Whitsend Market Garden

 Hello Everyone:

With a rainy day ahead, I have taken some time to relate a few details about the farm this year, primarily what's happened in the past few weeks and what's coming between now and the end of the season as the ground freezes.  

Off farm, the big household task is taking the rejected tomatoes and preserving them for the winter.  One easy and practical way to preserve a "taste of summer" as I call it are with frozen cherry tomatoes:

Prepare a roasting pan with a bit of light oil.

Clean the cherry tomatoes and cut in half, and put them into a sieve to drain off some excess moisture (This reduces the roasting time).

After a bit of draining, fill the pan until it is one layer deep.

Roast in the oven on low heat (170 or so).

Give them a stir every 10-15 minutes or so.

The cherry tomatoes are done when they start looking a little dry or start to singe.  

Remove from oven, allow to cool and put them in freezer bags for the winter.

I put them on grill cheese sandwiches (with frozen peppers and garlic) or in salad.  They are also good on burgers.  I find they thaw quite quickly, however they are used.

We have lot's of these at the farm gate store - get them while they are still good!  $5.00/Lb.  This is a good deal.  If you think otherwise, try the tasteless slop they shovel out at the grocery store.  You won't find "product of Lanark" there...

Grilled cheese open faced sandwich on a slice of naan, with roasted cherry tomatoes, radish and green onion.

Roasting the tomatoes this way concentrates the sugar, making the fruit sweeter than usual.

Peppers?  Clean, slice, bag and freeze.  It's that easy.  No blanching necessary.

Garlic?  Peel, clean, double bag and freeze.  Could not be simpler.  If you don't double bag them, they will flavour your ice cream.

Introducing the heir apparent to this little bit of property:

Percival Midnight de Sheridan Rapids; 1st lord of the house, Duke of Whitsend and Marquess of the woodshed.  Percy for short.

Pictured here at 4 months, situated regally in his seat of power (and bed, scratching post, watchtower and launching pad).

He is a very faint tabby (when lounging in the sunlight), perhaps the colors of blackest on blacker.

I have referred to him as "Sandstorm Percy" when  covering his business in the litter box.  A very vigorous digger.

We'll see more of him in future posts...

This past Saturday, we were at the McDonald's Corners Agricultural fair.  Somehow, this little village has kept their fair going for 172 years.  

A number of vendors cancelled at the last minute.  I suspect a few local producers lost sensitive crops to frost.  

As the only vegetable seller there, we did very well.  

Fun things to see, do and learn about.  A number of political hopefuls were dunked, several folks fell during the sack races, 4H awards were given to young agriculturalists and Lanark Counties finest were on display.

There is hope for those of us who want a simple tractor without all of the digital "steer by-product".  Ursa Ag, based in Bowden, Alberta, Canada, has  started manufacturing tractors that are much more affordable and can be repaired with everyday tools.  No proprietary software required.  Almost half of the modern tractors price is due to the digital bells and whistles.  I hope they plan on making small size "in-line" tractors useful for small scale vegetable farms.  And square hay balers.

As for the competitions, we did quite well in several categories, though we were knocked off the top of the honey podium, settling for a second place.  Nice to see more entries this year.

Our firsts were Red Onions (our cippolinis), Red Peppers (Carmen variety shepherds peppers) and Green peppers (King of the North). 

Our seconds were Garlic (Susan Delafield variety) and tomatoes (Prudens Purple - I had three exquisite heirlooms entered but they were so soft that one bruised slightly during transit).

I was going to enter a sunflower that volunteered itself in the wildflower field, but found the fair had no entry for "largest sunflower" this year.   It was about 24" tall and had a ridiculously small bloom, but since no-one entered any last year, I figured it stood a chance.

On a whim, I entered an amaranth bloom from some bolted amaranth leaf crop.  

I was curious to see an unfamiliar name whose entries often placed in the top two with my own.   

If I had put by this batch of cherry tomatoes one day earlier, I might have had a chance with the "oddest vegetable category".  

This is a "twinned" cherry tomato.  Two fruits, one calyx.  I've never seen this before.  

 

Back from the fair, a farms worth of work awaits, some of which is downright disheartening.  These four beds (two covered in plastic mulch, and two not covered) will be spotless in a couple of weeks, as this is where the garlic is going to be planted.

This was a boon for pollinators and birds; and the asters provide some nice purple and whites.  I wish the wildflower field looked more like this.  

If I had grown another winter squash variety this year (I had to cancel kabocha's temporarily due to the vine borers), this was where they would have gone.  If it had been a more normal season, I'd have planted a cover crop to use as first a living, then later dead, mulch to feed the soil and fend off the weeds.

But I have a list of priority lists, and each have their reasons for being done first.  

I start with the customers food:

Here are the onions as they finish sun curing.  Due to the many rainy days and high humidity, they have taken much longer than usual.  With the temperatures lowering, they need to move into the nursery for a couple of weeks to finish.

The tarp is used to keep the onions protected from night time dew and rain.  A wet onion is a rotten onion.

Still air can be as bad as moisture, so under the fan they go.  The nursery lights are a new innovation for me, I used them to ripen the tomatoes after loosing a third of my first fruits to crows and jays pecking.

I am desperate to get another nursery to cover future (even current needs).  Ideally, a curing shed would be configured a bit differently than a nursery, but to save costs, I try to use one structure for both.  

As you can see, one structure is not enough, with potting equipment, tomatoes and onions all competing for space.  

I had to hang the cayenne plants to finish their ripening, the frost would have destroyed the "not quite ready" crop.   

I would prefer to cure the squash in a nursery like setting, but they have to settle for the hardening off shelter.  

This is another structure that needs to be rebuilt.  

Fortunately, the garlic is finished, so the kidney beans can go into the big shed's rafters to hang.  Another crop that should have come in last week before the rain started, but sometimes I have to prioritize value - these sell for less than garlic, so the garlic got it's necessary extra time to cure.

Garlic cannot sun cure, as it is scalded by sunlight and that reduces storage time.  And trying to ground cure beans would just attract mice, and reduce the crop to shavings. 

Then there is tending the produce that still requires growing time, though as the days get shorter, time is running out.  

The second round of celery looks good other than the size.  Likely due to no rain in the past three weeks (until yesterday).  The water problem is exacerbated by a break in the irrigation's header pipe for this section of beds.  The break is under the turf, so I will have to do a substantial amount of digging to get a pair of hands and a roll of silicone tape in there.  

I've hand watered as much as I can, but neither the water can nor the irrigation can do in a week what a gentle, twenty minute rain will do.

We jsut might have purple top turnips for Thanksgiving.  The rain we get today and the sunlight we get this week will determine if we do.

Probably not so for the rutabaga.  These started to fail almost immediately after starting their tap root at 2-3 weeks after germination.  This is the same area that carrots were gnawed from below by some kind of 4 legged rodent, so that is a possibility. 

 These beds were given a rich compost last autumn.  Therefore, I would have expected them to be in better shape.  

Disappointing after last years extraordinary rutabaga success.  

Once again, most non brassica family leaves did very well this year.  The chard has thrived in our atypical soil since day one, and despite al of the micronutrient imbalances, this year was no exception.  

I have kept the groundhog(s) at bay, and the frost off the leaves.  We will have a steady supply of lettuce until at least Thanksgiving, and probably beyond.

The romaine's quality dropped remarkably after the rain stopped, which makes me think there is no point in growing romaine next year, if the long term forecast for very dry conditions continue to hold.  The plants were growing well, but the leaves were tough.  

Red boston, green boston, greenleaf, red oakleaf and red and green speckled mini romaine's are the last ones standing for this fall.

Here is a difference between protecting crops with row cover as opposed to not.  With limited covers available (and limited time to apply them late afternoon), I covered the green peppers but not the jalapenos.  The difference is easy to see, with the burned leaves on the bed to the right.

In an effort to save a few tomatoes, I put our last available tarp over a section of tomatoes, which made a small difference.  

Moskvich tomatoes can take a light frost, so I might still have a few for next week.  I observed some un-burned fruits as I walked by earlier this morning.  I'll take a closer look later.  If they have the slightest hint of red on them, they'll go in the nursery under the lights; perhaps there will be a few tomatoes later in October.

The manganese supplement made a big difference to the tomato crop this season.  The plants grew slowly, so the crop was late (not enough sunlight days?) but at least a decent harvest was available.  Until the septoria leaf spot set in, which thrives on tomato plants in wet weather.  

More on how I can fix this particular issue, later in the post.

I even had some Prudens Purple tomatoes reach maturity, though these seem to be more susceptible to leaf spot than the moskvich.  Even better next year...

Speaking of water, I suspect the rain had a hand in our oversized "mini watermelons".  As suggested in the seed catalogue and other sources, I transplanted the seedlings close together to make small fruits, and as timing would have it, their place in the rotation pattern had them in a relatively shady area this year.  

Less sun, less fruit growth.  They are about a third larger than expected.  

Still a few left at our farmgate store, but get them soon...

Still to come in the following weeks, carrots.  Our usual orange variety, plus red, white and yellow roots to round out the color palette.  

I am very curious about the red ones.  I have tried a few varieties over the years and none have tasted satisfactory.  

I was thinking of a "Canadian Thanksgiving" when I opted to try another red variety, to pair with our successful white carrots.

Carrot quality this year has been "variable", with more losses than usual this year.

The rain came a the right time for the apples, which had a successful bloom despite a late frost on the ground.  

But as I have discovered, success breeds more work, so my evenings are taken up with cleaning, coring, paring, mincing, more cleaning, carving, more cleaning (pans and pots included), more paring, more cleaning...

This is the future!??@!  I was assured back in high school that robots would be doing this sort of work by now!  (Speaking of which, where is my flying car?  I was promised that too.  And working from home...and a just society...)

The value of avoiding monocropping is evident in my cover crop regime.  The buckwheat has died off from frost, but the oats and peas are thriving.  This bed will have a root crop in it next year, so there is only a small percentage of peas in these beds (Too much nitrogen fixing buy the peas will promote leafy carrots with small roots).

Cover crops feed the soil and protect it from erosion. This particular mix also has allelopathic properties, to suppress weeds.  If I had more time mid summer, more beds would look like this right now.

Cover cropping on a larger scale.  This is next years country, as I continue to expand and prepare for future growth.  I have added daikon radish to break up any compaction caused by the tractor that plowed this field down.  

The oat seeds that did not germinate helped keep the wild turkeys out of the other beds; it is possible that the groundhog moved here after I dissuaded it from the lettuce beds, about 50 feet to the left of this area.

There is a disheartening amount of quack grass that did not get destroyed by the plowing and flipping of turf, so I will have my work cut out for me next season.

It has taken five years, but my hay field is staring to look like a hay field.  I have put extra work into suppressing the broadleaf plants other than clover - goldenrod and milkweed and others that I do not want to seed the beds with when I use the straw from here to mulch crops such as tomatoes, celery and garlic.

Mulching preserves moisture.  It also prevents soil borne diseases such as leaf spot from splashing onto fruits like tomatoes.  

With the next (and possibly two next) year(s) predicted to be VERY dry, this has come just in time.

As always, I like to take a moment to remind everyone that farms such as this promote a lot of bio diversity, much of which in turn supports our crops.

This sand wasp has taken advantage of my keeping the car window down and has set up it's egg nest inside the door.  

Yes, my car is messy from farm work.  The back is perpetually covered in straw, but at least I clean it out enough to prevent spilled cover crop seeds from germinating inside the spot where the back hatch locks into place.  

Our resident porcupine cleans up the deadfall apples, preventing these from spreading disease back to the trees, or attracting deer, racoons and bears.

This has been a good year for mantids, I am seeing them in several places.  This one (and another larger one seen the day before), were on the tarp covering the curing onions.

Your support of small scale, ecological farms provides more than just your food.  

Our humming bird feeder (a gift from last Christmas) has been a hit with the locals - I've counted three males at the same time, all fighting to claim it as their own.  This brand has the added bonus of being impenetrable for paper wasps and yellow jackets.

Important note about our honey.  It was a wet season, and bees and rain do not mix.  The saying in the apiculture business is "a wet bee is a dead bee...".  When it rains, the bees remain in the hive and do house cleaning:  removing debris such as dead or damaged bees, excess wax and propolis and likely a few ants and earwigs as well.

When they do this, they have no time to forage food for themselves, and so consume some of their honey stored for the winter.  The result is low yields for the hive at harvest time.

We are not finished drawing the honey, but it appears we will not have very much , and will have to limit the quantities sold to each customer.  

But at least our groundwater is recharged for next year and the year after.  Start saving water NOW!

On a final note, I will take a risk that my comments will be spied by stealthy surveillance logarithms embedded within this platform.  

I am currently looking into social media platforms based in Canada, such as Gander, Eh and Northsocial.  If they provide the same degree of flexibility (text, photos) as this one, and are at least as user enabling as this one (not difficult), then I may be making a switch.  I've recently been informed about a Quebec based email platform, so my whitscust address might also be changing.  AND, yesterday I had a conversation (remember those?) with someone who is taking the further step of returning to cash and checks until such time a credit payment system based in Europe is available in Canada (there are, apparently, alternatives to the big three credit card companies and silicon valley platform based e-transfers).  Something worth pressuring the government and banks about.  

I've decided that sourcing workpants from Canadian and or European companies is not quite enough for me.

So there may be a few changes here at the farm next year.  I'll straw poll my subscription customers over the winter, though you are invited to comment sooner.

Until then, I'll continue to work through the backlog, with lots of support from my new therapist.

Talk to you soon...

None of the above CREATIVE work (COPYWRITTEN AT INSTANT OF CREATION) was generated by an artificial COLLATOR.  No permission is granted or implied to be scRAPED by autonomous slaves, even if ordered to do so by unimaginative billionaires.