October 2020

I slept in on Saturday!

For the first time since early June I didn’t have to rise at 4am to load the van and head off to market. It felt great!

Our farmers’ market at Georgetown finished on the 17th – and what a finale it was! The weather was good, lots of people came out and sales were great. (and one customer even baked me a birthday cake!)

After an uncertain start to the season and learning the new COVID-19 rules & protocol, we actually had a very good 20 weeks. The people of Georgetown are amazing – they were happy the market was running and supported it with enthusiasm, adapted quickly to the new rules – and purchased a lot of vegetables! Our sales were up considerably from 2019.

Thank you to all our customers, the market staff, organizers & volunteers for a great season!

And now we are full-time on the farm, finishing up the fall work and putting the farm to bed for the winter.

The first thing we did last week was harvest any remaining vegetables including beets, green onions, spinach, lettuce & peppers. We washed and packaged them and sent everything off to Project Share, a local food bank in Niagara Falls. Then I mowed down the entire farm, finished spreading manure over it all, lightly worked it in – and that’s it. Harvest 2020 is complete and the fields are ready for next season!

The rains we longed for all summer finally came last week as well, preventing us from planting garlic. But this week looks drier and we plan to get about 5500 cloves of garlic in the ground any day now.

It is a beautiful time of year and we are enjoying a more relaxed pace. Of course there is a lengthy list of fall chores that we are working our way through. But each day brings us closer to completing that list – and a time of relaxation.

In fact some of us are already practising for that winter rest …

Around the farm this week …

Cover crop growing well.

Our little pawpaw patch. The crop was light this year but we had a few to bring to market.

Even the blackberry canes show some nice colour.

Ready for play!

Thanksgiving Monday was a beautiful day.

Warm, calm, sunny & dry, it was the perfect day for … spreading manure!

Manure is an important part of our farm fertility program. Manure provides nutrients for the soil which in turn feeds the vegetables we grow. It also adds humus or organic matter which improves the texture of the soil and increases its ability to retain moisture (which is very important during dry seasons like this past summer). It can be difficult to source, but we were fortunate to find a new supplier this fall and received 6 large truckloads last week – about 180 tons!

The other parts of our fertility program include straw mulch, wood chips, compost & cover cropping. Mulch prevents weeds from growing, keeps moisture in the soil and adds nutrients & organic matter as it decomposes. Wood chips can do the same thing. We make compost by mixing manure together with our vegetable waste, straw and any leaves, grass clippings etc. that a local lawn care company drops off at our farm.

Cover crops are crops grown specifically for improving the soil. We use mixtures including buckwheat, sudan grass, oats, peas, radishes, hairy vetch, and several clovers. They are grown and then mowed down & worked into the soil. Some provide nutrients, others prevent weeds from growing, or add organic matter or …

Here is our squash patch from this year. After harvesting the squash we mowed everything down, lightly tilled the soil & seeded a cover crop mixture. It is just germinating now. Hopefully we get enough nice weather yet that it will grow larger and cover the soil for the winter. In spring we’ll work it down and plant other vegetables here.

The final component of our fertility program is a liquid fertilizer that we use when we transplant our vegetables. It gives them a quick boost and helps them get a good start, before their roots have grown enough to receive nutrition from the soil.

Growing great vegetables requires healthy soil. We spend a lot of time, effort & money on improving our soil. But the result -healthy & nutrient dense, flavourful & beautiful vegetables is worth it!

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Around the farm this week …

Still vegetables growing in the field – lettuces, spinach, arugula, beets …

… eggplant & peppers.

We even had a new crop for market this week – radicchio! 4 varieties of this beautiful and bitter green.

We seeded sunflowers every Monday all spring & summer for a consistent weekly supply. But the plants and the weather don’t always co-operate and it doesn’t always work out. Last week we took 16 pails of sunflower bunches to market and left a lot behind that we couldn’t fit into the van.