Yesterday we had about 50 South Western Ontario CRAFT (Collaborative Regional Alliance for Farmer Training) interns from other organic farms in Southwestern Ontario come to our farm. The  day included an extensive tour of the farm, pot-luck lunch, a soils workshop and demonstration of various horse drawn implements in the main garden. We enjoyed hosting this group of fine young  people who have given the season over to learning about organic farming on various farms in our region.

CSA member Marianne Campbell has shared a couple of recipes that she has enjoyed. With the anticipation of Zucchini coming and for those of you who still have fennel in the fridge and aren’t quite sure what to do with it…keep in mind that any summer squash can be substituted for zucchini.

Zucchini Relish

 5 cups ground zucchini with peel

2 cups ground onion

2½ tbsp. coarse (pickling) salt

1 small green pepper, seeded and ground

1 small red pepper, seeded and ground

1¼ cups white vinegar

2½ cups granulated sugar

1 tbsp. celery seed

2 tsp. cornstarch

1½ tsp. dry mustard powder

1½ tsp. turmeric

1½ tsp. nutmeg

¼ tsp. pepper

Combine zucchini, onion and salt in large bowl. Cover and let stand overnight on counter. Drain. Rinse in cold water. Drain. Turn into large pot.

Add remaining ingredients. Heat on medium-high, stirring often, until it boils. Boil, uncovered, for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Pour into hot sterilized jars to within ¼ inch of top. Seal. Makes 5 to 6 half pint jars.

Source: Company’s Coming “Preserves” by Jean Paré

 

Shrimp and Couscous Salad with Fennel

1 ¼ cup whole-wheat couscous

1 ½ cup boiling chicken broth

3 tbsp. olive oil

Zest and juice of 1 large orange

2 tbsp. lemon juice

1 tsp. salt

½ tsp. red pepper flakes

12 large shrimp

½ fennel bulb, diced

½ sweet red pepper, diced

¼ cup toasted slivered almonds

½ cup fennel fronds

Place the couscous in a medium glass or stainless bowl. Pour the boiling chicken broth over top. Stir to combine. Cover with a lid or plastic wrap and let sit for 5 minutes. Fluff with a fork and let cool.

In a medium glass blow, combine the olive oil, orange zest, orange juice, lemon juice, salt and red pepper flakes. Whisk to combine. Add the shrimp and set aside.

When the couscous is cool, add the fennel and red pepper.

Add the dressing with the shrimp.  Add the almonds and fennel fronds. Toss well.

Season with salt and pepper, if necessary, and serve.

(Serves 4) Source: London Free Press

 

June always brings with it the big push to get all the main transplanting done. Monday, we got the winter squash and pumpkin transplants planted. Wednesday, with the help of our new horse drawn transplanter, we planted out the melons, summer squash, second succession planting of brassicas and sweet potatoes. Thursday, we were planting the first succesion planting of sweet corn transplants when we got rained out. We are hoping to finish it tomorrow afernoon, if it is dry enough. Today, we covered all the melons and summer squash with row cover (CSA working shares helped too), weeded the hoop houses and started in on trellising the tomatoes all before we began the harvest and washing of the CSA vegetables for tomorrow’s pick-up.

Sam, our apprentice, was cooking supper on Tuesday afternoon, when a CSA member came into the house. The Spinach Casserole he was making smelled so good that the recipe was requested so here it is:

We have been working so hard to get the spring work done that the Apprentice Introductions are long overdue. We appreciate all the efforts of everyone on our farm team this spring and look forward to seeing results of all the preparation that has gone into production thus far as the season unfolds. Spring is always welcome after the winter, but it is always an anxious time for me as I care for all the little plants and try to work with the weather not knowing what the spring will be like. Once the seeds and transplants are in the ground and growing I am always relieved. We are almost there now, with the exception of succession plantings. Now I am hoping for some warmer weather to make things grow!

My name is Jean-François Langlais. I come from Québec. I studied organic agriculture at Cegep de Victoraville. I took a break of my studies to come at Orchard Hill Farm and I will finish my programm next winter. I wish to develop more practical agriculture skills and learn more about drafts horses. I wish to have a farm using them later! I want to learn English too, because, as you probably guess, my first language is French! Don’t be shy to talk to me, I enjoy every occasion to meet people and improve my English by the same occasion! See you next time!

Written by Sam Bass: I am so happy to be here helping in a small way to grow your vegetables on this beautiful piece of land. This is my first month in Canada. I grew up in Austin, Texas, but left home to attend college in Massachusetts, where I studied literature. When I graduated I decided to pursue agriculture, and worked for two years on a vegetable farm in New Jersey. I came to Orchard Hill to learn to work with draft horses, after meeting a former apprentice, Lisa Miskelly, who spoke very highly of the apprenticeship here.

Learning to care for even a small piece of earth is so humbling. All that I do not know and want to learn often overwhelms me. I am deeply grateful to Ken and Martha for allowing young people like myself to come onto a farm and into a home that is so nurturing, and giving so generously of their time and knowledge. I look forward to coming to know you, the members, over the course of the season. You make all of our lives possible by your support. I am sure this farm gives beauty and sustenance to your lives as it does to mine, and it will be good to share its bounty with you.

Hi! My name is Stephanie Valiquette. I’m from Quebec. Before I arrived at Orchard Hill Fram I did some fruit picking, dairy farming and did a little market garden with my pony. I’ve studied Organic Farm Management a bit and now I am really enjoying learning here. I’m glad that CSA members come to Orchard Hill Farm to be part of encouraging small diversified farming. I would like to see more farms like this around the world. Farms where we can enjoy good work while empowering ourselves and our communities with good food to root our bodies to the earth. I think farms can be places where we find partnership and sharing to strengthen our humanity. I’m grateful to learn here and meet everyone that is part of the farm, each with their own unique vision and experience. I am looking forward to meeting more CSA members during the summer!

Hi there, Bill here for another year at OHF. Alongside my responsibilities as senior apprentice, I have undertaken a small farm project of my own with the guidance of Ken and Martha. With this project I intend to move toward greater agricultural independence (with the help of some horses of course) and provide fresh food choices for those who would like them. This season I will be offering you the usual pork sausage selections, as well as bacon and whole chickens. Thank you for your support.

Thanks to CSA member Judy Sinasac for the following recipe. She said that she searched for a recipe that wasn’t too sweet.

Dee-lish!!!

Rhubarb Crisp

1 1/2 lb rhubarb, trimmed and cut into 1/2 inch cubes -about 6 cups
3/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup a.p. flour
1/2 tsp cinnamon
Mix well, spread in greased 8 (9″) cake pan

Topping
1/2 cup a.p. flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup brown sugar
3/4 cup rolled oats (regular, not quick cooked)
1/2 cup butter, melted

For the topping, toss everything but the butter together. Drizzle in butter, mix well. Sprinkle over the rhubarb. Bake in 375 F oven for 30 minutes.

Our CSA got off to a great start on Saturday, May 18 followed by the first Tuesday pick-up on May 21.  It is always very satisfying to gather together the first of the produce we have been working so hard to produce and display it in the pick-up. Seeing returning CSA members is like a reunion of friends and welcoming new members into our food centered community is a joyous occasion. Our apprentices feel a sense of accomplishment when they harvest the first of our crops, that they helped plant and nurture. It is impossible to communicate how much care, planning and preparation goes into the production of the spinach, spears of asparagus, heads of lettuce etc. we grow, using organic methods, starting with attention to soil fertility and the love of our land, but when I see the bounty and taste it’s goodness I am deeply fulfilled to know that we are blessed to be able to share it with so many families through our CSA.

We have had the successful launch of our new horse drawn transplanter.  We started with the onions and leeks, which are the most difficult to  plant, at, 6 inch spacings, however it sure did make the tomatoes, at 2 feet spacing, seem like a breeze by comparison. Gena and Gwen, our older well trained Suffolk horses, were the stars of the show as they walked VERY slowly down the row giving us time to get the plants into the carousel. We still have some kinks to iron out, but overall it has gone very well with a minimal amount of swearing.  My back appreciates the change and it has pulled Ken on to the transplanting crew!

On the holiday Monday, May 20 we  had a Plough Day here at the farm for the Southwestern Ontario Draft Horse Club. We had 19 heavy horses ploughing in our south field. It was a beautiful day and our apprentices all enjoyed to opportunity to try their hands at ploughing and to see other teams and teamsters.

We are very happy that Sam Bass has arrived from the U.S. as our fifth apprentice. He has been here for a week now and already we are feeling a bit more caught up with our weeding!

 

May has arrived with warm dry weather that has resulted a big push to catch up with all our planting at once! The past week has been very busy…the spring grain is in for us as well as Bill’s two small fields. Our Suffolk Punch Draft Horses worked hard on the process as they cultivated, spread compost, cultivated again, seeded and rolled all the grain fields. We also got the final hoop house up and the hoop house tomatoes are crying to be planted! We did manage to plant the strawberries for 2014, a new asparagus field and all of this years potatoes. The greenhouse was bursting at the seems and we moved our transplants out doors to “harden off” so that we had room to start the next flush of brassicas as well as cucurbites to be transplanted later this month (melons, squash, pumpkin and cucumber). Hopefully, in the coming week we can get the onions, leeks, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, celery, celeriac transplants that are ready out into the field. Ken still has some work to do on the new horse drawn transplanter and I have my fingers crossed that it will run smoothly!

Looking at the sudden growth of the rhubarb and the first spears of asparagus we have decided to have our first Saturday CSA pick-up on May 18 and first Tuesday CSA pick-up on May 21. It’s always a leap of faith to make our initial deep dive into the CSA pick-up season. However, things seem to be jumping now and we expect they will come along as usual. We just have to keep swimming and remember to come up for air once in a while.

We are happy to finally have some warm weather! The rhubarb is poking up and the spinach in Hoop House “A” has germinated under the row cover. The head lettuce and pac choi that were planted in Hoop House “B” are also growing nicely under row cover. We have moved three of the hoop houses and have only the tomato hoop house  to move. The brassicas: broccoli; cabbage; cauliflower and kohlrabi that we started in the greenhouse have grown well.  We are hoping to have sturdy transplants the beginning of May, when we will use our transplanter for the first time pulled with our Suffolk Punch horses. Although the spring seems to be getting off to a slow start I am encouraged that the seedlings are growing and look healthy. The CSA will start as soon as everything has grown enough.

Everyone here has been working hard with many different jobs. Around the edges of farm work all of our firewood for next winter has been cut and split! It makes quite a mountain of firewood. When we have a cold spring we use a lot of wood between our house, the greenhouse and the bunkhouse. Tonight is the first night that I haven’t started a fire in the greenhouse since the beginning of March, when we started the first transplants.

The ground for the main garden has mostly been ploughed and we are working on preparing the fields for spring grain. There is always more to do in a day than we can do, especially when the land dries out, but we keep plugging along and we get there eventually.

We have had two draft horse workshops this April. During the first, our new apprentices joined in as an introduction to working with the draft horses. The second just finished today. Everyone was a good sport about carrying on despite the rain and cold. Ken searched for a field that was dry enough to plough today and managed to find a spot for the workshop participants to try ploughing. In the meantime, we have been transplanting in the greenhouse and managed to do the early garden seeding outside and cover it with row cover before the rain started. We are waiting for a break from the wind to put up the plastic on our third hoop house. Next week we have two more hoop houses to move and plant. It was encouraging to me today to peek under the row cover in hoop house number one and see that the spinach has germinated. It feels like a real leap of faith this year to believe that warm weather will come and the plants will grow.

Early spring brings a variety of activities as we gear up for the start of our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture). Our apprentices have been with us for a week now and have been busy with a variety of jobs. Initially, they worked in our passive solar/wood heated greenhouse. The onions and leeks are growing well. We will be planting them with a transplanter that is being retrofitted to be pulled by our Suffolk Punch draft horses (a rare breed that originated in Suffolk, England). The broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage and kohlrabi seeds that were planted a week ago are popping up.

Another of the first jobs that we do is to get our hoop houses up and running in order to have early lettuce, pac choi, spinach, mixed greens and green onions to accompany our early perennial crops of rhubarb and asparagus. The process began with plowing under the clover cover crop with a team of Suffolks. The clover was planted last year to prevent erosion over the winter and fix nitrogen. After spreading compost and cultivating it, the hoop house was erected and the first transplanting of the season began.

Today we worked on getting the frame ready for another hoop house and started plowing the main garden area with the horses.

March brings the start up of the greenhouse regardless of how cold or warm the weather is. We started up the wood-stove in the greenhouse to keep it warm on the cloudy days and sub zero nights that we have been experiencing. It turned out that Michelle Jory was here again this year to help with the first tray filling and this year she took the picture of me…The first lettuce and pac choi transplants for the hoop houses are up. Our onions and leeks that we start from seed are coming along. It looks like we will have to replant some onions to make up for the poor germination of some varieties. Saturday, I brought out the sweet potatoes that wintered over in our attic to start slips. We will root the shoots and then plant them in 50 cell trays. We will then wait until all danger of frost has past to plant them out in the garden.

Our transplanter has arrived and Ken and Bill are working to retrofit it to be pulled by our Suffolk Punch horses. It will be a learning year for the transplanter. Part of the challenge with the onions is that in order to use the transplanter I planted the seeds in 200 cell trays. Previous years I broadcast seeds into flats to be separated and planted individually by hand. This year,  I carefully counted out two seeds per cell. Where the germination was poor we have some empty cells. Next year, I will plant four seeds per cell and thin out where necessary.

Friday, Bill broadcast the red clover seed onto the winter cereal crops. The under seeding will grow under the wheat and rye and when the grain is harvested the under seeding will grow on. The clover will become a cover crop to fix nitrogen and protect the soil from erosion over the winter.  It is good to do the under seeding on a day when there is a bit of snow on the ground so that you can see where you have already spread the seed. In the spring when the snow melts it helps water in the little seeds and the seed settles into the soft earth where it waits to germinate and spring forth.

Ken has been doing some round pen training with three of our young horses. The jury is still out on what to do with our two young stallions. We will see how they progress.

The arrival of spring is bringing the first three of our new apprentices, who expect to be with us until Thanksgiving. We are looking forward to a good season and are itching to get out to the field and start ploughing the CSA garden. One of our first jobs will be to move the hoop houses and get them ready for the first spring planting.

 

February brings our annual Logging Workshop. Ken marks the trees in the woodlot and then fells them to be ready for the big day. He then spends several days “sharp shoeing” our Suffolk Punch horses so that they have good traction for pulling in icy conditions. One team moves the logs down to the trail in the woods and lines them up ready for the other team to pull them out  into the field.  Some of the small and damaged logs will be cut up and split for our 2014 winter firewood and other good logs will be sawn into lumber with the sawmill. We were happy to have good conditions for logging – enough snow for the logs to skid along on without getting dirty, but not so much that it was hard to walk around in the woods. The sun came out and made for a very pleasant day in the woods.

The sun also makes the greenhouse warm up and we are ready to start the first onions, leeks and head lettuce the beginning of March.