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, reminiscent – almost – of a painting by Yves Klein, for whom white came in many shades.

And so we take advantage of this final message to thank you
for your support throughout this season and for sharing with us its highs and lows.
We wish you a beautiful, snow-filled (a must) winter, full of great surprises. As for us, we are looking forward to rest with a capital “R”, in anticipation of a fresh start next March.
Thank you for everything.

Photo Credit: Tom Toro, New Yorker Cartoons

The last basket is decidedly root vegetables:
potatoes, onions, beets, carrots, various other roots, and squash.

See you again shortly.

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 that impression, but it is clearly not what the weather had in store for us to start the week. So my tour was brief, mostly to check on our recently sown cover crops, which the last cold spells seem to have halted in their tracks. I am still hoping that November will be mostly clement and that they will eventually poke through the soil.

That said, there are still some leafy vegetables in the fields,
protected from the cold by heavy nets, but they too are clamouring to be harvested. The last important agronomic activity this week will be covering our garlic planting with straw to protect it from the winter cold and from the weeds that will emerge in the early days of next spring.

And I cannot conclude this message without informing you of
the commotion at the forest’s edge on the farm
as deer-hunting season draws nigh.
The excitement seems proportional to the size of the hunting blind my own children built this year for this activity. When in Rome, do as the Romans do…

Finally, I would like to send a special shout-out
to our market farm members,
as this will be our last week at Atwater and Jean-Talon for both baskets and loyalty cards. A big thank you for supporting us throughout this summer, and we wish you a lovely winter full of snow. We look forward to seeing you again next season.

This week will see fewer leafy greens and more root vegetables in your baskets:
there will be a variety of squashes, beets, carrots, potatoes, onions, winter radishes, and kale.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

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 can withstand severe frosts beyond a certain temperature. And so it is that we will be harvesting several varieties of leafy vegetables (Asian greens, lettuce, Swiss chard, etc.) over the next couple of days and storing them in our cold rooms.

I am also relieved at the thought that
the fieldwork in all the fields we wanted to prepare for winter was completed last week, courtesy of the nice weather that preceded this cold snap. I remain skeptical though, given the current weather, about whether these last cover crops will sprout before the snow flies, but who knows, another warm spell might be just enough for them to germinate and at least develop a root system strong enough to hold the soil – which is, after all, in part what a cover crop should do.

In your baskets,
you will find squashes, various leafy vegetables and root vegetables, all served somewhat randomly.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

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, like sweeping a dusty house…

End-of-season chores are ongoing.
The highlight of our weekend was completing the planting of next year’s garlic, a task that requires cooperation from the weather and tremendous patience, as planting some 20,000 cloves of garlic takes time… But all’s well that ends well, and we finished under a glorious sun. The only garlic chore remaining is to cover the beds with straw, securing their contents against the harshness of winter.

In your basket this week, Jerusalem artichokes
(also known as sunchokes) are back.
They are a root vegetable that deserves to be tried. Sauté them in a pan or roast it in the oven, but above all, do not bother (or attempt) to peel them. A quick note about this week’s winter squash, which will be butternut that I need to include in the baskets again now to avoid losing it if it stays too long in the warehouse. The season has been tough for squashes in general due to the heavy rains in July: they are not keeping as long as usual. The ones you will have in your basket may be a bit blemished, but their flesh will still be just as delicious. Make soups with them or freeze them in purées as soon as you can. And to complete your baskets, there will also be carrots, radishes, celery root or pak choi, leeks, various leafy greens, and more.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

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 or less green plants? The telltale dark patches on certain weeds, with galinsoga leading the way, followed by other plants which, although still alive, are fading to various shades of ochre. While the landscape may be one of desolation for some, it allows this market gardener to breathe a sigh of relief, buoyed by the certainty that the end is nigh and that Mother Nature will hasten the demise of what we, humans, have failed to eradicate during the long summer months. Also, there is a silver lining to frost: the increased sugar content of our root vegetables, the strengthening of the foliage of our leafy greens, and… the return of pants. That said, let’s not entirely deny ourselves a good thing: they are forecasting up to 20 degrees, still, this coming weekend…

This week’s basket is definitely autumnal:
butternut squash, rutabaga, carrots, lettuce, kale or an Asian green, Chinese cabbage, leeks, and, size permitting, the first Jerusalem artichokes of the season.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

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 conducive to growing cereal crops, water needs are high, and their destruction is labour-intensive. So, to fertilize greenhouse vegetables, growers tend to use composts that, in the medium term, inexorably increase the phosphorus levels in their greenhouse soils. A little phosphorus is good, but too much is toxic. We therefore decided to participate in a project aimed at replacing composts with green manures sourced from our own hay fields and spread over tomato beds in our cold greenhouses.

They came, dug holes here and there, sniffed the soil, fingered the transported hay,
then looked me straight in the eyes, providing countless suggestions of how to do better next time…
All joking aside, the experiment proved interesting and is certainly promising for those of us wanting to move away from phosphorus-rich composts.
That said, practice makes perfect, and it is only over the long term that we will start to see meaningful results. It will indeed take time for the soil to recover from the compost “crack” to which it is addicted and to recreate its own fertility through new inputs – hay, in this case, but also legumes. In short, years of enjoyment and experimentation lie ahead.

This week’s basket will attempt to meet your Thanksgiving requirements:
cabbage (green or Nappa), carrots, potatoes, various squashes, leeks, a mix of leafy vegetables varying from one drop-off point to another, assorted herbs, and more.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

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 regarding payment, we will have our Interac machines but will also accept cash (exact amounts, if possible, are appreciated).

As we enter October,
I’d like to remind everyone that there are only seven weeks of deliveries left for subscribers in Montreal West, Town of Mount Royal, and Westmount (vs 6 for Jean-Talon and Atwater market subscribers). If you haven’t done so already, we encourage you to think about doubling your holiday baskets, sooner rather than later. I suggest, if possible, to double them every two weeks to better plan for the consumption and storage of vegetables.

Speaking of vegetables, here’s what we are announcing for this week’s baskets:
delicata squash, a last round of ground cherries, carrots for Wednesday subscribers (another vegetable for other days), a new batch of colorful peppers, the last Italian tomatoes, leeks, various leafy greens, and very possibly some beans.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

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 season. An array of ochres unfolds before our eyes, and there is nary a vibrant green to be seen – suddenly, everything is subdued colours.

Another unmistakable sign is the combine harvesters of our cereal crop neighbours,
who have had an easy time of it these past few weeks, starting their soybean and hay harvests in unseasonally glorious weather. All we need now is a bit of rain and cooler weather to confirm the transition that has begun – which is exactly what they are forecasting for the upcoming delivery of your baskets…

Said baskets will not be full-on fall-like quite yet though,
as they will contain a mix of beans, onions, acorn squash, carrots, peppers, tomatoes, cilantro, radishes, and a couple of yet-to-be-determined leafy vegetables. We wanted to start fulfilling garlic orders this week, but the weather forecast is calling for two days of rain that may complicate deliveries at our drop-off locations. Consequently, we ask for your forbearance as we have decided to postpone garlic deliveries until next week.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

I do not know what to make of these summer temperatures
except 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 because this heat will give a boost to the vegetables already in the fields, especially those recently planted, but water is a source of life, and without it, the seedlings will languish in situ, hoping that Mother Nature will show them some mercy. Since no clouds are are in the forecast before the end of September, we have decided to bring out the heavy artillery and call on our irrigation ponds, which have hardly been used this summer anyway.

The nice weather also gives us leeway to clean our fields nonchalantly, almost,
and to continue sowing our green manures. In short, the week will be busy, but the level of intensity has started to decrease, and this market gardener is quite relieved…

In your baskets, memories of summer are quickly fading –
save possibly for peppers, but even those plants are starting to wear out. On the other hand, I am happy to offer you celery root, a finnicky vegetable that often wants for fertility and/or water but seems to have had enough of both this year. Leeks are back, and this week’s squash will be the courge musquée, known even in French by its English name, ‘la butternut’. There will also be a couple of leafy vegetables (lettuce and kale), and I am aiming to do a final harvest of tomatillos to free up those beds and prepare them for winter. We’ll round out the basket with one or two yet-to-be-determined root vegetables…

We look forward to seeing you all again.

Do not go thinking that I actually have time
to 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 the theme of which does not surprise me at all considering the prominent place Fyodor assigns to it in several of his novels. I speak of the “moujik,” the emblematic Russian peasant: the story is titled The Moujik Marey, published in January 1876 in The Writer’s Diary.

Dostoevsky fully positions himself as a staunch defender of this social class
(which he idealizes a bit too much…),
he who was a major critic of tsarism and serfdom and paid dearly for it, having spent years in the gulag as a result. The debate over the nature of the moujik is indeed fundamental in Russian literature, with Tolstoy, Gogol, and Chekhov, even, having either praised or condemned the Russian peasant in their respective works.

I won’t say anything about the role of Russian peasants in the history of the Soviet Union
during the 20th century,
as they were the source of many ‘tugs-of-war’ between those who saw them as the vanguard of the Bolshevik revolution and those who viewed them as relics of the old regime. It will be a fascinating subject to ponder during our long winter evenings…

Your baskets this week will be a mix of
late summer and early autumn,
given the return of our spaghettini squash – which we cannot leave indefinitely in our bins due to its fragile nature, fennel, a selection nightshades (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants) that will vary by drop-off location, the beginning of Asian greens (most likely mustards), garlic, and one or two other yet-to-be-determined vegetables. This week, we aim to complete deliveries of your Italian tomato orders; in a week or two, we will begin deliveries of your garlic orders.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

The week has begun with a chill and our activities have followed suit.
We are cleaning up fields that have already been harvested and doing an early harvest of winter squash, even though the full process will stretch until mid-September. Most importantly, though, we are focusing on planting another large batch of leafy vegetables, which has been delayed by intermittent but abundant rain. This has caused some delays in an activity that needs to be undertaken in a systematic fashion. The weather is (finally) expected to be nice until Saturday; the plants will definitely be in the fields by then.

I also pray for not-too-violent winds to help dry out the soil, as another end-of-season task urgently awaits:
finishing my green manure sowing. I keep talking about it, but Mother Nature keeps throwing us curveballs, and the rains of recent weeks have delayed this crucial activity, a must for enhanced soil health. The window is short, a maximum of two weeks, because any sowing beyond September 15th will not allow for the necessary build-up of organic matter. So let us pray – for good weather, at least.

This week’s basket will be similar to the previous one since the nightshades are still generous,
although I am starting to notice signs of fatigue. We’re also experiencing a gap in leafy vegetables, with lettuces taking their sweet time to mature. This week’s novelty: the red kuri squash that we’ve just harvested. You will also find eggplants, peppers, summer squash, carrots, onions, tomatoes and more.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

The week has begun with some particularly fall-like activities,
like the harvesting of our first winter squash, the spaghettini, which should find its way into this week’s baskets. The plants were starting to turn yellow, which is a clear sign that it’s time to remove the fruits from the fields. We also thought you’d enjoy our small summer leeks, which we also call ‘vinaigrette’ leeks. As the name suggests, steaming them and adding a good garlic vinaigrette making them sublime – borrowed from the French sublimer, a verb used to excess of late, it seems, on some Gallic cooking channels…

To complete these vegetables, you should find
the following in your baskets:
eggplant, peppers, summer squash, tomatoes, garlic, a brassica and fine herbs – all in addition to the two companions mentioned above.

But that is not the main point of this communication:
as ’tis the season for canning tomatoes and planning yearly garlic allotments, I hereby announce that order-taking has begun.

ITALIAN TOMATOES
(Italian in name only, as in fact we grow a Spanish version of the Roma plum tomato called Granadero).
We plan to start delivering Italian tomato orders from this week – the tomatoes are ripening quickly! – and to switch to garlic deliveries starting in mid-September.

CONSERVATION GARLIC
Place your orders now, and the garlic will be delivered once the tomato orders are completed, that is, starting around mid-September. Our ‘Music’ garlic is available by the pound or by the kilogram.

INSTRUCTIONS
We don’t have much to say about how you process your tomatoes, as there are many techniques, ranging from more complex blanching to simple, direct freezing. However, we can confirm that our garlic will keep throughout the winter and even into late spring if you store it in your pantry or kitchen cupboard, in the dark, in its paper bag, and in dry conditions. Many of you have confirmed this to us over the years.
Orders will be filled on a ‘first come, first served’ basis.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

The week has begun under grey and rainy skies,
and the recent humidity is beginning to affect the condition of some vegetables in the fields. You may have noticed that there are no more cucumbers in your baskets, as the plants have suffered from the excess moisture, which has led to the spread of various kinds of mold. One would think the same would be true of our summer squash, but the plants are much more resistant to the vagaries of the climate than their cousins.

Our tomatoes will last a few more weeks,
but there too I have noticed the beginning of senescence, as the plants are also susceptible to different types of fungi that seem to be caused by the excess humidity in the air. That said, leafy vegetables are doing well, and I foresee a bountiful fall in this regard.

Although there are still a few days left in August,
know that leeks, the first winter squashes, and conservation onions are on the way and will subtly begin to appear in your baskets.

Speaking of baskets,
this week’s will be similar to last week’s,
with just one or two differences:
cantaloupe, corn, summer squash, basil,
green onions, eggplant, kale, tomatoes, and more.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

PS: A separate email will follow shortly regarding these  summer essentials – i.e., orders for conservation garlic and paste tomatoes…

It is sad to see an old barn go up in smoke…
yet this is exactly what happened to a farmer friend who has just lost a chunk of family heritage, vestige of a bygone agricultural world. His barn, a structure of blissful simplicity which I used to glance at every time I passed by on my way to Montreal, is no more, a casualty of human, albeit unintentional, carelessness. It took only a small spark to start the destructive fire, and within a scant fifteen minutes, the building was completely consumed by flames.

Those who know our farm are aware that its buildings date back to the same era,
i.e. the last third of the 19th century.
We are fortunate to have inherited structures that are representative of a time when everything was built from wood, using architectural and carpentry techniques that few, if any, can replicate nowadays.

I find myself thinking of our beautiful red barn,
older (and bigger) than the one that just burned down, where onions freshly harvested last week, and garlic, are curing, soon to be joined by our winter squashes. These buildings might seem useless from the road, but inside they are alive, and for that reason alone, they must be cherished and cared for.

Meanwhile, back to our baskets:
they will be filled this week with
watermelon, corn, eggplant, summer squash, green cabbage, tomatoes, fresh onions, and more.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

“Where the forest is, Chateaubriand is believed to have said, there is the homeland: forests precede civilizations and deserts follow them.“

This quotation attributed to Chateaubriand,
though no one seems to be able to find it in his writings or correspondence, has haunted me ever since I discovered it while browsing a web page. What did this august French writer mean to share with us, if he is indeed the author?
While the first part seems to affirm the intimate connection between humans and the land, the second part is a scathing condemnation of the nefarious impact of humans on the world that surrounds us. Chateaubriand an ecologist ahead of his time—who would have thought? One could even see it as a terse commentary on the rise and fall of civilizations, but we’ll leave that discussion for another time… Indeed this quote would have been a great topic for the French baccalaureate philosophy exam this year, but they did even better by selecting a quote from Mes Forêts, a collection of poems by our very own Hélène Dorion, Quebec’s poetess of trees and the natural world.

L’homme qui plante des arbres rares du Québec
La Presse, 2024-07-13

I’m sharing all this with you because in a few days we will be meeting with Charles Lussier,
a well-known Quebec geographer/botanist, to discuss how we might improve the state of our woodlands on the farm. We’re looking forward to our discussions with him.

In the baskets this week:
cantaloupe, corn, eggplant or pepper, summer squash, fennel, tomato, leafy greens, beans or potatoes, and more.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

I harrowed one of my large green manure fields this weekend,
the one that was leveled earlier this summer.
A beautiful green manure that I buried under the teeth of my disc harrow. I could not help but note the following paradox: while through these repeated passes, I knew I was nourishing my soils and thus ensuring next year’s production, the swarm of insects surrounding my tractor (and me!) clearly indicated their discontent, or perhaps frustration, even, with my sacrilegious act.

I understand them well, poor creatures.
In nourishing my soils, I was taking away the smorgasbord they had been feasting on for several weeks, from pea flowers to oat grains, not to mention the lovely variety of weeds that manage to sneak in between the rows of our mechanized sowings. I won’t lose sleep over it, though, because for every plot destroyed by our machines, another plot is in the process of being sown or has already been sown. They will just have to wait for the next feast…

It’s a summery basket in these last days of July:
blueberries, summer squash, cucumbers, eggplant or tomatoes (we’re almost, but not quite, in full cornucopia mode), carrots or beans, a leafy vegetable plus one or two other vegetables not yet chosen, and last but certainly not least, corn.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

As mentioned in my last note, we spent the week planting:
various brassicas, fennel, lettuces, basil, and more. These vegetables will certainly be in your baskets this fall, but we had to act quickly so as not to miss this short planting window. As we enter August, plant growth is affected by the amount of light they receive, and for slow-growing vegetables, there’s a significant risk they won’t reach their ideal size. This risk has been averted.

However, we are now facing three significant harvests:
firstly, the one we have just started – blueberries – which also has a short window, just two weeks to load up. It’s a delicate task because the difference between a perfectly ripe blueberry and one that needs just one more day is very slight, and explaining that subtlety to our day pickers can sometimes be a challenge. Next week, we will be harvesting garlic, which will demand considerable attention and energy, along with our first carrots. In short, the season continues to unfold, with every week as intense, challenging and rewarding as the next.

In this week’s basket:
blueberries, summer squash, cucumbers, cabbage, spring onions, kale, herbs, and two other as-yet-unidentified vegetables.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

DEAR MARKET MEMBERS:
Intense workweek, short note.
We started the week with nearly 200 trays of assorted vegetables to transplant to the field – failure was not an option, as it would have meant a less-than-abundant end of season.

Fortunately, the weather cooperated nicely,
with a little rain here and there, mostly at night, and plenty of sunshine during the day. Our boots got muddy, but the work is nearly done, and that’s what matters in the end.

In this week’s basket,
you can expect black currants or blueberries, garlic scapes, green onions, cucumbers, summer squash, a brassica, kale, kohlrabi, and more.

We look forward to seeing you at the market starting Friday.

I hesitated this morning before
making this decision,
but as we did two years ago, we find ourselves having to cancel and reschedule basket deliveries for Wednesday, July 17th, and Thursday, July 18th (Montreal West, Town of Mount Royal, and Westmount). The reason is quite simple: we are short-staffed at the farm and have nearly two hundred trays of vegetables to plant in the fields, an activity that will take us two to three full days – with no distractions – to complete.

Delaying the planting of these vegetables is not an option:
it would place the end of the season in jeopardy since everything that goes into the fields now ends up in your baskets in the fall. And so it is that Week 6 Wednesday and Thursday deliveries will be rescheduled to November 13 and November 14, making for cooler delivery conditions, among other things 😊…

And for those of you wondering
about the season so far,
I would venture that it is one of the most beautiful seasons I’ve experienced since we started the farm. The weather has been cooperating, and the vegetables are plentiful and of high quality. The only difficulty is the dearth of qualified field staff, which is another challenge altogether.

We thank you in advance for your understanding,
and look forward to seeing you next week at your respective delivery locations.

After much shilly-shallying that has lasted weeks, or the entire spring, even,
July is dragging us into the heart of summer.
It is doing so without a true heatwave or excessive humidity: it’s just warm – warm enough to beckon laziness and the delights of beach activities. But we must not allow the mind to stray, our focus remains the planting of vegetables – at this juncture, veggies that will be served up to you in the fall: a range of brassicas, the last of the zucchinis, lettuces of course, and many more.

We are just as focused on weeding, because July is a market farm’s make-or-break month.
A weed left to itself will come back to haunt you in August, the month of reckoning, the one that will determine whether you’ve succeeded in your season or not.

July is also the month of harvests to end all harvests,
with nightshades almost ready, melons and watermelons having started to form their fruits, and our garlic, earlier than ever, soon to be harvested and set out to cure. In short, July is the craziest month of the season…

In your baskets this week:
lettuce, cucumbers, summer squash, spring onions, garlic scapes, Swiss chard, basil, and more.

We look forward to seeing you all.

This week will be busy.
It will begin with a harvest blitz to prepare our Wednesday and Thursday baskets. As soon as these vegetables are washed and packed, we need to focus on setting up our stalls at the Atwater and Jean Talon markets. From July 5 onwards, that’s where you’ll find us Friday through Sunday until early November.

Every year, the same frenzy takes hold of us,
as we have just a few hours to set up tents, arrange nearly twenty tables, hang banners, find our bearings again, and from Friday morning onwards, resume our weekend market routines, rain or shine.

Fortunately, we are well surrounded,
with our offspring helping with stall setup and loyal employees assisting us in running things smoothly during the season. It helps that the forecast is calling for nice weather for several days…

In this week’s basket:
lettuce and kale, kohlrabi, summer squash, fennel, garlic scapes, broccolini, and more. The cucumber plants are starting to yield their fruit, but not enough to include some in the baskets yet. They will be a new addition to next week’s baskets. I’m also closely monitoring our cold greenhouse dedicated entirely to tomatoes, hoping that 2024 will be our earliest season yet.

We look forward to seeing you all.

The week has ended and begins under
the sign of water.
Lots of water. Not that I don’t appreciate nature’s generosity, but…there comes a point when enough is enough – when the are fields soaked, the rows impracticable, and the farmer’s t-shirt is perpetually wet…

We already had to kick our heels before planting
our winter squash
– finally managing to transplant them into a barely accessible field – and now the rains of recent days are causing delays for a growing list of other vegetables.

The weather might change,
and the mix of rain and sun forecast for the week by Environment Canada (EC) might morph into a string of uninterrupted hot and sunny days…not. Indeed, I am of those who believe that climate science has made such tremendous progress in recent years that weather forecasts now almost always come true… Fortunately, EC is still calling for a very warm summer, and I’m still willing to believe them.

The basket remains a bit leafy, albeit with
a few new additions:
escarole or chicory depending on the drop-off location, plenty of lettuce, kale and Swiss chard, beets for some and Japanese turnips for others, summer squash, not to mention the garlic scapes that we’ve just finished harvesting… and more.

Joyeuse St-Jean to all and see you very soon.

I never thought that one day I would be sharing with you the alarming antics of a singular creature in our fields, the groundhog.
What is a groundhog if not the most comical animal in the countryside? Comical because of its schizophrenic behaviour when it exits its burrow, a mix of hesitant waltzes and extreme wariness that are a source of hilarity for this farmer.

Initially, we try to be magnanimous, letting them dig a tunnel hither and yon, hidden in the tall grasses that border some of our fields.
But eventually, our patience wears thin, and we find ourselves having to resort to heavy artillery to dislodge them. It is neither for aesthetic reasons nor out of concern for our physical safety that we need to remove these critters, but rather because of the fact that with the passing of time, they come to believe that what is yours is also theirs, and nothing stops them once they catch a whiff of cabbage or fennel, even when protected by our nets.
So, if you want to know how we get rid of such a creature in our fields, ask us when we meet this week…

Second week of the season, and I am happy to offer you the scrumptious strawberries of my friend Mathieu, an organic farmer who hails from nearby Farnham.
The basket is still quite leafy – don’t be surprised – but changes are coming as we have harvested our first summer squash, and gradually, we will be expanding our offering. For the time being, though, we’ll also be serving up lettuces, kale, spinach, kohlrabi, beets or white turnips and more.

We look forward to seeing you all.

I am still digesting the article from La Presse
a few days ago about Time in general and
Time that flies in particular.
Apparently, we don’t have enough of it…which I can confirm, because I find myself writing this first communication to you, wondering how I could have missed its passing.

Be that as it may, the 2024 farm season
is well underway
and starting on Wednesday, you – farm members from Montreal West, Town of Mount-Royal, Westmount and at the farm – are hereby summoned to come and collect your CSA basket, the first of 22 iterations.

Overall, spring has been mild,
except for a few days of heatwave here and there and a short series of cool days. Nothing to bother our vegetables, which are doing quite well in the fields. As usual at this time of year, our basket will be generous in  terms of leafy vegetables (lettuce, spinach, kale), but there will also be root vegetables with foliage (beets, white turnips), bok choy, coriander, and a couple of other yet-to-be-determined vegetables.

With that, we welcome everyone and look forward to seeing you in a few days.

We’ve been quietly busy…
But now we’re back, epistolarily speaking.
Indeed, we’ve been far from idle, particularly in our seedling greenhouse. Leeks and onions are already out on hardening tables, along with kale, Swiss chard, and the first brassicas.

That said, we wonder what May has in store for us.
April was chilly, and the first days of May aren’t looking to be any warmer. Your market farmer, always on the lookout for optimal conditions to start working in the fields, wonders if Mother Nature will offer us the necessary opening, a span of at least four warm, sunny and windy, even, days, to dry the soil and allow us to haul out our tractors and field implements and deploy them in the fields. The laws of probability are affirmative, but nowadays with climate change, all bets are off…our fingers are crossed.

We remind you that the season for our neighbourhood basket deliveries (in Montreal West, Town of Mount-Royal, Westmount and at the farm) will begin on June 12th,
while market baskets (and loyalty cards) will launch on July 5th at Atwater and Jean-Talon.
You have until early June to sign up, but there’s nothing preventing you from doing so earlier 😉. Please don’t hesitate to encourage family, friends, and colleagues to try the experience for a season – our 15th, something worth celebrating!

As indicated in our previous email, we have made some adjustments to the composition of our baskets
by increasing the fruit portion with more melons and cantaloupes, and introducing a greater diversity in leafy vegetables (arugula, chicory, endives, etc.) along with a relative decrease in the quantities of winter squash.

And our friends at Capitaine Levain will be back with their delicious organic sourdough bread.
We invite you to register with them or to contact them directly if you need more information about their offer.
See our sign-up page to register.

We look forward to seeing you all again.

Have you felt the winter? Neither have we.
We’ve caught a glimpse of it these past few days, though, with about fifteen centimeters of snow covering our fields that have been bare for too long. Will it suffice to bring a semblance of chill to the air? Perhaps. However, your market farmers cannot afford to pine for winter, as spring will officially be upon us shortly, and we must prepare accordingly.

We are therefore very pleased to announce the launch of the 2024 season,
our 15th, which will officially begin on June 12 and end 22 weeks later, on November 10, including deliveries at our public market farmstands which will start on the 5th of July.

We have received all our seeds,
our paperwork is in order, and by the end of March, we will fire up the seedling greenhouse to kick things off. In the meantime, we invite you to visit our sign-up page, take note of all our offers (small and large CSA baskets, and at our market farmstands, our Petit Marché and Grand Marché loyalty cards), and if you are ready and willing, sign up and reconnect with an enjoyable summer habit filled with freshness and delightful surprises.

Fruitwise,
Mathieu from Diversibio has promised us strawberries somewhere in June. Even with 40% fewer blueberry plants in our blueberry patch since the close of last year, there are still enough plants (600!) to include these small fruits in your baskets at some point (or two) between mid-July and mid-August. We have also decided to increase our watermelon production to include them more than once in your baskets, somewhere towards the end of August (we’re hoping for a warmer – and sunnier – summer than this year). We will try to do the same with cantaloupes, although they are more finnicky fruits…

Vegetablewise,
last year’s ginger tests in our unheated field greenhouse were conclusive: we will be including some in your baskets towards the end of summer. We have decided to decrease our production of winter squash and favour certain leafy vegetables requested by many of you, especially spinach and arugula. There will still be winter squash, but in smaller quantities than in previous years. We would also like to include more leafy vegetables like radicchio, given comments from several of you last year, as well as some broccoli varieties that are easier to produce than the classic ones found in grocery stores, which are very demanding in terms of space and nitrogen inputs.

That said, all the key vegetables of any self-respecting garden will be in your baskets,
starting with our nightshades (tomatoes, eggplants and peppers – in all their many declensions), sweet corn, summer cucurbits, carrots and beets, not to mention our sometimes huge lettuces, Asian greens, leeks, and other alliums. In fact, if you have found certain vegetables missing from our baskets in the past, let us know asap so we can try to include them in our production plan. 

And for all our fans of fresh sourdough bread,
take note that Capitaine Levain will be back for another year at our neighborhood delivery points in Montreal West, Town of Mount Royal and Westmount (unfortunately, due to our early departures on market days, their bakery schedules do not allow us to offer their bread at our Atwater and Jean-Talon farmstands). You know the drill: the links to their registration forms are also available on our sign-up page. Choose the formula that suits you; we will deliver their delicious organic breads and sweets along with your weekly CSA basket.

This note covers the essentials of the season’s start and
marks the beginning of our seasonal correspondence.
We hope to see many of you sign up for another season. We are already looking forward to seeing you at your respective delivery locations.

If ever a sign from God were necessary to signal that it was high time we pack our bags and head South, this would be it :
according to Environment Canada, that depressingly doomsday-ish weather forecasting service of ours, night temperatures at the farm will hover between -6 and -11 degrees Celsius for the next 3 nights, the likes of which we have rarely (if ever) witnessed in late October.

For those of you who wonder what -12 means for a vegetable,
it is certain death, as no vegetable cell can resist that kind of cold, except perhaps our leeks, who can withstand a hard frost here and there without sequelae. For this reason we have harvested almost every remaining harvestable vegetable today – leafy greens, cabbages, etc. We’ll collect the last of the Jerusalem artichokes later this week, but no worries on that front : they can withstand most everything buried as they are 6 inches under.

And so it is that we face this final week of CSA baskets,
happy to see the season end at last. It has been a colourful and emotionally charged one, albeit perhaps less so at Arlington Gardens than elswehere. Why, you may ask? Maybe it’s that our sandy loams absorb excess water, or that our vegetables are planted in a more forgiving soil. One thing is for sure, it’s called plain old luck: the luck of not being at the mercy of unforgiving winds, like our friends at La ferme des 3 Samson and their hail episode, or of diluvian rains, like the black soil farms of the Lake Champlain area, sponges that just could not be wrung dry this summer.  Quebec’s Financière agricole will be writing many cheques this year…

I will not attempt to provide a comprehensive list of everything in your baskets,
they will contain an eclectic mix,
with contents at each delivery location differing from those at the next. I can nevertheless venture the following for starters : a last winter squash (just one), carrots or beets, leeks, parsnips, one or two leafy greens, radish or turnips, and more. We look forward to meeting up with you one last time, and wishing you a wonderful winter.

It looks like it’s already off to a great start.

Were it not for the torrential rains of the past weekend,
the tractor and combine mechanical ballet would have continued uninterrupted. Every year witnesses the same field crop ritual. Just as market farmers are beginning to pack things up and in, field crop farmers sit astride their massive machines. Corn, for one, is harvested thus these days, with everything a function of degree-days and thermal units. The longer the cobs can stay on their stalks in the field, the drier they get and the less it costs to dry them post-harvest. The downside is that all this heavy machinery is all too often deployed in soggy fields with devastating consequences on soil structure, including probable compaction. deneme bonusu

Rural legend has it that Quebec winters,
with their alternating deep freezes and sudden thaws, counter soil compaction. My experience points to that being little more than wishful thinking…

In your baskets this week:
carrots, Savoy cabbage, leeks, squash, winter radishes, potatoes, another yet-to-be determined vegetable – and more, including hot peppers that we will bring separately.

We look forward to seeing you all again.