Tag: Suffolk Punch

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Lisa Foal Sitting

The summer is flying by! We are grateful for the rain last night – it will save us another round of irrigation. The hot weather is bringing on our heat loving crops like eggplant, tomatoes and sweet corn. Unfortunately, the raccoons have been making a mess in the corn patch, despite the electric fence barrier. Ken put up our heavy duty fencer last night and we hope that will discourage them! We harvested our garlic this week and it is hanging up to cure. Yesterday Ken took off our early planted oats – the horses will be happy about that throughout the year. Our two foals Eli and Wendell are doing well. Their mothers went back to work this week so that we could have two teams of three horses working to plow the 2012 garden area. Lisa was employed foal sitting in a little improvised outdoor stall – the ‘playpen’ – near the field so the mothers could nurse the foals without having to come all the way up to the barn. It would take a full time photographer to keep up with all the photographs we could take every day. Let alone getting it together to share them with everyone! We’re a small farm, but a busy one that feeds many.

I have been very pleased with the cucumbers that we have been harvesting from our hoop houses. We moved the slicing cucumber plants into the hoop houses this year because so many years the slicing cucumbers that we planted outside died off early from Downy Mildew. The hoophouses protect the plants from infection and keeps the plants bearing longer. Last year we tried a few varieties and chose “Tasty Green” as the one that did the best under our conditions.
Lisa and Grahame Riding up from the Field

We continue to appreciate the efforts of our apprentices. Ryan Brennen has finished his sojourn here at Orchard Hill and Tara Smedbol will be joining us later this week for the remainder of the season. We have just had a visit from Ava Richardson, who was an apprentice here in 2003. She was visiting with her husband from Japan. Ava has been working in Japan teaching for the past three years and is hoping to return to Canada with her husband and take up farming again. We received a letter this week from Anna McFaul, who was an apprentice here in 2008 and 2009. Anna is travelling for a year and is in New Zealand enjoying all the fruit that they grow there. We regularly receive emails from past apprentices who are fondly remembering their time here, a high number of whom are now farming themselves. It’s curious to have so many fledglings fly out of our ‘nest’ here on the farm. When we see them years later, I want to know if they’re eating properly, looking healthy, found a good mate…we have a vibrant family of past apprentices.

Three Generations in the Kitchen

Our daughter, Ellen, is visiting from Portland, Oregon until the end of August and we are extremely happy to have her home for a longer visit than usual. Her husband will be joining her for a week on Saturday. They are thinking of possibly moving to Ontario next year. Ellen has been busy in the kitchen doing preserving and helping to feed the crowd that gathers around our table for meals. It’s also great to have her experienced hand in the field…she and I started the CSA on our farm in 1997 to help fund her university education!

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Ryan with Wendell and Gwen

Gwen had her Suffolk Punch foal ready to greet us on Tuesday morning! A beautiful stud colt with a white diamond on his forehead. Ryan will be leaving our farm this week and was hoping the foal would be born before he departed.  Ryan is off to start medical school and has enjoyed being part of our farm team getting in on the ground level of good health which begins with healthy food produced in a sustainable manor.  We wish him well and although we will miss him we are sure that he will be an excellent doctor.

Andy with Wendell and Gwen

The heat and dry weather have been a challenge and we are irrigating the main garden for the second time this week.  It is interesting how things balance out. Ken says that the average rain fall over the year remains fairly constant so that when we have a very wet spring we are likely to have a dry spell in the summer to balance it out…We hope it doesn’t last too long, but are glad that we have the ability to irrigate the garden.

We have new Tamworth pigs to help jump start the composting of the horse manure. They also enjoy the extra produce on CSA pick up days.

Tamworth Composting Pigs

Getting Combine Ready for Wheat Harvest

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Transplants Waiting to be Planted

We are into our second week of our CSA pick-ups.  It is always a big push to get set up for the season.  Now we are changing the rhythm of our work week to include harvest and pick-ups twice a week.  Working Shares are signing up to come out and help with the harvest and we are getting to know new members and renewing our ties with others.  It has been a challenging spring with the cold and wet weather.  We continue to plant and transplant between rains and are now waiting for the ground to dry out yet again, before we can plant the peppers, melons, eggplant and tomatoes transplants in the main garden.

Last week the resident stallion, Chester, died due to some sort of internal problem that the vet couldn’t cure or clearly identify.  We are sad  and reminded again how fragile life can be.  We shared ownership of Chester with another Suffolk breeder and who just had a filly foal sired by Chester.  Two of our mares are due to foal in June and July so Chester will live on through his offspring.

Rhubarb Patch

Rhubarb is a main stay of our early CSA pick-ups. Go to pommeroyale.com (Ellen’s blog) from “Links We Like” in the side bar for a recipe for Rhubarb Compote with Wee Almond Cakes to accompany it. I guess almonds go with rhubarb because CSA member Bonnie Wietzel has also sent her husband’s gluten free Rhubarb/ Almond recipe:

Jason’s Delicious Dessert – Organic Rhubarb Honey Almond Crunch

Dessert base ingredients:

5 cups              Chopped organic rhubarb

1/3 cup            Liquid honey

1 tbsp               Bob’s Red Mill (Gluten Free) Almond Meal

1 tsp                  Organic cinnamon

1/2 tsp             Ground ginger

Topping ingredients:

1 1/2 cup        Sliced raw almond, crumbled by hand

1/4 cup           Coco Natura Organic coconut sweetener

1/4 cup           Liquid honey

1/4 cup           Unsalted butter, melted

1 tsp                 Cinnamon

1/4 cup          Nature’s Cargo fine Himalayan salt

In a mixing bowl, stir together rhubarb, honey, almond meal, cinnamon and ginger until well mixed.  Spoon into greased 8 cup baking dish.

Add topping:

In same mixing bowl that you just emptied out, stir together all topping ingredients.  Then sprinkle topping ingredients over the rhubarb mixture.

Bake in 375 degree fahrenheit oven for 40 to 45 minutes or until the rhubarb is tender and your topping is brown.

Should serve 4 to 6 people.

Enjoy!

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We have been challenged this season to choose our start date. I can’t remember a spring when it has been so cool that we haven’t enjoyed our first asparagus by this time in the season. We did manage to squeak in a second seeding of early vegetables yesterday and uncovered our first planting. Lisa introduced us to a method of gathering up the row cover like a big crocheted braid. It will hopefully make the relaying easier. I was delighted to see a good germination of peas, spinach, carrots, beets, radish and mesclun. The row cover really makes a difference. Ken was even able to cultivate with the draft horses and his riding single row cultivator. It rained again last night so it is good to have the second batch of early seeding done! We are later than usual with our strawberry and potato planting, but hopefully we will be able plant strawberries tomorrow and potatoes the beginning of next week.

OUR CSA START DATES:

TUESDAY – MAY 17
SATURDAY – MAY 21

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Ken Plowing

Spring plowing has begun again. Ken and our Suffolk Punch draft horses got a false start in March before the last snow storm and freeze up. Now they are back at it and getting ready to plant oats as soon as possible. We will also be planting the early CSA garden as soon as we can work up our early garden area.  We did manage to plant one of our hoop houses this week to have greens for our first CSA pick-ups.

Lisa Unloading Oat Seed
Grahame Servicing Mower
Andy Plowing

Our full season apprentices have arrived. Andy, from New Zealand, has returned to fill our Senior Apprentice position. It has already been a great help to have a trained teamster to work with the draft horses. He has jumped right in doing some of the spring plowing. Lisa, from Maryland, and Grahame, from B.C., have come to become teamsters and hone their farming skills. We feel privileged to work with such fine young people as we pass on what we have learned over the past 30 plus years farming and look forward to working with them this season.

Arthur Ford Public School Planting Bean Seed

Earlier this week we had a grade two class from Arthur Ford Public School in London come to the farm for a field trip. One of the students is a CSA member and we agreed for the class to come. They enjoyed a wagon ride, egg collecting and bean planting. Normally we are too busy to host school field trips, but we squeezed it in early and were fortunate to have good weather. I am hopeful that it will stir a horticultural bent in some of the students…

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Morning Emergence of Free Range Hens From Chicken Coop

The Laying Hens are very happy to have the land free of snow! They are laying again with the longer day length and we have eggs for sale at the farm. (Available in the breezeway of the house if we aren’t around.)

Big Pigs that Escaped!

Last week our two big “composting pigs” escaped! We had just mucked out the horse stalls and put the manure in one of our three composting areas. Two “Free Range” hens had made there way into the pen and we left the door open so they could get out. What we didn’t realize was that the door to the pen next door, where the pigs were, wasn’t nailed shut! While we were eating lunch and I was anticipating my afternoon nap with pleasure I looked out the window and saw two 500 lb. pigs rooting around in the horse paddock! Ken and I spent the next 1 1/2 hours chasing pigs before we got them back into their pens. They were out in the woods, in with Mable and finding nuts and grass roots to chew on – having a grand time!

Hoophouse Conversion to Greenhouse

On a good note we have our retrofitted hoophouse/greenhouse up and running with a wood stove installed. The little plants are looking happy. I have more sweet potatoes getting ready to send out shoots that we can plant as slips. Leeks, onions, and early lettuce and Pak Choi growing.

The end of February I visited our daughter, Ellen, in Portland, Oregon and enjoyed attending her graduation from a Chef’s Studio. She has written a blog http://pommeroyale.com/where she writes about her experience and adds recipes. I hope she can post some good ideas for using our produce when the CSA season begins. I also brought back a recipe book written by Robert Renolds, the chef she studied with, From a Breton Garden. I plan to share some of the recipes from it over the season as well.

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Back for Another Log
Hooking Up to a Log

We have enjoyed having another  Logging Workshop today. Ken has been demonstrating how to safely skid logs from the woodlot to a snowy field. Gwen and Buttons two of our Suffolk Punch draft horses are behaving very well.  We will cut up and split many of the logs for firewood later in the spring for next winter.  Some of the better logs we will  saw into lumber to be used for various projects around the farm.

Sunflower Oil for Winter Fuel

Ken has also been experimenting this winter with sunflower oil to run diesel motors. He has added a bit of gasoline to the sunflower oil (see jar on the right).  It keeps the sunflower oil from jelling up at cold temperatures (see far 0n left) and makes it so it will burn directly in a diesel motor without having to be first heated up or  made into bio-diesel.  Making bio-diesel is a complicated business and has some byproducts that are difficult  to dispose of easily. Using our draft horses makes sense for many jobs around the farm, however we still use the tractor for front end loader work and to run a Power Take Off for our baler and bush hog.   Ken is trying to figure out if he could grow an oil producing crop that would provide enough fuel to run the tractor  and perhaps a diesel generator for some electrical needs.

I walked down the farm today with a potential apprentice and was happy to see that the irrigation pond is almost full to over flowing.  Our CSA garden fields are becoming visible as the snow melts and I can feel my blood starting to stir as I anticipate the spring and the coming season.  We will soon be starting our early transplants. Most of our seeds have arrived and I am feeling rested up and ready to go again.  I enjoy having an occupation that is so closely linked to the natural word, where the work slows down during the dark time of the year and picks up again as the days lengthen out and my energy returns. We still have some spaces in our CSA for the 2011 season. We have a steady trickle of applications coming in and in March, when people are ready to think about spring again, I will contact all our past CSA members to remind them that it is time to save their spot!

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We have decided not to have a “mini”  farm market on December 11. With the colder weather and shorter days the chickens’ egg production has dropped off and the outdoor produce is frozen.  Thanks to everyone who came out and in October and November. We were happy to be able to sell our egg surplus and the garden produce that kept on giving.  It was a gentler end to the season and Caesar certainly was happy  to see everyone.  We would be happy to sell flour and  eggs here at the farm in the “off” season. Just contact us ahead of time to make sure we are home and the flour is ground and the chickens are laying.

We are moving ahead with our greenhouse renovations.  Hopefully, all the warmer weather isn’t behind us and we will be able to get the cement work done soon.  We are waiting rather impatiently to rent a back hoe for digging a big hole to bury rocks in for a passive solar heat storage.  It will keep us busy for some time. Everyone always asks what we do in our “off” season and it seems that this is our big project for this winter.

Our three older Suffolk Punch mares Jasmin, Gena and Gwen have all been “checked in foal”.  We hope to breed the two younger mares Buttons and Sassy in the spring. Gena is due the end of June and Jasmin and Gwen are due the end of July. It will be fun to have some young draft horses around the farm again.  We had Chester hooked up with Gwen recently and they went very well together all things considered. Perhaps we will be able to work Chester when the mares are on maternity leave next summer.

We hope that everyone has a Happy Solstice/Christmas Season and extend our best wishes for the New Year.

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Buttons and Gwen at IPM in St. Thomas, Ontario

Ken has spent the week at the International Plowing match in St. Thomas.  It is taking place only about 5 km from the farm and seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.  He has been plowing with Buttons and Gwen.  Elwyn McGuire has also been plowing at the match with our older team Jasmin and Gena.  Our apprentices have been a great help with the horses as well.  Friday is the last day of the the four day plowing competition and then it will be back to the real farm work for everyone. It has been a lot of fun and a good chance to show everyone our calm, steady Suffolk horses.  Suffolks are a rare breed and it is unusual for them to be out in public.  We have been happy to see some of our CSA members who have stopped by to visit at the match!

Our squash harvest has provided a bounty of beautiful squash to share with our members. The mountain of squash is gradually going down in our front yard.  It is good that they store well.  An excellent website that explains about the different varieties of squash has hints on cooking and lincs to recipes is: whatscookingamerica.net/squash.htm

We expect to be digging the remainder of our potato crop next week and will have a bounty to divide up for our final weeks of the CSA.  We are really pleased with our first sweet potato crop.  We gave our first sweet potatoes on Tuesday and have quite a few more.  The fresh dug potatoes are not as sweet as the ones that have been cured. We are attempting to cure some in our greenhouses to give in the final week. We are new to growing sweet potatoes and are learning as we go.

Orchard Hill Farm CSA Fall Potluck will be held October 3rd from 2-4 pm

Bring: food to share, plates, cutlery, cups and lawn chairs.

Last pick-up dates:

Tuesday, October 5

Saturday, October 9

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Potato Digger in Action
Potatoes Ready for Picking-up

Some of you may have seen Ken working on getting our “new” old potato digger back into working order last week. One CSA member asked him, “Are you ever going to get that rust bucket working?” The answer is YES! We have pictures to prove it.  (If you double click on the photos they will enlarge.) One of my stipulations for growing the CSA was to have a potato digger and now we do! Those working shares who have helped us dig potatoes with a fork or paw around in the soil after the horse drawn potato plow went through can attest to the amount of work it is.  So, I am delighted with our “rust bucket” that works! We have a big potato crop this season and it will be well used. It is still a heavy pull for two horses, but we hope to split up the harvest between two or three digging days.

The squash and pumpkin crop is also coming in. Check out the recipe section for some squash and pumpkin recipes. Keep in mind that any pumpkin recipe can also be made with squash. Go to the search box and type in squash or pumpkin for some of the older blog recipe entries from past years.  The following is a recipe from a past entry:

Leek and Potato Soup by Jill Wilcox
Ingredients
1 lb. leeks (about 3 medium)
3 tbsp butter
1 cooking onion, chopped
1 rib celery, finely sliced
2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
3c water, chicken or veg. stock
2c milk or cream
chopped chives for garnish
To make the soup
1. trim the coarse green portion of the leeks. Cut leeks in half lengthwise, leaving the bulb end intact and clean well under running water. Shake off excess moisture and slice the leeks thinly, discarding the root end when you get to it.
2. In a stock pot, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Cook the leeks, onion and celery about 5 minutes until soft.
3. Add the potatoes and water. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook about 25 minutes or until the potatoes are soft.
4. Add the milk (or cream) and return to a bare simmer. Season with salt and white pepper to taste. (You can puree the soup with an immersion blender at this stage if you wish or pass it through a food mill.)