They tend to be sweeter in flavour than zucchini, and who can resist the flying saucer-esque shape of them!

We'll also be bringing lots of field cucumbers of various sizes, and a few more of our greenhouse tomatoes. Cherry and grape tomatoes are starting to ripen now, too -- we'll have to see if we can resist the temptation to keep the first few all to ourselves! Of course, you can't have tomatoes without basil, and we'll be offering small packages or large bags of basil tops at the market again this week.

Our second planting of beans is starting to produce now, too. The green beans are one of my favourite varieties - a slim, dark green bean called Valentino. Yellow, purple, and "dragon tongue" beans are coming soon, too, but they'll probably need another week before they're ready to pick. 

On the leafy side, we've got some beautiful heads of green leaf lettuce ready to cut, as well as the ever-popular baby kale and arugula (be warned, though, this hot weather makes the arugula extra spicy!). Pea and sunflower shoots always add a refreshing splash to summer salads and sandwiches, and we're not offering smaller packages for those who like to keep them fresh, or to make it easier to take one of each!

The big question tonight is: will there be raspberries? The crop was showing signs of coming to a close earlier this week, but we're still hoping to be able to find a few half-pints to reward the early birds on Saturday. Check back here, or on our Facebook page, tomorrow for the latest news.

Thanks for reading, and hope to see you at the market!

It's not very often that the weather catches us off-guard here on the farm, but Wednesday was one of those days. The day started off innocently enough - a mix of sun and cloud, a nice breeze from the west. I was out seeding a fall crop of beans, carrots, peas, and beets, in hopes that the frost will hold off long enough for them to mature. Julie and Ashley, one of our workers, were up in the raspberry patch, filling an order for afternoon delivery. After getting another order for yet more raspberries, I headed over to deliver the good news and more container, just as a few drops of rain began to fall.

Glancing up, I noticed a dark band of clouds moving down the valley to the north and heard the distant rumble of thunder. The skies overhead and to the south and west were still mostly blue, so I assumed that the storm would pass to the north - in the little valley that shelters our farm, we often observe storms passing on the other side of the ridge to the north, or sailing down the Ottawa River to the south, often missing us entirely. Within minutes, however, the rain intensified and any traces of blue sky were swallowed by a wall of gray.

I grabbed a tray of full berry containers and headed toward the tractor and trailer on the other side of the field, where I could put the berries under cover. As the rain came down harder and harder I moved faster and faster, not wanting to see the fragile berries soaked and ruined. It wasn't until I reached the trailer that I remembered all the seed packets spread out and the trays of beans set out to dry after receiving a coating of beneficial nitrogen-fixing bacteria. At the point, the beans were now practically afloat and the seed packets soaked. I quickly slid the berries under cover, then frantically stuffed the seed packets back into their plastic bin.

At this point, the raspberry plants and the berries on them were too wet to consider picking, so we abandoned that mission, and Julie, who had cleverly protected the remaining full containers with an intricate leaf "roof" headed back across the farm to the house to bring them to safety. Still believing that the storm would pass momentarily, and reassured by the long gaps between lightning flashes and thunder rumbles that told us the storm was safely distant, Ashley went to finish picking green beans and I started cutting zucchini - we were already soaking wet at this point, and the vegetables had to be harvested for delivery, so carrying on seemed like the best option.

Almost an hour later, the rain finally relented, but sections of the field were flooded once again. And what had started as a warm breeze had turned decidedly chilly - I was shivering and covered in goosebumps by the time Julie returned with raincoats - not to keep us dry, but to trap body heat and warm us up! 

It was another hour before everything was washed, packed, loaded into the van, and headed to Ottawa with Julie. I treated myself to a hot shower and a late lunch before heading back outside, under blue skies once again, to continue working. Days like this, an office job looks almost attractive. Almost, but not really.

Well, this week was almost, dare I say it, normal. Not too hot, not too cold, not too wet, not too dry. And very busy. We've still got some seeding and transplanting left to do, lots of tomatoes and cucumbers to trellis, and the weeds never stop, but we're slowly catching up. Our vegetables are catching up too - at this point, most crops are only about a week behind where they were last year, which is great considering we were three to four weeks later getting started this spring!

But what everybody seems to want to know about recently are berries - strawberries to be precise. As one of the only sources of local organic strawberries in the Ottawa area, we are inundated with requests every year for organic strawberries. A couple of years, we've even managed to pull off a decent crop, but it never comes close to meeting the demand. And in the majority of recent years, well, let's just say disappointment would be an accurate term. 

A lot of it comes down to management, frankly. If you look around, many strawberry farms focus exclusively on that one crop, with the possible addition of a few others that ripen at different times of the year. They know that strawberry production is a management-intensive activity, requiring careful timing and close observation. They're smarter than us. We try to grow strawberries along with about 30 other crops, many of which require transplanting, weeding, trellising, or harvesting during strawberry season. There's no doubt that our strawberry crop can never be as large as a result, and our losses to disease and insect pressure are probably greater, too. The advantage, of course, is that all of our "berries" are not in one basket - if they don't work out, chances are some other crop will, and we'll still be able to keep the bills paid! 

Strawberries are also very sensitive to the weather. A year ago, we thought we had done everything right: over an acre of berry plants in their third year, lush and healthy, mostly ahead of the weeds, covered by protective row cover. Then came a couple days of windy weather followed by two nights when the temperature dipped to minus 7 for an extended period. Goodbye row cover, hello frost! At that temperature, even the unopened buds underneath the row cover that remained on the plants were frozen. Our prize strawberry field yielded enough berries for a winter's supply of jam, and that was it (although "it" was mighty tasty!). All in all, over the past seven years, we've had profitable crops in less than half of them. To put it more bluntly, to date we've probably lost money trying to grow strawberries.

So why do we persist? Stubborness, mostly. I'm inspired by the history of this land as a strawberry farm, by the handful of other organic farmers across the country who are growing organic strawberries successfully, by the challenge of trying to figure out something that few others manage to do, and by all the people who are so eager to enjoy the pure deliciousness of an organic strawberry. So we keep trying. Our latest attempt is a very small patch of 1000 plants transplanted into biodegradable plastic mulch (to combat the weeds without invoking the horror that is black plastic) on a field sloped to help prevent frost damage. They're making a very small crop of berries this year, but we have high hopes of a larger crop next year, and of learning lessons that will allow us to increase the amount of berries we can produce without "betting the farm."  

Raspberries, on the other hand, are a different story. This farm once also featured a hillside field of raspberries that created a waiting list of people wanting to come and pick them. The field was abandoned years before we bought the place, and although a few lonely canes would poke through early winter snows, grass overtook the field. Or so we thought. But in the wake of last year's strawberry disaster, a chance walk across the hillside in early July revealed rejuvenated patches of raspberry canes bearing heavy clusters of ripe fruit. Compared to all the time and money invested in the strawberries, here was a crop we had completely ignored, but it was the one offering us a harvest of fruit. Because the field had not been tended in any way for well over a decade, harvesting was a very labour-intensive process, but Julie braved the wilds to bring some to market for a few weeks. Now it looks like the miracle may repeat itself again this year! 

What else can you expect to see at market this week? An excellent question, and one I won't be able to answer until I complete my pre-harvest scouting tomorrow morning. A number of crops are coming on so fast, it's hard to keep up. What I know for sure are sugar snap, snow, and shell peas. Head lettuce, "teen" lettuce, and baby lettuce (mesclun). Old favourites like arugula, mild spring mix, and Beta mix. Lots of the ever-popular baby kale. More green onions  and summer turnips. And, as always, pea & sunflowers shoots and wheatgrass.

As for the rest, check back tomorrow afternoon, and I'll post the rest of the list in the comments section. Now it's time for a few hours of pre-harvest sleep! 

OK, so I shouldn't have even mentioned it in last week's blog. The start of another rainy cycle that is. Little did I know that Thursday evening's deluge (an inch in less than 30 minutes) would only be the beginning of what has amounted to over 5 inches of rain in the past week! The first few inches soaked into the parched earth relatively quickly, but the last couple resulted in some flooding that has definitely had an impact on some plants in some areas of the field. It has also delayed planting our fall crops, but it was nice to have some time inside to clear the desk and the in-box!

Despite the saturated soils, we're still counting ourselves lucky. Farmers to the east of us received almost 12 inches, and the highway into Ottawa is now broken by two washouts, adding about 30 minutes to the drive into town. Things could be much worse, and actually, to tell the truth, they're starting to look better every day.

This is the beginning of "blossom season" on the farm -- it seems like every day, new rows of plants are coming into blossom -- last week we enjoyed the delicate whites of the peas; now we're seeing the little bells of bean blossoms hanging heavy and the first hints of the brash orange-yellows of the summer squash. Several varieties of tomatoes are sporting their star-like yellow blossoms, and the cucumbers are getting in on the act, too, with melons not far behind. 

What it means for our faithful customers, of course, is a greater variety of vegetables arriving at the markets and at our retail outlets each week. (We started our mid-week deliveries on Wednesday with a trip to the Herb & Spice on Bank St., and Life Organic - watch our Facebook page or Twitter feed for updates.) Here's the rundown of what we'll be bringing to the Main Market this week:

Strawberries  - yes, our plants have finally started producing! Supply will be extremely limited this week, but hopefully we'll have a few more next week - because it is the plants' first year, it will be a small crop.

Peas - all three types this week - snow, snap, and shell - and more of them.

Baby kale - red, green, or "dinosaur" - this remains one of our most popular items.

Arugula - a customer commented last week that we had the nicest arugula on the market -- always nice to hear things like that!

Mild Mesclun - a tasty salad mix with not too much heat

Baby Lettuce - a crop that appreciates cooler, wetter weather!

Leaf Lettuce - we'll have a couple different varieties of full-size heads available

Hakurei Turnips - sweet, mild summer turnips that have been much-anticipated

Kohlrabi - mixed bunches of purple and white - probably the last of these for a while

Garlic Scapes - real garlic flavour, and no cloves to peel!

Green Onions - another new item this week

Shoots, pea & sunflower - we had a couple of requests last week to buy them by the tray - let us know if you're interested in this option, too!

Wheat grass - a confession here - I had them packed and ready to go last week, then drove off without them. Our pigs and chickens enjoyed them, however, and there's a fresh batch ready to package up on Saturday again -- and I rarely forget the same thing twice!

There may be a couple of other things I'm forgetting to mention here -- we'll have to see what the next 30 hours brings! I'll be heading out at sunrise tomorrow to gather greens before the heat strikes, and hopefully to wrap up harvest and packing early enough to leave some time to celebrate with family and friends. Happy Canada Day to you, and enjoy the long weekend! 

Farm News

My apologies for the delay in publishing this post – our internet connection went down during last night’s heavy rains. But other than this technical inconvenience, it is certainly a welcome rain – after an extremely wet spring, the pendulum swung the other way for most of June and our fields were getting very dry.

As I mentioned last week, the upside to the sunny weather was the ability to get lots of fieldwork done, and we were very fortunate to be able to finish transplanting our main crops this week – the last of the winter squash and pumpkins went into the ground on Wednesday as a light rain fell. Our second planting of cucumbers and summer squash is still in the greenhouse, but they’ll be OK till next week, and that’s when we’ll aim to put in more plantings of beans, peas, corn, and carrots for late summer and fall harvests. This all assumes, of course, that this isn’t the beginning of another continually rainy cycle – surely we must be due for a little moderation by now!

Market News

It’s pea season! It’s a sure sign that the harvest season is gearing up once our peas are ready. This week we kick off with the first shell peas and snow peas of the year. The shell peas are an early variety, so the pods are a little shorter with fewer peas inside, but they are well worth a bit of extra work – nothing compares to the flavour of the first fresh peas of the year. Our sugar snap peas aren’t far behind either.

A luck few enjoyed the flavour of our first kohlrabi last week, and we hope to have enough for everyone this week at market. The literal translation of this word from the German is “cabbage turnip” and this aptly describes their flavour. We aim to harvest our kohlrabi a little smaller than some, in order to maximize the tender sweetness of the juicy flesh – they are great raw or lightly steamed at this stage.

Baby kale  was a big seller at market last week, and we were smart enough this time to save a few bags for ourselves. Julie put together an incredible marinated kale salad that we enjoyed for dinner on Sunday – it’s my new favourite way to enjoy kale, and being raw, it’s also the most nutritious way to eat it! We’ll also have our standard salad fare: baby lettuce, mild mesclun, arugula, Beta mix, and maybe even some baby spinach. And to top off the salad (or a sandwich, or simply as a snack), try some pea shoots or sunflower shoots. We also got lots of positive comments on our new method of packaging wheat grass with the root system still intact in order to preserve all the enzymes.

The other much-anticipated arrival this week will be garlic scapes. These decorative and tasty curlicues add real garlic flavour to dishes both cooked and raw – just chop them up like green onions. They also make a delicious pesto. Although they’ll have a remarkably long shelf life inside your fridge, if you want to keep a bunch for the long haul, try putting them through a blender then freezing them in ice cube trays for a quick and easy way to add garlic flavour to any dish – in our house, these cubes get used up faster than real garlic cloves!

The power just flashed off for a few moments here – I guess that’s my cue to wrap this up and head to bed! Hope to see you at the market on Saturday, even if it is a little on the wet side. And we always welcome feedback here, or on our Facebook page, too!

Farm News

It's that awkward time of year again: the dry weather is great for getting the last of our main crops seeded and transplanted, but at the same time, the seeds and plants that are already in the ground could really benefit from a good soaking. And so I check the weather forecast each day (or several times a day!) with some ambivalence - as each day passes, more and more gets planted, but the need to set up the irrigation system moves steadily higher on the priority list. 

Our winter squash crop has been the focus of a lot of effort this week. Yesterday, I counted roughly 7,000 squash and pumpkin seedlings in the greenhouse, and by the end of the day today, over half of them were in the field. That's meant a couple of early mornings in the field laying the bio-plastic mulch in the coolest part of the day and some hot afternoons on the tractor and transplanter. 

The rest of the crop is now waiting for another field to be ready - we harvested hay from it at the end of last week (here's a photo of Jasmine and Gabriel helping to bring in the last load of bales). The next task is to work it up, till beds, and lay bio-plastic to prepare it for transplanting - hopefully I'll be able to report that job done by this time next week!

Market News

As I predicted last week, the rhubarb and spinach have succumbed to this hot, dry weather. We're hoping to have spinach again in the fall, but you'll have to wait until next spring for fresh rhubarb. However, the arugula, baby lettuce, and mild mesclun mix continue to hang in there. An early bird or two will be able to snap up some Beta mix, and there's a fresh seeding of that on the way for future weeks. We were short on sunflower seed last week, so we're limited to pea shoots and wheatgrass this week on the shoots and sprouts front - the good news is that our seed order beat the postal strike, so we'll be back in the sunflower shoot business next week!

Boy, was our baby kale ever popular last week! We bagged each of the red, green, and lacianto (or dinosaur) leaves separately, but a number of customers just couldn't make up their mind and took one of each! We'll have more this week, for those who missed out last time. New this week from the fields are oriental greens, including the dark-green tatsoi and some lovely little heads of pak choy. These really shine in stir-fries. Our kohlrabi is right on the verge of being ready to harvest - I probably won't be able to resist harvesting a few bunches for market, too.

Our heirloom tomato, pepper, and cucumber seedlings continued to sell well last week, so we'll give everyone one last chance to fill that last corner of the garden, or a large empty pot. The cherry tomato hanging baskets are really starting to blossom now, so you'll have a real sense of just how productive these will be in the weeks to come!

Looking ahead, expect to see our summer turnips make their long-anticipated arrival next week, along with some shell peas. I wouldn't be surprised if the first of the garlic scapes are ready by then, too, as well as some heads of lettuce.

World News

A couple of news items have caught my attention this week: the first, of course, is the tragic e. coli outbreak in Germany that is being linked to bean sprouts produced on an organic farm in northern Germany. The second is the annual release of the Environmental Working Group's "Dirty Dozen" list of the fruits and vegetables with the highest levels of pesticide contamination. Have either of these stories had an impact on your food shopping habits? Please leave a comment below and let me know!

Thanks for reading...hope to see you at market or hear from you soon!

After complaining for the past couple of months about all the moisture, we're now at the stage where a bit of rain would be most welcome! Fortunately, we avoided the heavy storms that struck Ottawa and areas further south on Wednesday evening - there were some ominous clouds, a few flashes of lightning, and enough thunder to make the dogs nervous, but that was about it.

The upside to the long stretch of dry weather is that we've been able to continue to move transplants from the greenhouse into the field. This week saw our first plantings of zucchini, summer squash, cucumbers, and melons head into the field, as well as a few trays of winter squash. Thanks to our mechanical waterwheel transplanter and the 100% biodegradable and compostable plastic mulch (made from non-GMO corn starch), these plants settle into a pretty cozy environment, where they can withstand a bit of dry, windy weather (though without some rain in the next few days, we'll be looking at hooking up our drip irrigation system to give everything a drink). We've also been planting potatoes this week: it's a little late by some standards, but we always find that by waiting until June, our battles with the bugs are greatly reduced. It means you may need to wait a little longer for a taste of them, but hopefully it also means that there will be lots more of them!

I also spent a rare day off the farm this week, going back to highschool. Well, not really. As part of the Canadian Organic Grower's Growing Up Organic project, I was invited to speak to three classes of grade 10 students at a school in Kanata. By giving them a "virtual tour" of the farm, we discussed several important aspects of organic farming, as well as touching on issues related to food security and food sovereignity. It was lots of fun, and a real eye-opener. The students had some great questions about food and farms and were obviously thirsty for more information. Interestingly, less than about a quarter of them had any direct connection to a farm.

In other news, the crew from Wooden Shoe Timberframes (headed by Julie's brother), finished erecting our new packing shed last Friday. Here's a photo of the (almost) completed structure - now it's up to us to complete the interior and put it to use! I promise to publish a full report and lots of photos of the whole process soon!

We're hoping that it won't be long before we'll be needing to make use of all this new space: this week will mark the first real harvest from our early field crops. The star of this coming market is sure to be our baby kale. One of our regular customers declared this the best kale on the market last year, and we hope that we can live up to that reputation. These bite-sized leaves of green, purple, and "dinosaur" kale are tender and sweet enough to be eaten raw in salads, though they also stand up to a light steaming. Spinach and rhubarb will be with us for another week, too, although the heat of the early week has certainly taken its toll on these spring crops. Our baby lettuce, mild mesclun, Beta mix, and arugula are still producing well, though. We were pleased with the response to our wheatgrass last week, so this week we'll be bringing more - we'll also be experimenting with packaging in a way that conserves all of the valuable enzymes found in the growing plant. And of course there will be pea shoots and sunflower shoots for your snacking and salad-topping pleasure. 

We bid a fond farewell to the garlic greens and the stinging nettle this past week, although garlic scapes are probably only another couple of weeks away. We're also eagerly anticipating the first harvest of our very popular summer turnips, which may arrive as early as next week, as well as peas, which are now in blossom. Our experimental strawberry patch is also now beginning to blossom, so there should be a taste of those coming in a few weeks.

If you've got any room left in your garden, we'll be bringing the last of our heirloom tomato , pepper, and cucumber seedlings. And if you're out of room but still craving your own supply of fresh tomatoes, check out our hanging baskets of red cherry tomatoes - decorative and delicious!

If you have any questions about the farm, our products, or would like to leave some feedback, please feel free to post a comment here, send us an email, or drop by the market Saturday morning.

It's been an intensely busy week on the farm. The weather finally presented us with a stretch of dry weather, barely in the nick of time to prepare the fields for the first round of warm season transplants. These include tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, sunberries, tomatilloes, and ground cherries (all of which were transplanted yesterday) and the first planting of zucchini, summer sqaush, and cucumbers (which will be transplanted as soon as this wind dies down a little!). I also headed out this evening to plant a bit of sweet corn and the first main crop of beans (green, yellow, purple, and "dragon tongue"). Julie finished seeding the last of our winter squash this week, as well as the late season planting of zucchini and cucumbers. This means that apart from regular sowings of lettuce and oriental green transplants, the bulk of the greenhouse work is done for the season -- now our attention shifts almost fully to managing the crops in the fields.

Well, normally it would. But just to make things a little more interesting, we decided to construct some cold storage and a packing shed this spring. Our goals are to increase the efficiency of moving the veggies from the field to you while maintaining their quality and freshness, and to increase our capacity to store crops through the fall and winter. A project of this scale doesn't happen without some help: We are excited and honoured to have received support from Bridgehead through their Growing Up Organic blend towards this project (and we'll also have the opporunity to share our farm with some groups of school kids, too!). And we're also co-operating with the local office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food (MAPAQ) through their Young Farmer Development Program (one of the few times when I can still be considered "young"!). I'll post more details and photos, soon, but for now suffice to say that this project has occupied a few days of effort over the past couple of weeks, but it's coming together nicely!

Back in the fields, we're still waiting for things to really start to take off - most crops are still showing the signs of too much water and too little heat (though the weeds don't seem to mind that much). This means that our market offerings will look much like previous weeks.

Baby spinach will be the first crop seeding this apring coming out of the fields - this week's harvest will cover both the greenhouse and a bit of the field. A new seeding of arugula and mild mesclun mix is looking very good, and we'll also be bringing our usual offering of baby lettuce mix  and Beta salad mix. The stinging nettle patch hasn't started to set seed yet, so it will offer up another harvest of tasty, nutritious greens. And we'll be back with more rhubarb and garlic greens. For something new this week, we've grown some wheatgrass along with our usual cuttings of pea shoots and sunflower shoots.

We've still got a great selection of heirloom tomato plants and pepper seedlings, as well as giant sunflower plants. We've been hardening them off outside of our greenhouse all week, so they should be in great shape to head straight for your garden. I've also got some pots of old-fashioned cucumber plants and our favourite variety of pattypan squash seedlings to round out the plant selection. The cherry tomato hanging baskets are also looking great -- some plants even have blossoms on them already!

We're really looking forward to being back at market this week, and we hope to see you there, too!

In contrast to last week's headlong rush to get vegetables transplanted and seeded under sunny skies, this week's work has been quite varied. The greenhouse is nearing its peak capacity as we fill it with trays of winter squash and pumpkins, while maintaining a regular seeding schedule for lettuce and other greens. 

So, for one day this week, I put on my carpenter's hat and build a new set of tables to hold all these seedlings. I also put in some tractor time, discing down last year's winterkilled buckwheat cover crop in preparation for the warm season plants like tomatoes, peppers, melons, anc cucumbers, and plowing down a clover cover crop where our potatoes will be planted, as well as a field where we'll seed a crop of oats and clover to build fertility for future crops. (I have to admit to a real fondness for plowing - seeing that straight, neat furrow of dark earth turned behind the plow is one of the simple pleasures of farming that I've enjoyed from a young age!)

Another day was devoted to the latest chapter in our ongoing efforts to perfect an efficient and economical way to produce organic strawberries on our farm. Late Wednesday morning, a courier arrived with a box of 1000 strawberry plants (actually, they are mostly roots with the crown of the plant attached, but only the occasional leaf), still partially frozen from their winter's hibernation. With help from the whole family, and a friend who chose the right (or wrong?!) day to visit, we got them all in the ground before the end of the day. They are planted through a layer of biodegradable plastic mulch - our hopes are that this will help control weeds for this first year, without creating the disposal and environmental issues associated with regular black plastic. We'll wait and see...

The vegetables in the field are still looking a little depressed by this cold, wet weather, but the warmth of the past couple of days should help. The sun came out for a brief period this afternoon, and it was inspiring to notice the vibrant green of new leaves on the trees, and I swear I could almost see the grass growing (great news for our cows; not-so-great news for the shaggy lawn that's nowhere near the top of our priority list right now!)

Fortunately for our farmers' market customers, the greenhouse continues to produce vibrant, tender, and sweet crops of fresh greens.  Once again, we'll have baby spinach, baby lettuce, our mild mesclun mix, (all of which are pictured here) tasty arugula, and a bit of the Beta Salad Mix. I'll definitely be planting more of this last item - it's got amazing flavour and texture -  a great new find! After a break last week as a result of waiting for new seed supplies, we'll be back with both sunflower shoots and pea shoots - a super- healthy way to add a little extra crunch to your salads or sandwiches. And we'll be brave enough to harvest more stinging nettles, too - we were pleasantly surprised at how quickly they sold out at last week's market. 

New this week will be garlic greens. This is the first way to enjoy the flavour of fresh garlic each year - we pull the fresh plants and wash and bunch them just like green onions -  you can use them just like green onions, too! We're also hoping that our rhubarb patch will be ready for a little thinning!

With the May long weekend here, may people's thoughts are turning to their gardens, and we'll be bringing lots of our heirloom tomato plants to market - we've got 15 varieties to choose from, and offer a discount to those who can't make up their minds and buy 3 or more! We'll also be back with heirloom pepper plants and heirloom giant sunflower seedlings. We had hoped to be able to offer cucumber seedlings  as well, but I think I'll baby them in the greenhouse for another week before bringing them to market. (It's a good idea to keep an eye on the long-range forecast before setting out any of the plants you buy from us -- the May long weekend is early this year, we're having a slow spring, and there's still some time before the seedlings will outgrow their pots - no need to rush!). Short on space, but still want to enjoy your own homegrown tomatoes? We've got hanging baskets of "Tumbling Tom" red cherry tomatoes that will produce cascades of delicious fruit for your snacking pleasure. We've also seeded each basket with some white lobelia, just to add a decorative touch!

The weather forecast looks very promising for Saturday, so we're looking forward to a great market day - hope to see some of you there! (And if you do come, let us know that you read this blog - your feedback is always appreciated!)

Last week at this point, the greenhouse was bursting with transplants needing room to stretch their roots and leaves, and the fields were still quite soggy from the endless rains of April.

As I site here tonight, with sunburned skin and aching muscles, the greenhouse has been cleared of everything able to be transplanted (including onions, leeks, lettuce, tatsoi, pak choi, spinach, kohlrabi, cabbage, cauliflower, collards, and kale - say that 10 times fast!). That space is now occupied by freshly seeded trays of melons, cucumbers, and summer squash. We've also seeded the second planting of peas, spinach, summer salad turnips, swiss chard, dandelion, and carrots, and the main crop of parsnips is in the ground. I even planted a couple of rows of beans this afternoon (it's a bit early for frost-sensitive crops like this, but I was in a gambling mood!) I actually wouldn't mind at all if it rained some now - though not on Saturday, that's market day!

Speaking of the market, here's a sneak preview of what will be available this week:

Our raised beds in the greenhouse will yield a nice picking of sweet and tender baby spinach, as well as the first cutting of our baby lettuce mix. We'll also have the first of a new crop for us, a Beta Salad Mix. This is a mix of beet and chard greens cut at the baby leaf stage. They're tender, sweet, and very good for you! We'll also have some more of the arugula and the mild mesclun mix that were so popular last week (come early so you don't miss out!).

We'll also be bringing some young, tender stinging nettle. Yes, really. Nettles are packed full of vitamins and minerals (they are actually higher in iron than any other vegetable), are reported to have a number of health benefits, which means they make the perfect spring tonic. Just be careful when handling them! (We'll have them safely tucked in a plastic bag for you, and once they start cooking they lose their sting very quickly). We'll even bring along some recipes, or you can check out a bunch here: http://www.mariquita.com/recipes/nettles.html 

Do you grow your own garden? Once again, we'll be bringing 15 different varieties of heirloom tomato plants potted up and ready to go. This week, we'll also be bringing along some open-pollinated, heirloom sweet bell pepper plants. And, of course, we'll have the ever-popular giant sunflower seedlings - I'm thinking this year we should have a contest to see who can grow the tallest sunflower from one of our seedlings - just need to think up a really cool prize...

That's all for tonight -- hope to see you at market on Saturday! 

As market gardeners, a lot of our customers are curious about what we get up to in the six months we are not supplying them with vegetables at the weekly market. Knowing how intensely busy the growing season is for us, they ask, “do you get time off in the winter?”

The answer is both yes and no.

Long Weekends!

One of the first things we notice after market ends is that we suddenly have two-day weekends again! As much as we enjoy being at the farmers’ market, not waking up at 5:00am and rushing out the door every Saturday morning does feel good come November. Of course, one of the pleasures and privileges of farming is that we are not necessarily tied into the 9 to 5 Monday to Friday work schedule and are free to steal a day here and there as we please (provided of course, that there’s no pressing work to be done on the farm – the more accurate way to put it may be that we can choose to free up an hour or two during the day and then make it up in the wee hours of the morning!). But given that most of our family and friends have regular jobs, we still find that we are able to spend more time with them when we can plan visits on Saturdays.

The Bills Keep Coming

At our present scale, the money we make from the farm over the summer doesn’t manage to pay the bills all year round, so we need to make an income through the winter months as well. I’m very fortunate to be able to remain involved in organic farming, working as a consultant to other organic farmers. Through phone calls, emails, articles, by organizing workshops and tours, and by attending tradeshows and conferences, I help organic farmers deal with challenges related to soils, crops, livestock, organic certification, and anything else that comes up. The beauty of it is that I’m learning lots at the same time, and once the warming weather begins to draw those farmers away from educational opportunities and back into their fields, I get to focus my attention back on Songberry Farm. It’s not a perfectly synchronized system, of course: my busiest months are usually late fall and early spring, when there’s lots of work here on the farm but it’s “meeting season” for many farmers. And I still need to stay on top of things through the summer, too – that’s what Blackberries are for!

The Farm Keeps Running

As a mixed-farm (some would say “mixed-up”), there’s still lots going on once the vegetables are out of the field. Actually, there’s still a fair bit to do with the vegetables once they’re out of the field – we’re still supplying stores and other outlets with winter squash, pumpkins, and potatoes until around Christmas. We also work to provide a good portion of our own food supply from the farm year-round – everything from canned and frozen fruits and vegetables, to a freezer full of beef, pork, and chicken. Once the snow flies, things get busier at the barn, too: the cows come in off pasture and need to be fed hay regularly; eggs need to be collected year-round, but in winter there’s the added responsibility of making sure they, the cows, and the cats all have fresh water available. When we’re lucky enough to have a cow milking, collecting a few litres of fresh, warm milk is another daily task…no matter if it’s zero and sunny, or -20 and a howling blizzard (and you know it’s cold when milk comes out of the udder at body temperature and immediately freezes to the side of the stainless steel pail!)

An Early Start

Winter is also planning time…a time to review what worked well over the past year, what didn’t work so well and how to do better, what investments to make in the coming year, and what our goals will be for the year ahead. And usually before the last squash is sold, the next year’s seed catalogues arrive in the mail, and the cycle begins again…but that’s a topic for another post.