HouseCome visit the farm next Saturday May 6th and celebrate spring! RSVP to info@orchardhillfarm.ca if you can make it, but if you forget – come anyway. We will have wagon rides, an asparagus cooking demo at 3pm and snacks! There will be plants, eggs, honey and bread for sale, and it’s a great chance to check out the farm if you’re thinking of joining the CSA – there’s still room. If you’re already a member, it’s a great time to drop off payment and visit with fellow members.

The pick ups will start Wednesday, May 17th (or 24th for some half shares)! If you’re signed up and haven’t gotten an email from info@orchardhillfarm.ca, please let me know!

We have planted a lot of the early crops, and the first few weeks were full of tests – we tasted all the varieties of potatoes that did well against leaf hoppers, performed well in storage and chose 3 to plant again this year. We are participating in a potato trial run by the Bauta Seed Initiative to try and come up with new varieties of potatoes that grow well under organic conditions (and taste good!). We will be receiving some new varieties to trial again this year. Here’s a photo of our three interns for the 2017 season, and the line up for tasting – their name’s are Yoan, Maike and Connor. They have already been a great help with all of the early season work and are getting along well with the horses.

IMG_8745

Another trial that we’re running this year is in the garlic field that was planted last fall – we have divided it into 15 sections, and there are 3 different tests on randomly selected plots within the field – we will attempt to control weeds using a living cover crop (oats), mulch (hay) and standard cultivation. Here is a hill view of the field with the mulched sections visible.

IMG_8877Ken and Martha are all moved in to their new(ish) house, the one on the laneway that was under construction in the fall. There are still a few pieces to keep them busy next winter (tiling floors, doors, railings, etc), but the kitchen drawers and counters that Ken built from raw edged walnut slabs are absolutely beautiful.

IMG_8890Hope you’re enjoying the beautiful weather and we’ll see you soon!

Ellen

 

IMG_8719Is it spring? It must be because there are English Violets (so fragrant it’s incredible – here infusing some sugar to be used for a future project – perhaps a FARM DINNER in June??!), apprentices and the greenhouse is looking – well, green.

Come see us this Saturday, April 8th at the Go Wild Grow Wild event in London at the Western Fairgrounds! There are tons of fun people to see and things to do (hawks, snakes, climbing wall) – we will be there spreading the word about the CSA and handing out popcorn. If any of you members need some popcorn – stop by and pick up some at the farm or at Go Wild!IMG_8372

We also have a lot of eggs from some enthusiastic new laying hens – the eggs are $6/dozen and they’re in the white cooler, just drop the money in the (plastic) jar! Last week Martha and I, with baby Frankie, went to get some new laying hens – organic pullets from around Kitchener.  A pullet is a young hen that’s ready to lay. We’ve got 50 new chickens – hopefully they’re more obedient than the chickens that we have now – we have 20 chickens that we got in the fall that will not stay in the beautiful huge pastured area that they have to explore, because they’ve discovered the rest of the barnyard and feel as though they are being ripped off if they can’t eat blueberry roots, dropped grain and all the roots of the flowers in the flower beds.

Greenhouse is filling up, but there’s still more to go in for another couple of weeks. Onions, leeks, shallots, hoophouse tomatoes, ground cherries, tomatillos, herbs and lots of flowers have been started, along with some sweet potatoes, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and kohlrabi. We just planted out the first pok choi and head lettuce into hoop houses. We plant head lettuce every 2 weeks from now until September so that we can offer lettuce every week to our members.

When it gets really cold, we have to stoke the fire in the greenhouse in the middle of the night, as well as before bed and right away in the morning. Not having to keep all the plants warm makes spring that much sweeter!

Ken and Martha have made a lot of progress on the massive bunkhouse renovation in the last few weeks – they’ve got the propane hooked up for hot water and a working stove. Martha did all of the drywall, mudding and painting. Ken has made all of the trim for the window sills. They have a bathroom that’s awaiting tiling, and a kitchen that is gradually getting cabinets, drawers and counters – there’s a lot of beautiful raw edged walnut from the farm. Martha loves it that it’s been raining because it means that Ken wasn’t been pulled away from construction and wood working to do farm work quite as soon as he might have been. Here is the fancy moving equipment that we use here on the farm! IMG_8495

Now we have 3 new members of the team – the interns Connor, Yoan and Maike! They just arrived last week and have been settling in – today they started working with the horses and they did great! It’s always fun to meet the new people that we will be working and (mostly) living with for the season, and to see things from their perspective for a while.IMG_8697