The year that was:
- The crops;
- Soil;
- Farm development;
- Harvest, packaging, delivery and customer communication;
- Community engagement;
- Farm employment;
- Price point pressures;
- Farm Gate Store
I'll start with the crops...
One note to bear in mind that in addition to all other factors, precipitation was very low all season. On at least three occasions during the summer, small rain cells drifted just to the south or north of us, one being as close as Playfairville, less that 3 km away in a straight line.
Our irrigation system could use what is a "continuous flow" well pump that would more effectively maintain an even pressure within the irrigation system. This would be a considerable, though not insurmountable cost. The piping in our house (also fed by the well pump) might require replacing if the continuous flow pump functions beyond a certain PSI. In other words, more research needed for a topic I am not too familiar with. And our current pump still has a number of years left in it's lifespan.
Part One- Crops
Beans: When not dormant due to heat, all crops produced beyond expectation.
Green Bean: Both varieties did well when not dormant. This season, I tried to plant portions of the crop at different intervals in an attempt to ensure that enough were available for a harvest week. This took up a lot of space and consumed a lot of seeds. In the end, the second round produced too much at once and a lot of pods were composted due to not having enough time to pick them.
I also planted a half bed of romano beans and these seemed to tolerate the heat better, it may be the way to go in future years. (I have since done some research which confirmed that romano beans - such as our yellow and red 'Dragon's Tongue variety - are generally more heat tolerant than other bean types).
I assume that our climate will continue to warm and some crops such as green beans may no longer be reliable in our climate. Early on at our Littledown farm location, I used to start my beans extra early with a green bean called Provider. It was bred to germinate in cool soils that usually caused other bean seed varieties to rot. During about our third or fourth season, it was obvious that provider was very affected by heat, even more so than types I use now.
Peas: Snow peas did very well. The late season snap peas did ok, though one of two beds had the seeds plucked out by what I assume were starlings, crows or mourning doves. The second bed had a patchy germination, and was most exposed to the heat. In the end, there was enough yield available on harvest days to cover two lucky customers.
Another factor was that I should have planted these peas about a month earlier. I kept putting off the sowing until the temperatures moderated, which they never did.
Next year, my rotation pattern moves the pea/bean beds to a spot where there is shade from mid afternoon onward, so we might see an improvement.
Beans are a loss leader due to the amount of time required to pick, even when priced at $5.00/Lb. Due to crop regularly coming to fruition after or before a harvest date, they are a great cause of frustration to me.
Lettuce: Did very well, some of the best lettuce I have ever grown. My only disappointment was the toughness of the green romaine. Better than Littledown Farm, but still not as tender as I prefer. This might have to do with the particular variety. The red romaine and buttercrunch lettuce were great, everything that I want in a good lettuce, and the freckles variety was a nice addition to sandwiches - the leaves are so flat, you can pack a lot in between the bread slices without having the entire package fall apart in mid bite.
Chard: Also did very well. At the previous location, a 25 foot bed covered the needs of 10 to 12 customers. At this location, it seems as if the same bed size can do 30 customers during the mid season. Also, I have had no chard plants go to seed as sometimes happened at Littledown farm.
The variety Fordhook Giant which I first tried at Littledown, is surpassing expectation and will likely be the variety I choose to grow from now on, though I do like the savoyed leaves and broad white stem of the Silverado.
I have yet to find a coloured chard that yields as well as either of these varieties.
Spinach: The spring round germinated fairly well though the plants remained quite small. The second round did not germinate. The weather forecast suggested a week of moderate temperature in mid August and I hurriedly got a bed cleaned up and sown, only to watch the forecast change to hotter temperatures. In the end, they did not germinate and I was out of seed for the season.
Coriander: Did quite well, not bolting as early as at Littledown. Always a challenge finding space for this crop and determining if I have planted enough or too much for the variable demand.
Parsley: I put a few plants in the end of one bed, intending it for farm store sales only. It did very well, and I wished I had planted more for the CSA. It's long tap root and aversion to wet leaves meant that this year's growing conditions were ideal.
Expect some next year if I can find space. This crop is far more versatile than most people realise; check out the parsley paragraph on the "Our Crops" page.
Amaranth: Grew well, though only a very small quantity was produced.
Allium crops: Muck soil is ideal for onions, and seems to be preferred by other onion family crops as well.Green Onion: Grew well, though the last round was nibbled by mice.
Red and Yellow onion: Grew quite well, my spacing method could use improvement to produce more large bulbs. A mix up in my harvesting and curing caused the two red varieties to become delivered together.
Cippolini Onion: A new favorite crop, all of the too small to sell cippolini's were eaten here in salads and sandwiches. Took first prize in the red onion category at the fair. Garlic: Grew quite well in spite of quite a lot of virus in the beds. This might have been mitigated somewhat if I had the time to cull some of the obviously infected plants.
Winter Squash: These did fairly well despite being in a new field that had very little work done on the soil. Compared to last year (with almost no fruit production) the field their beds were in this year is about 1-2 feet lower elevation and thus closer to the ground water. That fact gave me the idea to use this new field in future years for deep rooted crops such as carrots and other umbellifers, squash, and kidney beans. Next year, I am hoping to add a new variety or two to the menu to augment the tasty mini butternuts. Finding a good tasting squash is not easy, the most of the best flavored ones have thin rinds and do not last all that long. Pictured: mini butternut and delicata squash.
Zucchini: Didn't notice any of this in your deliveries? The zucchini plants barely grew after transplant. Due to limited space in the nursery, I did not start them until late spring, and thus they were subjected to a lot of heat and drought pressure during their earliest growth. The other factor as to why it grew poorly may have been to it's proximity to the black walnuts, which border one of our growing areas (The snow peas grew in that same field of beds and did just fine, despite finishing their season in unseasonably hot weather). As well, I grew some delicata squash a few years ago in the same field, about 25 feet away, and they did ok.
After the second fish application at about eight weeks, the cherry tomato growth was vigorous, and the plants started to produce an abundant quantity of fruit. I'm still not sure if the fish emulsion had a positive effect or not.
The Grightmire also showed signs of growth, though it never caught up to the cherries.
Most of the Moskvich remained small and stunted all season, with a couple of the plants with the most shade doing the best.
The vines were profuse and required a lot of pruning.
My theory is that the heat was more of a factor than anything else. Tomato plants will go dormant when the temperature rises above 37 in the day and/or 25 degrees at night. Even fruit stops ripening.
The cherry tomatoes seemed to shrug this off better than the others, despite being in the area with the most sunlight.
Grightmire turned out to be more of a cooking tomato - lots of flesh, not too much juice or seeds and not as flavorful as a regular table tomato. I'll return to this variety when we have enough field to offer cooking tomatoes as a regular part of our menu.
Next season, I will experiment with a few varieties to see what is more heat resistant. A quick search just now suggests Cherokee Purple (Big fruits, not too acidic, quite flavorful, though perhaps low yield per plant) and Pruden's Purple (Big Fruits, very flavorful, resistant to cracking). Both varieties take between 12 and 20 days longer to mature than Moskvich, though I suppose late is better than never. Elmtree farm grew both of these varieties, and I tried Cherokee early on at Littledown. Some of the heirloom varieties have very thin skin and do not travel well, but I cannot recall if this is the case with either of these.
Pepper: Planted very early and then successfully protected through the May cold snap and ice storm. In spite of starting early, they took about four extra weeks to produce significant quantity of fruit. When they did, there was no disappointment. The green fruits were of a nice size and flavor, and when allowed to ripen further to their colored state, were very good.
The Frying peppers (aka Shepherd's peppers) were another big discovery for me, surpassed as a favorite only by the Orange picnic peppers, which were sublime.
The only variety that disappointed me was the Milena yellow peppers; the yield was very low.
The hot, dry weather likely helped the peppers ripen further without becoming moldy inside.
Hot peppers: My cayenne seeds failed to germinate well in the nursery. Only two plants were available for transplant. And neither of them did very well - each had dozens of fruits that were less than an inch long; only about half a dozen fruits reached a usable size.
These plants had plenty of sunlight, so either I didn't pick off the first flowers enough, or the plants did not receive enough water.
I happened to have some old banana pepper seeds and used these as an alternate to ordering one packet of cayennes, despite these being less versatile for use in the kitchen. They produced more to what I would have expected.
Given the amount of interest in peppers, I'll double the number of plants I grow next year, and supplement their water as much as I can.
Potato: Produced beyond expectation. The fingerlings were so large that they pushed themselves out of the hill and had some greening. I made an attempt to grow some russets this year, but the tubers wound up being smaller than the original seed potatoes. After a mid season consultation with Henry Ellenberger, I learned that soil with high nitrogen content tends to impact some potato variety types more than others, and according to feedback provided by some of his other customers, the russets he grows might not be suitable for our farm.
For a fourth potato type, I could try either blue potatoes or yellow fleshed potatoes, both of which Henry sells.
Celery: Two of my three successions of celery did very well. The third probably would have done so as well, though I failed to mulch it in straw soon enough and it became too dark and strong flavored to use as anything other than slow cooking. The period of time that it was growing, I was to busy to give it much attention, and eventually lost most of it to frost.
Fennel: The first succession did ok, the second round was not thinned in time and resulted in mini fennel plants. The rotation pattern placed this crop in a fairly shaded area, so I assume that the medium sized bulbs were affected by less sun than this crops prefers.
Brassica Family Crops: With their extensive, shallow roots, these crops are generally very dependant on regular moisture. Being cool weather crops, they are stressed by long hot summers with little or no moderate shoulder season.
Arugula & Tokyo Bekana: The first and only round of these were so lush that I was able to get two deliveries out of them. There was not enough space to place an additional round of arugula without interrupting the fields rotation pattern.
I can get around the space problem next season by undersowing my first two rounds in narrow bands in the squash beds, while the squash are still small seedlings. In fact, there should be enough space to allow me to include radish and pak choi with the squashes as well. I used to do this at Littledown, though this season, the squash were going into a new field that was not very well prepared (quite messy, I didn't have time to give it a thourough cleaning before the squash plants went in and had to depend on using plastic mulch beneath the squashes).
In turn, that should reserve enough space for a fall planting of at least arugula and radish somewhere else in the field.
At the previous farm, kale usually succumbed to the heat and insect pressure by mid summer, and I would have to find space for a second succession in the autumn. Last season, the kale did remarkably well all summer. This year, the kale was dependable until late July, when it very quickly succumbed to flea beetle and cabbage moth.
Next season, I'll be returning to the two kale successions per year as I used to do, and as new beds are prepared, I will try three successions, though if the summers remain as warm as they seem to be getting, this may be a crop that has a limited amount of time left in our climate.
Cabbage: How do the cabbage moths get through the netting? I used to have this same problem at the previous farm, when I used a very light weight row cover to keep insects out. I had assumed that the moths laid their eggs on the cabbage when the cover had been blown off. Row cover tends to get blown of the crops quite easily (even when pinned down by rocks), so it was a pleasant discovery when I tried using the netting that came with the farm. Netting - being more porous to air - tends to stay in place during windy days. Not so. Despite thoroughly covering the cabbage with insect netting, I lost a lot of cabbages to cabbage moth larvae. The only reason I was able to get cabbage hearts to all customers at the end of the season was because I had grown so many - our chickens love cabbage (better yet, when there are tasty grubs inside). I had just enough to distribute one cabbage head to each customer, though a lot of surface leaves had to be culled due to some moth damage.
I can only assume that the moths are laying their eggs through the netting, where the leaves press against it. The only solution I can think of is a wider netting and taller hoops. The wider netting is easy enough, but taller hoops? Not sure how I am going to accomplish that, short of using some duct tape to attach hoops together.
Radish: Planted early enough for the first harvest, but in heat that was too much for this cool weather plant. I did not have time to grow these in the fall - too many cabbage family beds were overgrown or had buckwheat on them.
Pak Choi: Similar issues to radish, though being a plant that is started in the nursery as opposed to direct seed, I was able to get it matured before it went out into the heat for planting.
Rutabaga: After a slow start, rutabaga did ok, though about a quarter of the plants were stunted and failed to do much. At least one fully grown plant had some kind of rot in it's core, though to my knowledge this was an unlucky one off.
Turnip: Not everyone likes the strong flavor of rutabaga, so turnips are a milder tasting alternative. As well, they grow fairly quickly, ready for harvest in as little as forty days. That makes them a favorite (easy!) crop for me to include. The first one was as insurance against the beets not doing well (they didn't) and the second round in the fall was started after I though the rutabaga was not going to do well (the rutabaga put on a growth spurt almost as soon as I planted the turnips).
A curious fact about cabbage family plants: Brassicas are polyploid, meaning that they have more than 1 pair of chromosomes per cell. The ease with which these plants can cross together and produce crops that are as different as pak choi and rutabaga are a result of this species ability to produce so many seemingly different forms. However, if you look very closely at the flowering head of a broccoli, you will see the same basic pattern in the flowers of a forgotten radish. Another clue is the first pair of primary leaves after the seed has germinated. They always look the same, whether they are from a kale, or a cauliflower, or a daikon.
Carrots: Aside from potatoes, I have come to count on this crop to scrounge the relatively nutrient poor beds in newly built fields. Despite our soil being skewed towards nitrogen in the macronutrient profile, carrots have done very well here provided they germinate. (See the section on farm Soil for a deeper explanation). My only complaint is the way they sometimes push themselves out of the ground when hitting a deeper, more compacted layer of soil, which results in greened and strong tasting shoulders. Cost us a first place at the fair, those green shoulders did!
Compared to most seasons at the previous farm, carrots here have so far have yielded between 25 to 30 per cent more than what I would expect of a similar amount of seed at Littledown farm.
Much to my surprise, I ran out of orange carrot seed for the last round of carrots, and had to go with white carrots. I have heard (and told) by younger vegetable eaters, coloured carrots are the best tasting, though most chefs disagree. The orange carrot was bred in the mid 1800's by (I think) French farmers, who were crossbreeding varieties to get a more flavorful root. As they bred for flavor, the orange color became dominant, suggesting a link between the genes that control sugar content and color (which in turn is caused by more carotenoids in the variety). But the carotenoids themselves are not responsible for the flavor, as red carrots are highest in carotenoids content. (I have yet to find a very good tasting or producing red carrot).
Celeriac: Like parsnip, also a heavy feeder. However, like at the previous farm, my celeriac this season was quite small. Some additional research suggests that I need to be watering it more than the deeper rooted parsnip and carrots. Next year, I have a heavily composted bed for the celeriac in the new field which is lower in elevation and thus closer to the water table.
Beets: This years beets were too small. I grew them in the bed that is close to the black walnut trees, as beets are one crop that tolerates black walnut toxins better than most other vegetables. However, there is less sunlight there, so I assume that I will need to find a new place for the beets. (I grew mangles for pig forage here the last time we hade pigs, and they did ok. That is why I opted to do the beets in the same bed field this past season).
Like the celeriac, these are a heavy feeding crop that needs lots of moisture. I am considering growing some in the new field (next to the celeriac) though I have also earmarked that area for carrots. Decisions...
Honey: 2023 was a good year for producing honey, though it came with a cost. With so many hives, the extra work caused a delay in starting the extraction process.We started the season with seven hives, more than any other previous year, due to our catching of several swarms last season.
In total, there were about 5 swarms, and possibly another that was not noticed. Two swarms were let go as they occurred at times in which saving them was not possible. Three swarms were donated to other bee keepers, who arrived and caught them with our assistance.
Our plan for next season is to maintain the number of hives at about five colonies. Bee colonies have long been recognized as having individual personalities, and ours are no different. One colony is exceptionally temperamental. The bees become quite aggressive when work is being done around or inside the hive. Next year, our intention is to replace the genetics by extracting the current queen and introducing a new (purchased) queen. As the new queen's eggs begin to hatch, a new set of genetics will be introduced to the colony, hopefully removing the "angry genes" from the hive.
One of the results of the extra work was that mite treatment was delayed until almost too late. At least one hive may have succumbed to mites, and only time will tell if the mite treatment was applied in time to prevent an infestation of the other hives.
Some of our last honey to be extracted was fairly dark - still light enough to be considered a gold grade, though noticeably darker than gold grades extracted earlier. This is due to the bees using the last flowering and fruiting plants (goldenrod and sumac) to make their honey. Honey with a high Goldenrod content is said to crystallize sooner than other honeys.
A curious fact that I learned about bee stings this year is the relationship between stings and arthritis. People (such as bee keepers who are regularly stung by bees are LESS likely to suffer from arthritis.
Part Two - Farm Soil
It all comes down to soil: Plant and livestock production, water retention, even keeping the fence posts upright for thirty years...everything depends on a strong and healthy foundation.I'll go right back to the start, when Julia and I first walked the property.
As with every property we looked at, I did a quick "palm-spit" test to get a rough idea as to what type of soil this location had. It's a common method: place a soil sample in your palm, spit on it, and rub the soil between your hands.
If all that is left is a slippery smear, the soil is a clay type. If there is just a gritty residue left, it is sand soil. Not too gritty but little to no smear indicates silt soil. A combination of all three indicates one of the loam-type soils. My test had a considerable smear, and I commented that the soil appeared to have some clay. It appeared that about two thirds of the farm was on a 12 to 24 inch clay, with endless sand underneath to the basement rock. One third of the soil - furthest from the house, was described as sandy, with the farthest north-east corner as being very sandy, and a small occurrence of pure, fine sand near the hexagon.
That was the premise I went with until I started working up the first garlic beds (In the area described as clay soil) two years ago. At that time, I observed that the soil was quite heavy, which was consistent with the clay soil assumption. Photos: The top shows a palm test rom the growing field. The bottom picture shows a palm test from the sand pit.
In early 2022, the first year we began planting many crops at Iron Mine, I observed that the soil, though fairly heavy, was not clumping in a manner that I had anticipated. At Elmtree Farm, one of the growing fields had a heavy clay soil. As it was worked, it become quite clumpy, though the clumps remained loose enough to push a wheel hoe through. Here, the soil broke down into a coarse, though still clumping, consistency. At that time, I began to suspect the soil was actually a clay loam.
To step back a bit, loam is a combination of clay, silt, and sand soils. If the soil ratio is skewed more to sand than typical loam, it is called sandy loam (what we had at Littledown Farm, and many of the fields at Elmtree were also a sandy loam). Assuming that there was a clay content in the Iron Mine soil, it seemed logical that I was working a clay loam.
As the bed surfaces dried out in spring - some of which now had transplants in them - I observed the soil surface was crusting into a hard, brittle surface. As the soil continued to dry, the surface cracked..
Surface crusting and cracking is sometimes attributed to clay soils (though my experience at Elmtree challenged this assumption, after observing the clumpiness of the surface), Another common reason that is sited with surface crusting is low fertility. This possibility puzzled me mightily.
In addition, the previous autumn I had applied amendments such as compost, ash, and what was left of my stock of greensand and rock phosphate
How could all that fertility I had grown and incorporated left me with a crusting surface? Had the baseline fertility rate that I was starting from been really, really low? That did not seem to match the experience on the new farm.
As spring 2022 progressed, there were more observations that led to more questions. The transplants were not growing vigorously. After almost three weeks, the tomatoes, peppers, and squash had barely changed. As well, the carrots, beets, and turnips were not germinating.
The potatoes (always dependable scroungers in weak soils) were doing ok, and the chard and kale seemed to be slow but at least providing observable growth.
A bit of research suggested that carrots and some other fine seed crops have difficulty germinating in clay soil.
So it was off to the sand pit on our property to collect some amendments. This sand pit has shown it's value over the years. I have used it to build up the gravel pad around the prep station, fill in a depression on two of the shed "floors" and sent some to the chicken coop for mid winter dust baths. If I ever need to make some heritage mortar, this sand is a decent consistency for that as well.
Not wanting to waste my (now much depleted) supply of carrot seeds, I prepared three beds and a control bed.
Bed One: One bucket of sand incorporated into the soil. As well, small quantity of sand dribbled into the seed furrows and mixed lightly using the edge of the colinear hoe.
Bed Two: Two buckets of sand incorporated into the soil.
Bed Three: One bucket of sand incorporated into the soil.
By far, bed one had the best response, approaching a 70-80 per cent germination rate. Bed 2 and 3 had somewhat less successful germination, good in some places but with bare patches along some parts of the furrows. The control bed did as expected, about three or four carrots for the entire 25 foot bed.
That experiment was from my last round of carrots last fall (2022). I used method one this season and have had good success germinating carrots and turnips.
So that problem was solved, but there was another. Working the beds (and harvesting potatoes) was taking a very long time due to some very compacted soil. Typically, when I prepare a bed, I'll use a broad fork to break up the soil and provide some deep aeration. I then add my amendments, and then incorporate them using the wheel hoe. The wheel hoe also breaks up the large clods broken by the broad fork, and leaves the bed with a tilth fine enough to sow or transplant, but not so fine as to create a fluffy powder that re-compacts easily (as happens when roto tilling). Then, during the season, I'll use the wheel hoe along the edge of the bed (to keep the grasses in the path from growing into the bed) and the colinear hoe around and in between the plants or seed lines for weed suppression. However, by mid summer, I was finding that the soil had compacted again, to the point where it was very difficult to push the wheel hoe through the soil. Potato harvesting was more akin to breaking rock, taking more than three times more to complete a bed than usual. The only good thing about all this was that, aside from grass rhizomes, there was very little weed germination happening, except along the furrow lines of the carrots where I had incorporated some sand.
This photo shows the beds after broad forking. With less compaction, the clods usually fork out much smaller and crumble up easily with the wheel hoe. Here, the clods are too big and hard to break with the wheel hoe. They are especially hard when dry - as was the case most of this season. I had to walk along the edge of the bed and stab the large pieces with my smaller harvest fork to break them up enough to use the wheel hoe.
Meanwhile, seedlings such as pepper, tomato, and squash were growing very slowly; and heavy feeding crops such as celery and beets were under performing.
Lettuce, chard, kale and garlic and green onion, however, were growing exceedingly well.
None of this was making any sense to me, and even two of my mentors were a bit puzzled by what I was describing.
By early summer of this season, I started to do some more research in the evenings. Wading through everything that the internet spews out when asked a simple question is neither my forte nor my idea of a fun way to spend an evening on the farm, but I eventually came across a few small pieces of information.
In our area, there is either little to no soil, coarse sand, sandy loam, or muck soil. Typically, muck soil is found in the low lying areas, in bands that follow old glacial troughs through Eastern Ontario. Many of these have rivers or narrow lakes, and others - like our property - are drained.
Zooming in on our property coordinates, I found that a deposit of muck soil was mapped in an arc that starts behind our house and looped out through the growing field. Beyond that, where the newly plowed ground slopes upward, the soil is listed as a sandy loam.
Muck soil? I've heard of that. Not a sand, silt or clay, which are rock particles ground down by eons of wind and water activity. Muck is made of decomposed organic matter that is left over after a marsh or pond drains (either naturally, such as after a glacial retreat, or intentionally, such as Holland Marshes in southern Ontario).
More research (augmented by a few bits of information that I already had about muck) included the following:
Perfect for growing onions, it is the soil they evolved to grow in;
Very fragile, lots of tilling turns this soil to dust that blows away;
Overall fertility "...can be high...";
Naturally high in nitrogen, moderately low in phosphorous, low to very low in potassium;
Tends to be heavy;
Tends to be somewhat acidic.
The only reference to hardness or crusting was from a quoted clip on a reddit account "WHY IS MY MUCK SOIL SO HARD?". I don't have an account for that platform and despite the temptation, had no desire to set up an account for a single use. (a blog and email are quite enough).
Those clues pretty much made up my mind. I don't have clay soil, I have muck soil. Perfect for onions. Well, no wonder the onions did so well, not to mention the garlic and green onions. High in nitrogen, which suggests a reason for the good performance of the lettuce and other leaf crops; and why the tomatoes need so much pruning.
Moderately low in phosphorous and low in potassium suggests poorer performance in root crops, though carrots - being good scroungers for nutrients - seem to do ok once they germinate.
Low pH, which suggests a reason for the potatoes doing well. (Though low pH is also favored by weeds, and I don't seem to have nearly the same amount of weed pressure as I did at Littledown, aside from grass rhizomes).
There was (perhaps still is) one question that I have not solved: Why the hard crusting? Aside from that one reference in the reddit quote, I came across no mention this, aside from references to the soil being easily compacted by lots of tractor traffic, which was not something occurring here. The last time a tractor drove over this field was when I had it plowed and disked three years ago. The aerating and working would have alleviated that by now. In fact, I found one reference to muck soils being very good for crops due to it having a loose tilth.
There are different types of muck soil, and it is possible that in our narrow dell, there was some rock based soils deposited into the soil matrix, giving my muck a different character than would be found in a broad, drained marshland. Finding more information on the web has continued to confound me.
to sowing, and I'll be including ash (contains potassium, needed for root growth) as a regular part of my soil amendments (I have always done this for root crops, but now I will be including crops that require extensive root systems, such as tomatoes and squash. Brassicas also have extensive root systems, though they go into the same rotation beds as root vegetables so, so they are covered). The ash will also help raise the pH toward the 6.8 to 7.2 range that I want.
And this might solve my "slow growing tomato plant problem".
If the soil is so heavy that carrot seeds have difficulty germinating, then would large plants such as tomatoes have a tough time growing their root systems to take up the water and nutrients needed to get to the fruiting stage? That, and the low potassium (which primarily affects roots), makes sense to me.
So, fortunately, there is a neighbor nearby with horses and sheep. And sheep manure is high in potassium. A quick phone call and a couple weeks of anticipation later, I was driving home with a trailer load of gold - three year old composted manure and straw bedding. It must have been as heavy as gold, as I managed to blow a trailer tire just before I pulled into the farm lane...
YOU CANT WIN!Then followed a couple of days of hurriedly getting the compost incorporated into the beds (this was back in October), to ensure that the compost was worked in enough to have any remaining harmful bacteria destroyed by spring. As for the residues in the trailer that I could not shovel out, I drove the trailer (flopping tire and all) up to our apple trees and washed out the leavings at the base of the trees.
And ordered a new wheel for the trailer.
We'll see if all this research and effort makes a difference next season...
Part Three - Farm development
Developing the farm is essential if we are to grow to a point where we can support a CSA that is about three times larger than what it is now. In fact, there are a few things that need to be done now to ensure that the current farm work is covered efficiently.
In 2022, with a CSA of ten households served "low maintenance" crops, I built the farm gate store, finished building the nursery, fenced the remaining 4 acres of farm property (through two patches of poison ivy - took longer than other parts of the fence line), and found time to build a rudimentary hay hutch. Some of the growing beds (about 900 square feet) were not started until spring last year and some of those had to be finished by mid summer in order to plant the last of the potatoes and a few other late crops. Then there was the new beds for this season. I had those plowed fall 2021 and disked spring 2022. Those beds needed to be forked, amended, tilled, and covered with two rounds of cover crop. 
Photo: Here is how you evacuate the augured post holes when surrounded by poison ivy: Nitrile gloves, a sheet of plastic, lots of H2O2 to clean off contaminated surfaces, and lots of concentrated caution.
This season, I had enough time to keep the CSA going; very little else was finished until late fall, when four fields were mowed down and plowed for working next year. And work progressed on the pig field, putting in the last of the perimeter fence posts and some of the paddocks and home base area prepared for hosting pigs this spring. Robert returned with his mechanics tools to work on the riding mower (essential for mowing away the grass and poison ivy along the perimeter fence) and snow thrower (essential if we are to trailer the pigs into the new pig field in March).
Julia and I covered a few dates at the McD corners market this year as well, though most week-ends we were just too overwhelmed to go (Julia with the bees and her day job and me with everything else).
Admittedly, I worked a little more overtime than I ought to have.
What the farm still needs to become more efficient:
New chicken coop: The old one is a small A-frame. Not an efficient place to work in (standing upright is only possible in the middle of the structure, which makes raking out the bedding and doing any work inside very time consuming and uncomfortable. The floorboards are weak and won't last forever. It is difficult to insulate without loosing height. No protection against a weasel big enough to eat a chicken. Not large enough for more than about six chickens. On a hill, which makes it difficult to access in the winter when the ground is icy, or to haul a portable chicken coop up to to transport chickens to the growing field to clean up recently harvested beds.
A portable chicken coop also needs to be built.
I have some portable interlock fencing that I can use to make a secure outdoor run, and some of the building supplies, but not the extra pair of hands or time to build it.
Getting power to the back of the property. Necessary for the curing shed; and for the future re-building of the big shed which would be used for carpentry and machinery repairs and maintenance.
The big shed will need to be dismantled and re-built. I have to do this with in the next few years as it is in the process of dismantling itself. A big cost, requiring at least a years worth of work, more when including building inspections and permits. Fortunately, we have a very good carpentry company that we have worked with in the past, and they have indicated that they are interested in the project.
Another hay hutch - the one I built is too small.
More storage compartments around the farm gate store to protect food from mice.
Replace old fencing along back of property. The eight foot tall fence is old and the posts are rotting away at the base. If a bear tried to climb it (attracted by the scent of the bee hives), the fence would likely collapse. Some of the posts are only upright because of the fencing.
Overwinter storage for machinery and building supplies. Right now, they are stored in the big shed, which is so full I cannot use it as workspace during the winter for machinery maintenance and repairs.
Mud room. Our front door opens into a alcove that is a extension of the living room. It is the only door of the house that is big enough to use as an entrance (the other regularly used door enters directly into the kitchen). So the front door is also a mud room, cluttered with messy farm clothes and stuff that needs to be dumped somewhere out of the rain on short notice. I step inside at the end of the day to get away from the farm, only to be confronted with more of it.
There is a third door that accesses a hallway just across from the bathroom. The hall is too narrow for a boot mat or dressing chair, but the area just outside the door is suitable for a small floating deck and storage shed that I can de-boot in and hang dripping farm clothes in.
Farm Dog: We'll be needing one of these as the fence will not always exclude deer. As well, a dog will keep pressure on smaller critters that the fence won't stop, such as flocks of crows in the hayfield or raccoons anywhere on the property. I am hoping to have one within two years.
Without these improvements:
The farm is vulnerable to bears, the chicken coop to weasels; everything else to deer and other critters
Small tasks take longer to complete;
Row cover, field seed and harvested food are at risk of rodent damage;
Building materials and or machinery are at risk of weather damage;
Opportunities for time saving techniques such as having the chickens clean bed surfaces are not possible;
Temporary storage of farm clothes and related supplies are in an unsuitable place.
There is more to running a farm than growing and selling vegetables!
Part Four - Packaging, delivery, and customer communication
Packaging: This has been a challenge ever since I started the farm - how to get the produce delivered to customers fresh and free of damage.
I used to pack all crops in separate boxes that were then packed into the car. At each stop, I filled a tray of items (paper bags of tomatoes and potatoes, bio-film bags of kale and chard, plastic sleeves for lettuce, and items such as celery or rutabaga un-packaged. Delivery was too time consuming using this method, particularly when we reached 25 customers.
A few years ago, I switched to cotton totes for everything except items that needed to be kept dry, such as tomatoes and garlic. This works well, except that the totes are a size or two too small, especially evident while trying to package lettuce, which more often than not was squeezed in and probably difficult to remove from the tote.
As soon as a year in which the budget allows, I'll be purchasing another bunch of larger totes to help alleviate this. Assuming I don't come up with another idea...
At Elmtree Farm, Tom and Alaine used hard plastic totes to deliver everything. Hard items such as potatoes and carrots were placed on the bottom, items such as beans were placed above that, leaves near the top, and tomatoes and summer squashes nestled among the leaves. No plastic or paper bags, everything was loose.
The drawback for me is that I would need a minivan to stack the totes in, they would never fit in the Subaru.
Tom delivered to two pick-up sites in Ottawa, and customers would have an hour window to come and retrieve the contents of the totes. If anyone missed the pick-up window, Tom would deliver directly to their doorstep, and include a $5.00 delivery fee (2009 era dollars).
Based on feedback from many of my customers, one of the primary attractions of my CSA is the doorstep delivery. If I were to go to a pick up spot model, I suspect I would loose one to two thirds of my current customer base.
If I were to deliver totes directly to customers, I would have to have at least double the number of totes to so that I could drop off a tote and pick it up with the following delivery. The last time I checked the price of totes, I was astonished at how much these cheaply made, plastic containers cost. Inevitably, they break (usually the lids go first, rendering the rest of the tote useless for many of the needs I have for containers).
Other issues around delivery:
For me, it is the least favourite aspect of operating a farm. I like the occasional contact with customers, but I usually arrive home exhausted and despite it being mid afternoon, almost always need to take a nap and or are too worn out to go into the field.
I am a better food producer than I am a delivery driver; there are hundreds of folks who are better delivery drivers than they are farmers. It might sound elitist, but I think I am better contributing to the economy by farming. To refer to a commonly sited economics axiom, "...everyone should do what they are the least worst at".
I have been pondering the problems posed by delivery for years. When I was a musician, we had a similar dilemma: Making a record is easy, selling it locally is easy, but distributing it is almost impossible - unless your art is commercial enough and you are willing to tour 364 days a year to land a major record label contract. The distribution system was entirely owned by the major labels.
It's the same with agriculture. If you want your produce distributed, it must be purchased (for wholesale prices) by a major grocery chain. They have the trucks, the warehouses, forklifts...the same reason why there are almost no private family owned general stores anymore, as the various chains only serve themselves. (What's the definition of cartel? Of competition? Of capitalism? I could go way off topic here...)
I have wondered about contracting an independent delivery person. This would be an added cost that I would have to pass on to the customers. Delivery would have to be very simple - just a stack of plastic totes containing everything for each customer with an address, so the driver could make a quick stop, drop off the tote, pick up the previous weeks tote, and continue to the next address.
To ensure this was feasible for both me and the driver, I would have to drop all outlier addresses and concentrate my sales in two or three neighborhoods.
This is not an avenue I have actively explored yet, but I might look into it over the course of this winter.
Another possibility that has been suggested to me is to find a drop-off point in conjunction with another business, such as a store that has something to do with food or gardening. I or someone else delivers the totes, and CSA customers go to the location where the totes are stored (could be a cookware store, a church hall, garden nursery, etc.). One would think this would be mutually beneficial, particularly if the drop off point was also a food seller.
The limited inquiries I made back then were inconclusive. Most stores were concerned about liability and storage space, and neither of the community organizations were willing to share space with a for-profit entity.
The other possibility is to eschew delivering to Ottawa altogether, and have local customers pick up at the farm gate store. To date, we only have one local CSA customer. Most folks who are interested in farm quality produce seem to prefer going to one of four markets between here in Perth (plus on in Almonte) than to return to the same farm every week.
This might be an option in the distant future, but there will have to be a renewed interest in rural populations about the CSA model, as it does not seem to be too popular or well understood. In the meantime, Ottawa will continue to be our primary market, and doorstep delivery our method of delivery.
The only other comments I have for this section are about customer communications:
I found this year I was a bit better in keeping track of customer requests and accounts. When we discovered the local line platform, I had high hopes that I could have a "website" with which I could relate the ongoing activities of the farm, explain the relative merits of different varieties of each produce, suggestions for recipes and long term storage, and have customers send their requests and additional payments in a way that I could easily read from a single print-out.
As it turned out, only the most expensive versions of the platform did the print out of requests, and some other aspects of the platform did not meet my expectations. (Limits on amount of text, limits to number of bytes per photograph, etc.). In the end, I came up with a simple way of tracking produce sales and despite being more time consuming than I would like, stuck with it because it is an improvement.
Part Five - Community Outreach
In the biodynamic growing regime, farms are considered a whole entity (farm health includes not just the crops, but also the soil, surrounding ecosystem, and the farmer and family). As well, the farm's place and contribution in the wider community is also taken into consideration.Although I am not a biodynamic farmer, there are many aspects of that regime that are aligned with my farming ethos, and integrating the farm with my surrounding community is part of that.
This year, our over abundant carrot crop was distributed to two different food banks (The Table in Perth and Plan B in Lanark), with another few pounds possibly going to another organization in Lanark before Christmas. Overall, more than 40 Lbs of unsold carrots were donated. As well, a round of lettuce that arrived between delivery dates and some excess chard went to Plan B for their monthly community supper. (Plan B is a grassroots non-profit organization based in Lanark that provides a lot of community supports - not to be confused with a Plan B program that another organization runs).
For reasons that baffle and discombobulate me, the village of McDonalds Corners has two farmers markets, both run by organizations that we wish to support - MERA (a local arts and crafts group) and the Agricultural society (which sponsors the annual McDonalds Corners agricultural fair). In 2022, we rented a booth from MERA, and this past season we switched to the Ag Society. If we are able to take part in a market next year, it will likely be back to MERA for one season.
The Lanark Era was the one media organisation we opted to purchase advertisement space from. By the end of the summer, they were the last standing independent news outlet in the region. (Maybe all of Eastern Ontario!) Aside from our annual subscription, we will continue to use this paper as our primary source of advertising locally.
I hope to continue expanding our involvement with the wider community in the future, though this will be dependent on if/when we are able to hire some help for the workload.
One other project I am interested in starting this season is growing my own field seed. This came about after government regulations around GMO seed labeling came into effect (see part Seven, Price Point Pressure). As well, I discovered that spelt seed of any type is not available around here, and none of the major seed suppliers sell open pollinated spelt seed (for our self pollinating hay field).
I turned to Seeds to Diversity, an organization that maintains the Canadian Seed Bank. They can provide some of what I am looking for. As well, I came across a grant that might help with starting a grain crop here (such as spelt) so if I have the time, I will be following up on this. If I understand correctly, a percentage of my saved seed will have to be returned to the seed bank, which seems reasonable enough.
If my experience with Seeds of Diversity is fruitful, I may choose to become more involved in this organization.
Part Six - Farm Employment
This is a problem that has to be solved for the farm to continue into the future.
I need a full time pair of hands, and ideally some additional casual help with machinery maintenance and casual help cleaning and packing produce.
If we expand our CSA by 1/3 next season, I can afford to pay someone part-time. That would wipe out my profit - mostly money for farm building supplies and a little left over for me. No building supplies means that the farm cannot expand without the curing shed, second nursery, and rebuilding the big shed.
So a straightforward hire is out of the question. That leaves interns or some kind of government employment support.
Interns: I was an intern for about 9 months. 55 hour weeks (once in every 4 weeks I worked 50 hours and had a two day week-end). I was paid a stipend of $100 per week and received room and board. The experience covered almost every aspect of working the farm, as well as additional information not directly related to agriculture such as community and neighborhood integration, farm work dog training, and putting food by. One of the most challenging jobs I have ever had and one of my favorite summer experiences ever.
The organization that I was part of - CRAFT (Canadian Regional Alliance for Farmer Training) no longer operates in Eastern Ontario.
As my internship wound up, I checked out what post secondary education was available for small scale farming. Guelph and Trent were the only schools that had such programs that were "close" to Ottawa. Four days of in class learning, and one day out in the field. The description of the course contents revealed that I was light years ahead in theory, and incomparably better off with practical training. As well, it was apparent that some of my internships learnings were not even covered by the school program.
So it is for that reason that I strongly value internships over paying an institution to teach farming four days a week in a classroom.
Unfortunately, we do not yet have accommodations to provide, so any intern would have to be from near here, which sorely limits the number of candidates.
World Wild Opportunities on Organic Farms is another organization that provides folks who want to travel and receive room and board on farms in return for a few days/weeks of work. The issue I have with hosting a 'Wwoofer', as they are known, is that they are not present all summer, and planning work load over the season is impossible without a guaranteed helper for the season. I need someone who is preparing for their career in agriculture, not a tourist who is planning the next leg of their travels.
So until we have some kind of accommodations set up, we need to find financial support for hiring someone. This has it's own challenges, as I have heard and read from other farmers. First, time lost to sifting through applications and having interviews. That's quite time consuming for any business!
Trying to find someone who already knows they want to work on a farm is a priority. There is so much specialized knowledge involved. Most folks looking for a $20/ hour job would be flabbergasted at the number of details to keep track of in a day, and retain for the entire summer. Anyone who has done a small amount of preparation for a career in farming will understand that produce must be harvested the day before delivery, rain or shine, or 35 degrees. It's an all weather activity. Most wage earners won't tolerate such conditions.
I've done some work on this detail, and have some leads that are not particularly promising, though I am certain there must be some kind of government support out there specific to the needs of training farmers. (Folks in my position in Quebec are VERY fortunate...that province values its current farmers, future farmers and farm land).
Farming is low income only because of the way our economy is set up and how we apply value to our economies products; it bears no relation to the knowledge base required. Ecological farmers are essentially fertility engineers, though small scale farmers will never be able to generate that kind of salary so long as one pound of potatoes are worth less than a brand new boot mat. Part Seven - Price point pressure
Aside from finding an employee and extra funds to set aside for rebuilding the big shed, there was one item that will have an effect on our bottom line and the cost of the CSA shares.For the past few years, BIG AG has been complaining about the regulations around gmo seed. In particular, if non-gmo seed has been exposed to gmo residues or has a tiny quantity of gmo seeds included, the producers and suppliers needed to note that on the packaging. Apparently this is onerous and leads to higher food costs, more work for suppliers and producers, and smaller returns for investors who prefer state supported capitalism.
Despite strong resistance from groups such as the National Farmers Union, the lobbyists for BIG AG were able to convince the ministry of agriculture to relax the regulations. (Your garden seed or foodstuffs might now have gmo's included without your awareness).
At a stroke of a pen, my seed costs for next year and beyond rose exponentially. I'll have to go back to buying certified organic seed, or at least seed that is certified GMO free (at least one of my vegetable seed producers has such certification, even for the non-organic seed they sell).
The biggest impact will be on field seed and cover crops, for which organic seed costs are considerably higher; some field crops such as turf breaker radish are not available in organic formats.My plan to help alleviate this over the long term is to start producing my own cover crop seed for certain crops such as spelt (See community outreach).
One other item that will push up my price point next season is the addition of one or two scheduled deliveries. I don't want to, but the car is getting too full for some of the larger deliveries, there was barely any room in the car after the two pre-Thanksgiving deliveries were packed.
Pictured: A mélange of cover crops on the field that was first developed in 2022 and went into production for 2023 (It grew your squashes, half of your kidney beans, some green beans, all red potatoes, cabbage, and amaranth flowers). The first photograph (from a different corner of the field shows it just after the seeds were sown and the buckwheat was starting to germinate).
Part Eight - Farm Gate Store
A permanent (as opposed to tent) farm store was a welcome improvement. For the most part it was a safe space to store produce, and provided walk-in customers a pleasant experience purchasing food. Though it is intended to be a self serve store, I wound up spending time there to meet customers, many of whom were neighbors or seasonal residents in the area.
The amount of time saved setting up the store each day was incalculable.
Conclusion:
All in all, I think it was an ok year: a bit of moderation with lots of good and lots of bad. It could have been worse, given that the year started with a heat wave followed by an ice storm and snowy weather in May. Spring came in like a forest fire (including one about fifty kilometers away) and farming while wearing a respirator. The drought started soon after. On the plus side, I didn't start to feel tired of the season until about mid September, and I suffered no injuries aside from a mild arm/shoulder strain a week before the snow halted most of the work.
Aside from the desire to have so much more accomplished, I am satisfied with what has been done when considering all the limitations.
My hopes for next year are someone to share the workload with; and less learning curve and more plateau.
See you soon,
Bob, Julia, and Cayley the cat