Farm Camp at Everdale Farm

 Here's a new twist on summer camp! Kids spend the week at a working farm, doing all the awesome crafty camp stuff, but with an opportunity to be engaged with daily farm chores, vegetable garden work, livestock care and  harvesting tasks. 
 
If your family values the outdoors, good food and a healthy lifestyle and are looking for something special this summer Everdale Farm Camp might be worth looking into.  The camp’s goal is to connect your child to the story of their food, from seed to plate.

Everdale is the farm I did my internship at 5 years ago - they have a tonne of experience doing fantastic, fun educational work with kids.

MORE INFO

Re-swarm

2 days ago 1 of the hives swarmed. Trina - our beekeeper - was expecting it. The bees had capped new queen cells and she didn't feel comfortable squishing any more of them. Armed with a bee box, we'd been left with the instructions to call her if they swarmed, and put out the baited box.

2 days ago, it happened. My intern Erik heard a remarkably loud buzzing sound & saw a lot of activity at the hive. They gathered on a branch like this:

But as time passed, the swarm got really heavy and one of the branches they'd gathered on collapsed. Then the bee ball looked like this:

Maybe this was a disconcerting progression of events for them...maybe they just re-thought their exit strategy, but either way the oddest thing happened. 1 ball disappeared, and the other one shrunk slowly as all the bees flew back to the very hive from whence they came. This was an unexpected turn of events. By the time Trina arrived to take a look at the hive, it was like the swarm never happened. Except...she couldn't find the queen. Mysterious. It would seem incredible if an entire swarm had managed to slip away without us noticing. And besides, we'd seen many of them fly back!

Today, it happened again. Erik saw the activity just as he was heading into town on an errand. I ran for the bee box, only to discover it was in the van that had just driven away! Fortunately, the van returned in time & I was able to set up a bait box in a tree a ways away:

This time the bees made a picture-perfect strawberry-shaped swarm tucked under the shelter of a spruce bough.

And best of all, Trina & her husband Chris made it to the farm before they flew off and were able to successfully capture them!! They sawed off the branch & shook the bees into a waiting box.

(You can't see them, but the bees are under that branch!)

Here she is placing the lid on their (temporary) new home.  Now we have 4 hives at the farm - hooray!

Plowing!

Hey - my dad taught me to plow. That's kinda cool!!

Mike Schreiner Visits

So on Thursday, Mike Schreiner - leader of the Provincial Green Party - came to the farm on a day touring KW. We had about an hour to chat and wander around. Mike seems to have lots of experience and history supporting local food systems and small-scale agriculture. I hadn't realized he even sat on the FarmStart board (the new farm support organization I teach courses for in the winter)!

I was really struck by Mike's genuine personability and understanding of agriculture and food system sustainability issues, as well as his focus on the importance of strengthening local communities. Mike pointed out that food and farming is the 2nd largest employer in Ontario.

Some highlights from our conversation and the provincial Green Farming & Agriculture platform:

• prioritizing sustainable, local agriculture
• improving small farm profitability
• providing tax credits for Ontario businesses who purchase Ontario grown food products, and to farmers who make food donations in their communities
• developing policies to get more local, organic food into public institutions including schools 
• supporting the re-development of local processing facilities
• offering public funding to support and expand farmers markets, farmer co-ops & other local food distribution systems
• changing key regulations and zoning to better support new farmers and small-scale farming needs (this is a very rare focus for politicians - I've never known any others to have such a solid knowledge of these needs and barriers!

These policies are not just sweeping generalities - they have lots of good legs on them. To be honest, I was really impressed. We have a by-election coming up in Kitchener-Waterloo shortly and I imagine I'll be giving the Greens my vote. I really encourage you to check out their platforms. The Food Platform is here. Thanks to CSA member Jason Hammond for setting up this visit!

10th Annual Heirloom Seedling Sale May 19

Don't miss this!! Little City Farm and I have been doing this sale for 10 years now and it's gotten bigger by the year. Tonnes of heirloom tomatoes and lots of other vegetables, herbs and flowers. Not everything is heirloom, but a lot is.

This year we've got live music lined up, an organic cafe, cob oven demos, garden tours...

RAIN OR SHINE!!

Comin' Up

THE FIRST SEEDS ARE SPROUTING IN THE FIELD!

GO PEAS!!!

 

...happy dance...

Blow-out

Went up to Hanover area yesterday to pick up some cover crop seed and fetch a row cover/drip tape reel that my farmer-friend Jeff at Cedar Down Farm built for me. About 20 mins into my drive home I heard an exciting noise & glanced in the rear view mirror to see something black flying out behind the trailer.

Pulled over to discover an entirely blown-out tire, with the trailer riding on the rim. Fortunately I'd thrown in a spare! Unfortunately, I could not for the life of me get the jack to work.

Instead, I unbolted the blown tire, lifted the trailer & kicked the old tire off, then lifted the trailer again to kick the spare on. It was trickier than it may sound, I assure you. I tried shoving a bag of oat seed under the axel to lift it a bit, but that didn't really work. Nonetheless...Success!! Until I realized the spare was flat. Grr.

Fortunately, I'd thrown in the air compressor. So I unhitched the trailer & backed the van up so the cord could reach. Unfortunately, the tire was so flat it didn't want to take air. Here's my situation:

Blocking a lane of traffic did not seem to generate enough interest or curiousity for any of the 10 people who drove past to pull over and offer a hand.

Until a nice farmer on a tractor came by and helped me identify that I had a tubeless tire which, at this degree of flatness, was never going to take air from my compressor. There goes the nice farmer taking my tire back to his shop to blow it up for me:

20 mins later, Helpful Farmer Man was back & lifted the trailer for me while I popped the tire back on. Of course, I'd figured out how to work the jack in the meantime...but I didn't tell *him* that! ;)