Your organic farm in the Eastern Townships
This week, we celebrate the apple. Should we speak of the small orchard we planted in our first year at Arlington Gardens, or of the old apple trees we have discovered scattered here and there along the riverbank? Both warrant a brief accounting. We wanted an orchard of apple, pear and plum trees. So far,…
I said I would revisit the topic, so here goes: another week has come and gone, and this vegetable farmer’s rapport with his farm equipment remains as fraught as ever. For some farmers, one of the major attractions of farmwork is precisely that: the use of mechanical gizmos and doodads, of tractors of varying horsepower…
Nothing better than a night at 6 degrees Celsius followed by a sun-filled blustery day at 16 to celebrate fall. Suddenly, serving up squash and turnips seems more than appropriate, a welcome change of fare. To these we add a few other root vegetables, some leafy greens and some nightshades, hangers-on emboldened by the still…
Just as we were readying ourselves for the final stretch of the season — you know, the cool fall straightaway which leads to the wonderful world of squash and root vegetables — Mother Nature placed yet another bump in the road. Indeed, even as we write this with a chilly evening drizzle as a backdrop,…
The hot spell continues…but why act surprised? Hot spells are all too common at this time of year in Québec. They are summer’s final hurrah before fall rushes in. That said, September is also the month of the first frost, the cold snap that stops many a vegetable in its tracks, in some cases finishing…
They came intent on stepping out of the fray, far from the madding crowd, they told us. A charming couple: he, working on a masters degree in architecture; she, finishing her studies in public health. Well-informed on organics, knowledgeable in most things environmental, they came to test the comfort of our straw berths and the…
With this, our 11th week of basket deliveries, the countdown has begun. Already the fields seem to be winding down…not because summer is over (au contraire, the season is at its peak), but rather because the urgency of the season’s last plantings is upon us: radishes, arugula and other fall greens — all of which…
To expect a vegetable farmer to tend to his/her flower gardens is like asking a shoemaker to repair his own shoes: both belong to the realm of wishful thinking. Indeed, following years of criminal neglect, tree-sized weeds and plants gone rogue, we have come to accept that our gardening abilities fall far short of those…
Surely you know the French expression — chassez le naturel, il revient au galop? In our case, it applies to a problem we face yearly in one of our fields. Even the flattest of fields is never as flat as it seems…and so it is that one of our seemingly flat hayfields harbours a sizeable…
We were expecting them at noon, they arrived at midnight, an F250 pulling a trailer loaded with 200 feet of greenhouse metal tubing in the dark of the night…They thought loading the trailer would be easy, but it proved to be major feat, considering greenhouse geometry, all horizontal arabesques and transversal bars piled to infinity.…