Farmers Are Optimists

In an often cynical world I have to say that I find the farming community as a whole to be pretty optimistic. If we weren't we'd quit when things get tough, we'd never be able to continue after a natural disaster wipes out all your work or a hail storm destroys your harvest. And yet farmers just assess the damage, sigh, and get back to work. Okay, we do complain about the weather a lot because it's one crucial variable of farming we can't control, but apart from that I think we're good. 

Here's how my day went. Around midnight we were checking that things were still okay because the winds had picked up into the 80-100 kph gust range. The greenhouse on the house was flapping so I thought we might have problems but it was fine. However Steves 6am check found the other lovely shelter on the barn was horrifically mangled. 

You can see that one post and anchor block were dug out of the ground by the force. The rest of them had the flange plates literally ripped off. The bee hives were blown apart and scattered and the glass door smashed in. However all is not lost! Steve was able to find and save a few bees so he's got the hives back together. I'll make some food for the poor things. Our friends Becky and Colby stopped in for moral support and to help me take the frame apart. Now it's in nice neat piles and can most likely be welded.   The door still needs replacing but it's blocked off for now and I'll get a board nailed over it tonight. And the gate, well, we can now improve on our gate design because it's toast and I'll need to build a new one. I have some ideas and I'll re-use the hardware. I'll have a new post hole dug in the spring and then we will hang it. Oh and the clear tarp cover is still usable which is pretty amazing. 

The kids have been helping with chores and clean-up. There's siding blown all over the place and we need to fill the wood bins inside the house as well as the usual chores. It was really warm last night so we let the fire go out and it was a great chance to shovel out the ashes and clean the wood stove before the weather turns cold again. It's gone from plus 10 Celsius  to plus 1 and flurries this afternoon so I suspect we will be back to our regularly scheduled Winter tonight. It'll actually be good because the warm and wet weather melted all the snowpack and now the rivers are quite swollen. Another couple of inches and our river will breach the southern bank. The house is fine though, we're on high ground. 

Kate's night to cook supper is tonight so we're getting tater tot casserole (a version of her smiley casserole) and roast squash with Brussels sprouts. She's the cook, who am I to argue? Everyone has to start cooking at some point and she has her favourite recipes. Root vegetables should be a much more important part of people's winter diets I think. And here I would also include apples. Local Cortlands are currently on sale for $4 #10 bag so we stock up and put apples in a storage tub with slightly damp sawdust. Kept in the addition they don't freeze and will stay fresh for a long while. It's worth it to me to do the extra work if it means we have fresh local apples to eat. 

Well. There's my day. It started badly, but you just have to pick up the pieces, figure out how to prevent it in future if you can (have metal flanges on the anchor posts) and then continue on. Friends helped clean up, and my bestie took me out for a two hour trip to town for some errands and lunch to cheer me up, and our family all pulled together. So yes, I'd say we're optimistic that this is going to be a good year for our farm, despite the setbacks. 

Happy ducks

I've been wondering why the ducks are spending so much time under the trailer...and now I know. There's a small leak in the water line and the smart little guys are using it as a drinking fountain and personal shower. Well unfortunately for them Steves under the house right now replacing that section of pipe. No more shower. Poor ducks. They'll have to use a waterer like everyone else. 

The weather has been pretty good and we're getting lots of work done. But we are also taking time to have fun. Dinner tonight with friends is lamb and roasted vegetables, yum! I don't know if I'm looking forward to the food or the company more. It'll be nice. When the nights are long it's always a good idea to make the most of them. 

Anyways I've got to keep this brief. I have parsnips and carrots to peel and prepare for roasting. Hope you're having a good winter. 

Self Watering Containers

As many of you have no doubt experienced, drought and dry summers are becoming just one more thing gardeners are having to contend with when trying to grow plants. Self-watering beds are a great option to beat the heat, especially for someone growing a few plants on their patio or balcony or for people who travel and may be gone for a few days. A self-watering bed is good because you can simply fill the reservoir to overflowing and it will wick up the moisture into the soil as it needs it while you're away. 

The major drawback to wicking or self-watering beds is the cost. Veseys has some lovely ones but I'm sure the price tag puts a lot of people off. $200-400 for the basic unit isn't unreasonable, it's just unaffordable for many. But never fear! You know I've used them before and I've found a set of plans online that are cheap, easy to follow, and reusable for many years. 

This is the time of year that storage totes go on sale. I recommend Rubbermaid but that's just my personal preference. You can use any tote that has a lid. Do you have some extras from a past move or from de-cluttering your house? You can use those. You'll need some pipe, a tote, plastic garbage bag, cable or zip ties, fertilizer (or mix in slow release fertilizer to the mix and of course good quality potting mix. I also sometimes put a single piece of landscape fabric over the inner tray before putting down my soil but you don't have to. Check out all the instructions for several variations from a five gallon pail to a large tub. I'm posting this on my phone so I may not be able to connect the hyperlink until later. http://postoilsolutions.org/documents/earthbox.pdf

Well I have to go. The kids school bus just came 15 minutes early so of course they missed it. Now I'm going to have to drive them which I'm not happy about. What happens to all the other kids who miss the bus and their parents already left for work? Of the normally 7 kids at our stop, nobody was there yet. You'd think that would be a hint. Oh well, time to go. Have a lovely day!

Planning My Winter Away

I'm sure that at some point you must have wondered what we get up to here on the farm in the winter. Well I still find myself pretty busy. Life at the farm has certain rhythms that revolve around feeding the animals, caring for them, doing repairs to tools and fences on the warmer days, maintaining our equipment, keeping the house warm (it's currently 12.8 Celsius and the fire has been burning for two hours already) and setting in place all the plans for the garden. A garden plan is like a complex dance, a balance of light, shadow, water and succession. This week it's time to think about ordering my seeds, supplies, and fruit bushes and plants. Wholesale orders fill up fast so January is a good month to plan and buy seeds rather than waiting until March. While it's still cold in Canada, other place are getting spring by March and getting lots of crops started indoors. I think this week I'll plan my cash crops like peppers and tomatoes and decide if I'm grafting tomatoes this year. I have my sales records from last year so I know what varieties of tomato performed well and which sold the best as plants. I also want to look into some grow bags as I've heard they're great for tomatoes and peppers in a greenhouse. If they work well, perhaps guy could replace my hard sided pots. Way less plastic! But I wonder about the benefits. I will have to try it and see. I have some landscape fabric so I'm going to see about seeing myself some fabric grow bags. This might be a good addition to the retail side of things in our nursery but really it's just to experiment. If any of you have experience with them please drop me a line. My big debate currently is this... Is it worth paying four times the price to get bags that are white outside and black inside? I think they'd be cooler on the plants roots in the summer. And you could write directly on the bags so there are no labels to lose. 

Our first small batch of wheatgrass went in to Porters Lake yesterday. Hopefully it's just the first of many deliveries. I have to admit that the wheatgrass does taste better than some of the other stuff I've tried. But it still tastes like lawn clippings, which anyone who has cut grass with a hand mower can surely relate to. A little trial and error and we'll have a nice little sideline going. 

My last post was about a local Nova Scotia CEDIF (Community Economic Development Investment Fund) and there was quite a lot of talk yesterday on CBC radio about how great the various CEDIFs are for the economy in terms of the development of jobs and businesses in the region, and also as an investment if people are interested in seeing their money being used to strengthen and help rebuild sustainable communities. If you're interested (and you should be) check out FarmWorks or the development funds in the areas where you live. 

Investing In Nova Scotia

The title of this post might be more easily read as "putting your money where your mouth is" and I'd mean it literally. I found a great investment to tell you about and no, it's not a scam, you will not get rich, but your money will be secure and you'll be supporting the economy here in NS. There are tax breaks as well so you're doing good for the local economy and potentially paying less in tax depending on your situation. 

We were introduced to a group called FarmWorks back in November. They are the ones who do the Gentle Dragons I wrote about a couple of months ago. And what they are is a Community Economic Development Investment Fund or CEDIF. As the name implies they are an investment fund that uses its capital to invest in local businesses that promote sustainable, strong, diverse and secure local food production from farmers to value added processors to restaurants.  After a rigorous application and vetting process the Board makes recommendations on worthy projects that can receive small loans of $5000 a $25,000 to start a business, expand an existing business or diversify. They provide support and mentoring in addition to requiring regular reports to monitor how things are going.  Payments and an interest rate are set and as repayments occur the money is then immediately available for further investment by FarmWorks into other projects. I'm making it sound pretty simple, and it is in theory, but I'm sure you have lots of questions so be sure to check out their website for a far better explanation than I could ever give. 

So why does supporting local food production matter? Let me tell you how it's going to affect you in 2016. 

As you know, the dollar is at an alarmingly low level which meant that the hat or book you bought on Amazon or eBay in US $$ this Christmas cost you a lot more once it was converted to Canadian dollars. The same thing is happening to food imports too. Oranges and lettuce are still costing $1 lb in the US but translated into current dollars that's now become $1.43 Cdn or whatever the current rate is. I apologize I'm actually not sure of the current rate.  Price fluctuations are initially absorbed by the wholesaler and retailers who make less profit, but the continued slide of the dollar means that now in order for them to stay in business you and I will be paying more at the store. Probably quite a lot more. 39 cent bananas, dollar bread and dollar apples and oranges are a thing of the past unless you're lucky enough to live in a producing region. Even here in the valley food will be rising in price as it becomes more profitable to ship our apples elsewhere in Canada instead of importing them from the States. 

Now you might be thinking that an increase of $100 on your monthly grocery bill isn't the end of the world. But what if your best friend is on disability or your grandmother lives on a fixed income? Then what? What happens when there's simply not enough money to buy healthy food? Two things. People buy cheap processed foods and skip the fruits and veggies. And reliance on local food banks increases to the point they can't keep up with demand. 

If you're thinking this doesn't concern you because you've got a job and food in the freezer think again. Having a population living on processed food leads to health concerns over time which leads to more tax dollars needed for health care which leads to less services and funding for other programs you might enjoy like funding for the Arts. Longer wait times to see a medical specialist can affect us all at times when we're feeling pretty vulnerable.  As much as we'd like to pretend we're above things like hunger, it affects us all. Nova Scotia is a tiny blip of a community on the World scale. We're a close community of not quite a million people in a World of billions. That's not to say we can't have an influence but what I think we should be doing is strengthening our home communities first. 

This is where FarmWorks comes in. Not only do they help food producers, they provide a good place to invest your money. Most of Nova Scotians retirement savings and wealth is in foreign and domestic investments outside NS so we're missing out on the millions and millions of dollars that could be used to bolster our own economy. That's where a CEDIF comes in. Periodically FarmWorks offers shares for sale that provide a provincial tax credit and a return on investment. I won't quote numbers because I'm not a hundred percent sure what they are but I know that to date approximately $1,033,400 has been invested and everyone seems happy. This is money that's working to benefit lots of different people. 

Let's say for example that we wanted to expand our farm. We could apply for a loan and do our presentation to them and fill in all the paperwork. Their board would check us out and see if we meet their criteria and if we are doing something they can support then a loan would be made and guidance and support would follow over the following years to ensure that we're successful. My business would increase and more food dollars would be which would be spent locally. In turn that gives me an income to spend locally while promoting farming in the Annapolis Valley.  The market grows, I hire a couple of seasonal workers who then spend their money locally and the cycle continues. Money that is already here in the valley stays here rather than going into the pockets of growers in Mexico or Florida. Or even the CEO's of Big box stores. Something as small as a 10% increase in local food dollars would have an enormous impact on the number of young people who would get into farming and those who would stay farming. Suddenly having a small family farm like ours would be sustainable and the local youth would be able to seriously consider staying in Nova Scotia to raise their families instead of moving out west. Being able to feed our home communities more would make farming an economically viable option for new farmers. And this could be duplicated in any area and country in the world where free enterprise and farming are possible. 

Of course I'm biased. We are very motivated to have a good customer base for our farm, for the farmers market and for the CSA that will be starting in May. We're working with other farms and growers to create an environment that's both economically viable and fun to do. Nobody wants to do a job they hate. But if you've ever sat on your tractor and  stopped to watch a sunset or marvelled at a perfect row of seedlings you planted, then you know that working with nature is a blessing like no other. Farming is a job that despite the ups and downs of livestock and weather, is good for your soul. 

If you are thinking about supporting more local growers this year, or looking for a return on your investments, then please check out FarmWorks. They are good for Nova Scotia in so many ways I can't even begin to list from providing a safe investment to encouraging better food security for all Nova Scotians. I'm definitely not doing them justice in this article so feel free to ask any questions you have and I can pass them along or contact them directly. I know new shareholders are very welcome to join this amazing group of people so look into it. It's truly a hidden gem of NS enterprises. 

Happy new year!

This is just a quick little post to say a huge thank you to all our readers and fiends for your support and kindness over the past year. 2016 promises to be a year of tremendous growth for us and we hope you'll spend a little time with us each week following our adventures. 

From all of us to all of you, have a happy, healthy and prosperous 2016. 

Winter Snows

I awoke at 2:30 this morning to the deep hush that you only get when the Earth is blanketed in new fallen snow. It started yesterday and has been snowing lightly ever since. It's not a lot yet, maybe five inches or 13cm. It's hard to tell looking from my window. But it's enough that everything is well covered in a layer of white and it's reflecting the starlight and waning moon so that it appears much brighter outside than it has in months. I always find the darkest winter nights are those with no snow to reflect the light back. This means that it's officially the end of gardening season and the beginning of planning season, although we are still hopeful that if it warms up a little we might get some turnips out of the garden that are buried under the snow right now. The snow will actually insulate them from the cold drying winds that cause so much damage to plants. Having a layer of snow is actually good for your perennials. 

Planning for a CSA and market garden happens on an ongoing basis. Rotations, sunlight, pests, soil characteristics and fertility, all these facrors and more go into our decisions on which crops to grow and where the following year. We also have the considerations of the tunnels and greenhouse for starting early crops and seedlings too. It's becoming quite a complex thing to manage it all. So I'm writing it all up on paper initially but it will soon be transferred to a series of spreadsheets so that we can plan and monitor our progress and production. The week that it will take me to get it all sorted out will be worth it in efficiency in the growing season. It also means I can order seed ahead of time and that's important for crops that we grow a lot of and for our grafted tomatoes to ensure we get the rootstocks and varieties we want. Popular items sell out fast and I don't want to be left in April scrambling for seeds. 

Just because it's winter doesn't mean there's nothing going on here except paperwork. We are growing wheatgrass for a new customer. Lenna of In The Raw Sprouting Centre in Porters Lake has ordered a weekly supply of 10 pounds of fresh wheat grass for her business and we're happy to do that for her. As you know it's something we've done before and so as we speak the seeds (sometimes called wheat berries) are putting out little roots as they germinate. Once they've had another rinse in the morning they'll be ready to transfer to the soil trays for growth. Lenna is expecting the usual New Years rush of people who want to improve their health so we will be starting with a larger initial batch and then settling into a regular delivery schedule that will continue year round. Wheatgrass is pretty easy to grow indoors so we have space set up that's got the right temperature for the most part and we use clean food grade plastic trays and organic potting soil. Lots of other growers don't use soil, but wheatgrass is one plant that really does well in a soil medium. I'll take some pics of our methods once it's light outside. 

The rush of kids visits and dinners is over now and we're eating turkey leftovers. Yum! It's a good way to load the kids all up with root veggies we have stored for winter. Meghan is going to stay with her brother in the city for a few days which will be a nice break for her. She's leaving today. And Steve is back to work as usual. I think he's home again on Thursday and we're going to friends for New Year's Eve. Other than that it's just a quieter time at the farm. Having said that, it's 3:49 am right now and one of the roosters out at the hen house just started crowing. It wasn't a one off either, he's regularly warbling away every twenty seconds or so. And I can hear the ducks gently chattering too. Oh, now one of the Roos in the greenhouse beside my bedroom is joining in. With any luck they'll realize that dawn is hours away yet and go back to sleep. If I'm awake in the middle of the night like I am now, I always keep my bedside lamp off so as to not wake the Roos. I don't mind the noise and in fact I'm so used to it that I'll sleep through the pre-dawn racket. But the sound carries down the hill and along the river somehow and spreads over the neighbourhood. Our rooster named Gargle was famous for miles for his distinctive crow. Oh, the ducks are muttering curses at the moment and heading for their favourite spot under the house. That means either there's a predator about or Jordan's let the dog out to pee and she's scared them. Either way the yard is now quiet again and all I can hear is the gentle breathing of my sleeping family and the occasional crackle of the fire in the kitchen. I put a couple of logs on at 3 to keep the stove warm so that when Steve gets up at five to get ready for work the house will still be warm. The wood stove is our only source of heat and since its small it requires more regular filling than a larger stove does. But it's the perfect size for our little trailer and with good dry wood and a box fan that blows up the narrow hallway, it keeps the house warm. Our woodshed is now moved to be outside the back door and is expanded in capacity. We could probably get 6 cords of wood in there and still have a wide walkway but we burned less than 3 last winter and we  aren't expecting to burn more than that this winter. I let the fire burn low when it's just me at home and overnight so unlike a modern house the temperature fluctuates quite a bit. But that's okay with me. It just means warming the oven if I want to rise bread or planning ahead and warming the kitchen. 

Well I'm going to try and get some sleep. The roosters are all quiet again so it seems like a good time. Sleep well my friends!  

Here's a pic of the unfinished side of the woodshed. The other two sides have recycled metal sheets we salvaged from our friends shed that got some damage in the hurricane last year.