We have had a busy week. Elaisa arrived from Germany on Monday for three months. Her arrival was delayed because of the volcano in Europe. We transplanted leeks, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, fennel, kohlrabi, radicchio and head lettuce into the main garden. We also planted our seed potatoes and finished planting our oats.

Work in the greenhouse also continues. We are trying two new things this year. Growing our own sweet potato slips and grafting tomatoes onto a stronger root stock to produce more vigorous plants for hoop house production.

Around the edges we have been making some baskets from Dogwood branches under the instruction of Sheri. She has made some beautiful baskets that she brought with her to show us. As we attempt to make our own we appreciate the skill she has acquired.

First pickups will be Tuesday May 11 and Saturday May 15. The pick-up times are at the farm from 11:00 am – 7:00 pm. Please bring your own containers to hold produce and payment for the remainder of your share cost if you haven’t already done so.

Those of you who have done a working share in the last couple of years may have noticed that we have been expanding into the back yard with additional washing stations when we wash produce before a pick-up. The clay ground can become quite muddy…as a result we have decided to dig out some of the clay and add some more crushed stone. Jesse and Sheri have done a majority of the work, although Caesar tried to take some credit in the picture of them resting from their labours!

Last Saturday we had a youth group from St. Paul’s church in Aylmer come to visit the farm and see how we grow our early vegetables. They toured the greenhouse, hot bed, hoop houses and barn. Sheri showed them how to plant a few beans to take home and start indoors. It was a cold day and they were very happy to step inside the greenhouse and hoop houses.

We have been continuing to plant and care for our early seedlings. Our work horses have already done the first cultivation in the garden. We were busy taking the row cover off and putting it back on again after. It is quite a job, but really makes a difference in bringing those young early plants along. We have also planted a new block of raspberries and strawberries for the future and next week we plan to plant out our onions, leeks and potatoes.

The apprentices have been learning to drive the draft horses and have all tried their hands at plowing. We are having a draft horse workshop the last part of this week and Nora and Jesse will be taking part. A young German girl was planning to arrive at the farm last Saturday to stay until early July. She is now planning to come on April 26th due to the canceled air travel from the volcano!

We have 7 shares still available so if you know someone who is interested in joining there is still room.

We welcomed the rain during the past week. Our early garden was already planted and I was starting to worry that we were going to have to start irrigating in April! Ken and our working horses had also planted some Red Fife wheat, a variety of heritage wheat for our bakers to try. The rain will help everything off to a good start.

After having most of the winter off, it doesn’t hurt for a work horse to have some cooler weather and a bit of a rest. It can be hard on heavy horses when the weather becomes extremely warm early in the spring before they are accustomed to it and they are back in working condition.

Having had some unsuccessful attempts looking for an area rug for the Bunkhouse I decided that a good rainy day activity was to weave a rag rug. The project met with considerable enthusiasm from the apprentices. The project is coming along well and we are getting excited to see it off the loom. Jesse took some time off weaving to cook supper. Today Nora and Jesse are off at a farm auction sale bidding on a grain bin and an irrigation pipe wagon. We are anxious to see if they end up getting anything. Yesterday, when Ken and the apprentices went over to look over the items for auction, Nora thought that the massive combines looked like “Transformers”. Over the years we have purchased many items at auctions and hopefully it will be a good learning experience for them.

Our two full season apprentice, Nora and Jesse, have arrived for the 2010 season. We are happy to have the much needed help and are excited to have the bunkhouse ready for occupancy!

Hello there, my name is Nora and I am a new full season apprentice on the ‘Hill. I am from Rockville, Maryland originally, and pretend to be Canadian when I get the chance. I have worked on and off organic CSA farms since 2005, in far out places such as Michigan, Maryland, New York and Ontario. Halfway through last season, which I spent at the Poughkeepsie Farm Project, a great mission-based non-profit farm in the Hudson Valley, it dawned on me that I really and truly wanted to farm for a living, and I needed to learn how to farm with horses. Maciej, a friend of mine and former apprentice, said Orchard Hill was just the horse’s feathers, and so here I am! I’m still trying to hone in on what my farming dream is, but I think it contains these adjectives and nouns: cooperative, draft power, friends, grains, direct, family, justice, beans, democracy, seeds, and songs. I’m looking for ways to farm during the day, and to help build more just and beautiful community-based food systems at night. Thanks in advance for welcoming me into yours!

Hello, my name is Jesse and I am currently an apprentice at Orchard Hill Farm. Originally, I am from Sarnia (Chemical Valley) and am, to be frank, enjoying my time away. Although I have no previous farming experience, I have come quick to realize I’ve chosen (and been chosen) to be part of a farm that is nearly wise itself.

This week Sheri Fleischauer arrived for the month of April. We look forward to getting to know Sheri and perhaps finding some time to for her to teach us some of her basket making skills.  She is from another Ontario organic farm and has already proven to be a great addition to the crew here.

The bunkhouse stairs are built and installed! They are made from wood from the family woodlot. The beauty of real wood is always impressive. Ken has worked hard to take the rough lumber and turn it into a work of art. He is now working on the upstairs bedroom floor. We hope to have it ready for the first apprentices when they arrive on March 24th and it looks like we will make the grade. Devan Penny, a former apprentice, came for a short visit and got right in on the action fitting the doorjamb of walnut with Ken!

The chickens are really enjoying the warm weather. Around 20 chickens have wintered over and are starting to lay eggs again. We have ordered another 30 ready to lay pullets to arrive in mid-May. The plan is to fence the field that is just north of the house and have it be our chicken pasture. We’ll see if we have better luck with that.

The greenhouse is up and running with the wood stove in place. The first transplants have been started. I always enjoy greenhouse work in the early spring. Applications keep arriving daily. We still have some shares available for the 2010 season.
An application can be downloaded from the CSA page of this website.

After the spring-like weather a week ago it seems winter has returned! The horses don’t mind because the snow and frozen ground make their paddock much cleaner than the mucky muddy mess we have had some yeas in February. I don’t really mind either, because Ken is itching to start his spring plowing and the winter conditions help keep him focused on the bunkhouse wood working. I am very pleased to report that the stairs are now in place and we are ready to start work on the floor for the upstairs bedroom. The beams look lovely with their final sanding and oiling. We are very hopeful that the bunkhouse will be ready for the apprentices when they arrive the end of March.

Around the edges of the bunkhouse work we will be starting up the greenhouse for the early spring transplants. Lots of garden planning has taken place and we are excited about the coming year’s growing season. CSA garden applications keep arriving daily with the mail. We still have some space available and welcome local folks to join for the season.

Yesterday we had another successful logging workshop here at Orchard Hill Farm. Ken worked hard getting ready the last couple of weeks felling trees to pull out of the woodlot on the big day and getting all the horses shod for the winter conditions. Our son, Grayden, came home for the weekend to help supervise the participants and demonstrated that he hasn’t forgotten his teamster skills while living in the big city of Toronto.

One of our youngest participants ever, 12 year old Chris Collinson, took to driving like a duck to water.

Now it’s time for us to get back to work on the bunkhouse in order to have it finished for our apprentices when they arrive the end of March. Ken has a set of stairs to build and Martha will be doing the finishing work sanding and oiling the woodwork, painting the dry wall and washing down the clay walls.

Everyone asks us what we do in the winter…One of our January tasks is to make wheel hoes to take to the Guelph Organic Conference to sell at our booth where we advertise our Apprenticeship program and our Draft Horse Workshops.

Ken was inspired to build his first stirrup wheel hoe after hearing Eric Eberhardt give a talk about how he cultivated his rather large garden with such a wheel hoe. When that first stirrup wheel hoe proved to be such an effective and easy to use weeder in our own CSA garden Ken decided other people might be interested to purchase a similar tool. The wooden parts are harvested from ash trees in our family woodlot. Ash is very strong, but springy hardwood that has been traditionally used for handles. The wheel employed is a bicycle wheel. The large wheel rolls easily and no tire and tube are needed, because there is no significant load to carry and pneumatic tires eventually go flat and need repairs. Most of our horse equipment rolls along fine on steel wheels. The stirrup is constructed from recycled band sawmill blades and makes a very tough but thin weeding blade. Painting is such an environmentally unfriendly process that we have opted to give the whole machine a coat of boiled linseed oil made from flaxseed to protect the steel and wood.

Another January job is to map out the garden and order seeds. Some of you may remember the picture a year ago of Caesar as a puppy sitting on my lap while we ordered seeds. This year he was too big to sit on my lap, but he still helped.

One of our early winter jobs is always to mulch the strawberries so they over winter well. The mulch keeps the ground from freezing and thawing so the shallow roots of the strawberry plants don’t get broken off. It also holds the plants back a bit in the spring. If they grow and bloom too early the blossoms often get frozen by a late frost, hence no fruit. We usually wait to uncover the plants until it is so warm that they have started to grow under the mulch (that we don’t want either)…then the mulch goes between the rows to keep the weeds down and keep the berries clean of mud when it rains. It also makes the ground softer for kneeling on. We have put electric fence around the strawberry bed to keep the deer from grazing on the strawberry leaves. In the past few years they have developed a taste for strawberries. We are hoping the fence will be enough of a deterrent to keep them out.

We now have four new little pigs to help with the composting of the horse manure. They started off their lives in a hedge row at an organic farm and are a bit wild. Michelle has been trying to decide on names and has chosen “Dot” for the spotted one. Ken has amended it to .com.

Ken has begun training Buttons and I got some action shots this afternoon. She is coming along well. Whinnie, one of our young mares, was sold earlier this week to a young couple who have a CSA in Eastern Ontario and have just bought a farm. Whinnie will be teamed up with Jazz, who is a daughter of Jethro Tull, our first Suffolk stallion. He is also Whinnie’s grandsire. We hope they will make a good team and are thrilled to have another CSA horse farm in Ontario with Suffolks.

Ken and I went down to the 2010 CSA garden plot this morning a remeasured the area to ensure that I have the proper row lengths for garden planning and ordering seeds. The area has been prepared with compost and is seeded down to rye. The rye has come up well and will give good cover to prevent erosion over the winter months. Previous to this the field was in Christmas trees for many years. This is the first time in 20 years that we haven’t sold Christmas Trees. It seems a bit strange, but it is nice to have our December back to do some other things. Have a Happy Holiday Season.