Your organic farm in the Eastern Townships
And into the fire… or so it seems, as we exit a heat wave and they are forecasting another cloudless week for vacationers’ pleasure. For this market farmer, today has been an all-hands-on-deck day to ensure a good drenching of all the seedlings scheduled for planting over the next few days as well as seedlings transplanted…
August is upon us and your farmer knows he’s heading into the final stretch. August is a perilous month, one of heavy humidity, blazing suns and late greenhouse seedlings that still require our full attention. Summer’s end plays itself out in the fields, as harvested plots need to be quickly harrowed and just as quickly sown…
I am often asked how best to store vegetables from your weekly csa baskets in your fridges – the short answer is to make sure there is as little water as possible on your leafy greens and to stock up on glass or plastic containers for all your vegetables. For your leafy greens (lettuces, kales and tutti…
As we near the start of the regal month of August, allow me to share a few thoughts on the month of July which is drawing to a close. Greyer, cooler and more humid than usual, it has clearly affected the growth and productivity of many plants. In the normal course, July is hot and dry;…
Last week ended in shades of grey. Nothing dramatic, just grey. In fact, I had been hoping for rainy weather to schedule plantings of lettuce, basil, spinach and more beets – rainfall to save us the bother of rushing to install our brand new electric irrigation system. Everything fell into place perfectly: a full day of planting, followed by…
July has just begun and the fields are already garbed in full summer attire. The not-so-subtle heat wave last week turned field grass yellow, adding to the effects of the intermittent drought we’ve been experiencing so far this summer. Beyond that, it’s the harvested patches of field that bear witness to how quickly time flies on…
Extraordinary situations call for extraordinary measures. I never thought I would find myself doing this, but over the weekend I transferred an entire high tunnel’s worth of peppers to another field. It had already been two to three weeks that I was worried by their lack of progress. Plants that should have been knee-high were just ankle…
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…
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,…