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Ken in the Bale throwing event at the Farm Olympics

Above is a youtube video that was filmed at Orchard Hill Farm last weekend by our son, Grayden, and his friend Ivan.  Grayden and our apprentices were brain storming earlier in the season on promoting farming as a good way to get fit and dreamed up a competition day   with various events…somehow it actually managed to come to pass. T-shirts were designed for the occasion with the “Farm Fit”  logo.  It was a fun weekend, but I think more fun for the city slickers who came than for our tired farm team here!  Grayden says that next time he will try and schedule it in the off season so that more farmers will actually attend!

Bill with Mater and Buttons Cultivating before Planting the Cover Crop for Next Year's Hoop House

We have been busy planting cover crops for the 2013 garden areas. Our garlic has been drying for a month and today we took it down and bagged it for future use. We are also reorganizing the middle barn to make room for the lumber that Ken is finally having time to saw. The motor for the new saw mill is now fixed and the sawing has begun!  Yesterday, Michelle and I bent over the tops of our onions to get them ready for pulling and curing next week. The crop looks good. We were also very pleased to see that the squash and pumpkins are producing a good crop.  This year we tried a new method of preparation and planted directly into a rye cover crop that had been cut off just as the heads were coming out instead of ploughing in the rye…as a result I was watching them very closely and getting worried that they weren’t setting enough fruit…I decided that I should just leave them alone to grow and was pleasantly surprised to see that left on their own they did fine!

CSA member Bette Conners with her Bouquet

Our cut-your-own flowers have been a big hit and I wish I had pictures of all the lovely bouquets that CSA members have taken home with them. I’ve planted several succession plantings of zinnias, snap dragons and calendula to keep the flowers coming longer and an pleased with the results. Over the years I have tried to select flowers that grow well here and produce good cut flowers for our CSA members. Gradually I feel like I am succeeding in growing a better “cut flower garden.”

Michelle and Bill Reorganizing Lumber Storage
Stemming the Cured Garlic

 

 

 

 

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Eric and Anne Nordell's Weed Free Garden

Ken and I went on a field trip the end of last week organized by the Ecological Farmers of Ontario. We are very grateful to our apprentices and working shares who were here to gather together a lovely array of produce for Saturday’s pick-up. We saw a number of other farms and visited the Rodale Institute for their field day. One of the farms we visited was Eric and Anne Nordell’s in Pennsylvania. They are a model farm for weed control with the use of draft horses. It is interesting for us to be able to leave the farm to see other farms during the growing season.

This time of year we have lots of produce coming in and we welcome recipes from our CSA members. Colleen Burns has supplied us with a Cold Cucumber Soup recipe that she has been enjoying.

Cold Cucumber Soup

3 T. Butter or marg.

1 cup chopped onions

4 large garlic cloves – minced

3 cups chicken or veggie broth

4 cups seeded diced, unpeeled cucumber (2 medium)

1 cup swiss chard or spinach

1 cup sliced, peeled potatoes

1/2 tsp. salt or to taste

1/4 tsp freshly ground pepper

1 T lemon

1 cup table cream

In a large saucepan heat butter and saute onions and garlic until soft. Add broth cucumber, spinach, potatoes, lemon juice, salt and pepper.

Simmer covered until potatoes are tender (10 min.) Tansfer mixture in batches to blender or food processor to puree (Blender makes soup smoother)

Transfer to large bowl. Stir in cream. Let soup cool. Then chill overnight or for several hours. Serve in chilled bowls. Can garnish with thin slices of cucumber.

 

 

 

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Wheat Harvest at Orchard Hill Farm

Harvest time is coming early this year with the warm spring and hot weather that we have been experiencing. Usually we don’t harvest wheat and oats until later in the summer, but our wheat is all off and the straw is in the barn. The oats are half harvested, one of our fiels isn’t ready yet. Our old combine has held together so far, but Ken says there is a vibration that is starting to concern him…fingers crossed that it all holds together for another season. We are selling our old thrashing machine today so we can’t use that as our fall back position.

Amanda, Eli, Elizabeth and Bill - Garlic Harvesters

The garlic was also harvested earlier than usual this week. It came out of the field as a bumper crop!  We dug it all in one afternoon Ken and Bill ploughed it out with Gena and Buttons, two of our Suffolk Punch horses, and a walking plough. Then we gathered it up and tied two bunches of ten together on either end of a length of twine, loaded it onto a wagon that the horses pulled up to the barn and it is all nicely hanging to dry.

We have been irrigating the garden  because of  the dry weather and are thankful that we have a pond and equipment to do so. It does add to the work load and it isn’t the same as rain, but it helps keep the garden growing! We are hoping for rain soon to help our hay and pasture fields to grow.

Cauliflower, Fennel, Eggplant and Lettuce CSA offering
Wagon Full of Garlic Waiting to be Hung Up to Dry
CSA Share Baskets Being Collected

The CSA pick-ups keep rolling around twice a week and we are harvesting beautiful produce to give to our CSA members. Our early carrots have been the most disappointing, because of the wire worm damage early in the spring. We are hoping that the later plantings will come along better. The taste of the carrots that we have harvested is very good despite the lower yield. Because of the wire worm we have decided to move our garden plot for the 2013 season to a different location. We had the area where we thought we were going to have the garden all ploughed in the spring and thought we were going to avoid summer ploughing in the hot dry weather. Now we are in the midst of ploughing the new area and it is hard on the horses and the teamsters. The ground is so hard that it is difficult to keep a plough in the ground. The apprentices are also working at preparing other plots for our 2013 potatoes, squash and new asparagus planting. Each of them have a field that they are responsible for and are doing all the tillage with the draft horses to prepare the ground. Some of the cover crops have been planted and the other fields are almost ready to be seeded.

We are happy that Princess,the belgian mare we had for sale will be going to Edencrest, another CSA farm in Ontario north west of Barrie. Mater is still for sale.

It’s Pesto time with fresh garlic and basil! Here is a recipe from Our Mothers’ Kitchens by Anita Stewart that I use:

PESTO

3 garlic cloves

2 cups packed leaves

1/3 cup pine nuts or walnuts

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp pepper

3/4 cup olive oil

In blender or food processor process garlic, basil, pine nuts, salt and pepper until finely chopped. With machine still running, gradually pour in oil and puree. Scrape into freezer container. Seal and freeze for up to 6 months. Makes 1 cup.

 

 

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Mabel

We are really into summer on the farm!  It looks like we will need to do another round of irrigation this week. Our first field of wheat is ready to come off and then we will have straw to bail. The garden is growing well with some tasty summer squash, cauliflower and broccoli being harvested. We are watching our garlic closely to make sure we don’t let it get over mature. Our strawberry season was short and sweet. We were pleased that so many strawberries escaped being frozen after our hot March and then -7 degrees C  nights in April!  We have another round of brassica transplants to go out this week and a succession planting of carrots and beets for the fall. My plan is to plant and then irrigate.

Amanda Building Pasture Fence for Mabel

We are getting another pasture fenced for Mabel, our Jersey cow. She has grown up in  the last two years and is ready to calve in August. We got her when she was two days old in May of 2010. Last Thursday she ducked under the top wire of the electric fence when Elias was moving her water barrel out of her patture and had taken down the lower fence.

Elizabeth Burying the Electric Fence Wire

Usually she is very friendly and quite happy to come to us for some attention, but she was having too much fun when she was out, playing tag with us, and it took a while before Ken was finally able to get hold of her halter!  Today Elizabeth and Amanda are fencing off the front pasture beside our chicken pasture so that Mabel will have some more good grazing. Next year the chickens will be in that pasture and Mabel can have the pasture where they are.  There are so many jobs to do all the time that, although fencing the front pasture for Mabel has been on the “list” for some time, it has only just now floated to the top.

Every week our work is framed by our CSA harvest for our Tuesday and Saturday pick-ups, however around the edges of that we do manage to keep up with other farm tasks. Finishing cutting up the fire wood for next winter is still on the list and every other week we do manage to do a sweep of in the garden – cultivating with our Suffolk Punch draft horses and then weeding and hoeing by hand. Ken also is planning to finish the cold room that has been under construction for some time. It will allow us more harvest flexibility and hopefully result in better quality produce for our CSA members. We now need to find and install a cooling unit, add some weather stripping and move the building into place. Ken finally had time to saw some of his lumber last week and then the new motor on the saw mill broke down! Understandably, he was very frustrated. The motor is at the repair shop and we are awaiting its return.

On the horse front we ended up buying back two Suffolks, Suzzie and Sonny,  that we sold five years ago along with, Sandy, a five year old mare out of our old stallion, Rufus, and Suzie. Sandy is untrained, but Ken is enjoying having two horses back that he trained himself. It’s nice to have more Suffolks on the farm again. After loosing three horses last year it is taking us a while to sort everything out. We also bought Queen, a lovely old belgian mare that we leased last summer. We are happy to have  Queen back on the farm to help out. We have Mater and Princess for sale because we don’t need quite so many horses. (See the horses for sale page of our website for pictures.) They are both good work horses and we hope they can find good homes. Our two foals from last year, Wendel and Eli, are “growing up” in the south pasture.

Grandma Martha Holding Della

In the back of my mind I am still remembering holding little Della Jane when I was in Portland for her birth. It’s too bad I can’t be in two places at once! We hope that Della can come for visits when she is older so we can get to know her and share our farm. Ken is of course hoping that she will take after him and be horse crazy and grow up to be an organic horse farmer! He has been collecting horse toys for several years…

Bill back from Cultivating with Buttons and Queen
Elias Seeding Head Lettuce Transplants
New Cold Room
Cultivating and Hoeing Onions and Leeks

 

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Ellen and Della Jane

Our most exciting news is that we are now grandparents. Our daughter Ellen, who helped start the CSA, had her first child on June 14, 2012. Some of you may have wondered what happened to Ellen’s food blog since last fall. It turns out that she has had a bun in the oven since then…Della Jane Berg came out a week over due (well baked) and  is a beautiful, strong and healthy baby, much loved by her parents Ellen and Aaron and extended family and friends. I was able go to Portland, Oregon for Della’s  birth and to help out after for a few days.

Ken, Uncle Grayden, Michelle and our apprentices held the fort here while I was away. They managed to finish our first cut hay, pick lots of strawberries and peas for three pick-ups, weed the hoop houses and asparagus, irrigate the whole garden, protect our sweet corn from an infestation of armyworms and continue construction on our cold storage. I returned to see the summer squash, cucumber and broccoli started and the whole garden take a great leap forward. As I write we are getting a lovely much needed gentle rain. I am thankful to have held Della in my arms and welcome her into my heart, but I am also happy to be home to participate in the joys and challenges of growing food for our CSA.

 

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The early pick-ups always feature rhubarb and our members sometimes share their recipes. The following was contributed by Pat Weiler. It was baked in the Orchard Hill Farm test kitchen last night with rave reviews!

Rhubarb Coffee Cake

1/2 cup butter

1 cup white sugar

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups spelt flour (wheat flour can also be used)

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

3/4 cup milk + 1 Tspb lemon juice ( let stand for 10 min.)

3 – 4 cups chopped rhubarb

2 Tbsp flour

Topping:

1/4 cup very soft butter

2 tsp cinnamon

1/2 cup flour

1/4 cup oats

1/2 cup brown sugar

Cream butter and sugar

Add in flour /soda/ salt mixture alternately with milk (don’t over beat if using spelt flour).

Dust rhubab with flour. Fold rhubarb into the mixture.  Grease 9 x 13 pan. Spread batter in pan and add topping. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 – 45 minutes.


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Paul Plouging the Extra Garden Area

We always feel a bit of a whirl wind of activity when the CSA begins and we still have the big push to get all the transplanting done! To top it off we discovered some wire worm in an area of our garden and as a result have had to prepare some new ground to plant our susceptible crops in. It’s quite an unexpected side step in our garden dance. Fortunately, we figured out the problem before all of our planting was completed. It will also impact our rotation. We had already ploughed the ground for the 2013 garden so that we could begin preparing the soil with cover crops and compost…now we will plant wheat there in the fall and prepare another area for the 2013 garden.

Michelle Watering in the Squash Plants

Michelle Jory was coming down for a visit and we asked if she could stay on and help us out for a week. It has been great to have her experienced help. Michelle apprenticed here for three seasons followed by a two year incubator farm of her own with Fairmeadow Farm Fall CSA.  She is looking to purchasing a farm, hopefully she will be able to find one in the area. Elias Neugebauer, a Waldorf high school student from Germany, has aslo arrived for a farm experience.

We started off with the squash field. It has all been mulched, watered in, planted and covered  with row cover to keep the cucumber beetle off. The transplanting continued through the week with summer squash, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes and melons. The next  big push is to get all the early sweet corn transplanted at the same time that we focus on weeding. The potatoes are coming up. We always do some early weeding before they come up with the harrow and finger weeder around the tiny plants with the draft horses. Now it’s time go through with the hoes and then the hilling can begin.

Getting Ready to Start Transplanting the Squash
Elias Taking out the Squash Transplants
Elizabeth Planting the Squash Plant
Covering the Field with Row Cover
Bill Resting After Building the Replacement Wash Tables

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Irrigating Strawberries and Fighting with Row Cover in the Wind

We are surprised by the long drawn out spring with the cold, windy and dry weather! Everything seems to be on hold and  poised ready to burst forth, just waiting for  some encouragement from weather! We are hoping to have our first CSA pick-up on Tuesday, May 8,  and have faith that it will warm up in the meantime. It has been  very dry for April and we got out the overhead irrigation to water the strawberries and our early planted garden. Friday and part of Saturday we spent removing row cover, row cultivating, hoeing, recovering with row cover and then irrigating. Working with row cover in the high winds is quite a challenge. Last Monday the wind was also quite a force to contend with, while planting our new strawberry plants for the 2013 season the apprentices thought it was quite comical to see me almost blown off my feet. I really can’t remember it ever being that windy.

Grayden, Elizabeth, Amanda, Bill and Paul

The coming week will be full of activity here on the farm. We have another batch of direct seeding to do in the garden, we also have our first outdoor transplants of onions, leeks, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, celeriac, kohlrabi, fennel, head lettuce, parsley and radicchio to go in. It is also time to start our greenhouse transplants of melons, squash and more broccoli, cabbage as well as brussels sprouts.

Hooking up at the Irrigation Pond

Our Suffolk Punch Draft horses will be busy discing and cultivating the garden area to be planted and Ken also wants to  plough the ground for the 2013 garden so we can start preparing the soil for a good crop next season. We purchased two 15 year old Suffolk x Belgian geldings that were actually  born here on the farm to help with our horse power. Unfortunately, they need some conditioning and discing will be a good way to introduce them back to working…Gena is hoping that they step up to the plate so she doesn’t have to work so hard this season.

 

 

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We have been enjoying the drawn out spring weather. It’s hard to keep track of all the activities that have been taking place. Our CSA membership is full for the season. We have started a waiting list in case some spots  open up. The oats are planted after some considerable frustration with getting the proper seed after we were sent “treated” seed which as organic farmers we were unable to plant.  We purchased  a new horse drawn implement this spring called a  “cultimulcher”  for working up the ground. It prepares a lovely seed bed to plant into. It also fits perfectly between our rows of fall raspberries, which is an added bonus!

Happy Greenhouse Transplants

Our hoop houses have all been planted to head lettuce and early greens to help with the first pick-ups of the season.  We have tomatoes and peppers started in the greenhouse to be transplanted into the hoop houses once the weather is warmer.  The other transplants growing in the new greenhouse are very happy and it’s wonderful to have such a welcoming growing environment to work in. We are still adjusting the ventilation. The rock storage is helping to moderate the temperature over night, however we have still been using a wood stove for extra warmth overnight and on cool cloudy days.

Amanda Transplanting Peppers

The first seedlings have germinated under the row  cover in the main garden and we have planted  potatoes  this week as well as another round of carrots, beets,  spinach etc. in the main garden.

The end of last week we had a Draft Horse Workshop  for our apprentices and two outside participants. Our son, Grayden, came home to help teach the workshop and everyone made great strides in their teamster abilities.  Caesar enjoyed the workshop as much as anyone, following along and getting lots of attention from everyone as they waited for their turn to drive.  Of course riding on the wagon is always one of his favorite activities.

 

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The apprentices have been busy planting hoop houses, building greenhouse benches, weeding perennial crops and turning compost piles. I have asked each of them to introduce themselves as follows:

Elizabeth Hammond

 

 

I’m Elizabeth Hammond. I grew up in Central New York, and this is my third year working on farms.  I studied Agroecology in the Pacific Northwest for a little bit, then returned to New York  State to start working. I’ve come to Orchard Hill to learn about this wonderful draft horse powered CSA, and to hopefully help out a bit. I love farming, and I hope to one day be farming with horses on my own. Maybe some raw milk. I also love cooking really big meals and making cheese. Dogs are pretty great, too.

 

 

Paul Papadatos

My name is Paul Papadatos.  I am 25 years old and this is my 5th year as a farm apprentice. I came to OHF from New York State to learn about how to farm with draft horses.  Farming is a way of life for me and I cannot imagine spending my time any other way.   I enjoy reading, eating, climbing on things, farm animals, swimming and bike riding. I hope to someday have a farm/homestead of my own.

 

Amanda Luchsinger

Hi! My name is Amanda Luchsinger and I was born in Toronto, but have been living in Santiago, Chile since I was 8 years old, in 1995. Back there, I studied Agronomy and currently I am finishing my thesis on ecological restoration for my degree. I have always been interested in organic production and getting the community involved in their own food production in some way, but in Chile, the opportunities for this are scarce, so when a friend of my mom’s from London introduced me to Ken and Martha and said that they received apprentices, I asked for an interview immediately back in 2009 so I could work when I finished my studies! I hope to start a CSA farm in Chile and allow more people to get involved in their own food production, opting for a better life quality and health.

 

Bill van Zanten

My name is Bill van Zanten.  I was born and raised in Port Stanley, not far from Orchard Hill Farm.  Some of you may know my parents and relatives who still live and work in the area.

After more than a decade of living in Western Canada while working in silviculture, forestry, and mineral exploration, I have returned home to pursue another sort of natural resource.  I am thrilled to have been selected for apprenticeship at Orchard Hill Farm and I look forward to meeting all of the CSA members.