Your organic farm in the Eastern Townships
Fall struck hard and fast last weekend, in the guise of two chilly nights with near-zero (Celsius) temperatures. We worked hard to harvest the last winter squash and to cover our basil. Most other vegetables, be they brassicas (cabbage, broccoli, kohlrabi) or umbellifers (carrots), thrive in cold weather – sweetening as the temperature drops. As…
We want to thank those of you who joined us for our September 9 mechoui. Nearly 170 of you, adults and children combined, converged on the farm. Good humour and plentiful food were the order of the day, we have the pictures to prove it. The weekend seemed off to a bad start on Saturday,…
The change in the fields is notable: the tomatoes, eggplants and peppers have arrived. This holy vegetable trinity gives everything a new look and feel. From here on in, your baskets will have fewer leafy greens and will weigh more. They are the ultimate trio, vegetables for our favourite summer vegetable dish, ratatouille. Their presence…
It seems all we have been doing in our spare time for the past month is staking and suckering tomatoes. Tomato chores rank pretty high on the tedium spectrum of vegetable farming – close runner-ups to weeding carrots (by far the most tedious of all vegetable chores). But, as we keep telling ourselves, it’s worth…
Given an early Spring and recent warm days, our plants are growing like gangbusters. This morning, as we were staking tomatoes, I started thinking that this might be a record year, agriculturally speaking, at least. Take our tomatoes, for example: June is not yet over and they are already laden with fruit. I am so…
The stress level on the farm has just gone up a few notches. The nonchalance of early May has been replaced by a sense of urgency as we have to plant, and fast, before the next rains. Coming days will be spent binge planting eggplants, peppers, corn, zucchini and cucumbers. Two weeks from now, we’ll…
From one year to the next, change is the only constant, or so it seems. Rewind to May last year: we were experiencing diluvian downpours, waiting for the rain to stop long enough to be able to transplant our first seedlings to the fields. This year’s weather is only marginally better – showers instead of…
We’ve taken advantage of the recent dry spell to work on our drains. Well-drained fields are critical, as water can accumulate in undrained patches, a real headache when planting time rolls along. Some fields, given their soil composition and texture, drain naturally. Others need a little help. Not so long ago (in the 70s and…
Here we go again. Broccoli is getting a bum rap, and American consumers are going to pay. Reacting to the current debate on President Obama’s health care bill (‘Obamacare’), certain politicians and Supreme Court justices are turning broccoli into an ideological scapegoat. “The government can’t force us to eat broccoli,” they’ve said in rebuttal to…
Too much change in just a week. While winter never really settled in this year, at least the chill was sufficient to remind us that we do live in Canada, after all. But over the past few days, ‘place your bets, all bets are off!’ a climate croupier might say. We’ve gone from winter woollens…