Whitsend Market Garden

Hello Everyone:

This is just a quick update - I have another busy day(s) ahead of me.  

First off, thank-you to our CSA customers who have supported us this season.  Our final season at Stittsville provided yet another exxcellent yield with several crops breaking  or matching our previous bests.  The fingerling potatoes, carrots, rutabaga, cherry tomatoes and kidney benas all did very well and our garlic did better than usual.  Beets still eluded me and the red chieftain potatoes were not as plentiful as they could have been (though bigger than usual).  

The two biggest disapointments were of my own making - I missed about a 1/3 of our garlic scapes.  I misinterpreted how close they were to harvest and missed them by about ten days.  This probably had an impact on the bulb size as well.  Customers recieved a typical amount of kidney beans, despite only 2/3 of the crop being included in their baskets.  The remaining third were left on the pods too long and got too wet.  As a result, some of the bean pods are rotten.  There are still good beans to be had but it will be a time consuming task to separate the good ones for the bad ones.  

With luck, I should be able to divert these rescued beans to the farmgate store after cleaning them this winter.

Our farmgate store is closing for the season.  Future purchases may be made by apointment.  Carrots, garlic, rutabaga and possibly green onions and kidney beans may be avaialable so keep checking here for updates.

Gold honey is still available.

Our pigs are being harvested as of today.  In about a week, we should be ready to sell our butchered meat.  This year, we are using the Farmersville Community Abbatoire butchering services.

Pork is available frozen and wrapped in butchers paper.

The price list on our pork page is out of date, but should be updated fairly soon.  Expect the new price to be higher than what is listed there as feed and other supplies are more expensive than in the past.

We are thinking of one of our past customers who now lives in B.C.  Two of our seed garlic providers - Rasa Creek Farm and Norwegian Creek Farm have survived the B.C. flooding.

Back in September, Whitsend participated in it's first community farm fair - the MacDonalds Corners Agricutlural Fair.

It gave us an opportunity to meet some locals, sell some of our food, and try out our new tent for the first time.

Here are our prize winning contestants.

Our gold honey took first prize.

Our Persian Star Garlic took second prize. 

As did our white honey.  

There was no category for Rutabaga, so I placed it in the unusual vegetables category.  There is nothing nusal about rutabaga or turnips, so it was no contest aginst some unusual squashes and (I can't recall its name) some kind of plant that I have never seen before.  Should have taken a picture of it, but I suppose vanity won out in that moment.  

Our cherry tomatoes did well.

I was surprised by our first place peppers.

This is our entrant in the odd shaped vegetable category.  

I had intended to enter our regular carrots but after harvesting them, I discovered that carrots needed to have their tops on to be eligible.  Beaten by the fine print!

Allin all, I was impressed by the organisation of the fair.  There was plenty to see and do and it was well run.  Can't wait for next year...