Update as of December 9th:

We still have produce in stock for sale.  For our CSA and occasional customers in Kanata, Stittsville, and Ottawa, I will be making deliveries once during the weeks of the 13th, 20th, and 27th.

Exact dates to be determined by the weather, I try to keep my best eather days for work here at the farm.

For custoemrme in the Lanark and McDonalds Corners area, please contact us by phone or email (prefferrred) to order and arrange a pick up time.

For honey or pork, please see the honey and pork pages respectively.  For other produce, check the Farmgate Store page.

Supplies for most of our produce stock, and certain cuts of pork are limited, so contact us soon.

Our jars of award winning gold honey make great Christmas gifts!

 

Hello Everyone:

Withthe pork to arrive soon, activity continues to ramp up here at Whitsend.  Even as the first snow flies, there are tasks to be seen to.  No time for winter reading just yet.

There are still carrots, rutabaga, garlic, and limited quantities of potatoes remaining to be sold.  Contact us if you are interested.

Our pork is arriving tommorrow.  As is our new freezer.  And the worst weather of the new season.  

For details, see the 'Pork' page at the tab above.

I'm sure my pork pick-up trip will be a bit of an adventure on the roads tommorrow.

In the meantime, we are saying good bye to the old farm.  Almost everything is out of the field except for my freshly harvested fence posts and a pile of smooth rocks I use to pin down row covers and insect netting.  

The barn has a lot of assorted stuff still in it, all slowly being packed while a new shed is hastily constructed at the Lanark site to put it all in.

Our field for the past ten years has finally begun to yield some very good results.  The last and probably biggest lesson I learned in deveping soil fertility was cover cropping, especially at the end of the year to provide for the next season's soil. 

One of the most unusual things I noticed this season was the lack of insect pests.  One potato beatle, no evidence of hormworms, very few lawn grubs and wire worms, and not a single squash beatle.  However, there were plenty common house finches, and several sightings of mature praying mantis'.  I was here almost five years before I found my first mantid, now the population seems to have established itself.  Hopefully forever...

This photo is taken of the earliest portion of the field that I grew vegetables on.  I have not used it for over three years, yet the outlines of the beds are still discernable.

The farm is now sold so everything must be out by January First.  Good bye first farm...

The new farm had some progress this season.  Our first vegetable field has had it's cover crops rotated for two years and now the new beds are being cut in.  

The first four to be completed were the garlic beds, seen here coverd with straw.

This is the next vegetable field to start work on after its first plowing.  I have started it now as I expect there will be at least one year of cover cropping.  While the cover crops break up the hard crust, smother weeds and feed the soil, I'll be cleaning and preparing beds in the first field.

Roof spacce is in very short supply here.  THis is my solution for storing straw.  I would have preferred to keep this in the large shed, but that structure is near black walnut trees.  Walnut trees proiduce a toxin that inhibits the growth of other plants, so I need to keep the walnuts out of the straw that I want to use as mulch and eventually compost material.

The problem with keeping stra bales near walnut trees is that the rodents like to eat the walnuts on top of the bales, thus spreading the rinds and shell (and toxins) into the bales.

So I have to resort to using some old tarps and whatever else I can find to protect the bales from exposure to rain and snow.  It's an eyesore, but it works.

Here is another temporary solution, a hastily constructed lean to covered in tarps. I hope it lasts the winter, in an attempt to keep building materials dry and as organised for quick retrieval as posssible.

 .

The foundation for the "hot nursery" is started.  For the past couoplk eof years I have used the main floor of the hexagon for seedling starting but the light is poor and the space not custom built to suit the needs. 

This will be the fourth nursery I've built, using everything I have learned from my first three nurseries at the old farm to improve the work spae of this one.

I will consider myself lucky if this gets built before the weather becomes impractical to continue.

Of course, there is much more to relate, but the sun is rising and that means tume to bundle up and head outside...

PS - Word from B.C. is that our two main seed garlic suppliers are ok.  At last word, one was without pawer and operating on generators and the other was on high enough ground to be out of the flood zone.  No doubt they still have their challenges.

It is very unfortunate that there will be a lot of soil remediation to be done.  One farmer I heard from remarked that after the water receded from their field, it left a scent of kerosene all over their land.  I wonder about the ecological and organic farms that have had their nieghbours herbicides such as round up wash over their soil.  This mess will be a long clean up.  

A drained lake is not land!

Hello Everyone:

This is just a quick update - I have another busy day(s) ahead of me.  

First off, thank-you to our CSA customers who have supported us this season.  Our final season at Stittsville provided yet another exxcellent yield with several crops breaking  or matching our previous bests.  The fingerling potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, cherry tomatoes and kidney benas all did very well and our garlic did better than usual.  Beets still eluded me and the red chieftain potatoes were not as plentiful as they could have been (though bigger than usual).  

The two biggest disapointments were of my own making - I missed about a 1/3 of our garlic scapes.  I misinterpreted how close they were to harvest and missed them by about ten days.  This probably had an impact on the bulb size as well.  Customers recieved a typical amount of kidney beans, despite only 2/3 of the crop being included in their baskets.  The remaining third were left on the pods too long and got too wet.  As a result, some of the bean pods are rotten.  There are still good beans to be had but it will be a time consuming task to separate the good ones for the bad ones.  

With luck, I should be able to divert these rescued beans to the farmgate store after cleaning them this winter.

Our farmgate store is closing for the season.  Future purchases may be made by apointment.  Carrots, garlic, rutabaga and possibly green onions and kidney beans may be avaialable so keep checking here for updates.

Gold honey is still available.

Our pigs are being harvested as of today.  In about a week, we should be ready to sell our butchered meat.  This year, we are using the Farmersville Community Abbatoire butchering services.

Pork is available frozen and wrapped in butchers paper.

The price list on our pork page is out of date, but should be updated fairly soon.  Expect the new price to be higher than what is listed there as feed and other supplies are more expensive than in the past.

We are thinking of one of our past customers who now lives in B.C.  Two of our seed garlic providers - Rasa Creek Farm and Norwegian Creek Farm have survived the B.C. flooding.

Back in September, Whitsend participated in it's first community farm fair - the MacDonalds Corners Agricutlural Fair.

It gave us an opportunity to meet some locals, sell some of our food, and try out our new tent for the first time.

Here are our prize winning contestants.

Our gold honey took first prize.

Our Persian Star Garlic took second prize. 

As did our white honey.  

There was no category for Rutabaga, so I placed it in the unusual vegetables category.  There is nothing nusal about rutabaga or turnips, so it was no contest aginst some unusual squashes and (I can't recall its name) some kind of plant that I have never seen before.  Should have taken a picture of it, but I suppose vanity won out in that moment.  

Our cherry tomatoes did well.

I was surprised by our first place peppers.

This is our entrant in the odd shaped vegetable category.  

I had intended to enter our regular carrots but after harvesting them, I discovered that carrots needed to have their tops on to be eligible.  Beaten by the fine print!

Allin all, I was impressed by the organisation of the fair.  There was plenty to see and do and it was well run.  Can't wait for next year...

 Hello Everyone:

Our farm gate store is now taking orders for carrots, honey, and garlic.

If you are interested inn our products, send your requests to whitsmg@gmail.com.

Our field in Stittsville is being very productive this season.  The potatoes, kidney beans, carrots and rutabaga are looking very good.  

The garlic is finished curing and I am in the process of grading it, selecting seed bulbs, and delivering the season customers share.

As soon as the garlic is out of the barn rafters, the kidney beans (pictured right) will be harvested, bundled up, and hung in the rafters for their turn to cure.

I spent a large amount of effort into preparing our future vegetable field in Lanark during the first two weeks of the month.  After seeding what should be our final cover crop of radish, clover, and buckwheat, I waited for rain.  And waited, while a flock of crows descended to start eating the seeds.

Fortunately, I put a lot of seed down, but none of it will perform unlesss we recieve more rain.  We now have had a little, but more is needed.  Keep hoping for wet weather!

Hello Everyone:

We hope you are all staying safe and coping as best as possible.  So far, the past few years have been trying but we have kept the farm going in spite of everything.

We intend to keep it that way.

Until such time as the pandemic is truly under control, we will continue to follow the guidelines for keeping your food supply safe:

No touring visits to the farm.  I believe that our customers should have the opportunity to see how their food is produced, but at this time we are not allowing visitors to the farm areas.

For the time being, farmgate store sales are by pre-order only.   Contact us by email at whitscust@gmail.com.  Garlic will be available in the next two to three weeks, details to follow.

Some of our CSA customers are immune compromised, so we have take these precautions seriously.  Thank you for your patience and respect.

Most of our crops are doing well after a slow start to the season.  

The garlic is out of the ground except for two slow to grow varieties.  About 2/3rds of our scapes are harvested and out the door, the remaining third remained on the plant too long and were too woody to deliver.  When I harvested the first round of scapes, several varieties only had one curl on the scape and so I estimated two weeks.  It turned out I was a week off.  A big disappointment!  Our garlic is now curing in the barn and should be ready for distribution in about two to three weeks.

The green onions have been exceptional; our first round went out the door for delivery last week.  Unfortunately this season, we probably only have enough for our CSA customers.

The kidney beans are flush with full sets of pods.  Our first picking of the romano beans has been very good.  Our green beans have struggled with the heat and have gone dormant at least twice.  They are now in full flower and I am anticipating a decent set of beans in the next 10-14 days.

The chard has struggled somewhat over the past couple of weeks with too much water, but fortunately, I had enough plants planted for a good harvest this past week.  Lots of leaves had to be culled as they were too pale or cracked from water stress, but these were greatly appreciated by the pigs and chickens.

Fennel was planted last week for fall harvesting.  Our celery started late as the first round dried out in the nursery.  

The tomatoes are in flower and the first fruits are ripening.  The peppers are just starting to flower.  The butternut squashes at Stittsville are also just setting their first flowers but the plants look quite healthy.  We have lost one round of squash flowers at the Lanark site where we are growing a limited amount of delicata squash.  The rodents have been after these and so I am using organic castor bean oil and hot pepper powder to try and keep these nasty little pests at bay.

Our first round of fingerlings are just about ready for harvest.  We are trying two new varieties this season:  "Red Thumb" and another heirloom variety from eastern Europe.

The carrots are coming along, as always slower than I would prefer.  The parsnips did not germinate very well so what quantities we have are very limited.  

Beets were planted last week in preparation for our fall harvesting.  I may be doing a round of radish later in the season - it is probably too hot for them right now.

In spite of everything, there have been the usual setbacks, mishaps, and breakdowns.  

I have to thank my Dad for this one.  I've had a few leaks over the years in the header pipes ofmy irrigation system and the silicone water proofing doesn't set properly in the heat of high summer.

He suggested silicone super tape and it has worked great.  

Crops coming in the fall:

I am starting a round of kale for late season harvest, and we will likely have some arugula in October as well.

If the plants do well, we should have a surplus of potatoes this season, including german butterball for October and red chieftain for late fall.

Our shiitake mushrooms continue to frustrate and annoy us this season.  My attempts tp keep the logs wet have been a challenge.

We are now up to five bee hives.  Two are doing very well; at least one will likely not have enough for harvest, and the other two are still a matter of wait and see.  

Interestingly, the hive that arrived last year infected with chalk brood (a fungal infection that destroys larvae) is one of the two doing very well.  In the spring, the bees in this hive were observed carrying out infected larvae and subsequent inspections show that the number of infected cells is reducing.

We hope to start honey harvest in about a week or two.

The pigs are also doing very well, growing quickly and having fun exploring the new paddocks that I lead them to every few days.  Of the four pairs that we have raised over the years, these seem to be the most docile and best behaved pigs we have had - a credit to Maple Lane Farm where they were orn and weaned.

I'll be taking pork orders in mid November.  Pork is harvested on December 15th and ready for distribution within a week.

This has been a very good season for wildlife at the farm.  We are seeing more and much greater variety of insects and birds.   

Julia successfully identified hover flies and leaf cutter bees as among the new comers.  

We credit the population of our pollinators to the hard work of the previous owners promoting the insects here and us growing a wide variety of local flowers and plants.  

As well, we only mow walking and working areas of the yard, leaving the places where wildflowers seem to flourish untouched.  

Our new vegetable field has had a successful first cover crop of the season.  The oats and jackhammer radish did very well and were thick enough to make up for a poor performance from the peas.  

The cover has been cut down in the past week.  Once a part arrives for my tiller, I'll rake off the cuttings, compost them, and till the surface in preparation for the second cover.   

As the second cover grows and suppresses weed growth, I'll cut down small sections and start building the first beds for future vegetable growing.

More photos to follow - blogger is giving me grief this morning!

Talk to you soon, 

Bob, Julia and Cayley

 Hello Everyone:

We had some frost earlier this week that affected our transplants.  Thirty eight of the first thirty nine tomato transplants didn't make it.  

I had covered the plants in anticipation of the cool temperatures; in the past, this has been adequate for spring frosts.

Water is a very efficient thermal mass, and helps soil retain warmth.  It appears that our dry soil was the reason the ground cooled off too much for the plants to tolerate the cold.  (This past May was apparently had the lowest rainfall on record).

Fortunately, I had about thirty seedlings left over in the nursery.  I typically hold onto my extras in case I lose a few to cutworms, transplant shock, or failure to thrive.  These have now been trasnplanted to make fup for most of the loses.

I also have extra squash seedlings, so I will plant these in the two tomato eds that I cannot fill.

Another example of the resiliency of small farms.

Garlic is much more cold tolerant, and continues to thrive.  These were only under insect netting to protect the garlic from leek moths.

Some garlic varieties are showing promise, assuming the thickness of the stalks are indicating a larger bulb size.

Kidney and Romano beans and carrots should be sprouting soon and the potato plants should be emerging soon as well.

Talk to you soon, 

Bob

 Hello Everyone:

Apologies for not making time for news about your food and how it is growing...

There are no end of details to relate about the farm that many of you will find interesting.

Most plans are proceeding as expected.  Some slower than others.  A couple of setbacks, and a few unexpected successes.

Our sales are closed...we have enough CSA customers for the season.  There may be surplus produce and or products as the summer continues.  More details to follow, 

Double checking the plans...this was taken very early in spring as I was making my final plans for a last seed purchase for the year.

Julia and I are planting extra flowers for the bees.  

At some point, Cayley found the seat vacated and gave our planning a final check as well.  More catnip.

Opening up the beehives and removing their winter insulation.

This past season was very good for mites.  Many bee keepers lost hives this past winter.  We were lucky.  

We lost one hive in late winter apparently due to too much moisture in the hive.  

We ordered two more hives but with the increased demand caused by professionals loosing hives and many new hobbyists starting hives, we were unable to get our new queens.

Dandelions are the first spring flower to grow profusely around here, and so one of the most important sources of early spring food for bees and other pollinators in general.  PLEASE consider leaving dandelions on your lawn.  Grass is not as important as food.

The conditioning crop in our 2022 growing field survived the frost.

Having the field worked last fall opened up the soil, allowing heat and moisture to get in.

When we had a sharp frost (around here there was rain the night before and the grass froze over night.  However, it seems that there was enough heat absorbed by the soil in the growing field, and so the ground (and the cover crop on it) stayed ice free overnight.

Last fall this field was plowed and disked for a second time, and this spring, I ran the tiller lightly over the surface to prepare a conditioning crop.

As with last year, the spring cover crop is a mix of peas, oats, and jackhammer radish.

The rain has given our grass a lot of lush growth, and allowed us to start making a lot of compost for next years food.

There are a few areas I can mow around here, so we use this for "green manure" to add to the compost.  The grass provides nitrogen and the chicken bedding provides carbon (from the wood shavings and straw) and a bit of nitrogen from the chicken manure.  

These are layered into a pile (known as a windrow) and allowed to heat up to kill pathogens and weed seeds.  Every five days for about 5 weeks, the pile will get turned to keep injecting air into the pile, and ensure that the contents are evenly cooked.  

When running properly, I an get the pile above 40 degrees and sometimes over 50 degrees.

Seen in the background are last years windrow (probably ready for next fall) and the windrow from two years ago (ready to use now).

The plastic tarp is used to control how much moisture is getting into the compost.  Too little and the composting shuts down; too much and the compost will go anaerobic - giving off methane compounds from slow acting, low temperature bacteria.  

Despite having 6 acres, the amount of mowable grass is limited.  Many areas are simply too bumpy for a mower.  Areas that are thick with dandelions are left for the bees.  

We have many mature black walnut trees here.  These trees are notorious for containing a substance that stunts or kills other broadleaf plants.  Mowing these areas risks pulling up leaf litter and pieces of branch, which would not be helpful if added to the compost and then later to the soil of the vegetable beds.

So despite mowing vigorously before the seed head sets in on the grass, our yard by no means looks like a golf course.

Mushrooms are starting to emerge from our logs...another benefit of our cool, wet spring.

I'm still not certain how well we are doing (this is our first crop of shiitakes).  It seems to be quite slow compared to some of the photographs I have seen from professionals and experienced mushroom gardeners.

Time will tell; in the meantime, I am keeping these as wet as possible.

Forking the beds for some of this season's food.  This year we will be growing one round of beans and a few squashes at the Lanark site.  

I hope to produce some mangles - a variety of beets for livestock fodder - for our pigs this season.

In the fall, I will plant next years garlic in these beds.

The broad fork is used for aerating the soil.  This stimulates biological activity in the soil, and creates space for water to seep in instead of pooling on the surface.

I love using this tool.  It is very ergonomic, and gives a similar workout to a treadmill with the "ski-pole" handles.  (I've never used one of those but I suspect the same muscles are getting worked out).

If the soil is very compacted, this can be a tough bit of work, but these beds have now been forked about 5 times over the past couple of years and so is becoming very to work.

After forking the field, I survey the area and start working up the beds.  First once again with the fork and once again with the wheel hoe.

The wheel hoe has curved tines with break up the soil further and pull grass rhizomes up to the surface.

The next task is raking the surface with a lawn rake, to pull the rhizomes down to the end of the bed.

I gather these up and place them in a pile that I keep covered so they can dry out and die.  Once they are thoroughly killed, I can put them in the compost and turn them into food for the bed.  

The grass in this are is very thick, and will take a number of years to fully remove.  Bluegrass is a very tough weed to fully eradicate from a garden, in my books it is the worst as is spreads easily in the understory of a crop.

Next, the amendments are added to the soil.  In this case, ash and compost.

In about a week, the first weeds will start to sprout, so I'll use the wheel hoe to disturb them before they establish while simultaneously incorporating the amendments.  Two tasks for the effort of one.

A week after that, I'll disturb the next round of sprouting weeds with a third pass with the wheel hoe.  The three hoe repetitions should prevent eighty per cent of the weed coverage on this bed for the next summer.

Typically at this stage I would add the rock mineral greensand and possible another rock mineral, calcium phosphate.  However, calphos is already sold out and suppliers are telling me that the local greensand is now mined out.

I will have to forgo the greensand and search for a new (and probably more expensive) source of greensand this coming winter.

New additions to the farm.  No more lugging one straw bale at a time to the chicken shed.

This is going to give a big boost to productivity and reduce or eliminate the need to rent a van to move the last items from the old farm when it closes for good this fall.

Much much more to follow and watch for....

Hello Everyone:  Winter is ending, and the most of us are coming out of hibernation here at the farm. 

There are still a few things that have been happening...

Sales for this years CSA are going well.  80 per cent of our shares are sold.   We have room for a few more; I am looking for customers in the following neighborhoods:

Centrpointe

Trend Arlington

Copeland Park

Bridlewood

I will consider customers from the following neighborhoods - please call to inquire:

Old Ottawa South west of Bank

The Glebe west of Bank south of Fifth.

Sales have been going quickly; last year we sold out of our shares by the end of March, so contact me soon.

More information about our CSA may be found on our "Join Our CSA" and "2021 Delivery Details" pages.

Contact me soon if you are interested or have any questions.

We seem to have had more snow here than the past three winters.

Hibernation on the farm consists of a lot of research, purchasing, planning, scheming, fretting about plans and coming up with alternate plans.  

Everything that needs to be accomplished in the next two years is interconnected and some goals cant be accomplished until other tasks are completed.  Some require rented equipment, some require a second pair of hands or expertise, many are time dependent and some are a bit out of my experience.

Apparently I am good at this kind of logistic planning, though it seems to require a lot of pacing, muttering out loud and occasionally going for a walk or lying prone in front of the fire while Cayley purrs on my chest.

We've had some company...a flock of Red Poles have been visiting regularly to eat Black Niger seed.  

I saw our first Canada geese of the season early last week and a pair of swans just the other day.  

Sensing the warmer temperatures and longer days, the bees have been venturing outside.  

In other words, the robins are on the way!

We lost more than half of our snow pack over the past week.  

One of the farm tasks to be seen to over the winter is checking on the beehives.

The bees are wrapped up in the hives, huddled together around the queen, beating their wings to raise the temperature of the hive.

All that wingbeating requires energy, which is why they store extra honey over the winter.  We took some back in the summer, and so we have to give them something back to eat.

Sugar cakes, with a little bit of mint.

These bi-weekly checks allow us to see how the bees are doing.

At last check, one of our three hives appear to have not made it through the season.

Our "sick" hive from last year is doing ok. It's population seems a bit small (it has been since arrival last spring) but they are active.

The third hive is thriving.

We've put an order in for two more hives.  Four is manageable for us, considering the rest of the work here on the farm.  Three is sufficient for our income, but we can't count on the hive that was infected last year to survive.

Do the sugar cakes work?  I keep wondering about the bees health, but Julia says this is the way it is done.

We undo the compression straps (keeps racoons and bears out in case they breach the electric fence), pry off the lid and lift it just enough to slip in another cake.

Lid and insulation back on, and another days task is complete.

More mushroom spores were ordered last week.  

Last month I decided to start another round of mushroom logs.  I selected some healthy ironwood trees that were in an area that needed thinning out (we are trying to promote maples and oak in that particular woodlot), cut the felled trees into 4 foot lengths, and lugged them back to the farm.

Temporarily, I set them across the old mushroom logs from two years ago.  This ensures that they are not in contact with the ground when the snow melts, where they might be contaminated by other types of fungus.

I tried a different supplier that uses inoculated wooden dowels instead of the Styrofoam plugs.

After drilling the holes the dowels are inserted and tapped in with a mallet.

The intention is that the shiitake mycelium will begin colonizing the rest of the log over the course of this summer.  

Keeping the logs in shade were they can remain relatively cool and moist will promote the mycelium growth.

After the dowels are tapped into the logs, they need to be sealed to keep moisture in.  

The supplier provided soy wax flakes which I melted in a mettle can atop the wood stove, and then brushed the liquid wax onto each of the dowel heads.

While doing this work, I dropped a dowel and it slipped underneath the old mushroom logs from two years ago.  

This is what I found....

Out of sight, in the dark, quietly going about their business.

There are not many mushrooms there, but enough to teach me to look a lot closer.

After examining a couple other logs, it became evident that these sprouted sometime very late in the fall and were covered by the snow pack over the winter.

This bodes well for the spring...I'll be watching these closely and waiting for our first harvest.

 At first this find was disappointing.  How many did I miss last fall?  Most of the logs were still too frozen and or snowed in to their supports to examine, so I'll have to wait a few days to find out for sure.  

As far as I can see, only a couple of logs produced fruit, and only one mushroom per log at that.  

After thinking it over, I realize this is a good sign.  I am having a small amount of success.  Heading in the right direction.  At least some of the logs were successfully colonized.  According to the text book, some of these logs should be ready to sprout this spring.

Motivation to keep gong for the coming season...