Another update as of this afternoon...they're here...


The black ones are Dominiques, the light ones are Buckeyes.

The red tint is from the heat lamp















A quick update:

The garlic is growing well.  The earliest plants to emerge have some tip burn, possibly from water stress or perhaps a little sunburn from when the straw was removed from the first shoots.














Welcome to the team!

Minnie is helping out this season.  She is hoping to take on the farm as Whitsend transitions out.

Surface cultivating is a technique that suppresses weeds quite effectively.  More efficient than weeding full grown plants.















Pictured faintly are the spinach plants germinating.  It appears that the germination rate has been fairly successful.



















We transplanted about one third of the tomatoes today.  For this bed, we have undersown the first succession of celtuce.

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The seedlings are still quite young, so a little added protection is provided by the row covers for the first week or so.  It helps break the wind, reduces the fll strength of the sunlight, and hods in the heat for the cool nights.

The peas initially germinated quite unevenly, possibly due to the cool weather.

The rows have filled out over the past week, though there are a couple of small gaps.

 With progress comes setbacks.  This is how a two hour task becomes a four hour chore and a two day delay on work that needs finishing last week...

Halfway through some light tilling, the tire goes flat.  A quick examination reveals a little more happening than a leak.  Cover the engine with a tarp and head for you tube.

Hello Everyone:

Finally the weather is improving enough to start more sowing and planting.  Everything is late and the time pressure is building. 

The best news is that the garlic is growing well, though I may have to harvest early.

So far this year, the weather seems to be following a pattern similar to 2017.  That year, the amount of rain damaged a lot of the garlic and caused a considerable amount of it to go bad before harvest.  When I compared notes with other growers, most said that in such seasons the bulbs should be harvested about two weeks sooner.  The bulbs are smaller with such an early harvest but at least they are still sound.

This photo and the following one taken by Minnie.

It is said that one failure teaches more than a hundred successes.  With this in mind, I should be able to produce a great crop of spinach this year.  Keep the row cover off the bed to allow for maximum sunlight as spinach needs a lot of light to germinate.  Keep the beds moist but not soaked to prevent the seeds from rotting.  Thin the seedlings sooner rather than later.  Don’t sow too early (not enough leaf production) or too late (before the weather turns too hot for good quality leaf).  I’ve made all these mistakes over the years and assuming I hit a good planting date, we should finally have some decent spinach.

The past two weeks I have been cultivating the beds as much as possible to suppress this year’s crop of weeds before they get started.  The beds are ready for the early crops to go into this week.  Chard, kale, kohlrabi and hopefully some lettuce should be making its way out of the nursery.  Carrot and radish seeds are likely going in soon.

On Monday we are taking our annual trip up to Coe Hill to pick up the seed potatoes from Ellenberger Farm.  Our usual two day “holiday” will have to be a day trip this year.  Each season I go there, I learn more about potato growing in twenty minutes of discussion with Henry and Janet than I do for the rest of the season.  One of the benefits of moving to Lanark is that the drive to Coe Hill is about an hour shorter.

A ten minute conversation with Henry on the phone the other day has already expanded my knowledge of seed potatoes.  These ones were saved last year and stored in the dark over the winter. 

When I pulled them out last week, I found that they all had very long eye stalks already growing; so long as to make sowing very difficult.  Previously, I had thought that breaking off the stalks would render the plant incapable of producing plants, but Henry's wealth of experience put my fears to rest.  

At his direction, I have removed the long stalks and placed the tubers in a bit of sunlight to encourage a new set of stalks to start.  This should take a week or two, and then the potatoes are ready to plant.  The process of removing the eyes of potatoes is called “chitting”.

The melted snow here in Lanark has revealed a greater mess than I anticipated.

These were beds that I was hoping to prepare for production next year.  It's possible that they can be cleaned up by fall, though timing will be everything.  The amount of quack grass rules out even the lightest use of a tiller here; I'll have to bring my curve tine wheel cultivator home and find time to cultivate to make this area productive.

 

Julia cleaned up an area that was plastic mulched over the winter (at the top of the photo) and sowed flowers for the forthcoming bee hives.

There are some pleasant surprises too.  This is one of many flower beds of bulbs and herbs that has a lot of potential to expand once they are cleaned up, aerated, and the soil amended with  compost.

The rhubarb is coming up but as you can see from the photo its bed is quite choked with at least a season’s worth of grass.  I doubt the stalks of all these otherwise healthy plants will produce the quantity this many plants would otherwise be capable of.  I’ll harvest it over the course of the next month or so but it will take a lot of time cutting and cleaning this many small stalks.  Those of you who receive some will have less chopping to do...

I’ll be contacting everyone soon about final payment and getting our email list together.  There are still a couple of shares left to sell, so if you know of anyone who is interested, please let them know as soon as possible.

Talk to you soon,

Bob

Hello Everyone:

Time goes by too quickly.  There is so much to write about I don’t know where to start.

 

The nursery seems to have stabilised.  I lost most celeriac, onions and leeks in the early spring to damping off, probably from running the nursery a little too cool.  The first celery, parsley, and lettuces did not do well either but their replacements are on the way and starting to harden off. 

The other crops – tomatoes, peppers, chard, kale, and kohlrabi are growing well. 

Out in the field of the Stittsville farm, the garlic is back to my usual emergence rate of 98 to 99 per cent.  The snow peas were a sown a week later than I wanted to due to the field being too wet.  The sorrel is very patchy and does not seem to have self seeded very well. 

I’m very glad that I took the time to aerate the new portion of field last fall as I assume that has allowed the water percolate deep into the soil and allow the beds to dry uniformly.  This time last year, this same location had standing water on the surface.

The main portion of the growing field is cultivated and soon ready for the seeds and transplants. 

The Lanark farm is where most of my efforts are focussed right now.

The melting snow revealed a great mess of winter debris – a season’s worth of work has thawed out.  The herbs look like they have plenty of potential, but it seems that some fall preparation was missed; none of the plants were mulched. 

The brush along the electric fence needed a lot of trimming back, the tool shed a complete re-organising, and livestock hutches a though cleaning out.

Old equipment from the previous farm here, inventoried back in the winter, is now being set out and examined closely.  There is hundreds of feet of hose – some useful, some requiring repair, and some not meeting our needs.  All the buckets and containers are getting a sterilising.  Fencing for the livestock is going up and plots of ground are being surveyed.

June is going to be busier, with the arrival of chicks, pigs, mushrooms and seed potatoes. 

I haven’t seen much activity in the asparagus bed, but the rhubarb is growing very well.  The number of plants that have come up are much more than I recall being told about.  There will be no shortage of this crop.

There will be more news and photos to follow...

Bob

Hello Everyone:

A little later a post than I had anticipated...plenty to do and though I enjoy writing about the farm, it is easy to get outside and stay there once the weather starts hinting of all the work needing to be done.   April and May is the busiest part of my season.

Our search for interns is just about wound up, and down to the most probable candidates.  From what I have seen so far, the final cut will be a difficult choice.

We have another six shares left to sell.  If you know of anyone who might be interested this season, please let me know and or forward my contact info to them.  

This season is a tough sell due to the reduction in deliveries, a lot of short term pain for long term gain.  This phrase keeps going through my mind as I struggle to pull together the threads that consist of this season’s efforts. 

The new farm is improving incrementally, slower than I would prefer but at a steady pace.  I’ve built a set of stairs (replacing a ladder) for the ‘hexagon’ – the two storey shed that will house the future nursery and production office.  It’s providing space to store tools until the tool shed at the old farm is dismantled and brought here. 

The A-frame shed is getting its collection of junk cleaned out to make space for the chicks due to arrive in May. Overgrowth around the electric fence is getting g cut back and the fence itself being re-configured to meet our needs.

Just about every tire that came with the farm needs patching...

The Stittsville farm is quickly losing its snow cover, and nursery work is going mostly ok there.

Mostly as in everything is ok except the bulb onions, which have succumbed to a considerable amount of damping off, probably due to running the nursery a little too cool – in an effort to keep the seedlings from drying out.

The other crops parsley, celery, celeriac, cutting celery, green and extremely hot peppers are growing alright.  The moderately hot peppers failed to germinate.  I can start these again after ordering more seed though their first delivery will be a little late as a result.

The biggest challenges are limited income (smaller customer base this season) and keeping my spirits up. 

There are certainly moments when the task ahead is frighteningly daunting.  I constantly remind myself to ignore the big picture much of the time and focus on the priority task before me.  As I move about the farm, the details are in plain view and difficult to ignore.  The receding snow adds to the sense of time ruining short...chickens arriving in May, repairs to see to on the fence, preparing for the bee-keeping, getting the new interns up to speed, signage for the farm gate store, dismantling sheds at the old farm and having them trucked up here...all this in addition to the usual work.  

Despite the lower income this season, I am glad we are only serving about a third of the customer base from previous seasons.

I spoke during the previous post about investments for the future of the farm. My activities of earlier this week are a good example.   I was preparing the shitake mushroom nursery...

Shitake mushrooms have long been a favourite of mine since discovering them in my early twenties.  My favourite means of preparation are sautéed in a sauce of honey, garlic, and ginger, though I have been treated on more than one birthday with “mushroom stroganoff” that includes shitakes and as many other varieties as Julia can find in the store.  Shitake is pronounced Shay-Tawk-Eh, translated from Japanese as “Oak Mushroom”.

During my internship, our CRAFT farm group gathered at Desert Lake Farm for a half day workshop on shitake growing.  The spores of inspiration were inoculated in my mind that morning. 

During our property search , one desired criteria was access to a woodlot with hardwood trees.  We were elated when we found that the sellers were willing to share the resources of their adjacent woodlot.

These mushrooms grow on hardwood.  Fruiting trees such as apple or cherry are notoriously poor.  The seller of our property offered us the opportunity to harvest ironwood trees from their woodlot, so this is the type we are using. 

The traditional method for growing shitakes involves inoculating logs and leaving them in a forest for a season. 

The trees need to be cut during the winter, after leaf fall and before the trees start budding.  This ensures that most carbohydrates remain in the wood for the mycelium to consume. 

The trees are cut into four to five foot logs, ranging in diameter of about five to eight inches.  The remaining portion of the trees can be cut into logs for firewood, as ironwood makes great fuel – it burns slowly with a fairly hot flame.

Off to the woodlot to start harvesting trees.  Tools of the trade:

Not your average gardening tool.  Chainsaws require some specialized training and safety gear.  As I am using one on someone else’s land for commercial gain, I am obliged to have certified training and top of the line safety gear, what’s known as “class A” chainsaw pants, and CSA approved boots and helmet. 

The most important piece of safety equipment is stored between the ear protectors...

After selecting suitable trees, they are felled. 

My twenty year old self might be a little horrified at the idea of felling live trees for mushroom growing.  After all, mushrooms can be grown in a “mushroom house” on sawdust – kind of like a greenhouse except dark, damp, and cool.  There are too many structures I need to build for other purposes and the quantity of mushrooms I hope to produce don’t warrant it.  Besides; my somewhat older self likes the traditional techniques when they are more practical.

As well, I have learned a few things about forestry over the years.

Managing a woodlot is like maintaining a self seeding perennial garden.  The idea is to maintain a steady production of desired crops, with a little pruning or culling to influence the character and productivity of the ‘garden’.

In this case, the landowner wants to promote more oak, cherry, walnut and maple in the woodlot.  To make more space for these species, the less desired ironwood is thinned out.  Some folks around here regard Ironwood as a weed.  It certainly is prolific.

Trees that are not quite big enough are left for future mushroom logs.

The logs will finish producing mushrooms in about four to five years, depending on size.  Full of mycelium, these will decay fairly quickly and return their nutrients and carbon to the forest floor and regenerate the soil.  In a rocky region such as this, more soil is especially beneficial. 

Another way I look at is that the forest contains a certain amount of nutrient mass.  Removing the fruiting bodies of the mycelium is all I am taking from the forest, the rest returns albeit in an altered state.  Less cellulose, cambium, and leaf matter, more mycelium.  Less sun life, more soil life.  Is there any death here, or just a change of state?  Mushrooms are profound creatures indeed...

After a day of cutting (thanks for spotting me Dean) we have a lot of down trees.  The logs are bucked and it’s getting late and starting to get chilly.  This is good, for the snow will be firm for the work ahead tomorrow...

As I walk back to the car, I pass the first trees that were felled earlier in the day.  I think of my grandfather.  He used to cut trees in the bush for a living.  His name was also Bob.

Next morning...

Now that the logs are cut, they need to be taken to the location I have chosen for the mushroom nursery.  As the logs require periodic soaking in cold water, I have chosen a spot where a year round creek runs from a springline a few hundred feet away.  As it is near to source and fast moving, this water should remain quite cold even on the hottest days of the year. 

Another criteria mushrooms require is shade.  Shitakes grow in forests, where the temperature is moderated throughout the season and direct sunlight reduced to a minimum. 

The lingering snow in the forest can be put to work, along with an old children’s sled I found stashed on one of the sheds here.   With a bit of twine and some clever knots, I start the process of getting these re-located. 

Why do most of the ironwoods grow on the opposite side of the woodlot from the nursery?  At least most of this trip is downhill. 

Now that the logs are gathered, they need to be propped up off the ground, to prevent contamination from other mycelia in the ground. 

At this point, I have reached the limit of what I can do for now.  The mycelium is being ordered, and should arrive in a few weeks.  At that time, I will add more to this post, detailing the inoculating process.

After inoculation, logs are left for a season while the mycelium colonizes the wood.  During the colonization period, the logs need to be soaked periodically so as to remain moist.  For this purpose, immersing the logs in the creek will suffice.  In our climate, the colonization process takes about a year.  

If all goes according to plan, the mycelium will fruit, producing the final product for harvest, for spring 2020. 

During the mushroom harvest, care needs to be taken to protect the fruits from predation – rodents of all types will eat these, as will slugs. 

Hardware cloth will keep out the rodents, and some ash and eggshells scattered around the base of the logs for the slugs.

Usually, logs will produce fruits twice each year, in the spring and fall.  However, a technique known as “shocking” the logs is said to encourage a more even growth. 

Traditionally, Japanese growers used mallets to strike the logs.  I presume this opens up minute cracks to encourage mycelium growth and fruiting, but that is just a guess.

A more recent shocking technique is to re-immerse the logs during the fruiting season in cold water.

Now that the logs are pre-positioned for their inoculating, I take a much needed break and think of the relatively easy work ahead of me.  The hardest part to do now will be the waiting to see (and taste) the fruits of my labours.

Waiting is worth it!

Here are the fruits of my labours from last season.

Months after harvest, the last of our butterscotch squashes are starting to look like their shelf life is nearing it’s best before date.

Even the ugly looking one is as rich and orange inside.

Roasted up...there is no time to make soup today, so we roast them, let them cool, and get them into the fridge.


Post script:  we did make the soup a few days later.  Now that I am watering your mouth, I suppose I'll have to get the recipe from Julia and get it posted here.  Just in case some of our last season customers are looking at their squashes and wondering what to do with them...