March 24, 2016: a deep breath and a sigh of relief. The greenhouse has been cleaned, the bags of potting soil are piled high. The devil’s in the details (as always), but we’re ready to roll. Relatively speaking, I don’t spend that much time in the greenhouse over the course of a season — a couple of months in all — but it’s long enough to appreciate its warmth-filled nooks and crannies. Knowing that it would be my primary abode from mid-March to early May for the foreseeable future, I built it with a wooden frame, to the surprise of my greenhouse supplier. ‘A wood frame?!’ he had asked, doubtfully. ‘No one uses wood anymore, it’ll rot in no time,’ he had added. Poor Richard. He just didn’t get it. He couldn’t begin to understand my love of wood in general, hemlock in particular, and its amazing ability to morph over time, greying gently at first, then darkening to bold hues of brown. In truth, I had little interest in the metal frame he was suggesting, which dwindled to no interest at all considering the reality of snow-covered spring fields and night temperatures still hovering around -10 celsius when we fire up the greenhouse furnace every year. I wanted a cocoon, a nursery to encourage the birth of my seedlings. Hence the wood-framed bubble in which I have just sown leeks, onions, herbs and our first kale. And that’s just for starters…
Meanwhile, online registrations are in full swing. If you haven’t registered yet, don’t wait until it’s too late. Our website has been completely revamped in order to streamline basket registration and to allow for extra orders of vegetables and fruits throughout the season on a new platform. The season will run from the beginning of the week of June 13 to the end of the week of October 23rd — a total of 20 weeks. Yet again, we will be offering two basket formats (small and large) and as wide a selection of vegetables and fruits as in previous years. This year, we will be partnering with a local baker, Stanbridge East newcomer Ghislain Despatie, with a view to offering you mouth-watering breads, made with ancestral organic grains. We’ll do a more formal presentation of Ghislain shortly. We look forward to seeing you all again this summer.