Welcome to Whitsend Market Garden!  If you have received a flyer and are interested in learning about our CSA produce delivery, please check out our "Join Our CSA" page, by clicking on the tab above.

Hello Everyone:

2024 is here and we are hoping it is better than the last few years, generally speaking - do you recall the good old days of 2017?

Between bouts of reading and snow throwing (and inventing a new card game), I have been doing seed research and trying to source new LED grow lights that suit my nurseries needs.

We are looking to expand to 30 customers this season, so I will be doing some flyer delivery in the Bridlewood area in February.  

The price has gone up, but so have the number of deliveries, and the variety of the crops is slightly increased as well.  

More leaves this year!  More lettuce and salad green deliveries this season.  

A lot more hot peppers, and new varieties.  We have honored requests for Jalapeno peppers, and I have sourced an "Anaheim" type pepper - like a mild cayenne - that has thicker walls and good for stuffing.  As well, I have renewed my cayenne seed stock to improve our germination rates over the last season.

If you want to see how the farm fared in 2023, the 2023 Year End Review is available on a separate page - see the page tabs, above.

The biggest challenge here with regards to growing food seems here to have been solved, if the results on some crops (parsnips, winter squash and sweet peppers in particular) are anything to go by.  

Our honey production will likely be down somewhat this season - it seems about four of our remaining six hives were lost (we lost the seventh in the fall).  New "nuc hives" have already been ordered

Julia suggested that our autumn mite treatment may have been a little late, but we won't have a better idea until we do a full inspection next spring.  At least the nasty hive is one that succumbed, no regicidal activity required.

Due to the extraordinary amount of honey we produced last year, we still have some to sell - see the Honey page for details.

More news to come...

Hello Everyone:

Not really a time to rest, though my left arm is telling me otherwise.  Three days of rest and light activity whether I like it or not, with a healing regimen of ice applications and extra stretching to get myself back into shape.  No matter how much I have accomplished, there is always more to do...

In the meantime, the farm store is open by appointment only until next spring.  For details, see the farm store page.  

Our stock is limited to honey, fingerling potatoes, kidney beans, mini butternut squash and some carrots.

Contact us by email or phone if you are interested in making an order.

or call (613) 278-1937

Next years country.  At last, the next and final stages of land preparation have started.

This is the smallest of four strips that were plowed in October by a local farmer (thanks Kevin!)

The turf will remain flipped over for the winter, to allow the freeze dry cycles and desiccating action of the wind to kill off as much of the bluegrass and quackgrass rhizomes as possible.  

In the spring, Kevin will return to disc the field, chopping it up into a tilth that I can then work into seed beds.

 

This particular field will be used next season to allow us to expand our CSA by about a third.  In the next 2 or 3 years, the extra produce will be in one of the other three strips, while a set of hoop houses will be set up here to extend the season of our tomato, lettuce and salad greens production.  

Author and (now retired) CSA pioneering farmer Eliot Coleman documented a lot of his experiments creating high tunnels that cost a fraction of what many "professional" greenhouses do; and they are easily scalable.  

By the way, Eliot's books are eminently readable, loaded with interesting information, and easily translate to any of the gardening work you might be doing in your yard or allotment.  I first encountered his books and techniques during my internship at Elmtree Farm 

The other big accomplishment is work on the new pig field.

There are not many pig breeders in the area who specialize in the traditional outdoor foraging breeds, and the demand is higher than what these breeders raise each season.  As I understand, sows generally produce two litters: one in March and one in May.  As most folks seem to want their pigs in May, having a home ready for them in March increases the chance I have of finding some earlier in the spring.  Therefore, I have done everything I can to prepare this field so that it is ready in time for the first litters of 2024.

This area pictured is what I refer to as their home base:  where the pig hutch, water trough and feeding station is.  It has a strengthened electric fence augmented by a physical fence to "train" the pigs to respect the electric lines that divide their paddocks and the entire pig field from the rest of the farm.  

One other item (off camera by about 20 feet) is a scratching post and place where the pigs can create a wallow to cool off and deter flies in the summer.

The remainder of the field is divided into 21 paddocks.  Surrounded by an 18 inch fence, with an additional two electric lines. One is at snout level and one at jumping level.  (Yes pigs will jump, though I have only heard of this behavior being done by boars when separated from a female in estrus - not necessarily a behavior exclusive to pigs...).

In turn, the paddocks are separated by temporary electric tape that are easier to adjust should the need arise.

In this climate, grass typically recovers from grazing in 21 days during the spring and early fall. At that time, the pigs will be given access to each paddock for one day.  The next day, that paddock will be closed and the next opened, allowing the pigs to access fresh grass.   After 21 days, the pigs return to the first paddock, which would have new growth on it by then.

During the mid summer, the grazing recovery period is about 28 days.  During that time, the pigs will have access to paddocks in the new field discussed below.  

Each paddock will have it's own set of grasses, weeds and planted oats and other forage crops to graze upon, as well as old, rotten and partially buried logs to root around for grubs.  Each paddock is different, providing novelty to keep them interested in their surroundings, and important element to consider for raising healthy, stress free animals.

Most of the paddocks also have shade for the summer heat.

As for the other fields plowed this fall:  

This is one of three parallel strips of land plowed.  In the past, I had used these strips as the old pig field.  

My intention is to create a 3 year rotation of the activities in each strip:  In season one, pig paddocks in one strip, produce in another, and spelt and or other hay crops in the third strip.

In each successive season, the pigs move to the vegetable field, the vegetables are planted where the hay was, and the hay grows where the pigs grazed in the previous season.

With a set-up like this, the pigs follow the vegetables, cleaning out roots, weeds and rodent nests and re-fertilizing the land.  The season after the pigs are on a particular piece of land, I will have hay planted to use as bedding (and winter fodder for when we start to breed pigs).  Placing the hay year  between the pig foraging year and vegetable growing year ensures that the manure is safely broken down and incorporated into the soil, neutralizing harmful bacteria more than a year before produce is planted.

Always thinking ahead, I have a place to over winter pigs when I am ready to start breeding them.  This structure (seen from the opposite side of the pig field) is the current chicken coop.  It's cellar opens onto ground level (the door is visible behind a small tree). 

With more than a bit of work, the cellar and yet to be enclosed yard can be re-purposed to contain pigs over the winter, taking advantage of the insulation provided from the surrounding soil and ground heat coming up through the earthen floor.

 

I'll need to build a run that leads the pigs from the winter yard to the pig field, though that task should be fairly easy.

To be continued...

One of the biggest challenges of learning this farm is understanding the soil.  This season I had a number of challenges and questions, and now most of them have been answered.

 

Hello Everyone:

We are starting an ad campaign in the Lanark Era to run for the next four weeks - we have a lot of surplus food to sell that is ideal for winter storage.

Each year I select several crop varieites that are dependable for long term shelf life, such as our red potatoes and red fingerlings; onions, and big carrots.

While suplies last, we also have some fresh produce - sweet peppers, cherry tomatoes, and (coming soon) celery.

If you want to make a bulk purchase to put by for the winter, contact us in advance and we can work out a bulk price.  You may then pick up your order at the farm store.

We have a lot of honey available but past experience tells that is sells quickly in the run up to Christmas, especially our gift sized 250 gram ($5.00) jars.  Order now!

For info on the farm store, click on the Farm Store tab, above.

As for our CSA, we are preparing for our final delivery of the year.  Each customer shall recieve carrots, celery, chard, green onions, kidney beans and (if we can keep it protected from the frost) mini red romaine lettuce.  The russet potatoes did not size up so I will provide some red potatoes instead.  

There are some left over items that CSA customers may request from whatever is left over in the field:  mini fennels, cilantro, mini celeriac, kale and turnips.  Request these soon as all are limited quantity.  One request per CSA customer.  

No spinach - I had beds prepared for this crop but then the temperature went way up and the rainy forecast either evaporated or passsed by to the south of us.  I opted to not waste my time or seeds, the spinach would likely not have germintated well.

This celeriac should be cosiderably larger.

Aside from the carrots, root vegetables have not done so well at this farm.  I have done some research during the past year and found that the soil here (a type called muck soil) is high in nitrogen, moderately low in phosphrus, ad low in potassium.  

All crops require these macro-nutrients, though potassium is especially important for sizing up roots.  

In fact, the soil here has been one of the two biggest challenges I have had to work with this season (the other being the acute neeed for additional labour - more on that in a different post).  

Most soils - sand, silt and clay (and a combination of all three, loam) are made of finely ground rock.  Muck soil is the result of marshes, ponds, etc. being drained naturally or otherwise, leaving a residue of decayed plant and animal matter behind.  

I have struggled to find much information on muck soil, aside from what I already knew:  it is high in nitrogen, is heavy, comparable to clay soil in this respect, and very fragile (suceptible to erosion if worked too hard).  

I've spoken with my farm mentors about this (I still call them my mentors despite being more akin to colleagues by now) and aside from a few suggestions that have not panned out, they have not been able to provide any more ideas than I have.  

The soil here compacts very easily.  I am still trying to determine if this is a natural condition, or if my soil is lacking in organic matter.  I had originally assumed the latter and over the past two seasons have added as much compost, grass clippings, straw, autumn leaves, ash, greensand and rock phosphate to the beds as I can afford.  In spite of that, activities such as harvesting potatoes or cleaning the beds after harvest still takes three times longer than it ought to.  This is time better spent doing everything else required to build up our farm.  

When possible, I have also been using cover crops more intensely, such as the former fingerling beds shown here.  

After the beds were cleaned up, I sowed oats, buckwheat, and a small quantity of peas to the beds, with the intention of letting them frost kill later in the fall.  The greenery will flatten out onto the bed surface (providing protection against erosion and green manure to work into the soil next spreing) and the roots will decay over the winter, softening the soil for when it is worked in the spring as well.  

This has shown some promise in the past, though the affect seems short lived.  For season long crops such as chard or tomatoes, there is no time for establishing a cover crop.

Next year, I will experiment with planting buckwheat arond the edges of the beds, cutting them back before they shade out the vegetable crop.  

We aslo have a small sand pit on our farm; I'll try using more of that in our soil to help loosen it up.

Until then, I'll try scouring the internet using whatever key words I can think of to find the info I don't have, and trying to contact farmers in regions with muck soil such as Orillia and Barrie.

Work never ceases.  If the farm is going to expand it's customer base next year (and it must if I am to attempt hiring someone) then new ground must be broken.  

This is the next field to be plowed.  The first step is to cut back the grass.  Usually easily done with a tractor (which I do not have) or a brush cutter (which I can rent but the ground is too uneven to push an implement ofthat weight across).

So the only alternative is scythe or line trimming.  I am not profficient enough to do all of this with a scythe (though I am forcing myself to do some for practice), so the line trimmer it is.  I have questioned my sanity but there are no other options...

After this is complete, work starts on the new pig field (on hold all year due to lack of labour and time spent on working the beds) and after that a second nursery that will be required for next years expansion.  All this before the snow flies.

Far more than gardening goes into your food!

It's light out, and the repair store is opening soon (I have to pick up my line trimmer as it gave up part way into the work), so time to hit the road.

Talk to you soon...

 

Hello Everyone:

It's been a busy several weeks, with plenty of unfinished work keeping me from putting up anew post.  Here it is...

In the news:  We are at the McDonalds Corners Fair Saturday September 30th.  We have a sales stand there, and several items of our produce entered in the competition.  Hope to see you there!

At long last - one month late - our peppers are finally coming into their own.  With lots of patience, I have beeen able to coax the colors out.

Here we have the little orange picnic peppers (very sweet), the long Italien frying peppers, also known as Shepherds peppers (sweet and rich flavour), the somewhat small green to red bell pepper King of the North, the large green pepper Olympus, and the gree to yellow bell pepper Milena.

Our last round of lettuces dodged a bullet with a light rost last week.  I was out at 5:30 in the morning hosing the frost of the cold sensitive plants.  Ordinarily I would have covered everything with row covers, but a chance hearing of the weather orecast after supper (at 9 in the evening) I elt tootired to go out and stumble around inthe dark getting frustrated.  So I went out and drained the hoses and placed bats of straw over the taps to keep them from reezing.  And set the alarm for very early.  Long day...

The extraordinarily dry weather is hurting everything on the farm, though the kidney beans curing in the field are an exception.  

As the leaves continue to fall of, the pods are exposed to more sunlight and dry out enough for harvest.  

Our kidney beans are much liked by our customers, far more lavourful than the store bought alternative.

Here is our cabbage.  If it develops it head, these will be ready for delivery in November sometime.

I also might have some turnip next month as well,though much willdepend on wether we recieve enough sunlight for the root to develop.

These are two crops that will improve their flavour with exposure to frost.

One last photo - a rare or at least fleeting aeial phonomena known as a fire rainbow (I am sure there are other names) The sun is out of sight to the right, but it's light is passing through some water in the clouds to create this prism.  The photo doesn't do jsutice to what the eye sees...

Talk to you soon, 

Bob