Your organic farm in the Eastern Townships
I cannot let this season end without a special mention for those who planted, weeded and harvested all the vegetables which have filled your baskets. 2020 will have been a very particular year : our core field crew, who hail from Mexico, arrived on average two months late, and it took a good deal of moral…
It seems the forecast is for a grey and rainy week…and there is nothing surprising to that, as the end of October is fast approaching. Patience is a virtue, so we sometimes wait for the rain to end, other times we slip on our rain coats, don our rain boots and brave the elements head…
A glorious day is unfolding, cool and sunny, an upbeat start to a week that will be up and down, meteorologically speaking. My morning constitutional in our last vegetable patches reminded me of the second – slow – movement (The Lonely One in Autum) of Mahler’s The Song of the Earth, an ode to the fading beauty…
The farm seems to be plunging headfirst into Fall. Fallen leaves are everywhere, empty boughs abound, nature is slowly emptying itself of life. How is it that the transition is always so sudden? It always takes me by surprise. All that’s left in the fields is row upon row of the vegetables that will fill your…
Beattie Barn, Arlington Gardens — by Peter Toth For starters, the beautiful fall colours are a harsh reminder that there are only six basket deliveries remaining (five, for our market farmstand baskets). And so it is that we enjoin you to think about making up any holiday baskets still outstanding. We have officially entered Fall,…
We had a rough start to the day last Saturday. A more-or-less anticipated frost had struck overnight, dashing all hopes of a lingering summer even as it killed most weeds. It was a mean hoarfrost, spreading its white crystals as far as the eye could see, not a speck of field was spared. Despite the shock,…
This morning’s field inspection took place in the deepest of silences. Dawn had broken, it was the beginning of an honest day’s work, but in the eerie quiet, it seemed as though everything was numbed by the morning’s chill. In the winter squash patch, a few forlorn and forgotten squash seemed to be begging to be…
September is just around the corner, a comforting thought. Cooler nights but still warm days are all it takes to make pests that have been the bane of our existence suddenly disappear. That said, they don’t really disappear, they simply burrow underground, readying for the really cold weather, nestled between a few drops of water and some vegetable…
Organic farmers no longer really use ploughs in their ongoing field management. This millennial activity is no longer fashionable, much to the relief of defenders of soil conservation and subterranean biodiversity preservation. Nevertheless, when one wants to convert an old hay field to organic production, there are few options other than to till said field –…
It’s almost mid-season already, so both a review of what’s passed, and a preview of what’s to come, seem appropriate. As you may have noted, the first half of the season was not easy, successive heat waves and droughts having wreaked some havoc in the fields in May and June – particularly in our brassicacea beds…