Update as of November 27:
We are now sold out of garlic.
We still have carrots and honey in stock.
Contact us at whitscust@gmail if you are interested in purchasing either of these products, or to inquire about next season's CSA.
More details soon.
Update as of November 1st 2020:
Hello Everyone, this has been a very busy week, and quite a nerve wracking one at that. Plans that were laid back in the summer finally came together. Against my wishes, everything fell together at the last minute just as the weather looked like an early ground freeze was imminent. What a test of faith!
Saturday the company contracted to do grading work around the house and A-frame brought their machine and made the ground shake as they leveled out a depression in the yard, created a drainage swale for spring snow melt, and leveled some ground below the A-frame in preparation for laying a concrete pad for a forthcoming livestock shed. Cayley spent most of the day under the couch. I hope to get McPhee and Son next year as well.
The cedar logs for fence posts arrived Sunday. Two hired guns and their trailer - Stuart and Andre. It was great to work with Stuart again (he helped out at the Stittsville location last summer) and a pleasure to meet Andre. They had a chance to meet some of the locals.
This necessitated the garlic having one day to plant - Tuesday (Monday I had my once every 7 day rest after missing it for over a week. I read, slept, and ate...).
Wednesday was spent doing a myriad of fall clean-up tasks, in addition to cutting turf away from designated fence post locations and whipping grass in the immediate vicinity.
Thursday the hired gun from Balderson came up with the tractor to plow and disk the growing field that is under development. The growing system I use should only require this once,, but the attempt got off to a poor start last year with a less than adequate plowing job, followed by a late cold snap this spring which stunted my first cover crop.
Jacob did a great job and is welcome back when we do the next field...
Friday was back at Stittsville to harvest the carrots and do some fall clean-up there, mostly preparing the beds for next season.
Saturday the auger was picked up and another hired gun - Chris from Watson's Corners - and I bored the post holes. This job went so well we were finished by noon. After that, I was turning the cedar logs into fence posts. Did as much as I could until it was time to go inside and carve the pumpkin.
Sunday was spent continuing to dress the cedar logs, packing carrots, and heeling in the first posts. It was wet and cold by the time I was finished. After supper, onto the computer to do some marketing...
Honey Update as of October 12th:
The honey is bottled, labeled for sale, and going very quickly!
Whitsend Honey is Ontario number one grade.
We have two colors - white and gold.
White honey has a more delicate flavour. Gold is a little stronger.
White tends not to crystalize as quickly.
As of this writing, we have the following:
White Honey 500 gram jars - 6 units remaining.
White Honey 1 Kilogram jars - 5 units remaining
Gold Honey 500 gram jars - 33 units remaining
Gold Honey 1 Kilogram jars - SOLD OUT
Still more 2020 produce for sale!
Garlic - 10 medium sized porcelain bulbs for $25.00
We also have some small and a few large bulbs of porcelains and rocamboles, inquire.
Order now for a late October delivery or pick up of
Orange carrots
Green onions
Our second drawing of honey is being processed now. Much of it is already spoken for but if you want to get on our list, contact us by email very soon.
The 2020 Thanksgiving harvest from Whitsend.
Each share contained:
Four Butterscotch squash, totaling over 8 Lbs.;
Three pounds of white potatoes (photo includes fingerling potatoes);
Two pounds of white and yellow carrots, with a few orange thrown in;
Chard, just under half pound and a bunch of green onions.
Customers had a choice of either rutabaga or parsnips; a couple of customers received the limited supply of 1 pound of un-shucked dried romano beans instead.
I took artistic license to add a bag of window sill ripened tomatoes; it seemed to me the picture needed some color.
One of my favorite harvests in eleven years.
The squash yielded just over 3 fruits per plant - at the low end of what is expected for this variety. However, the fruits were consistently larger for what this variety (Johnny Seeds Butterscotch PMR) typically yields. The biggest fruit weighted in at 3 Lbs 7 Oz. Most fruits ranged from 2.5 to 2.75 Lbs.
The rutabaga were exceptional in that they were blemish free. It is not often that I get them harvested before they take a little bit of worm damage, the result of leaving the roots in the ground too long. I often delay the harvest to get the plants "frosted" at least once. The confluence of my delivery schedule and the September frost proved ideal. Our biggest root weighed in at just under 3 .5 Lbs; most were between to 2.5 to 3 Lbs.
My favourite way to enjoy rutabaga is to mash in equal parts with potatoes. The flavours really compliment each other. The drawback in order to mash them, they need to be boiled, probably the worst way to cook roots - the water leaches out the nutrients and the flavour.
Retain the nutrients from the boiled water by giving it to your house or garden plants. If some of these are herbs or other vegetables you are growing at home, you get the nutrients anyway!
Here is where your potatoes cured after harvest, the cellar of the six sided shed ewe refer to as "the hexagon". A brief drying period so that you can easily store them. Darkness, air circulation, and a fairly even temperature range are what is required. The fan - not pictured - provides the air circulation.
All four varieties are very thin skinned, so I don't try to take off any soil. This helps the tubers keep a long shelf life.
Best ways to clean: Just before preparation, place the tubers in a pot of water and either roll them vigorously between your palms or stir with a wooden spoon.
My Mom advocates the latter method, she learned it from her father. Don't bother peeling these; there are lots of micronutrients in the skins; plus you have better ways to spend your time!
As with the water mentioned above, when cleaning your potatoes, retain the soil and use it to amend your own plant's soil. The soil around the roots of plants is very nutrient dense, your plants will appreciate it.
Your potatoes, my field seeds, and anything else in the hexagon are safe from the ever present scourge of rodents.
Whenever I am working near this building, Cayley gets in to do a peer and sniff patrol of all the dark corners.
2020 losses from mice were quite low in the field, as far as produce goes. They did manage to put a big hole in two of the IRT mulches after building nests under them.
The parsnips were small, but very uniform and also free of any scab or blemishes. Another crop that benefits from a bit of frost. I tossed in a few with some roasted carrots and their flavour distinguished itself.
I roasted these in a pan with a bit of olive oil, taking out to stir three times. During the third stir, I sprinkled on some ginger and driddled a couple of table spoons of melted honey over them.
Speaking of carrots, the "yellowstone" and "white satin" carrots grew very well. Many of the white carrots were in the 6-7 Oz. range; this yellow carrot weighed in at just over a half pound.
Had I the time, I ought to have hilled the shoulders to prevent some greening that occurred.
There were so many carrots that I had to move the harvest baskets out to the as yet incomplete prep station at the Lanark site. It was good to give the set up there a trial run, with it's broad counter set at a height perfect for comfortable work.
Speaking of comfortable work, I have found that the dried romano beans are not as easy to shuck as the kidney beans. I weighed up a half pound of these and shucked them to get an estimate of how much bean was in a pound's of un-shucked pods. Answer seems to be around 10 Ounces, a little less than the kidney beans.
A good task to foist onto your children; a couple of years ago, one of our customers said her children "had a riot" cleaning up the beans.
My understanding is that dried romano beans require a little more cooking time than kidneys; they are best used as soup beans after a long cooking on low heat. Probably best to give them a soak overnight before starting, though I would check your cook books before taking my amateur advice.
While all of this harvesting was happening out in the field, honey production continued in the kitchen.
I missed out on taking photos of the actual harvest, mostly due to having our hands full. At this time of year, the bees are a bit grumpy and the work needs to be done swiftly before they sense a disturbance and who is to blame for it.
Honey production
When the bees store their honey, they cap the frames with wax. After we harvest the frames, the wax "cap" needs to be scrapped off.
The wax is reserved for candles, chewing gum, and anything else we can think of.
Once the caps are removed, the frames are placed in the extractor, which is basically a centrifuge.
Special thanks to Jeannine for loaning us the extractor.
When the centrifuge is finished, the spout is opened and the honey begins to drain out. The bucket has a pair of nested sieves which take out any impurities - remaining bits of wax, parts of bees, and anything else that got into the frame.
Once the honey has drained onto the buckets, the next task is to pour the honey into jars.
The honey is then graded according to the color, from "white" to "golden" to "amber".
Once we determine the grade, the labels are printed up and applied to the jars.
Then it's ready to deliver...
