Whitsend Market Garden

Hello Everyone!

Finally, I have retrieved access to the email account that accesses my farm blog.  An entire year to catch up on.

First of all, we hope that your holidays and start to the new year are as good as Cayley's Christmas present.

Aside from the usual holiday goings on, I found time to read a book about the year 1816 - the year without a summer.  Made the past couple of years seem like a walk in the field...

Here is our first growing field in early autumn.  Most of the beds by then had cover crops on them, in preparation for the 2023 season.  On the right hand side of the field, you can see the straw covering the planted garlic bulbs and a row cover over the chard.

Big difference from the past two years, when this field looked more like the new field of beds that were worked up this year.

Next year's country:  Last fall I had another square of pasture plowed up, and planted a cover crop this season to break-up and feed the soil.  

In mid summer, I scythed off the buckwheat flower heads after giving the bees a chance to collect some nectar - they really like buckwheat but we don't care for the flavour of buckwheat honeyso we don't give them too much.

Mid autumn, I sent the mower over the field three times over a period of weeks, each time cutting progresively lower.  This helped mulch up the leaf cover and make it easier to work into the soil.

 

The next step was to survey the beds, go over them with the broadfork, apply the amendments (compost, greensand, ash), and work them in.  These will provide kidney beans, squash, potatoes, carrots, kale, and some other brassicas next season.

This sounds like a lot of work (becauase it is) but I have some help with various tasks from time to time.  Our resident porcupine cleans up rotten crab apples.  

This winter, help arrived in the form of a Lesser Weasel.  It has gone through the local squirrel (and presumably mice) population like a scythe.  

I suspect Cayley feels like her larder is being raided, but for me, it heralds a season with less rodent damage.

Nonetheless, I have built a hay crib far from the trees where the squirrels hide the black walnuts.  When my hay was stored in the shed (near the trees), the rodents would store and or eat walnuts in  the hay and leave shells and rind all through the hay.  This hay is to be used in the growing beds as mulch and as bedding for the chickens, which in turn is sent to the compost.

Black walnuts have a residue that stunts the growth of plants, including many of the vegetables we grow.

So I took some salvaged wood, rejected fece posts, and old metal roofing panels from when we had our house roof replaced.  It looks nicer without the tarps, but those help keep the snow from blowing in.  

Most of the new nursery was also built with found or re-purposed materials.  I'll be starting my onions in the next couple of weeks in here.  Nice to have a little more elbow room than the temporary nursery we had in the hexagon.

Thanks to Gord for helping with the wall rasing.  The walls are extra heavy as I built them a little thicker to contain the insulation.

The only damage we took from the deracho was having the nursery door wrenched off it's hinges, but a quick repair fixed that.  

The other structure I built this season was the farm gate store.  

An 8x10 rodent proof structure, with two doors at the front to access shelves of produce, and a rear door on the other side of the fence to allow entry  for stocking, storing packaging and delivery totes, and our market tent.  

Since this photo, I've started to put on the cladding to make the bulding a litle more attractive.

The other big building project was fencing the remaining 4 acres of land.  Parts of it were quite tricky as they passed through an area covered in poison ivy.  After using the auger to drill the post holes (with help from Julia and Matt - thanks to both of you), I had to evacuate the remaining soil in the hole.  

Then the posts went in, the fencing leaned against the posts, and the fence tightening tool attached to the back of the car...

This is a traditional technique that I learned from Dick at the Stittsville farm.  

Bolt a pair of two by fours to the end of the fence, ensure the corner posts are strongly braced, tie a rope onto the two pieces of wood, and then attach the rope to the trailer hitch using a hook.

Advance the car in low gear, stopping every few inches to test how tight the fence is.  When the page fencing is tight as a piano wire, stop the car with the parking brake (otherwise the car rolls back slightly) and proceed to fasten the fecne to the posts.

After that, a line of eletric fencing, a grounded line of high tensile steel, and then a more visible line of old eletric tape fencing at the very top to dissuade deer from even thinking of jumping over to get at the bounty within...

Our self seeding hay field (the dark green rectangle between the pines and fence line, middle) would be one such treat the deer would like all too much.  

This is mid season, when the hay is perfect for cutting and baling for winter forage.

Last year, I let everything go to seed (orchard grass, oats, and red clover).  Next season, I'll be adding amaranth, spelt, and a nitrogen fixing crop different from clover.  

This will ensure we always have a store of forage and bedding for our livestock, and mulch for the  vegetable field. 

For a variety of reasons, growth for much of the season was disapointing.  By the end of the year, research and tenacity paid off and here is one of the results - heads of lettuce weighing over a pound.  

I'm sure there are gardeners and farms that can do this regularly, but this is probably the best lettuce I have ever produced so I'll take a moment to gloat.

I'll delve into our growing challenges in future posts with moredetails.  It was an interesting (and very frustrating) learning curve.

As the season drew to a close, I took some time to do an experiment.  We have a lot of pine trees on the property, and these need regular pruning to keep eletric lines , laneways, and paths clear.  

Traditionally, pine boughs were used as frost protection for plants such as lettuce.  

The mini heads of lettuce survived two heavy frosts before succumbing.  

It was a good way to use some lettuce heads that were sown a little too late to size up.  

As we go into this season, we continue to plan for the future.  Here is one of two pear trees we planted last spring.

There used to be a couple of pear trees here, but until this year, there was only one remaining.  These trees need at least two individuals to pollinate the flowers and grow fruit.

If at least one of these survive, we can have some pears in the not too distant future.

One discovery for this year were the morrels in the yard just outside the kitchen door.  Very convienient.

Something from the near furture (a brief period days in the spring) to look forward to.  

This is the first update of this blog I have been able to do for almost a year.  

Other pages will need a lot of updating.  Please be patient.  I'm on it...

'Til then, Bob