Category: Vegetables and Berries

And this is how the season ends, with a mix of light rain and sunny breaks.The week ahead is forecast to be rather cold, but it matters little, as everything has been packed away, hidden and put back in its place on the farm. In fact, this is what our cold greenhouses look like now,…

C’est triste Orly, le dimanche, Brel said in one of his last songs,and I would say the same was true of the feeling I got as I trekked through my fields during this week’s Monday morning tour of the farm. A blue sky and bright sunshine might have been all that was needed to alter…

They were predicting a chilly -10 degrees Celsius for last night,and although the mercury did not drop that low, the fields were covered in frost this morning and wonderfully crunchy. I was worried about my leafy vegetables, which we had protected with nets, but you can only mess with nature so much, as few plants…

Could this week finally be the ‘autumn warm spell’ they have been predicting?It certainly seems so.In any event, this farmer has slipped his shorts back on and will, probably for the last time, be revving up his big tractor in some satisfyingly dry fields for this time of year. Nothing too serious, just a little field cleaning,…

My tour of the fields yesterday, Thanksgiving Monday, under a few drops of rain, allowed me to confirm that we have indeed experienced the first frost of autumn.I was somewhat incredulous, although Environment Canada had warned that it could be a possibility. How does one know it has frozen across an irregular palette of more…

There were about ten of them visiting us at the farm this afternoon.A mix of agrologists and market farmers, all interested in some of our agricultural practices, particularly with respect to the fertilization of vegetables in our cold greenhouses. You see, it is difficult to do green manures in greenhouses:greenhouse space is not at all…

Environment Canada is calling for blue skies and warm weather.That’s great news.It means we can confirm that we will be delivering garlic orders to drop-off points on Wednesday and Thursday, and we invite market subscribers to come pick up theirs this weekend as well. We will explain how best to store it at home, and…

If ever there were a sign that autumn is truly upon us,I witnessed it this morning while walking the fields of the farm.We’re still a far cry from end-of-season desolation, but the changing hues of our pastures and our perennial plants are an indication that we are surreptitiously slipping into the final stages of the…

I do not know what to make of these summer temperaturesexcept that we decided to set up our sprinklers today, which we had stored in our red barn a while ago. It was necessary, given that we are experiencing the most intense and prolonged dry spell so far of this erratic summer. I’m not complaining…

Do not go thinking that I actually have timeto read during the summer,but I do sometimes come across a text, a fragment of literature, courtesy of the internet, that piques my curiosity or tickles my fancy. This time, it’s the discovery of a short story by Dostoevsky that I had not heard of before, but…