2012 Apprentices Have Arrived

Posted on 27 March, 2012

Caesar, Bill van Zanten, Ken Laing, Amanda Lushinger, Elizabeth Hammond, Paul Papadatos

Now it seems like the new year on the farm has really begun with the arrival of our apprentice team for the season. We have a new group this year and they have arrived with a welcome burst of enthusiastic energy. The whole crew took a turn driving our Suffolk Punch draft horses, Gwen and Gena, as they ploughed a round in the potato plot, yesterday, with oversight from Ken and Caesar. The apprentice team and I also spent the better part of the day wrestling with row cover for the early garden planting. Row cover seems like one the necessary evils of organic farming. We are using it this time of year just to keep the soil warmer where we have tucked in the early garden seeds and it does make quite a difference in the early garden growth.

Ploughing Under the Rye for the Potato Ground

Bill van Zanten actually arrived a week earlier than planned because the weather was so warm and we were over whelmed with all the early spring work to be done. He helped us get our hoop houses ready to go and worked in the greenhouse and with the early planting. We aren’t sure what the weather is going to do from here on out. We have left the strawberries covered hoping that it will protect them from the extremely cold nights we have just had. However, we don’t want them to start growing under the mulch because that is also hard on them, so we will have to uncover them soon and hope for the best. Our early peas, spinach, carrots, beets, radishes and mesclun are planted out doors. One of our hoop houses is planted to spinach and we are going to plant more of our hoop houses later this week. It is a challenge to time it so it will all be ready at the right time to go with our perennials of rhubarb and asparagus and then be able to dovetail with the outdoor plantings so that we have a continuous supply of produce once we start the CSA pickups.

Ken’s new sawmill did arrive. Unfortunately, he hasn’t had time to do much more than try it out, because all the fields are calling to him. We are expecting to have some windows of time to do some sawing a little later after the oats are planted. The earlier you plant oats the better they do. We are hoping to get them planted before the end of March, but we are still waiting for our new seed to arrive. The early spring has everyone feeling like they are behind before we even get started!

Walnut Logs and Past Apprentices

Posted on 11 March, 2012

by Orchard Hill Farm

Ken has spent a good part of the last month felling trees and skidding logs out of the woodlot with our Suffolk Punch horses. He was ideally waiting for some nice snow cover for the log skidding. The logs get very dirty when they are pulled out in the mud. Today, on our Sunday farm walk/talk, he was saying that he should probably get a power washer to clean up the logs before cutting them or he will have a lot of dull blades in a hurry when he starts sawing. I was delighted with the idea, because we could also use it to wash the garden soil off of the carrots and other root vegetables. We purchased a “root washer” last year, but I have been very disappointed with it. It does a lovely job of washing peppers, tomatoes and zucchini, but in my opinion they don’t usually need much washing anyway. However, with the really dirty roots we had to pre-wash them for them to come out clean. I’m ready to try a power washer!

Ken’s farmer blood is starting to boil with all the warm dry weather in the forecast and he is ready to start spring plowing so he can plant some early oats. The earlier they get in the ground the better. It is unusual for us to be able to plant before the end of March, but it looks like this year it should be possible. The frost is out of the ground and it is starting to dry up! The good thing about doing so much logging is that the draft horses have kept in shape and should be ready to go with the plowing. It is hard on horses when they are out of shape and the weather warms up quickly. We have three new horses to work with this spring and it will be good for Ken to begin working with them before the apprentices arrive at the end of the month.

Molly, Jonathan, Martha, Ken, Bill and Jolianne

On the weekend we were delighted to have two of our past apprentices, Jonathan Bruderlien and Joilanne Demers, come to the farm for a stop over with their new team of draft horses, Molly and Bill. They are CSA farming in Quebec and have purchased their first team. Ken helped them hitch for the first time and they even did some plowing. It is very gratifying for us to have helped train this fine young couple who are pursuing sustainable farming with horses and we wish them every success.

New Greenhouse Inauguration

Posted on 2 March, 2012

by Orchard Hill Farm

It’s time to start planting our early transplants for the CSA garden in the new greenhouse! Michelle Jory was down for a visit earlier this week and helped get the seed trays ready in between playing with Caesar and the cats, Mosquito and Courgette. Wednesday morning our daughter, Ellen, was here visiting from Oregon and she and I popped in the first seeds of the season. That meant we had to get busy and install the wood stove and the new fan to blow the hot air down into our rock storage on sunny days. Ken will be spending a lot of time monitoring the temperature of the rocks! We’ll keep you posted on how much less wood we use this year over last season when the new greenhouse was under construction and we had to use one of our hoop houses to start the plants…

Ken is itching to get back to felling the remaining trees on his list and skidding them out with his Suffolk Punch horses. He is eagerly awaiting the arrival of his new saw mill. It is sad to cut down so many walnut trees, but the lumber will be very beautiful.

Ken is the President of Elgin National Farmers Union for this year. The NFU is hosting a screening of a new farm film, To Make a Farm in Aylmer, Monday, March 12 at 7:30 at the Old Town Hall (above the library), 38 John Street South. It is about some young farmers in Grey County, Ontario with urban backgrounds, who have bought farms and started farming. Some of them have come through the CRAFT apprentice network that we are part of. Scroll down to see previews:

http://tomakeafarm.ca/

I also include an animated video about genetically modified alfalfa:

Logging Workshop

Posted on 18 February, 2012

by Orchard Hill Farm

The Logging Workshop went well today with seven participants who spent the day in the woods learning how horses can be used to safely bring logs out of the woods. Skidding logs with one horse then two horses.

February on the Farm

Posted on 14 February, 2012

by Orchard Hill Farm

The CSA seed order was sent in and the seeds have arrived. It’s always important to take the time to sort through them and make sure that all the seeds I ordered actually arrived. Sometimes there is a slip between my list and the order form and sometimes the seed companies make a mistake. As a result, I have learned to always check the order so that we don’t end up in the greenhouse or field ready to plant and not have the seed we thought we had…Ken made me some lovely dovetailed wooden boxes a couple of years ago to put the small packets in to help keep them organized.

The new greenhouse is enclosed and it gets quite warm inside on sunny days. We have one small fan installed and even with just that running it kept it from freezing one night when it was -10 degrees Celsius outside. We are encouraged that the in-ground rock heat sink will really make a difference in heating and evening out the day-night temperature difference in the greenhouse.

Two of the kittens from last summer’s stray cat’s litter have been neutered and are fully recovered. They were busy today mousing in one of the hoop houses. It is an important job. I can see tunnels where the mice have been active in the nice warm hoop house during the winter. One spring we had our head lettuce transplanted into the hoop house and nicely tucked in with row cover to be ready for the first spring CSA pick-ups. When I uncovered them to weed I discovered, to my dismay, that all of one variety of head lettuce had been neatly munched off entirely! Since then I have been very concerned to eliminate the mouse population in the hoop houses before spring.

Suffolk Punches Getting Ready for Logging Workshop

On Saturday, February 18th we are giving a Horse Logging Workshop here in our woodlot. Ken is busy this week getting the horses back into shape and cutting down some trees to pull out. He does selective cutting in the woods to thin it out to give the better trees more room to grow. The thinned trees provide us with our fire wood and some logs to saw for lumber. During the workshop the horses pull the logs out of the woods. Horse logging is much gentler on the woodlot and does much less damage to the remaining trees that using big machinery.

Full Circle – Mulching Strawberries Again

Posted on 3 January, 2012

by Orchard Hill Farm

Leaving the barn yard with straw to mulch the strawberries.

When we come round to mulching strawberries for the CSA it really feels like we have come full circle in the farm year. We were discussing today whether it was the last job of the previous season or the first job of the new season. I guess that this year it is the first job of the new season since it is January 3rd. It’s hard to believe that three days ago we were planting garlic! The weather is so changeable. However, I am happy for the draft horses to have the snow to exercise in. What a mess the winter has been so far with all the mud!

We hitched up two of our Suffolk Punch horses, Sassy and Gwen and loaded up the straw to take down to the field to mulch the strawberries with. We were waiting for the ground to freeze before we did this job, but we weren’t expecting to have so much snow over night. It was hard to see where the strawberry rows were! Caesar enjoyed coming along especially if he got to ride on the sleigh.

On another note we have been picking fresh kale from the garden, it just gets sweeter with the frost and tastes so good as a green vegetable. Kale chips are good too. The following recipe was given to me by two different CSA members and it is very tasty.

Kale Chips with Cashews

KALE CHIPS with Cashews

Blend together in food processor:

1 Red Pepper (I use frozen ones from the summer).

1 Cup Cashews

2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice

1 Tablespoon Tamari Sauce (you can use soy sauce)

2 Cloves Garlic (crushed first)

1 Tablespoon Nutritional Yeast (optional)

1/2 teaspoon Sea Salt

6 Cups of firmly packed Kale (tare bit size pieces of kale off of the center stem and discard stem).

Massage the above mixture onto the kale.

Spread on a 2 cookie sheets and dry in a slow oven until crisp. You can even turn the oven off after it has warmed up and then turn it on again every hour just enough to warm up. You don’t want to cook the kale, just dehydrate it. I use my dehydrator, but not everyone has one.

Happy New Year

Posted on 31 December, 2011

by Orchard Hill Farm

Ken, Bill and Grayden harnessing up Gwen, our Suffolk horse

We have finished up a good year here at Orchard Hill Farm and are anticipating a good season in 2012. Our apprentice positions for the 2012 season are filled. We interviewed for our last apprentice position this week with and on farm visit. Another 2012 apprentice, Bill van Zanten, came to drive horses for the morning on Wednesday.

We spent today planting more garlic just for insurance for next year. The weather has been so mild and we had some extra garlic left over so we decided to pop it in.

Ken finishing the west side of the Greenhouse

The greenhouse construction is continuing and we finished putting the poly carbonate on the west wall today. We are waiting for the ground to freeze up so we can mulch the strawberries…I getting ready to order seeds and map out the gardens for the coming season. Already I am noticing the days starting to lengthen out bit by bit and am excited as I anticipate a new greenhouse to start our seedlings in.

Tamworth Pigs with their beautiful red hair

Our composting pigs are tamworth, a rare breed, and their winter coats are beautiful red hair that glistens gold in the sunlight. I couldn’t help wanting to take a picture to share.

December on the Farm

Posted on 15 December, 2011

by Orchard Hill Farm

Plucking the spent laying hens for chicken soup

December is already half over and we wonder where the time goes. Our last Fall CSA pick-up was on December 3 and it finished up well. The mild fall certainly worked in our favour. I enjoyed the extended harvest of the fall crops in the garden and the ability to share the bounty with our CSA members. The greenhouse greens were a help especially on the last pick-up, but it was surprising how well even the outdoor greens were growing with the use of row cover. Once the CSA customers stop coming to the farm we don’t have much of a sale for our free range eggs and because we don’t push our hens with lights through the winter they usually stop laying when it gets cold. We decided to butcher our old hens and only winter over the hens that were new this year. It is not an easy thing to do, but whenever that time roles around I always remember my Aunt Betty and my grandmother, who were both very practical farm women, showing me how to eviscerate a chicken when I was a young women and we had our first old hens to butcher. We do eat meat and it seems fair to me that I should be able to kill a chicken that has had a good life. Many people think nothing of buying chicken wrapped up in plastic at the supermarket and don’t consider that it has been fed antibiotics and genetically modified grain and lived it’s whole life indoors. I have the chance to humanly butcher my own chickens that have been raised organically and allowed to run around outdoors and it seems wasteful not to do just that.

Our greenhouse is coming along. We are now waiting for some special screws to arrive and a calm day to put on the poly-carbonate plastic sheets that will cover the roof and wall areas. I look forward to having the greenhouse to start our early transplants in.

Our Suffolk Punch Draft Horses are having a much deserved rest after all the work of the season. Unfortunately, the mild fall weather and all the rain has made their paddock a muddy mess. I will be happy when everything freezes up and we get a nice cover of snow. Mabel, the Jersey cow, has been bred three times by artificial insemination and we think that she took the last time which means we can look forward an August calf.

Fall CSA

Posted on 25 October, 2011

by Orchard Hill Farm

Last Saturday we had our first Fall CSA pick-up at the farm. Ken and I had a taste of harvesting in the rain without our apprentices to help. We did have some help from CSA friends and were very pleased to have a good showing of produce. We moved into the bunkhouse in anticipation of colder weather before the final pick-up in early December. Also our summer pick-up area doubles as our woodshed in the winter and we have it full of firewood to keep us warm this winter.

The fall Cauliflower stole the show for the pick-up, but all the tomatoes from the hoop house were a close second.

We had to use the bunkhouse couch for the pumpkins. Ken wanted to put the potatoes there so we could give “couch potatoes”, but I thought they were a bit too dirty.

Now that the pick-up is over we have been able to go back to work on the greenhouse. We have used cut outs from patio doors. They have insulation between layers of aluminum and we screw nailed them to the outside of the foundation wall. Now Ken is busy back filling around the outside and then we can put the rocks inside for a heat sink. It is going to keep us busy getting it all done hopefully before the snow flies.

Mid October 2011

Posted on 18 October, 2011

by Orchard Hill Farm

We finished up our main CSA season with a great group of apprentices. We tackled a number of jobs during the apprentices’ last week to complete the season. The garlic for 2012 was planted with our Suffolk horses, the potting soil for winter started transplants mixed up and stored away, the corn ground and this year’s garlic ground was worked up and seeded to rye. We also managed to work on the foundation for the greenhouse. Our garden area for next year was worked up and seeded down to rye and oats using our draft horses and the grain is coming up nicely.