Last Saturday we hosted an Ecological Farmers of Ontario composting workshop. Ken taught the course and we have some pictures courtesy of EFO staff member, Emily Hansen.

CSA member Chantelle Diachina sent some pictures along that she took during the CSA season last year. It’s nice to see the beautiful flowers, herbs and aray of popcorn  in her pictures from the 2013 CSA season. It gives me confidence that warm weather will come and we will again have a bountiful harvest to share with our CSA members. We still have some shares available for the 2014 season.

We put the first plants into the ground in one of our hoop houses last Saturday!  Since then we have been doing some more seeding and transplanting in the greenhouse and have been trying hard to get the other hoop houses ready for planting. The big snow dump at the end of November last year ruined about 150 feet of hoop house- bending the hoops and tearing the plastic. It has been a major job to take apart the old hoop houses, clean up the plants and trellis that were inside, and salvage what hoops and plastic we could to rebuild one 50 footer.  We have purchased a new 100 foot hoop house to take the place of the one big one. We are getting closer, but the strong winds today mean that it is not the day to cover a hoop house with plastic!

The Suffolk horses are becoming accustomed to jumping up on the treadmill and Ken milled some more flour, with their help, last Saturday. Our small mill is slow and we are wondering if we should buy another small mill and run two at once or purchase a larger mill. We’ll see.

Our chickens are starting to lay more eggs as they gear up after a winter “off” getting ready for the CSA season. We have ordered some young ready-to-lay pullets for the middle of May to replace some of our older hens.  They are really enjoying scratching around since the snow has disappeared. We will have some extra eggs for sale at the farm before the CSA season begins for anyone who wants to come out for some real free range eggs!

As the snow disappears we are getting ready to work land and hope to have some seeds in the ground next week. Ken is happy that the horses are in good shape to start the spring work because of all the logging and treadmill work they have done already.

Our CSA membership is gradually filling up, but we still have some shares available for the 2014 season and welcome new members.

I’ve spent part of the winter developing a reliable Sourdough Bread recipe using 100% of our own sifted whole wheat. Ken has spent part of his winter setting up a horse treadmill connected to a flour mill with a sifter to grind and sift our wheat. Horse Treadmill in Action

Sourdough Whole Wheat Bread

Sourdough Starter  – follow a standard recipe to get a mature starter or get some from a friend.

I feed the sourdough every day: Discard all but one Tablespoon of starter and feed it with about ¼ cup of water and 1/3 cup of flour to make a relatively thick paste. If you do this every day or even twice a day, it will stay fresh and be active and ready to bake with anytime. If you are not going to bake for a week it can be kept in the fridge, but it needs to be taken out before your baking day and “woken up” with at least one feeding the night before you intend to bake. I use a small glass container with a plastic lid.  If refrigerated it needs to be “fed” at least once a week even if you don’t use it.  When the sourdough is fed often enough and mixed with more flour to make a paste like consistency it will have a nutty smell and not be too sour.

I use a scale to measure the ingredients for the bread. I have added times to the following directions to give an idea of when each stage could be done, however the start time can be adjusted to suit your schedule.

 Day One  – Sourdough  – 8:00 a.m.

Measure the following into a bowl:

50 g. mature sourdough starter

200 g.  – 90 degree Fahrenheit spring or well water

250 g. –  Orchard Hill Farm sifted whole-wheat flour

Mix together and cover

Leave at room temperature 6 to 8 hours.

Final Dough – 2-4 p.m.

792 g.  – 90 degree Fahrenheit spring or well water

960 g.  – Orchard Hill Farm sifted whole-wheat flour

Mix together, cover and let stand 30 minutes

After 30 minutes add:

432 g. sourdough

25g. sea salt

Wet your hand to work with the dough to keep it from sticking as you do the following:

Wait 15 – 30 minutes and stretch and fold dough, cover.

Wait 15 – 30 minutes and stretch and fold dough again, cover.

Wait 15 – 30 minutes and stretch and fold dough again, cover.

About 5 hours after starting to mix the final dough or when dough is about double in volume:

Divide –  8:00 – 9:00 p.m.

Dust the counter with flour and ease the dough out of its container. Use a dough scraper to cut the dough in half.  Shape into a ball with the scraper and your hands. The dough will be very wet, but that is OK. Transfer dough onto a floured piece of linen fabric. The dough does not stick to linen, this is important! (I cut up an old linen tablecloth and it works well.) Gather up the linen cloth by the corners and transfer to a bowl.  Repeat with the remainder of the dough.

Proof

Place bowls in a plastic bag and refrigerate over night or for 12 – 13 hours.

Day Two  – 8:15 a.m.

Preheat oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit. Put Dutch ovens, with lids, in oven to preheat and wait about 45 minutes.  (If you only have one Dutch oven you can bake the loaves separately, just leave the second in the fridge while the first is baking and reheat the Dutch oven before reusing for about 5 minutes.)

Bake – 9:00 a.m.

With oven mitts carefully remove the Dutch oven from the oven. Remove lid.

Dust the interior of the Dutch oven with rice flour.  Lift the dough out of the bowl holding the corners of the linen cloth. Supporting the dough with your hand turn over and gently place the dough into the Dutch oven pull the linen cloth away from the dough. Cover with the lid. Repeat with the second proofed loaf. Place the Dutch ovens into the oven and bake for 30 minutes with the covers on. Remove the covers and continue baking for about 15 minutes. Remove the Dutch ovens from the oven and turn bread out on to a cooling rack. The bread should sound hollow when hit on the bottom and appear well browned.  This should result in a crusty loaf with a very moist interior.

Today I did the first seeding in the greenhouse for the 2014 CSA season. It is always exciting to start the new young seedlings. I enjoy greenhouse work and the anticipation of a new gardening season. Onions, leeks for the main garden and early lettuce and pac choi for the hoop houses are the first seeds that I plant. We are trialling different potting soil mixes this year so it requires an extra layer of organization and record keeping. Ken wants to see if worm castings make a difference  to the seedling health. There are claims that it will cut down of fungus growth.

Ken and Grayden have been working at pruning our fruit trees and cutting and skidding out logs to be cut up later for firewood and lumber.

January came and went and February is almost over! We have had a busy snowy winter filled with all the usual winter activities: hiring interns;  farmer meetings and conferences; reading and stoking the fire as well as CSA seed ordering and garden planning. Ken has been busy sawing lumber and getting the horse tread mill /flour mill set up. It is almost ready to try out. We will have to have a special post just for that!   I have been perfecting a sourdough bread recipe that uses 100% Orchard Hill Farm sifted whole wheat flour. A u-tube video is coming soon…

Ken continues to study soil plant nutrition and as always he is striving to find ways to improve the nutritional quality of the food we produce on our farm for our CSA. This week we got out the refractometer and measured some of our stored vegetables with a  Birx test (measure of sugar and minerals in the juice of the fruit or vegetable or the sap of the plant). One carrot was 6.5 (a little better than average) and the Sweet Dumpling Squash 12.5 ( between good and excellent).

Our Suffolk Punch horses are wintering well. The frozen ground and snow pack make for a good winter paddock. It is much better than a muddy wet winter. Eli, our young Suffolk Stallion, is coming three this year and is proving to be a very well mannered sensible horse.  He is running with the herd and they are all getting along. We installed wooden floors in all the standing stalls with ash from our woods, that Ken was able to saw himself. It made mucking out today easier and should be better for the horses legs when they are in their stalls.

Our son, Grayden, has moved back home and plans to work on the farm part time this season. It is great to have him around and we look forward an upswing in the quality of the photo record of the farm as he adds his professional skills in that area. (He took the photos for this entry and formatted them.) We also anticipate a good season with an able team of interns we expect the first three to arrive the last week of March. The fourth is coming in May, after her schooling is finished.

Our big news on the Suffolk front is that we are going to host the American Suffolk Horse Association Annual Meeting here September 12-14. Ken has been dreaming up lots of fun activities for the horses. We will be inviting Suffolk owners to bring horses here to show off and participate in events. Suffolk horses are a rare bred and it is exciting to have and event in Ontario to celebrate the breed.

As the year draws to a close one job that always needs doing is tucking in next year’s strawberries for the winter with mulch. As we were working at the job, I realized that Ken and I have mulched strawberries every year since 1978, when we grew our first plants. It is one of the most consistent annual farm jobs of our farming careers. Completing the farming year with a familiar annual task is satisfying. I enjoy the change of pace that goes with the seasons and our farming life, the rhythms and patterns are somehow reassuring. Now I am ready to turn my focus inward and enjoy nesting, holidays and a bit of hibernation before I start ordering seeds and planning next year’s garden.

We managed to have a beautiful last Fall CSA pick-up despite the big snow that proceeded it. CSA member, Jim Conrad, helped us out with all the Fall pick-ups and was ready with his camera on the last day. I am happy he was able to get some pictures of the beautiful array of produce before the pick-up began.

Ken and Bill have been sawing logs and the”backlog” is finally beginning to go down a bit. After the Fall CSA ended Ken and I took off for a week in Oregon to visit our daughter and her family. While Ken was there he toured some wood working and lumber businesses and was inspired by the beauty  of wood and what can be made from it.

I have had time to hunt up some recipes and found a corn muffin that uses squash! It is quite yummy. The last time I made it I used sweet potato instead of squash and that worked well too. It is from The Cook’s Garden Edited by Liz Primeau (Canadian Gardening Collection).

BUTTERCUP CORN MUFFINS

1 cup cornmeal

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 3/4 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp salt

1 tbsp. chopped fresh marjoram or oregano

1 tbsp. chopped parsley

1 or 2 green onions, finely chopped

1 cup fresh or frozen (thawed, drained) corn

2 large eggs

3/4 cup plain yogurt

3/4 cup olive oil

1 cup mashed, cooked buttercup squash

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Lightly butter muffin tin and set aside.

In large bowl, combine cornmeal, flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, marjoram, parsley, green onions and corn. Stir together well, then set aside.

In another mixing bowl, beat eggs together lightly, then incorporate yogurt and olive oil. Blend in squash until mixture is smooth. Add squash mixture to the cornmeal mixture and stir until well incorporated, but do not beat heavily.

Spoon mixture into muffin cups about 2/3 full. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes, or until browned and a tester emerges cleanly. Let cool for a few minutes in the muffing tin. Serve warm with butter and red pepper jelly.

We have been moving snow for the past two days after the 30 inches we got on Saturday night. Fortunately, we have the root crops for next Saturday’s  last Fall CSA pick-up all dug and in cold storage! We will be digging kale out of the snow later in the week and harvesting salad greens from under one collapsed hoop house. The weight of the snow was too much for it! Yesterday, we took a team of Suffolk Punch horses out to break a trail with the big bob sled and they were so worn out from ploughing through the snow that we had to turn around before we reached the main garden area and head back up to the barn. The snow has settled somewhat today and we are expecting to be able to make it down to the garden by the end of the week.

I have had my eye out for onion recipes because we have had such a bumper crop of onions. The following two recipes are from Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard.

Caramelized Red Onion Relish 

Balsamic vinegar is the magic ingredient in this recipe. It adds a pungent sweetness to the caramelized onions. Serve with barbecued or broiled meats such as steak, lamb chops and chicken.

2               large red onions, peeled

1/4 cup    firmly packed brown sugar

1 cup        dry red wine

3 tbsp       balsamic vinegar

1/8 tsp      each: salt and freshly ground pepper

1.  Slice onions into very thin slices. Combine onions and sugar in a heavy non-stick skillet. Cook, uncovered, over medium-high heat for about 25 minutes or until onions turn golden and start to caramelize, stirring frequently.

2.  Stir in wine and vinegar. Bring to a boil over hight heat, reduce heat to low and cook for about 15 minutes or until most of the liquid has evaporated, stirring frequently.

3.  Season to taste with salt and pepper. Spoon into clean jar and refrigerate to use within 3 weeks or freeze.

Caramelized Red Onion and Tomato Pizza 

This tasty appetizer is easily prepared using Caramelized Red Onion Relish

1/2 cup       Caramelized Red Onion Relish

4                  individual pizza crusts

1                  medium tomato, diced

2 cups       shredded mozzarella cheese

Divide onion mixture among pizza crusts, spreading evenly. Combine tomato and cheese; sprinkle over onion. Bake in a 350 degree F oven for about 10 minutes or until hot and cheese is melted. Cut each pizza into 6 wedges.

Makes 24 appetizers.

It’s hard to believe that we are already at the end of the Spring/Summer CSA season! Yesterday, it felt more like July with the hot dry weather. I guess we are making up for the cool spring. Our squash harvest has been more drawn out than ever before, while we wait for some of the squash to ripen in the field. It got off to a slow start in the spring and has needed the warm sunny weather of the last week to catch up. We are planning on bringing all the remaining squash up today. Yesterday, we finished digging the last six rows of potatoes and the field has been disced. The popcorn and ornamental corn was all picked too. Gradually, we are finishing up all the big fall harvest jobs and then we have the garlic to plant and the winter fire wood to bring up to the woodshed. Our pick-up room doubles as our wood shed. Once the main season CSA is finished we fill it up with firewood. The greenhouse is used as our Fall CSA pick-up room, because it doesn’t freeze. The produce for the Fall CSA looks great and we are looking forward to abundant harvests of stored and fresh picked produce throughout the fall. Today, we will plant  a couple of the hoop houses for fresh baby greens to add to the in November pick-ups. I enjoy the challenge of extending the season and the fresh picked fall greens have such full flavour they are a big hit. We still have a few spots left in our Fall CSA.

We are accepting applications for the 2014 Spring/Fall CSA  – Click the following link: Orchard Hill Farm Application

Ken and I had a wonderful trip to Vermont and saw about 30 Suffolk Punch Draft horses on our travels. Considering it is a rare breed that was quite something. We also had fun visiting Jolianne and Jonathan, two of our past apprentices and seeing their CSA farm operation Ferme Melilot in Quebec. (www.fermemelilot.com). It’s amazing how quickly they have advanced considering how long it took us to find our way forward with our CSA farming. It is a tribute to the individuals, but also demonstrates the great benefit there is in farm apprenticeships. On route we stopped off at Prince Edward County and I picked up a cookbook with some seasonal recipes that looked good. Here are a couple adapted from The Miller’s House Cookbook by Robert Simpson:

GRATED RUTABAGA CAKES

1 lb rutabaga, peeled

1/2 lb baking potatoes

1/3 cup all-purpose flour

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 egg yolk

1/2 cup thinly sliced green onion or cooking onion

1/2 cup vegetable oil

Coarsely grate the rutabaga and potatoes. In a kitchen towel squeeze the grated vegetables to extract the excess liquid. In a bowl toss the grated vegetables with the flour, stir in the whole eggs, egg yolk, onion and season the mixture with salt and pepper.

In a large skillet heat 2 tbsp of the oil over moderate heat until it is hot but not smoking and in it fry rounded tablespoons of the mixture in batches, flattening the cakes with a slotted spatula, for 1-3 minutes on each side, or until they are golden and tender. Transfer the cakes as they are fried to a warm heat proof platter, and adding more oil to the skillet as needed. If necessary,reheat the cakes before serving.

yield: about 20 cakes

SWEET POTATO SOUP

1/2 cup onion, finely chopped

1/2 cup leeks, finely chopped ( add 1 cup onion if you don’t have leeks)

1 large cloves garlic, minced

2 large carrots, sliced thin

2 tbsp  unsalted butter

1/2 lb sweet potato (2 medium size)

1 baking potato

2 1/2  –  3 cups chicken broth

1/2 cup white wine

3/4 cup water

Cook the onion, leeks, garlic and carrots in the butter over moderate heat, stirring, until the vegetables are soft. Add the sweet potatoes, baking potato, broth, wine and water and simmer the mixture covered for 15-20 minutes or until vegetables are very tender.

In blender puree the mixture until it is very smooth.  Add additional broth to thin if necessary. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

serves 4  to 5

We tried the horse drawn potato digger to dig our sweet potatoes and it worked like a charm! The sweet potatoes are now curing in one of our hoop houses. They are different than any other vegetable because they need heat to get sweet instead of cold.