Tasty, fresh and nutritious food grown on the Saugeen Bruce Peninsula
Seasonal eating stories seem so one-sided. It’s easy to celebrate the first asparagus of spring, the first tender green chives, overwintered spinach’s fresh sweet leaves.
But what about when it’s February and you’re only half-way through a winter of trying to eat locally and seasonally? It can look grim. Now is the winter of our discontent.
It doesn’t have to be like that. Continue reading “Embrace the Cabbage”
It’s January now and all the highs and lows of the 2019 summer season are having their sharp edges whittled away by time. We’ve seen snow, a melt, more snow and yet another mild spell in the last six weeks. Our lifestyle orbits around heating with wood, winter chicken chores and keeping the lane snow-free.
It wasn’t that long ago that the meadow was lusciously green and we were harvesting armloads of veggies for the farmers’ market. Looking back through our photos twigs my memory of the past season. Here’s a short and sweet list of three things that stood out.
Over the past few years we’ve worked to reduce our tillage in the gardens. Exposure to a series of books, articles and podcasts convinced us that a no-till/no-dig system would really benefit us and our shallow, heavy clay soil. Continue reading “Reflecting on Summer 2019”
Maybe we talked at market, but the timing just didn’t work out. Or maybe you were too shy to ask. Or maybe you didn’t even know it was a possibility.
Well, this year we can officially remedy that.
Our farm is a member of Rural Gardens of Grey and Bruce Counties. We refer to ourselves as being members of a “garden tour,” but it’s more like a choose-your-own-adventure story than a scripted tour. It’s up to you which gardens you visit and when you visit them.
Continue reading “Did you want to visit the farm last season?”
Preparing for a local Seedy Saturday today has me thinking about my journey as a gardener. On reflection, I realize that I am entering my 27th year of growing veggies, herbs and flowers. Wow. 27 years!
Growing in downtown Kitchener, then growing in small-town Wiarton paved the way to growing on our rural property and finally growing for market. I guess I might have a little to share with budding enthusiasts, after all.
It’s been a wild winter. A mild December lulled us into believing we would get a break this year. Silly, silly us. By the end of February–when we often have a thaw, but not this year–our daughter had missed a record sixteen days of school because of cancelled busses. We even saw the weather website post ‘Blizzard Warning,’ which was a new meteorologic category for many of us. In the midst of this, our physical access to the outside world was throttled.
I’m stealing from Peter’s letter/essay that he shared with several family members in February about the experience.
By Peter
I sometimes tell students the proverb: “There’s no such thing as bad weather—just poorly prepared people.” That perspective has been intercepted and tasered the past two weeks. Even slightly decent weather has been an exception.