Elaiza on left and Jessica on right
We had a fair-well party for Elaiza the night before she flew back to Germany. Elaiza came as part of her Walforf school grade nine curriculum to work on our farm for three months. She was a great help in growing the produce for the CSA and worked well with the horses. An exceptional young women who fit in well. She and Jessica are good friends and shared a room in the bunkhouse. Jessica is an organic agriculture student from Quebec who has been here since the end of May and will be leaving the end of this month. She brought with her a keen interest in organic agriculture and a desire to learn as much as she can while she is here to apply to her future farming career. We have certainly been blessed with a group of wonderful young people again this season to help us run the farm for yet another year.

Our CSA working shares helped us harvest a beautiful crop of garlic last Tuesday and Thursday. It is now hanging to dry. Everything continues to grow well in the garden. Heat and moisture are welcome and we are expecting a bumper corp of potatoes and tomatoes. The melons, cucumber and squash are growing well too. We hope the Downy Mildew won’t kill the plants before they can produce a good crop. Ken was able to combine our early Harvard wheat last week between the rains. We now need some dry weather so we can bale up the straw.

Another week as flown by! I took some time this morning to take some CSA garden shots.

CSA garden in July
The Summer squash has started and yesterday we harvested our first summer cabbage. It’s very mild and good in cabbage salad! Most of you know how to use summer squash, but we do have some past recipes on the blog from previous years. I haven’t transferred them all to the new recipe section of this website, but if you type in a vegetable name in our “Search this site” box the old entries will come up. We have some summer squash, beet and lots of other vegetable recipes. We are always happy to post new recipe ideas. Please email your favorites and I will post them! Many people have asked what to do with kohlrabi and fennel and ideas other than chopping them up in salad or adding them to stir fry are welcome!

The new Suffolk stallion, Chester, is settling in. He has been driven single, but we are waiting to introduce him to the herd until after the mares have been bred. So far none of our mares have been interested… Our first cut hay is all baled and we hope to get in all mowed away tomorrow morning. So our horses won’t go hungry this winter.

The egg production has been gradually increasing with the new fence. We still aren’t able to keep up with the demand from our CSA members. However, we do still have lots of sausage and freshly ground whole wheat flour available for sale.

CSA member Avery and toad in pcik-up room
We have had a very good strawberry season this year and many CSA members have taken advantage of our Pick-your-own strawberry option. Three full weeks of berries is about as good as it gets with regular season strawberries.

We are happy to have CSA members signing up to help with the harvest and the washing of produce for our pick-ups. The gardens are in good shape. It is always a relief to have the majority of the crops seeded, transplanted and mulched. We have taken off the row cover from the squash, corn, melons and early plantings and the pathways in the garden that we seeded down are growing. The garden looks its best in early July when the majority of the crops are still growing well. We got a bit of rain yesterday, but plan to start irrigating later this week and hope to finish our second cut hay. (That is if the weather forecast is correct…)

Chester, the stallion we bought a half share in, arrived yesterday. Ken is doing a bit of work with him in the round pen before he tries hooking him up to the stone boat. Jazz our new mare is adjusting to being here, however we don’t trust her in the barn with children. WE ASK THAT PARENTS KEEP THEIR CHILDREN OUT OF THE BARN. We would rather be safe than sorry. The horses we raise here become accustom to people from the time they are foals, however new horses are not so trustworthy.

The New Addition
We have had a busy week on the farm! The newest addition is a very sweet jersey calf. We hope that she will become our future milk cow on the farm…Caesar is very interested in her, but especially likes to lick our hands after we have fed her.

We harvested some beautiful head lettuce and Pac Choi from our hoop houses for the first pick-up of the season. (See pictures in the blog from the beginning of April when they were planted.) It is always great to see all our old CSA members again when the pick-ups begin and to welcome new members to the farm.

Sheri, Nora and Elaisa harvesting in hoop house for first pick-up

CRAFT DAT at Orchard Hill
Wednesday we had the first CRAFT Day of the season at our farm and over 80 farmers and apprentices from southwestern Ontario came to our farm for the day. How wonderful it is to see so many young farmers in the making! As the “work project” for the day we mulched a 50’x 375′ plot in the garden with old hay for the squash and pumpkins. It only took about 10 minutes to mulch the whole area! We have a link to CRAFT if you are interested to learn more about it.

Jesse and Nora single row cultivating with Gena
Nora and Jesse have been doing quite a bit of work with the horses this spring and I finally caught them in action with a single horse.  Working with a single horse is one of Jesse’s  favorite horse driving activities. It sure beats the rototiller in terms of enjoyment!

We are gearing up for the first pick-up on Tuesday, May 11.  Yesterday, we began the spring cleaning in the pick-up room, half of which serves as a wood shed during the winter months.  It always amazes me how much “stuff” accumulates in a temporarily unused space! Our planting of seeds in the greenhouse and outdoors continues at a great pace.  We tuck in the outdoor plantings with row cover to get them off to a good start.  There are a good stands of peas, spinach, beets and carrots already up and growing to provide our CSA with lots of produce in a few weeks.  In the meantime, the hoop houses will be supplementing our rhubarb and asparagus plantings with lettuce, radishes, green onions and even some Pac Choi.

Chester
Our big news is that we are purchasing a new stallion with another Suffolk breeder from Ontario. “Chester” will be coming to the farm sometime in July. Ken just couldn’t help himself from going back into the breeding of Suffolk draft horses. This means next year we should have some foals again…

Our CSA is full for the 2010 season. We begin our pick-ups next week Tuesday, May 11 and Saturday, May 15. Members can come to the farm on their chosen pick-up day any time between 11:00 am and 7:00 pm. They need to bring their own containers to hold produce.