Your organic farm in the Eastern Townships
This week’s topic is anything but bucolic, yet noteworthy nonetheless. In short, we spread manure last weekend: heavy (nay, stinky), but necessary, work to guarantee quality organic produce throughout the season. The manure is delivered by the 10-wheeler, 15-tonne truckload, deposited in an odorous dark brown swath along the field’s edge. To the uninitiated nostril,…
The timing of this post is an indication of the kind of weekend we’ve had. Another crazy race, this time against the heat. Which means installing sprinkler systems to water new transplants and rolling out drip irrigation lines where they had yet to be set out. You must be thinking, as you read this — following…
Nothing better to lift sagging spirits in soggy fields than a high tech happening at the farm, i.e. the arrival of a gleaming new tractor, a Case 95 HP… While I am not particularly mechanically inclined (or perhaps because I am not so), I finally gave in to the lure of a new tractor. Several…
We had to do it. And do it fast. You see, the rain was coming. And so, Friday and Saturday, we weeded EVERYTHING: the herbs, the baby broccoli, the kohlrabi, the beans…the list went on and on. We also planted EVERYTHING — more broccoli, more kohlrabi, and a few other things left on our greenhouse…
We spent the past week twiddling our thumbs and praying. The thumb-twiddling was because of the rain…needless to say, there was a lot of both (thumb-twiddling and rain) as we waited for the sky to clear and prayed for the rain to cease…visibly, praying has its limitations, as it was only by the weekend that…
It’s been several years since we’d seen anything like it: an early May that looks more like a late July! While it’s the kind of heat wave that lifts the sagging spirits of many a Québécois as winter (finally) draws to a close, it does nothing to smooth the furrowed brows of farmers. Our workload…
After last week’s proverbial April showers, we were hoping not only for May flowers, but for drier days propitious to planting. So far, though, May has been a disappointment: a short sunny break (four days), followed by diluvial rains since Tuesday noon. For farmers with loamy soils, a few days without rain will not suffice…
The 2015 season at Arlington Gardens has indeed begun! We’ve completed everything — placed our seed orders, drawn up our field plans, submitted our annual organic certification filings and launched our ‘new and improved’ website. All that remained was to say at your keyboards, ready, set, go! We are now accepting online registrations for the 2015 season.…
Our 2014 season has come to a close. As our fields take a break, so will we. Our farming activities will ramp up again in early March 2015 — we’ll keep you posted. Enjoy your winter, may the snowfall be abundant. We look forward to seeing you again in 2015.
Just to let you know: Environment Canada is forecasting snow on Saturday…As the thought of finishing off the season in muddy, slush-filled fields is not a pleasant one, we are hurrying to get everything done before then: planting garlic, harvesting the last vegetables, and generally battening down the hatches to protect everything from winter squalls…