Your organic farm in the Eastern Townships
Thus ends our 2021 season :an apotheosis, according to Environment Canada and their forecast for sunny skies, albeit accompanied with a bit of a chill. I won’t complain, as the fields are soaked from weekend rains and we still have to harvest the contents of your last basket. Another summer growing seasonhas come and gone, true to form,i.e.…
Si fueris Romae, Romano vivito more –or more familiarly, ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans do.’ The expression comes to mind as I observe my three sons readying themselves for the deer-hunting season. Preparations include the felling of a few cedars to build their caches, the installation of cameras to better appreciate the comings and…
They’re heading off to greenerpastures, our hens,the very ones whose eggs have graced your plates, whether poached, scrambled or boiled (hard- or soft-). It’s our usual routine every October, as the days grow shorter and the hens yearn for a more hospitable laying environment. So it is that we go to great lengths to find…
It’s (farm) cleaning time.We’ve been talking about it for weeks now, but the dithering has to end, it’s time to get down to brass tacks…As our honeymoon with the vestiges of summer comes to an end, we run the risk of getting stuck between the proverbial rock and a hard place – namely, diluvial fall…
Each year, as the days shorten and we move into October, I pick up my well-thumbed copy of Verlaine. I always flip to the same poem, a few stanzas thrown on a page, simply written but so evocatively capturing the essence of what we all feel as autumn begins. The poem is Chanson d’automne (Autumn Song), an ode…
Montreal’s public markets are lively these days. We should know, it’s where we spend our weekends. You can feel the end of the season is nigh and like any season end, it is characterized by a last minute frenzy, as some rush to fill up on paste tomatoes for their spaghetti sauce while others load up…
Following its August apex, the season continues to decelerate, trailing with it a number of pluses and a few minuses. On the plus side, who would have thought we’d see such clement weather given a Farmer’s Almanac average first frost date of September 18 in Quebec? We certainly won’t complain, nor will a number of vegetables in our…
You can look for them high and low, but you won’t find them anymore : our young farm employees have left in pursuit of more studious occupations. Colleges and universities beckon, and the call of the classroom has won out…you may still catch a glimpse of them from time to time at our market stands, but they…
I like to say that the harvest season still has a long way to go and that summer still has a few spectacular days left, but these are risky – or at the very least, incomplete – statements. Harvests are but one of the many things that keep us busy at the farm these days. Field…
We have a big week in store at Arlington Gardens. The vagaries of the season are such that we find ourselves having to rush to harvest our winter squash which have all ripened at once as we also hasten to dry out our conservation onions a bit more in one of our greenhouses before bagging them…