Update as of April 19 2017:  We have eight shares left to sell.  If you are interested in taking part in the coming season, please order soon.








Hello everyone:

Happy Easter to you all, I hope this spring is treating you well.

Plenty is happening at the farm, read on.

I'll be going over accounts in the next day or two to ensure everyone is making their payments on time and double checking where we are at for customer count.  I think there are only eight more shares left, so if you are still trying to decide, bear in mind space is limited.

Call now if you have any questions.


(613) 831-8218.  I'mm usually home by 6 pm, though some evenings I am a bit late.




The nursery is now getting crowed.  The outdoor nursery is now ready for taking the oldest onions for all but the coldest nights (On those nights, the onions are placed on the storage shelves inside the nursery).

The nursery is almost full - we are onto the fourth bank of lights, with kale, chard, tomatoes and the third round of onions just starting to emerge in their seed trays.

Over the next few days, I'll be counting tomato seedlings and determining if any more need to be planted.






Here are your peppers at two weeks.  They have opened their primary leaves and are establishing their roots.

We are growing four types of pepppers this season - Olympus, a standard green bell pepper; Lipstick, a cone shaped sweet peper, Hungarian Hotwax, a banana pepper that is somewhat hot; and Hungarian Black Pepper, somewhat hotter but not extreme, according to our hot pepper experts.







The celery is a little older, having progressed to its secondary leaf growth.

As with the peppers above, much of the growth is in the root systems, so the plant appears to be growing very slowly.

These will be following the onions to the outdoor nursery in the coming week, though spending the first few nights back inside until the weather gets a little warmer.








Along with all the work in the nursery, more tasks for outside are added to my spring routine.

Some of last year's late season beds need to be cleaned out - kale and brussel sprout stems need to be pulled and sent to the compost, and a few blades of grass and a few overwintered dandelions need removing,

Some beds near the edge of the buffer zone were left mostly untended last year until I knew for sure where the buffer zone was.  These beds are first on the list, a task that will only get more difficult if left.




The next beds to get cleaned up are the ones that are direct seeded early in the season - snow peas and spinach; and the first successions of carrots, beets, turnips, parsnip and rutabaga.

After that, the beds that take the first transplants are cleaned up - onions and parsley.

Fortunately, many of these were cleaned up last fall, and only need some light working.










If this is not enough to seem daunting, the rock garden needs some cleaning, compost windrows need turning,  and a broken part needs to be ordered for one of my tools.

A night of sub zero weather was put to use the other day.  I added a bit of grass and clover seed to some paths that had a few bare patches.

Grass and clover seed often germinates better after exposure to some cold, the temperature change helps break the seed open.

I use all the help I can get.







Some beds need deep aeration - the tool pictured here is used for that it is called a broadfork.

The five tines reach 10 inches into the ground and create passages for moisture and air to get into.  The air stimulated aerobic bacteria, which in turn speed up the decomposition process of organic matter, which in turn releases nutrients into the soil.

The passages also allow worms, bugs, and amphibians opportunity to move about in the soil easier.






Insects and worms overwinter in the soil below the frost line, consuming organic matter and helping to break down nutrients that are deep in the soil - too deep for most crops to reach with their roots.

When these soil dwellers sense the warmth of spring, they migrate to the surface, bringing these nutrients from below the root zone back up to the surface.

This is just one of many activities on the farm that develop soil health, which in turn leads to healthy food.

This is a photo of me using a broad fork in my first year working the earliest beds.  The broadfork is one of my favourite tools to use.  An excellent all body workout that will do the same things a treadmill, stationary bike, and rowing will do...and at the end, one can say the exercise accomplished something.





I have a few perennial crops.  This is a self seeding bed of primroses in our rock garden.
The rock garden also contains oregano, thyme, sage, and amaranth flowers.

I am gradually establishing sorrel here as well.

Instead of broad forking, I use dandelions as my deep aerators.  dandelions are biennial, so when their deep tap root dies, and decomposes, they provide the same kind of hole in the ground that the broadfork does.







Our first crop of the year - rhubarb leaves emerging from dormant plants.


Rhubarb is in the plant family Polygonaceae, which also includes sorrel and buckwheat.

I also grow buckwheat (as a cover crop), and I am establishing sorrel in one of the perennial beds as an additional herb.

The oldest rhubarb plants are ready for harvest in early June, a few of our customers shall receive some.  The other plants will take another year or two to mature.

We are down to 9 shares remaining for our capacity.  If you are interested in having your certified organic produce delivered to your door this summer, contact me soon...


Hello Everyone:


We are back from another farm and dog sitting assignment.  We may be reached at our usual phone number, (613) 831-8218; or by email.


Beau just refuses to give up - I suppose after fifteen years, it's difficult to change change careers but I suspect Beau prefers being a Labrador Retriever more than anything else.






As for Whitsend, there has been a lot of activity the past week.

The growing field is 90 per cent clear of snow, though still a lot of draining to take place.

The ground is still much to wet to walk onto, without tearing up the permanent paths.

A few of last years beds still require cleaning up (late season crops such as the remnants of the brussels sprouts in the foreground).







One of our new customers requested Kohlrabi.  This is our third request for this crop, so I have finally opted to give it a trial this season.

This is a curious looking crop, another member of the cabbage (Brassica) family.  With so many Brassica's in the field already, finding space for another is difficult.

This season, I have planned to concentrate on small turnips.  Harvesting them young means they are less fibrous, have a milder flavour, and do not require peeling.



By harvesting turnips smaller, I can seed them a little more thickly - they'll take up less space, which leaves room for planting a few Kohlrabi plants.

There will be a limited amount of Kohlrabi this season for those of you who are interested.  If the crop works out well, we'll try more for next season.

It is an heirloom variety of Kohlrabi called 'Azure Star'.  Kohlrabi is unusal in appearance, I liken it to something off a B-movie set about carnivorous vegetables.   The heirloom variety goes one step further visually from what you have probably encountered...

In other "new crop" news, I am currently corresponding with some other producers on how best to grow miniature pak choi, so as to honor another request from last season.  I have the seed, but I want to ensure I can get the choi at the right size while still tender and crisp.

There is no end of things to learn!



In the nursery, a few more light banks are switching on as the crops there increase in number.

The first planting of celeriac didn't germinate too well, but it was started early enough to allow for a supplemental planting - these are now just starting to sprout.

The bulb onions, parsley, eggplant are coming along well.


Eggplant is one of the most challenging crops I have ever tried.  The difficulty starts right from when the seeds germinate.

Eggplant requires about twelve weeks of growing before it can withstand transplanting.

Unlike the onions or celery, it has no tolerance for cool temperatures.  This makes working in the nursery in March a challenge, getting seedling trays out for work and the doors closed back up as quick as possible to prevent the eggplant from getting a draft.







The first two rounds of celery are up, and the second round of green onions is emerging as well.

Tis is a tray with celery, celeriac, and parsely.  At thsi stage of growth, they all look the same, so every cell pack is tagged.

Even at tranplant time in another , it is impossible (for me) to tell the difference.







Most of the action has been outside, on the gravel pad next to the barn.  The photograph at the very bottom of the page, you can see how the front of the barn appeared in my first season.  Since then, I have laid down a ten inch layer of stones (removed from the growing field as it wasprepared) around the front of the barn, bordered it with some old barn logs, and covered it over with gravel.  This has made a useful workspace.

Since the first season, I have added a tool shed (left) and the outdoor nursery (not visible).

The new structure I have been working on is a three sided shed constructed to shade our newly constructed ice fridge.



This project has gone a lot slower than I had hoped - after all, I'm a farmer, not a carpenter.

Most of my work has to be done piecemeal inside the barn during the winter and then dragged out when the snow  cleared off the pad.

I designed the ice fridge after consulting old handbooks on how to build ice houses.  It is a cedar wood structure for storing produce on harvest day.

This is the ice compartment, capacity three feet by three feet by five feet tall.  The walls are four inches thick, and filled with pounded sawdust.

Sawdust is the traditional insulator for ice houses.  Unlike most materilas, sawdust insulates well even when wet.

As the first layers of ice are applied, several insualted panels are inserted into the "doorway" to close the compartment.  When it is full, anotehr four inches of sawdust are poured on top.



The final task then is to place screen over the sawdust, to prevent rodents from getting in to cool off.

Ideally, the ice compartment should be on top of the fridge, but this would make the structure much too top heavy.  Instead, I place an uninsulated wall between the ice compartment and the produce compartment, and then insulate the produce compartment.


The produce compartment.  I'm not too good at building doors, and the four inch thick doors posed considerable challenge.

At one point I was so irritated by door building that I altered the design and put in a pair of sliding shelves.

It's very rustic looking, but shoudl do the job.






By the way, I should thank Jack and his brother down the road for coming over to help - the outdoor nursery weighs well over 200 pounds and it was in the spot where the fridge was to go.  Thanks for the lift!


Talk to you soon....