Our workdays now sometimes span the ever dwindling daylight hours… picking parsley at sunrise then beans at sunset is a great reminder that the end of summer is upon us.  Needing a blanket again for lunch hour naps is also a hint!

Garden work is switching into fall mode.  Some of the summertime plants whose fruits we harvest are no longer bearing fruit.  That means we don’t have to pick them every day.  It also means it is time to pull the plants out and send them to the compost.  The black plastic (biodegradable, corn based) then gets pulled up, also headed for the compost.  Drip tape gets rolled to use another time, and then the garden is ready for compost and being worked with the tractor.

Even though it is fall, we are still seeding more crops each week, planting seedlings into the garden, and weeding.  Some crops stay the same through the fall, other crops are phased out, and some new ones like spinach are starting to grow.  The lettuces are starting to germinate and the onions will soon be ready.  As the fall slows the growth of our garden, the weeds also grow more slowly – at least that’s the theory.  I look forward to seeing it to believe it!

Heather

What’s in my Box?

Week No.12

• Zucchini: Unless the plants perk up again this will be the last week for Zucchini, the cold is starting to slow them down.  As the very first week was Thursday only, this week is Tuesday only. There’s just enough to make a jar of zucchini relish to go with a barbeque dinner later this week when it warms up.
• Colourful carrots: You’ll notice not all the purple carrots are the same – some have yellow in the middle (dragon variety), others have a more mottled purple skin (purple haze).
• Radish: A bit of spice is nice!
• Potatoes: Roasted, fried, mashed, boiled, baked, pancaked…
• Tomatoes:  Paste tomatoes this week – they have more pulp to less juice and seeds, making them ideal for sauces and salsas.
• Wax Beans: Yellow coloured beans to much raw, throw into salads, or boil ever so briefly.
• Scallions: No meal is complete without a relative of onion or garlic.
• Basil: Spaghetti shouldn’t always require reaching for cans and jars – especially with scallions, tomatoes and basil available!  The black spots that appear on the leaves after a few days are due to the cold. Basil doesn’t like being refrigerated (and it wilts if you don’t put it in the fridge) – so put it in plastic or a crisper in the fridge and use it quickly.

This is a single weblog entry, posted on August 31st, 2011. Comment here »

An early morning harvest… with everyone at one end of the garden (Steve on chard, David on parsley, Thuja on supervision, and I was in the basil with the camera

Farm life continues on its merry way towards the end of the summer. This week Carolyn returned from holidays to share her smiles and helping hands with us. The geese and ducks enjoyed playing in puddles on a couple of occasions, and we shared their joy when we saw a nice wet garden. We spent all Wednesday weeding in the southern section of the garden: it’s so nice to see it clean and tidy again!

Both tractors are back in service this week – we had a key break in the ignition of the utility tractor, and the walk-behind two wheeled tractor needed some time in the shop. Now there is a fresh layer of compost in one section of the garden, and the green manure (buckwheat) is being ploughed into the fields. The field where the hoop house will go up has been freshly worked, and will soon be ready to plant in!

As the dancing started up…

The week ended with our barbeque and concert. We really enjoyed it, and so did fourty or so others who came out. Thank you to CSA members, store and market customers, and friends of the farm for supporting us! We have been busy eating lots of leftover food though, and there is more stashed in our freezers. We had less than half the turnout we were expecting from the various different ways we had advertized the event. This week’s hard lesson seems to have been in event planning…

As the days get shorter, and the mornings cooler, this coming week we will be focusing on adjusting for the end of summer. That also means the fall vegetables are coming soon, yay!

Heather

This is a single weblog entry, posted on August 28th, 2011. Comment here »

Come on out tonight to support our greenhouse building initiative and two great bands!

Picnic, BBQ & Concert!

This is a single weblog entry, posted on August 19th, 2011. Comment here »

It may be August, but we’re still planting things at Riverglen! The southern section of beds is starting to fill up with crops for the fall. All the different vegetables you enjoy take different amounts of time to grow. So a couple of weeks ago another batch of lettuces, carrots, raddishes, rutabagas and beets were seeded into the garden.  Last week more beets, carrots and radishes went into the ground. This week some scallions, celery, cabbages and kale were planted from blocks. There is some chard, collards, scallions, kale and lettuces in soil blocks to be planted soon.

While we are still playing a bit with the spacing between the plants, the general routine is relatively well established.  Spade down the weeds, till the beds, rake the beds.  Then you either direct seed or plant.  David does most of the direct seeding – you load the seeds into the seeder, adjust the seeder to release the right number of seeds, the right distance apart, and then ‘just’ push it down the the bed in a very straight line.  Planting involves raking those same very straight lines, placing the soil blocks along them at the right spacing, then going down the row with a planting trowel and popping them all into the ground.  The common theme is straight  lines, which make the hoeing much easier afterwards.  Straight lines are like perfect circles, they never quite exist in reality but rather they are an ideal to strive for.

There’s also a very different kind of planting that takes place.  Steve has been out broadcasting buckwheat on all the beds we are finished with for the season.  Once a crop has been harvested, the greens get turned into the soil and we plant a cover crop for the rest of

Spazz and Moe Sharing a Meal

the season.  This helps to keep weeds from establishing and also makes some nutrients more easily available to the v

egetables we will plant next year.

Hurrah for the rain!

Heather

Catching Up on a rain day    Hi all,   Well, it’s not really raining… Actualy it’s rather sunny out again. But we’ve been working 7 days a week, often 7am to 9pm for a while now and we need a break! So if the sky still refuses to rain, we’ll just have to pretend it is. We are dusty, hot, and reaching our mental and physical limits. So here’s to rain days and spending some time indoors!   Newsletters   Since Heather has been doing such a great job writing these newsletters, I haven’t taken much time to write messages myself. I hope you have been enjoying the newsletters as much as I have. Heather’ upbeat, optimistic nature comes through nicely.   I guess that’s really been a theme this season. Amidst all the obstacles and hard work, I can always count on a strong, positive crew to stick it out until the job is done. I can tell you that makes a big difference on the garden. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it so tidy, organized and weed free. And of course, that means more produce for all! That isn’t to say we’ve been without our dramas this summer, but somehow the challenges seem more… surmountable.   Little Italy Farmer’s Market     Halfway Mark for the CSA   So here we are, only a week away from our half way mark. Hard to believe, it’s already been 8 weeks of CSA. I’m proud to note that even with the cold and wet spring we experienced, we still managed to start moving food one week earlier than last year, two weeks earlier than many other CSAs in the area, and more than 3 weeks earlier some CSAs who just couldn’t rebound fast enough after the foul weather. Of course, our spring selection was fairly limited, since many crops rotted, flooded, or never even got planted. Spinach is one such casualty, as well as arugula, early scallions, radish, turnips, peas… When farming you only have a certain window of opportunity. ”Catching up” isn’t an option in this game. You only get a few swings and if things don’t work out, well, it’ll just have to be next year.   So let’s be thankful for what we did get. Lots of mesclun, 5 varieties of head lettuce, spring kale… More recently we’ve been enjoying a steady stream of carrots and beets. I’m particularly proud of the broccoli heads and early water melons.   And what’s coming up? You can count on more carrots, more scallions, lots more cucumbers, more zucchini… Wax beans are getting ready, tomatoes are coming off the vine and the peppers are starting too. It’s been hot and sunny, and the garden is lush! Actually, we’re remarkably lucky about that. I’m very happy I spent all that money on irrigation equipment, because floods have now turned to drought. This much brown grass at this time of year is a novel sight for my eyes. Our water is on every single day and we can barely keep up. We don’t have the capacity to irrigate all our different crops, but winter squash, corn, potatoes and beans are tough crops and I’m sure they’ll pull through ok.   Planning and Preparing for the future   Despite causing sinus clogging amounts of dust to billow into the air, tilling the garden in this kind of weather is generally works out alright. We’ve got spring crops tilled under and replaced with buckwheat cover crop and we are now working on fall crops. Although some fall crops, such as leeks, have been in the ground for several weeks already, some fall crops are still being seeded. With all the room left over in the garden from springtime, we’re pushing for as much fall roots and greens as we can!   This is the sort of structure we’ll be putting up   We’re also pushing for an extended season in general. And how can we best overcome poor weather and a short, Canadian growing season? You guessed it, greenhouses!!! Well, we’ll start with one greenhouse. And to be fair, it’s not really a greenhouse since it isn’t heated. A hoophouse!! A tall tunnel!! A coolhouse!! Call it what you will, but we’re building it next week. A series of 15 foot tall arches will create a 50′X100′ protected growing area. With roll-up sides and lots of compost, this basic structure will add 2 months of outdoor growing time on each end of the current season. No kidding. We’re talking sowing spinach in February and harvesting carrots in December.   But I suppose I can’t hide from you the fact that this thing is a little pricey. It’s a major capital investment for a young enterprise like this one, especially after $4000 in lost spring sales, $1500 storm damage on the barn, $1500 to replace a busted mower. And I’m still waiting for $1200 in HST refunds that were lost in the mail strike… Like I mentioned, it really wasn’t a good spring. It looks like we’re going to need a little help to cover this hoophouse invoice.   Raise the Roof!   Instead of simply passing the hat and hoping for the best, we’ve decided to throw a party. A fund-raising party! Please consider attending this very special event on Friday, August 19th. We’re putting together a couple folk-roots-rock bands, decking out the barn with a P.A. and preparing lots of good food for the BBQ. It’ll be a great chance for first-timers to see the farm, for regulars to catch-up and for nature lovers to enjoy an afternoon outdoors. Not to mention a chance to catch some awesome tunes and support your favorite cause. It’s a win-win situation!   So come give us dirty, overworked, Salvation Army wearing, discount rack shopping, social life avoiding, ultra-dedicated and law-abiding (mostly) farmers a thumbs up. Buy a burger, have a drink, enjoy the scenery and bob your head to the music. It’ll be fun, I promise! If you plan on attending, let us know if you plan on buying burgers or sausages, so we have an idea how much to prepare. It’s meat from close to home!   -David    Raise the Roof Riverglen – Friday August 19th – 6pm to 11pm

What’s in my Box?

Week No.9

• Watermelon: Early watermelons so we can enjoy them while it’s hot outside. They could use a day or two on the counter to ripen.
• Cucumbers: Fresh slicing cucumbers for sandwiches, salads and making interesting shapes on a fancy meal.
• Pickling cucumbers: What’s the difference? These are smaller. Really, that’s it? Yup, that’s it. Make sure you read the bin label and take the appropriate number. Eat them like regular cukes or pickle them. Yum! I’ll post a sour pickle(no vinegar) recipe on the website and if you want to purchase a larger amount, just visit our store or market stand.
  

  Harvesting irrigated cucumbers in a dry garden

• Zucchini: We’re rotating different varieties between pickups, so they may look different this week.  Five different varieties of summer squash are growing in the garden. You should be able to taste them all over the next couple of weeks.
• Radish: We’ve been having terrible luck with anything Brassica this year: Radish, turnip, arugula, kale, broccoli… For some reason the Swede Midges and Flea Beatles are on them like a bunch of school kids at a Chinese buffet. We take several precautions to mitigate the damage, but sometimes these dedicated little insects get the upper hand. Obviously, the tops on these radishes have been destroyed to the point of not being edible but the roots can be cooked as usual.
• Carrots: More carrots. This year our orange carrots look (and taste) great!
• Garlic: Just a little taste of garlic as it is fresh from the garden.
• Sweet pepper: Choose one from an assortment of white, green or red sweet peppers. There are lots more on the plants, so you can look forward to more.
• Tomato: Tomatoes are also making their debut this week. These are mostly ‘Stupice’, but some of the others are ripening as well.
• Basil: A fresh summer herb, perfect for seasoning pasta sauce, vegetable sautes, etc.
• Cilantro: A classic herb to go with some warm chili during a cool damp week. Also awesome with eggs!

This is a single weblog entry, posted on August 11th, 2011. Comment here »

Hello Intentional Eaters Community,

It is I, Steve, the long silent intern counter part to Heather. I am breaking my long silence to bring you all some sad news: summer will be with us for only a scant month and a half more. Yes, it is true. I know, you don’t want to hear this now with the sun high in the sky and the waterways filled with swimmers and boaters. We are at the high point of summer; it is true, but here at Riverglen we are always looking into the future and planning for what will come. What is coming? The cold.

As our wobbly little planet shies us away from the sun our temperatures start to drop. Frost will be here soon enough and our late season crops are already making their way into the soil. We need to do something to save our veggies from standing around in the cold. We need to bring them inside and give them some heat!

And so it is that on Friday August 19th Riverglen will be borrowing some of the summer heat and passing in on to those fall veggies through song and metal framed plastic. Riverglen is putting on a summer folk rock concert! It is time for Raise the Roof Riverglen: Bring Those Veggies in From the Cold! The concert is our summer fundraising drive for our long dreamed of greenhouse. This greenhouse will mean a major extension to our farm season.

The Marni Levitt Collective, a roots/folk/African rhythm inspired ensemble from Toronto, and local folk rockers Ashley Newall and Friends will perform a couple hours of music for us beginning at 20h00 on the 19th. The show is family friendly so kids are more than welcome. The cost of entry is an $8 suggested donation at the door with proceeds going towards the greenhouse and the evenings entertainers.

There will also be a lovely picnic and barbecue before the show, starting around 18h30, featuring Riverglen Veggies and local beef burgers for sale. So come, bring a couple of lawn chairs, an appetite, some beverages (please put them in plastic or metal containers), and enjoy the evening’s entertainment with your farmers. It’s already down on my calendar

Steve

This is a single weblog entry, posted on August 3rd, 2011. Comment here »