Ken and I had a wonderful break away from the farm between the end of our Main Season CSA and the beginning of our Fall CSA. We were privileged to attend the beautiful wedding of Kailea MacGillivary and Andy Pedley in Cape Breton. Andy apprenticed here at Orchard Hill Farm in 2010 and 2011. We were also able to visit two other farms, Olde MacKenzie Farm in PEI and Broadfork Farm in Nova Scotia. Both relatively new farms growing produce with ties to Ontario, where we met the farmers originally. It was fun to visit another part of the country and see other similar operations. We came home feeling blessed to have good land to farm and ready to dig in and harvest for our first Fall pick-up.

The digging has been made considerably easier with a our newest horse drawn implement, a Ken Laing manufactured Root Lifter. It is a U shaped bar that pulls along under root crops and loosens the soil around them to make them easy to pull out of the ground. What a help it is and time saver! Ken has also been busy in his shop making a barrel root washer and it was well tested yesterday and today washing potatoes, beets, carrots, parsnips and winter radish! I am thrilled to have both new additions to our line of equipment.

One job we like to do while the interns are still here is to convert our pick-up room back into a woodshed by putting the divider wall back in place and filling it up with wood. The potting soil is also being mixed up ready for the greenhouse transplants. It is sort of like making a big cake…sifting the pails, instead of cups, and them mixing them together. One of the requirements for organic production is to have potting soil with out chemical fertilizer. We use compost to add nutrients to the mix with a recipe adapted from Eliot Coleman’s book The New Organic Grower.
Early October and garlic planting always coincides with the end of the internships on the farm. We have to wait for dry weather and the golden October sun usually makes for a fun filled day. The interns are always pleasantly surprised at how easy and fun it is to plant our garlic. We prepare the ground during the summer and plant it to a cover crop of oats and peas in early September. The oats and peas cover the ground and grow into the late fall. They then winter kill and the garlic can grow up through the cover crop mulch in the spring. We open up a furrow with a row cultivator. The garlic cloves are placed 6 inches apart and then the furrow is closed in with a disc hiller pulled by the horses. We planted 5950 cloves of garlic in about 2 1/2 hours this morning with the help of our Suffolk Punch Horses.

We are very grateful for all the efforts of the apprentices throughout the season and wish them well with their future endeavours.

Our main season CSA is drawing to a close with our last main season pick-up coming up on Tuesday, October 7th. Charlotte has already left for the season and Brandon and Caitlin will be heading out on the 14th. Jayme is going to stay and hold the fort here while we go to the wedding of Andy, a past apprentice, in Cape Breton. We are squeezing in a trip between the end of the main season CSA and the beginning of our Fall CSA on Saturday, October 25th.

The American Suffolk Horse Association Annual Meeting, held here in September, went well despite the cold wet weather at the beginning. Everyone who attended especially enjoyed participating in and watching the obstacle course. It was great to have the breeders and directors from far and wide come and celebrate the Suffolk Horse. Ken enjoyed show casing what we have been able to do here using our Suffolk Punch horses. Our apprentices were appreciated as voices of young teamsters. The youngest teamster came from eastern Ontario, a 12 year old enthusiast, who was not intimidated by the big horses and was driving teams around.

 

Our sweet potatoes yielded very well, especially considering the cooler summer we have had. We put them in one of our hoop houses to cure as we have done in the past. It takes warmth to get the sweet potatoes to turn sweet. However, this year with our unseasonable hot weather the end of September it caused sun scald on the sweet potatoes. Needless to say I felt sick about it when I realized what had happened! As a result, we are giving them all out as quickly as possible and asking people to use them up right away. Do not put them in the fridge, as they don’t like cold. I made a delicious sweet potato pie with homemade sweet potato ice cream and a sweet potato soup. They were all excellent. 

We have decide to keep both Ned and Queen to help us and our apprentices get started next spring while Eli and Sandy continue with their training. We now have 9 horses and only 7 stalls. Brandon took on the task of building two portable horse stalls that we will put in the south lean to of the middle barn for Ned and Queen for the winter. It is made out of solid ash timber that the horses pulled out of the woods and Ken milled on our saw mill. The Emerald Ash Borer is here and we have had to harvest a lot of ash…

It feels like we are wrapping up the season in a hurry. Our potatoes, both regular and sweet are dug. The squash and pumpkins are gathered in and the onions are cured. Our garlic is separated ready for planting next week. The fall grain and cover corps are all planted and the hay is finally all done. We had the best haying weather of the season the end of September! We also planted the hoop houses to fall greens for the Fall CSA. Lots of loose ends are being gathered up before our apprentices leave. Now we just have some potting soil to mix up to be ready for the late winter greenhouse transplant starts.

 

• 1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
• 3 tablespoons onions thinly sliced
• 1 tablespoon honey
• 1/3 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 4 medium beets, cooked and quartered or (sliced in 2 inch pieces for Cylindra)
• 6 cups fresh arugula
• 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted, coarsely chopped
• 1/4 cup dried cranberries or dried cherries
• 3 ounces soft fresh goat cheese, coarsely crumbled

Directions

Line a baking sheet with foil. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees F.

Whisk the vinegar, onions, and honey in a medium bowl to blend. Gradually whisk in the oil. Season the vinaigrette, to taste, with salt and pepper. Toss the beets in a small bowl with enough dressing to coat. Place the beets on the prepared baking sheet and roast until the beets are slightly caramelized, stirring occasionally, about 12 minutes. Set aside and cool.

Toss the arugula, walnuts, and cranberries in a large bowl with enough vinaigrette to coat. Season the salad, to taste, with salt and pepper. Mound the salad atop 4 plates. Arrange the beets around the salad. Sprinkle with goat cheese, and serve.

EGGPLANT PARMAGIANA

Recipe from Lynn Selway: Easy and delicious.

1 eggplant
1 egg beaten
sea salt
parmesan cheese
pasta sauce (we like it spiced with basil, spinach and romano)
mozzarella or cheddar cheese grated

Slice eggplant into thin slices and lay them on papertowels. Sprinkle salt on top and let sit for about 15 min to bring out the moisture. Pat dry. Dip slices in beaten egg and coat with parmesan cheese on both sides. Bake slices in oven on cookie sheet approx 15-20 min at 350 til tender – turning to brown on both sides.

Layer in casserole dish eggplant, pasta sauce and grated cheese and repeat until all eggplant is used. Top with remaining sauce and cheese. Cover and bake approx 20 min-1/2 hour until hot and bubbling. Serve immediately and enjoy!!

August continues to be a busy farming month. It has brought out the horse drawn potato digger pulled by a four horse team, which sure saves a lot of forking by hand! We still have to gather the potatoes up on our hands and knees. I guess the next step would be to attach some sort of bagger behind the digger…We have been working around the weather and managed to get the garden weeded again and two fields of second cut hay in the barn. Ken brought out our old combine ready to harvest spelt and found the radiator had a leak. It has now been over a week while we waited for the repair job. Then Ken discovered a nut and bolt that needed to be replaced on one of the wheels. It is an odd size and he has been trying to track down a replacement. Fingers crossed that it will be found this morning and he can start the harvest. However, thunderstorms are in the forecast for this afternoon in our area. This morning the apprentices are discing in our buckwheat cover crops. Sometimes I feel like I need to just run around with a camera all day taking pictures of all the different activities that are taking place simultaneously.

Charlotte dug out an old saddle and asked if she could try riding Ned. One afternoon, Ken tried out the saddle and although Ned didn’t really object to having Ken on his back, he refused to move. (We question whether he had ever been ridden in his life before.) Charlotte then got on and with her experienced ridding confidence got him to start moving. Old Ned managed a small buck in objection, but did respond and was trotting around the front yard with Charlotte on his back before long. The joyous smile on Charlotte’s face was heart warming to see.

 

We have been enjoying the fruits of our labours with meals prepared by everyone on their cooking day. Jayme out did herself making two blueberry pies which were works of art. The tomatoes, melons and sweet corn continue to be a big hit. Our green beans have been out producing themselves this season and we have tired a delicious new recipe provided by CSA  member Maria Drangova.

FRIED GREEN BEANS AND GARLIC

Saute four cloves of finely chopped garlic in about 3 tablespoons of olive oil until they start to turn golden brown around the edges.

Add 4 cups chopped up Green Beans. Cover and cook over medium heat for about 10 – 15 minutes stirring occasionally. Add salt to taste.

Uncover, stir and cook until the pan juices start to caramelize. Serve warm. Oh so good…

Amounts can be adjusted depending on number of servings desired.

The second half of July has flown by! We held our July Southern Ontario Draft Horse Workshop with relative ease and a great group of participants. The apprentices looked after the farm, while Ken and Grayden taught the workshop and Martha cooked. Our CSA harvest and pick-up on Saturday, during the workshop, went smoothly with added help from our working shares and other extra helping hands.

I continue to be amazed at the beauty of the produce as we gather it together twice a week for our pick-ups. The bountiful time of year is approaching and we are looking forward to the start of the sweet corn and early potatoes. Our first tomatoes from the hoop houses are ripe and a few of the outdoor tomatoes are starting to turn colour.

The sweet corn has grown too tall to cultivate with a riding cultivator that straddles the row. Instead, we cultivated for the last time with a walk behind  single row cultivator. One person rode a horse and the other followed behind to steer the cultivator. We spread  cover crop seed before we cultivated. It will grow on to cover the ground after the corn is harvested and we mow off the stalks.

The next three big jobs on the list are 2nd cut hay, taking off the spelt and straw and harvesting the garlic and hanging it to dry.  All three jobs require dry weather and it doesn’t look very likely for the rest of this week. We are hoping the forecast will be wrong.

 

 

 

Cultivating Corn

 

 

 

 

The Season is moving along! Strawberries are well over and the summer squash is rolling in. Our hoop house cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen and hopefully the full size ones won’t be too far behind.

On the horse front, some of our most reliable horses for apprentices to drive have developed sore necks from too much time working. Well-trained Suffolk Punch horses are hard to come by …so we have welcomed two older reliable horses into the herd. Queen is a Belgian mare who blends in well. Ned makes me do a double take because he is a white Percheron gelding. Ned is a sweet natured horse and has become a star already because of his previous experience on a vegetable farm cultivating, spraying and standing. (Some of our other horses take great exception to the smell of fish emulsion when it is being sprayed and caused a run away, which thankfully ended without disaster). Ned has a taste for all sorts of vegetables and enjoys nibbling on whatever is within reach. The added horsepower has given our other horses some needed rest.

Our young stallion, Eli, is a stallion no longer. We hope that some of our mares are in foal for next season, but decided that we didn’t want to cary on breeding after this year. The hope is that Eli will make a fine working gelding. Ken hopes to spend more time training him this season.

Haying has been a challenge again this year with rain coming just in time to spoil our hay, we have our last field of 1st cut hay down now and are hoping to get it into the barn later this week.

The apprentice team has been working hard getting the gardens into tiptop shape. We have the tomatoes trellised, beds weeded and a beautiful crop of cabbages. Our last planting of fall broccoli and cabbage were seeded in the greenhouse on Monday. The fall carrots, beets spinach and rutabaga have been direct seeded in the garden. The lettuce this season has been particularly good. Many of our CSA members have commented how much they are enjoying it. We wonder if it is the biological sprays we added to the soil or the cover crops , compost and soil amendments. Likely it is a combination, but it is gratifying to know that all Ken’s care and study of soil fertility is paying off.

We have appreciated all the help from our working shares with harvest. The children are also a wonderful addition to our pick-up days as they enjoy our bushel basket of farm toys and of course picking flowers.

Time flies when you’re having fun or you’re farming in the spring! We have been so busy it has been hard to find time to take pictures and make blog entries. The CRAFT Day here on May 14th was well attended by organic farm interns in our CRAFT network from southwestern Ontario. Our granddaughter, Della, was the youngest in attendance. She and her mother have now returned to Oregon, but were here for our first CSA pick-up days.

Our CSA fields are filling up with transplants and seeded areas that have come up and are being weeded. We have put row cover on and taken it off too many times. The squash field, with young transplants, has been irrigated and rained on and the plants sprayed with white clay to deter the cucumber beetles. Our hoop houses have supplied the CSA with lettuce, spinach, pac choi, green onions, cilantro, dill and arugula and now have been transformed into tomato and cucumber houses. The outdoor plantings of greens are taking over and we hope to harvest our first Hakueri, summer turnip, on Saturday. The strawberries won’t be ready until the end of June because of the late spring, but we didn’t loose any fruit to late frost!

After our weekly Sunday tour and looking ahead at the forecast, we have decided to go ahead and have our first pick-ups on Saturday, May 17th and Tuesday, May 20th. The asparagus is coming up, the rhubarb is growing and the greens in the hoop houses will be ready. We hope that the greens under row cover out doors will grow fast to take over when the hoop houses are harvested. It is always a challenge to mesh the planting dates with the uncertainty  of weather.

We have been very busy planting and covering crops with row cover to bring them along faster.The first onions and brassicas have been transplanted. The strawberries for 2015 are in the ground and we finished planting our potatoes yesterday. It is wonderful to have some warm weather, finally, to encourage everything to grow. The trilliums in the woods have burst into bloom in the last two days – always a sure sign that we are underway. Our Suffolk Punch horses are out on pasture and loving it after a long winter of dry hay!

Our daughter, Ellen, and granddaughter, Della, are here for Mother’s Day, visiting from Portland, Oregon. What a treat it is to have them here. Della is enjoying all the animals like a story book come to life.

We are hosting a CRAFT day on Wednesday, May 14th and expect about 60 organic farm interns to come to our farm for a tour, workshop on soils and draft horse power with a pot luck lunch. Our interns are looking forward to the day! We may even squeeze in a work bee of some sort.

 

We have finally gotten some seeds in the ground outside and the row cover on! All the hoop houses are up!  The directly seeded greens in them are coming up and the transplants are growing well. I peeked under some row cover today and found that the head lettuce planted on April 5th is sizing up well. Yea hoop houses and row cover! They really make a difference when we have a spring like this one! Our Greenhouse is filling up and we have mixed up another batch of potting soil  to be ready for the next big planting of squash, melons and brassicas – scheduled for next week.

The apprentices have been enjoying learning to drive the horses. Charlotte Giard-Laliberte has come from Quebec as our fourth apprentice and she is a great addition to the farm team. She is taking part in the Draft Horse Workshop this week to learn the basics as a foundation for her work here with the Suffolks this season.

The CSA is filling up, but we still have a hand full of shares left. The rhubarb is poking up and the grass is green again after the long winter. The horses are looking forward to going out on fresh pasture soon!