Spinach for dinner!

I know, I know, it’s been a while since my last post.  For the past few weeks every time I came to the farm, stepping out of the truck was quickly followed by cursing under my breath that I had once again forgotten to bring the camera.  But I finally remembered! and its a good thing too, because things are definitely heating up in the garden.  The first two rounds of carrots and beets have germinated and are coming along strong (thanks to the hours of hand weeding…there are few things worse in life than the first hand week of carrots….), along with lettuce, spinach and radish.  The peas are looking to be much better than last season (when their season was cut quite short due to weather).

As for seedlings, a lot of the hardy crops have been planted out- some broccoli, kale, lots of Brussels sprouts (yay!), chard, cabbage and beans; and the hot weather suckers (tomatoes, melons) will be out soon too.

you can see the first rows of peas on the left (and the silly weeds staring to germinate in future beds!)

alex and i planting out the brussels sprouts

first round of carrots, beets, spinach and radish, and more peas.

Most of the potatoes are up, and we’ve got the beds ready for the sweet potatoes- this year we’re doing less potatoes but more sweet potatoes. If you read the blog last year you’ll know that I spent a lot of time complaining about bugs, the Colorado Potato beetle in particular.  While we were lucky that they came later in the season and thus didn’t affect yields too much, they definitely did quite a number on the plants.  But this year we’re ready for those suckers, hopefully catching them before they feast their way through our potatoes.  When they’re not eating, they’re making babies, which sucks for us because its the babies that do the most damage. The potato beetle is really like a zombie, they emerge from the dirt in the spring, in a dull haze (these suckers don’t move very fast) slowing making their way across the field in search of food.  You can almost see their arms outstretched moaning “fooood…..potatoooes…”

Okay, enough about bugs. In other garden news the CSA is full once again for this year, we had a great Member’s Meeting at the end of April to meet all the new folks and talk about the season.  The Main Farmer’s Market has started but we probably won’t be there until another week or two.  Until then its just weeding weeding weeding, planting, planting, planting planting!

Gearing up

It’s been a bit of an odd spring so far, bouts of very warm weather then back down to or below seasonal temperatures (although I guess that’s the nature of spring really!).  It’s kinda like the plants and mother nature are playing a game or Red Light Green Light (warm weather – grow!…..cold weather! stop).  Despite the temperature fluctuation the great thing is that the fields have dried up quite fast (yes, i know, lower than average water levels is no good for our local ecosystem in general) so we’ve been able to get some stuff in the ground.  To mitigate against the wavering temperature we’re been using row covers quite a lot, both in the field and in the (unheated) hoophouse.

These photos are a bit out of date now but it gives you a sense of how we get stuff going at the farm.

these are the first rows of carrots, beets, spinach and peas.  the row covers (held down by UV resistant bags of gravel) give them a couple extra degrees of warm to help them germinate and get going.

many of our plants start out as seedlings in the hoophouse to get them established before they have to survive the elements! these guys are a mix of lettuce, cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and greens.

 

It’s hard to beleive that the farmer’s market starts in a couple weeks! We won’t be there the first couple of weekends, without a heated greenhouse its pretty hard to have anything ready to do until mid to late May at the earliest- but before you know it we’ll be weeding those god-damn carrots and transplanting the first batch of seedlings.

 

CSA Workshare Positions

My first interaction with a small-scale organic farm was through a workshare in a CSA.  Instead of paying for a share I spent a few hours a week working on a farm alongside the full-time farmer and other workshare members.  It was a great experience and helped me realize that growing food was something I was really interested in.  We think workshares can be a great partnership between the farm and folks looking to get local organic veggies and a taste of what its like to grow them too!

So, as we did last year, we’re looking for people who would be interested in joining the CSA as workshare members. You can read all the details here: CSA Workshare 2012, or scroll down below.

Workshare Details

As part of our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) we are looking for several individuals to join the garden as workshare members. Instead of purchasing a CSA share, workshare members contribute 4 hours of work a week in exchange for a share of the harvest. Workshare members will receive a weekly basket for the duration of the CSA season (16 weeks) and will also receive the Fall Root Storage Share consisting of roughly 50 pounds of various root crops and squash. Worshares represent an important aspect of the farm, and it is a great way to learn about vegetable production and participate in a local food system.

Workshare Description

The workshare last 20 weeks, from the beginning of June till the end of October. Workshare members can schedule 3 weeks off within the 20 weeks. Workshare days are either Mondays or Wednesday from 8am-12pm. Tasks will primarily be weeding, harvesting and overall garden maintenance. These tasks will involve bending, crouching, lifting and walking in sometimes unpleasant weather conditions (heat, rain, wind). Appropriate footwear, sun protection and water are strongly encouraged.

There is no experience necessary but folks should be prepared for a labour-intensive adventure. We want everyone to have a good time and learn lots of new things, but there’s no way around the fact that growing vegetables is a ton of work! A workshare is different that volunteering at the farm. They represent an important contribution to the operation of the farm and we depend on workshares to meet our responsibilities to all CSA members and our wholesale customers. Being able to commit to the whole season is really important, as is keeping the same weekly schedule.

Workshare members must arrange their own transportation to and from the farm. It is about a 25 minute drive from downtown Ottawa, and unfortunately public transportation is quite limited. We will try and co-ordinate carpooling amongst workshare members.

About the farm

We are a small-scale non-certified organic vegetable farm located in Vars, in the eastern tip of the city of Ottawa. On a two-acre garden we grow a wide variety of vegetables for a 30 share CSA, several restaurants and a farmer’s market. We employ organic farming methods on land that was previously farmed conventionally (two years ago), part of an important practice of putting nourishment back into the soil and protecting farmland for future generations. Alex is the full-time farm manager and Amanda works part-time.

To Apply

If you’re interested in becoming a workshare member please send us a statement outlining your interest in the workshare and what you’re hoping to get out of it. Please indicate if you have access to a vehicle. The deadline is Sunday April 1st, 2012

Contact

For more information, you can reach us by phone at 613-869-6842 or email at theveggieunderground@gmail.com or check out www.theveggieunderground.wordpress.com

Safe Space Commitment

We want the farm to be a safe and inclusive space for everyone involved. We expect anyone who participates in the farm, whether as workshare members, volunteers or visitors to come with an open mind and to treat everyone with respect. We strive to create an environment free of any form of oppression, prejudice and violence.

Cool Upcoming workshop with Just Food

okay, last minute I know, but if folks are free tomorrow (Tuesday) night they should consider checking out this workshop organized by Just Food on Vegetable storage.  It’s at the Sandy Hill Community Health Centre from 7-9pm.

Click here for all the details.

Seriously, using an old fridge seems like a pretty awesome idea to me!

Seeds…the 2012 edition

It’s around this time of year that we eagerly await the arrival of our seed orders – alex gets excited especially for the seed packets of things we haven’t grown before. This year’s list includes fennel, some interesting varieties of onions, red and yellow carrots, an expanded list of herbs and beans! (as in dried beans- kidney, black beans etc). I’m really excited about the beans.

Pretty much everything has now arrived except for a few things on back order (and the potatoes, but we won’t pick them up till April) and we’ve started the first batch of seedlings.  The onions have poked their heads up already and the celery, celeriac and leeks are on their way.

Ordering seeds is both super exciting and super stressful – finding all the different varieties of the things you want, in the quantities that you want, and organic can be quite an undertaking, but its also kinda fun (alex would probably disagree on this point as he spent countless hours pouring over catalogs and on the phone).   Ideally we source locally available organic certified seeds.  Sometimes you can only get organic seed of the variety you want from the US, and then sometimes there isn’t a certified organic variety available anywhere.  In those (generally rare) occasions we ensure that they are untreated seeds (this is in accordance with Canadian Organic Standards) All the seed companies we source from pledge to provide seeds that are non-GMO.

2012 CSA Information

We have some spots available in the CSA for this upcoming season.  If you are looking for a vegetable CSA in Ottawa (pick-ups in Old Ottawa South and Hintonburg) click here to open the Info Sheet with all the details:  Veggie Underground CSA 2012

It can be hard to think about green things popping out of the earth when you have to chip away at a think layer of ice just to open your front door, but it’ll be here before we know it …at least that’s what I keep telling myself…

Check out the CSA page for more information on Community Supported Agriculture.

CSA Week Sixteen

So here we are, the final week of our CSA! It has been an amazing 16 weeks, lots of excitement and challenges along the way.  We hope our members have learned some new things about local veggies and sustainable farming! Alex and I have certainly gained invaluable experience with another season (almost!) under our belts.  Local organic farming is definitely a life-long learning project  – we were pretty lucky this year that most of our experiments and new trials worked out (except for that corn and those pesky raccoons!).

This week’s final share will be a bit of a surprise, but we hope it’ll be a great way to end the season!

Now if you find yourself staring longingly at your empty fridge next week (one of our members joked that they would come by the pick-up anyways just out of habit), don’t fret, there are still ways to get your hands on some local organic produce before winter sets in.   We’ll be the Main St. Farmer’s Market for another few weeks on Saturdays from 9-2pm.  We also should have produce up on the Eastern Ontario Local Food Co-op (with a pick-up on Tuesday at our house).  Or, just give us a shout and we can work something out!

We’ll be in touch soon about an end of season meeting for CSA members and our plans for the CSA next season!

CSA Week Fifteen: Tomato Revival..sort of

So apparently mother nature has a sense of humour. Just when it seemed like summer had packed it in for the season we have a week or unseaonably hot temperatures, making it feel more like mid-august then the end of september.  These warmer temperatures don’t cancel out the frost we experienced last weekend, but it gave the farm a bit of a grace period, where a few more tomatoes ripened and a few pepper plants that didn’t completely die were able to recover.  This little summer revival is only temporary though, as temperatures are supposed to dip down again below zero this coming saturday.

Regardless of the warmer temperatures, we’ve been enjoying some of those great fall crops that only get better with a frost.  Kale in particular gets slightly sweeter with the colder temperatures. In the past 24 h alex and I have literally consumed about five bunches of kale – we just can’t get enough of those crispy kale chips! We’ve also indulged in some sweet potatoes! I say indulge because having local organic sweet potato is pretty frickin’ awesome, and isn’t something that happens every season.  If you’re unsure of what to do with your sweet potato in your shares this week, there are a billion recipes online for sweet potato soup (my favourite is a sweet potato coconut soup), sweet potato mash, sweet potato fries (also a favourite) but you might want to just roast them wtih a bit of oil and appreciate the flavour on its own.  We’re betting it’s gonna be one of the smoothest sweet potatoes you’ve ever had.

We continue to spend most of our time on harvest but we’re also taking some time to clean up, take stock of our infrastructure, supplies, tools etc to store them properly for the winter and make necessary repairs.  We would much rather take the time to repair those busted quart containers then throw them out and buy new ones!

Okay, on to your shares for this week:

sweet potato

squash (you will have the choice of either acorn, buttercup or spaghetti)

table tomato

lettuce

spinach

raddish

broccoli (there might be a couple that have to wait for next week, we’ll see)

celery

sweet carrots (fulls only)

leeks (fulls only)

 

A reminder that this is the second last week of the CSA!

CSA Week Fourteen

Summer is officially over! Well, technically there’s a few days left, but the farm experienced a frost over the weekend so for us that pretty much means fall has arrived.  What does a frost mean for the farm? Well, it signals the end of most hot crops (tomatoes, peppers, beans, eggplant etc) – most of these guys can’t handle below zero and are pretty much dead if there’s a frost.  We’re still able to harvest the remaining fruits on the plants, so you should still see some this week.  But don’t fret, the frost also signals the start of some wonderfully tasty vegetables, most notably squash! This week there will be a delicata squash- it has a very nice sweet flesh, get for stuffing or roasting.  The Summer Tomato blog makes a pretty solid case for the delicata, and it contains a nice recipe too.

it also signals the thing i have been waiting for all frickin’ season long….sweet potatoes!  We grew these as a bit of an experiment so we weren’t sure what to expect- some of them are pretty funny looking but they are definitely sweet potatoes.  So I’m pretty ecstatic about that.  They have to cure for a bit so it’ll still be a little while before sweet potato fries are on the menu (and sweet potato soup, more sweet potato fries) but get those recipes ready!

It’s around this time of year that we really start thinking about food for the rest of the year, getting a last batch of canning in, doing around round of freezing and dehydrating (got some peppers and eggplant going as I type), and figuring out exactly how many storage crops we can fit in our basement.  So if you find yourself with a few free hours this week, think about what in season veggie you’ll miss the most and think of a way to keep it around a little longer.  There are a billion recipes/instructions for all sorts of preserving methods- or feel free to ask us at the pick-up!

Speaking of which, you’re shares for this week:

tomatoes/peppers/eggplant (Because of the frost, we’re still trying to figure out what quantities we have left of the hot stuff, so basically all of those are in the maybe category.But i’m betting there will be some combination of the above) 

radish

kale

bull’s blood beets

potatoes

green cabbage

spinach

delicata squash

CSA Week Thirteen

This week at the farm you could definitely start to see the change in the seasons.  The growth on some of the plants has slowed down a bit (ex. the beans) while other things are loving the cooler temperatures (Ex. lettuce).  One morning after a night of heavy rain you could still see large puddles in between the rows – during peak summer that would have never happened, but with the cooler temperatures the ground stayed wet all day.

We also had an unpleasant visit from the Leek Moth.  There was a lot of talk at the beginning of the season about the leek moth and the potential damage it could do to leeks, onions and garlic.  Up until this week there wasn’t much  sign of them on the leeks so I thought we were in the clear.  Unfortunately they have made a late, but significant visit to our leeks, damaging quite a few of them.  Little buggers! Thanksfully all the onoins have already been pulled and fingers crossed we still get some good ones.  These ones still looked pretty great!

Some of you might have heard us talk about the various wildlife we encounter at the farm. Besides the raccoons stealing our corn, we’ve also made friends with a couple kitties.  One cat in particular has stolen our hearts, who we’ve named Straggles #7.   I like to think of him as the unofficial farm mascot.  He’ll visit us in the field or in the barn for some food and a belly rub.  This is a photo of him hanging out in the truck for a snack:

Okay, enough about straggles, on to your shares this week!

Brussels Sprouts

Crisphead Lettuce

Raddish (if they’re not quite ready, then beets)

Tomatoes

Cherry Tomatoes

Couple of jumbo carrots

Fairytale Eggplant

Potatoes

Leeks (Potato and leek soup!)

Beets (Full share only)

Beans (Full share only)

 

If you’re looking for something new to do with the Brussels sprouts, we did a really yummy roasted Brussels Spouts with maple syrup, cider vinegar and hazelnuts! Check it out.