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!

What a backward spring! We are all ready to go, waiting for the weather to warm up to let us out on the land! Ken and the apprentices have drug out and serviced our equipment. Earlier in the week Ken was able to do a bit of “snow ploughing” with our Suffolk horses in the field, because the ground was thawed under the snow, but this morning the snow is gone and the ground is frozen again! I feel like we are horses chomping at the bit waiting to get on the land! However, we are getting a lot of odd jobs done and it is important to have things in place so that when the window does open we are ready to take off running. Hopefully, we will be able to do some more ploughing this afternoon. Four of our five hoop houses are up and planted we have one more ready for its new plastic and then we will plant it. Once things warm up the everything should come along quickly.

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.