Hello Everyone:

I hope everyone is doing well as we all emerge tentatively from our dwellings.

Having read about the influenza pandemic within the past two years, plus having some knowledge of other past plagues, I think we got off fairly lucky.

My big complaint is the grocery stores seemingly unable to source large bags of oats and other items, which are more expensive.  No wonder a certain grocery chain is posting record profits!

(I thought gouging during a crisis was illegal?!?!?)






I have finished a very intense period of seeding and transplanting; followed by some weed suppression and maintenance work on the irrigation system.


The firld is looking good, the planting schedule is on track, and the plants lok healthy other than a few zinnias broken by the row covers.

My repairs to the irrigation system were not perfect, and so part of the field still requires a bit of hand watering.








The squashes are mature enough to remove the covers.  I leave these on so that the transplants have some respite from the heat and wind as they root themselves into the beds.

As in previous years, I have inter planted the zinnias with the squash to save space.

A couple of flowers and one squash failed after transplant, so there are a few cloches covering the replacement plants.










I keep the row covers on the garlic for the night, when leek moths are active. 

While digging around in the obscure corners of the farm in Lanark, I came across some insect netting and decided to give it a try instead of row covers.  Now I am wanting more...

The scapes are developing.  They have curled once, and are ready for harvest after two curls.


















I have found that successfully germinating parsnips can be hit or miss.

This year seems to be a hit.

Next I have to thin the plants out.

I didn't plant a lot of parsnips this season as they tend to be of limited interest and I only had enough space for abut half a bed.










The other half of this bed has a closely related crop, the celeriac.  Another crop that seems to have limited appeal.

These transplants were sown back in early April, and transplanted two weeks ago.  They'll be ready in about 90 days from now.

















The chard is also growing very quickly.  I suspect that there will be enough for about half the customer base when the scapes are ready. 

Now that we have had some rain and the covers are off the plants, I expect the chard will grow even quicker.

















Your first round of potatoes - the Linzer Delicatesse Fingerlings.  These should be ready by late July, along with the first carrots and tomatoes.

Julia sowed these while I trasnplanted the squashes and zinnia.

In the bed immediatly to the left, the second round of yellow flesh potatoes - the German Butterball - are just starting to emerge.  I am hoping to have these ready by Thanksgiving. 










The first round of green beans is off to a good start, as are the kidneys and romano beans.

The mice did lesss damage to the been seedlings this season due to a new trick I have tried.

I have an organic approved insecticidal soap that I purchased a few years ago when my choi and cabbage were caught by a surprise aphid infestation - something that is usually rare for organic farming.

The soap has been sitting quite unused since then.





After hearing that a bit of soap splashed on and around the plants helped deter rodents, I gave this a try in addition to trying to keep a tightly fastened row cover over the plants as they germinated and grew their first leaves.



It seems to have worked, only 5 per cent or less of the plants were damaged.  Now that the plants are a bit older, the mice leave them alone, I'm not sure if the terminal buds are now out of reach, or if the plant becomes unpalatable to the rodents with age.

Another possibility is the phytotoxins plants produce when they are damaged.   As one plant is nibbled, it produces chemicals that deter the predator.  Neighboring plants have receptors for these chemicals, and when these are detected, the other plants then start producing their phytotoxins.

Plants are not helpless.

Some tomato plants are already starting to flower. 

I am hoping they do not flush out too early.  We can absorb the first few fruits. I don't want to have so many that I need to do an early delivery.

There is still tooo much to do at the farm in Lanark...

Back in Lanark, our two new colonies have arrived to replace the three lost over the course of the winter.  We started last spring with twoo hives; this year we start with three.  I anticipate the oldest hive will swarm this season, meaning we should go into fall with five hives.

Julia and I share a common peeve.  Why can't living things follow the textbook?  

All of our hives have been quite individual in their behavior. 

What is amiss with this picture?

I walk past this tree every day, and should have been a little more aware to take a look to see what was going on.

I only looked after I noticed another crab apple tree  in a similar state.    After checking other trees, I realized the willow was also loosing some of its foliage.












Gypsy moths.  Lots of them.

Within 48 hours of this photograph, caterpillars (and their droppings) were raining down all over the place.

According to a quick search online, our options were hand picking them (impractical for 6 acres) or a bacillus spray.

More on that shortly.

If you have fruit trees, maples, or deciduous trees, better go check them.  It appears that 2020 is the latest peak in their life cycle.





After an afternoon of feeling like Lanark was under siege (or aerial bombardment), I collapsed into the chair by the door and promptly noticed that not everything thing here is against us.

Update as of May 25:

Our CSA shares are sold for the 2020 season.

We will probably have some crops available for additional purchase:  tomatoes, carrots, garlic and honey.  There might be others as well.  I hope to add a few details about purchasing these crops up in the next month or so.  If you are interested, please contact me and I will add you to my contact list.  Please note that I will not deviate too far from my delivery route, so please include your address or at the very least, the nearest major intersection to your home.

I look forward to hearing from you,

Bob

Other news as of today:

The late July harvest of carrots, fingerling potatoes and green and Romano beans are now in the ground, and the first tomatoes are transplanted.  Parsnips, kidney beans, and more tomato and potatoes to follow.  The chard, green onions, celery, and celeriac are doing well in the nursery and their place in the field is reserved and being prepared with some weekly weed suppression using my hoe and plastic mulch.  Soon the mulch will come off and I will switch to using buckwheat to suppress the weeds.

The garlic is doing very well, even the Rocambole (which emerged quite late).  I anticipate the scapes will be ready late June or early July.

Our old tool shed has now been completely dismantled and moved up to Lanark - thank-you Tim!  Enjoy those seed potatoes!  The shed components are now stacked next to where I will reassemble it under the willow tree.

For those of you who have contacted me with questions over the past few weeks, thanks for your patience.  At this time of year, the seeding and transplanting is too important to miss.  Even my off farm time in the evenings needs to be set aside some nights and when I finally get in, I usually have no interest other than to eat, play some music or crib or watch a film, and get a good nights sleep. 

I shoud have a new post up soon with photographs of the progress...


Update as of May 9:

I have added a couple of photos and related info to this post - pricipally to the garlic and near the ends, my latest farm helper.



Hello Everyone:

All of the previous post detailed work at the Lanark site.

Here is some info on what is happening over at Stittsville, where your food is being grown.


There is so much to keep an eye on...












Most of the beds used for the CSA are ready to go.  A few that I did not get to last fall need some serious weeding.

In a few instances, I had to resort to using the tiller (see beds at right of the photo).

Once the beds are cleaned up, I cover them with IRT mulch.  This (supposedly) allows only the infrared light from the sun onto the soil, allowing it to warm up without providing the white light to germinate the weeds.

In practice, I find I have to double up the plastic mulches to really suppress the weeds.

The white row cover in the background is there as a deer foil.








A week after I put down the first brand new mulches, I arrived one morning to find a deer had wandered through the filed and planted a couple of hoof-holes through the plastic.  I'd have hit the roof if there was one.  This was the second time in over 11 years one of these animals had got into the field.  I intended it to be the last.

I know that deer usually avoid white objects - a tip given to me by a nieghbour who had an anecdote about a unter who had placed a white salt block on a known deer path, and proceeded to go out morning after morning to his blind to no avail.

So I placed out a couple of nylon row covers in the field, and selectively place a few white buckets around the perimeter.

I'm not sure how it got into the field in the first place - the electric fence is operating soundly - but hopefully it was a temporary aberration.

The most exciting development is the emergence of the garlic.  I haven't bothered to count my emergence rate yet, but it appears fairly uniform.


Most years, I remove the straw to allow the soil to warm up and get on with manual weed suppression.

To save time this season, I am leaving it on a little longer.

Here is the garlic a week later.  As with most season's, we have about 95 per cent plus emergence of all but one variety.

The rocambole garlisaved from last season is either starting late or not viable for some reason.

When it became apparent to me that there was going to be a lot of upward pressure on the price of food this year, I decided to check out some of the beds I had not used last season, and had not intended to use this year either.

A year's worth of grass and weeds have been whipped away from old beds.

Next, I'll need to aerate these, run the tiller over the surface to clear out and bury the grass, amend with some compost, and cover for use later this year.

These will allow me to grow extra carrots, tomatoes, and green beans.  

I had been despairing of the number of burrows that I have found in the Stittsville field this spring.  They seem to be about the right size for groundhogs, though missing their characteristic escape hole.

All of them were in the unused half of the field, and a few became apparent as I started cleaning up the unused beds mentioned above.

How was I going to solve this problem?

As seen through the car window.   While eating my snack late Wednesday afternoon, I saw a movement in the field.  A fox had figured out how to jump between the electric lines and patrol the field.  I watched trot from one burrow to another to give each a sniff, before finally crouching in a mass of growth where the rock garden used to be.  Finally, it started leaping about, presumably after some mice living among the rocks.  A very welcome guest.  When I left the car and went onto the field, it circled around and left - not before investigating one last burrow and giving me a few cautious glances.

It eventually left, hopefully to return many times.





The end of an era:  The tool shed that has faithfully served me for the past five years is being dismantled and packed to move to Lanark.

When I first designed it, I knew that the Stittsville location was not going to be permanent.  So I built it in a way to allow it to be easily dismantled.

Now the dismantling has started.  The ice fridge is already taken down.  One of the outdoor nursery's is also coming back to Lanark, likely to be completely taken part and the materials repurposed.





One more animal to document:  Upon arriving home, I saw one of our tenants at Lanark climbing into the willow tree beside the driveway.
















One more note about the Lanark site.  I have sowed the first succession of field crops to feed and build the future growing field and grazing field (see the previous post).

These are oat seeds being poured into the chest mounted broadcast seeder.

Thanks to Julia for the new zipper and patch.  I left the broadcaster hanging in the barn last winter without realizing there was a couple of seeds in it and the mice made all the shortcuts they needed to get at the few seeds that were in there.

Then I walk back and forth, turning the crank and spreading oats, peas, and daikon across the field.

Ordinarily, I would have to go over the field a second time with a rake to presss the seeds into the soil.  This time, I made use of last weeks heavy rain to do that job.

Hello Everyone:  We hope you are all doing well and finding some fun and productivity in spite of everything.

Myself, I have had a bad day toiling over a very reluctant walk behind tractor.  Four years of machine shop lessons back in high school are not proving easy to access in the distant portions of my memory.

Most other days we are making some good headway at both farms.  Here, I am rehabilitating an old growing bed that was in an area inaccessible to the tractor.

After slicing through the turf, each square is getting turned over in preparation for field seeding.  Using some advice from Tom (my mentor from Elmtree), a lot of winter reading, and some plain logic, I'll be breaking this up using plants instead of machines.

Even if the tractor was working, using a tiller on this would have some negative results.  A tiller implement would break up the turf, but in doing so, would also compact the soil, kill frogs and other beneficial organisms, disrupt soil fungi networks and generally compact the soil.

Instead, I'll be planting annual field crops on the upturned sod.

Jackhammer radish:  A type of daikon that is not particularly edible but as the name suggests, will break though the clods of soil and loosen it up.  The roots will then decay and feed the soil with their nutrients.

Oats:  This crop is very effective at soaking up sunlight and converting it to nutrient that is useful for the soil biome. 

Peas:  This crop does both of the above, though not quite to the same effect.  It's tap roots will do some turf breaking and like all plants will also feed the soil.  In addition, peas (like beans and other leguminous plants) will fix nitrogen into a form that plants can use.

The rhubarb and asparagus beds are in a similar shape.  The plants are there, but the soil fertility is low and as a result the plants are barely producing leaves or stalks.

Unlike the garden pictured above, I have to work around the asparagus and rhubarb as I want to keep what is already there.

I'll be sowing the cover crops around the plants, using the broadfork to do some aerating, and applying some compost around the plants themselves.


For the final step, I'll place thick mulch around the rhubarb to suppress the remaining turf grass.  If all goes well, this bed will be producing some nice red stalks next year.








First, we crawled about trying to locate the plants, and placed stakes to ensure we didn't inadvertently cut them.  The plants were started several years ago by the previous owners and have since migrated somewhat, so are not necessarily in straight lines or evenly spaced anymore.

If you look carefully, you can see the outline of the original bed, directly in front of me and continuing beyond the bottom of the picture.

On the left side of the photo, you can see the main growing field that was plowed last fall.  A bit too big to do by hand...







And then more turn cutting, this time around the rhubarb plants - you can see the stake and a stick but the plant is not easily seen in this photo.

One thing I noticed as I flipped the turn are nematode worms.  I had never seen so many per square foot before and a quick check of our available literature did not indicate the visible differences between the good nematodes and the bad ones.

Either way, the daikon radish - as with many brassica crops - will give off a chemical which suppresses nematodes.

Eight hours of work, for approximately 20 of 60 rhubarb plants.  We'll stop at twenty for this season and continue this project next spring.

If I have time later this year, I might continue, but in my experience, cutting turf gets harder as the soil dries out into the summer and there are other tasks which require my attention in spring as well.

The A-frame was an acceptable place to overwinter the chickens, but as the days warmed, we wanted a safe place to allow outdoor access.

Uncertain of our permanent chicken arrangement, I opted for a temporary arrangement that could easily be dismantled and reassembled in a different location.

Using some old logs, chicken wire, nails removed from old fence posts, I fashioned five frames, fit them together and lashed them with rope.

The chickens favorite time of day is evening.  Julia lets them out and takes them for a walk.

They wander about pecking for seeds, weed and grass shoots and insects.  Lately, they typically head for the base of an old crab apple tree.

They are very perceptive, giving alarm calls and huddling together when large birds fly overhead, be it a pair of geese or one of the hawk species that frequent this area - red tailed hawks and the rare red shouldered hawk.

For no reason apparent to us, they will abruptly return to the A-frame and settle around the feed tray to eat.

During this time of social isolation, we have had a pair of visitors drop in.

Great source of manure, I wish an entire flock were here for a few days.  This photo was taken from way back by the house, through the fence.

This growing field will also get the cover crop treatment of peas, radish, and oats.  I'll speak more about this interesting project as he year progresses as there are a few other steps in the process and many interesting details.












Another long distance shot.  As I worked my way along the rhubarb bed, I noticed that a male robin was getting increasingly agitated.  After a bit of polite nosing about, I finally spotted the nest, tucked into the crook of a pine tree.

Fortunately, Cayley seems to be very busy supervising my work - just see the pictures - to be any bother to the birds.  Just in case, we make sure to provide lots of petting and attention when she gets mice and on the one occasion when she caught a sparrow, I took the bird, spoke to her with a scornful voice, and made that "expression" that cats seem to use to convey dislike, sort of a turned up nose look.


I wish tractors were that easy to train.

Update as of April 17:

Our CSA sales are now at 85%.  Contact us soon if you wish to purchase a portion of this season's harvest.

Pork is also starting to sell, and our stock is starting to dwindle.

I'll try to set some time aside on Sunday to do another post.  We have accomplished a fair amount over the past few weeks.

Take care,

Bob and Julia




Update as of April 3:

Our CSA sales have reached 70 per cent.

I have started celeriac and a second round of green onions in the nursery.

The dianthus flowers are starting their next pairs of leaves.  We are growing a lot of these in hopes of establishing them here in Lanark.  They should self seed effectively and be a treat for the bees.

Talk to you soon,

Bob

Update March 30th, 2020:

Hello Everyone, we hope you are all well - physically and mentally.  We know this has been an exceptionally challenging start to the year for a few of you - civil servants called upon to do work that you have never done before, teachers who have gone from the irregular work hours to no hours at all, families with children and parents to care for, and all of the other challenges big and small that we are all trying to mitigate and adapt to.  Some of my most interesting observations in the past month have not been on the farm!

Speaking of which, we are continuing on here with not too much disruption.  Most of my supply chains seem secure so far, though field seed prices are fluctuating as crops such as buckwheat and field peas are a commodity.

As of yesterday, our sales reached 60 per cent of our capacity for this season.  Thanks to all of you who have shown your faith in our farm during this most unpredictable season.

I am doing my part to ensure our property is remaining as low risk as possible.

I'll have more to write soon,

Bob

Hello Everyone:

Whitsend Market Garden is open for business this year.  I intend to continue to deliver food through the summer.  I'm doing my part to stay healthy and ensure I can continue managing the farm during this most unusual and unpredictable season.


If you are interested in a share of our produce this season, feel free to check out our “How to Buy a Share” page.  Contact me if you have any questions.

I hope you are all well in spite of everything.  As we have to limit our internet usage for Julia’s work from home, I will only use text for the following posts.

Here is a very brief update...

As of this writing, we are both well.  The snow is starting to recede from the house and the first bit of soil is starting to appear in the field.  The forest floor in the woodlot is about half snow free.  Cayley has been quite impatient for warmer temperatures and bare ground so she can prowl about without getting her paws cold.

The chickens are healthy and two of our four bee hives appear to have made it through the winter.  We are expecting another two new hives later in the spring.  


While we cleaned the two hives out, we inspected the frames.  In one hive, we noticed a lack of spring larvae.  This suggests that the colony appears to have lost it's queen at some point.


The other hive had dismembered bees and feces from shrews.  A miscommunication between Julia and I - her for not telling me that we should put screens over the hive entrances, and me for not telling her that this property is crawling with these rodent-like creatures.   

Seeds are now being planted in the nursery – green onions and tomatoes are the first out of the gate this season.  I have added gold bison tomatoes to the list as we still had some seed when we grew these a few years ago and I wanted to use it up.  These are an heirloom canning tomato with a nice taste.  I am curious as to how the Galahad tomatoes will work – a new variety for this season.

Most of the rest of the work on the farm right now is taking advantage of the limited amount of time in which the ground is starting to clear but still too frozen to do field work.

 

In addition to the spring clean-up, there is preparation for fence work, and work in the wood lot.  We are planning on making a few blue-bird houses together this week-end.

When I am out working on the farm, I feel like my life has changed very little other than Julia working from home.  I was a bit concerned about shortages of field seed, but after a quick chat with my supplier I was reassured that supplying animal feed and crop seeds are considered an essential service. 

Despite that, I keep looking ahead at possible what-if scenarios and trying to figure out what I would do if need be.  Farmers do this all the time, though typically on topics such as the weather and seed prices.

During this period of transition I am only using about half of the Stittsville farm growing field.  I was originally considering putting it to hay – it’s much too small to turn to cash crop.  The old vegetable beds are very overgrown but with a little work could be brought back.  I keep wondering if this could be necessary.  So I have been skipping past the regular news and watching the business and commerce section to see how supply lines are handling the unusual money/trade/transport situation/food accessibility.

In the meantime, it’s back to work.  We are set up to take care of ourselves for quite a while, and in a position whereby we can avoid going into town for prolonged periods of time if need be.   As a food producer, I want to ensure that I am healthy enough to keep our farm going and not a vector when it comes time to start delivery.


Fresh vegetable substitutes are starting to sprout in the woodlot, so I can eliminate one more reason to go to a grocery store.  

To close, please do your part to take care of yourselves as you are also taking care of others!

Don’t forget the people that the news is missing...I think daily about how life must be like in the border region of Turkey and Syria.  I checked the BBC website earlier today and found not a single story there about possibly the most vulnerable people on OUR planet.

Bob and Julia

We still have pork hams and loin chops...see our pork page if you are interested.