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! ;)

Seeds in the Ground

It's been dry and warm, and a bit of rain is actually called for (finally!) so I decided to try seeding a few things. If it works, there might be peas at one of the first CSA pick-ups and carrots by early July!

Here are the supplies:

And here I am with the 1st of the carrots, beets, peas and favas seeded. Garlic is coming up nicely through the straw mulch too.

New Toys!!

Went to a farm auction last weekend and scored a few new toys!

Got this wee wagon (the sides are removable to make a flat bed when preferable):

And this S-tine cultivator!!

Tried the cultivators out yesterday and they are SWEET! The rake at the back does a really good job of breaking up clods of dirt so weeds dry out faster. It also leaves a really smooth finish on the field surface. I'm pretty excited...

In other news, here's where the garlic is at now:

A few early spring photos

Went out to the farm to check on a few things this afternoon. 2 exciting developments:

1. I peeled back the mulch and discovered that the garlic is up!

2. Both bee hives survived the winter! If you look closely at the 2nd pic you'll see that 2 of the bees have bright yellow pollen stuffed in their upper leg pockets. I'm so curious what's flowering already...

And it begins again

The smell of potting mix is pretty intoxicating in the spring (in fact, an article I read recently suggests that a particular microbe found in the compost acts as a mind-altering drug inside the body, functioning as a mood elevator when we breathe it in! - I always knew I could get high on good dirt!) I just spent an awesome day up at reroot organic farm where I grow my seedlings in Caitlin's heated greenhouse until the weather warms up enough to bring them home to the (unheated) greenhouse at Fertile Ground. It made me pretty happy to be up to my elbows in potting mix, then dropping the first little seeds of the season into the trays.

47 flats are now seeded: onions, shallots, leeks, celeriac and perennial herbs. If you wonder in October why leeks and shallots are so expensive, it's because by then growers have been caring for them for 7 months!!

In 2 weeks I'll be starting the next round: some of the flowers for the cut flower bed, the 1st planting of lettuces, and the peppers and eggplants for our Annual Seedling Sale at Little City Farm.
 
Here's our greenhouse set-up crew: me, Jenny and Caitlin from reroot, and 2 of Jenny's friends who were helping her move up to reroot from Toronto that day.

Bee Friendly Farming

Fertile Ground is the 1st in Canada to certify as a Bee Friendly Farm! Pollination Canada (a branch of Seeds of Diversity) has recently partnered with Partners for Sustainable Population to bring the program north.

The widely-reported disappearance of honeybees (called Colony Collapse Disorder or CCD) brought public attention to the issues facing both honeybee populations and native pollinators. Some common factors that affect CDD are nutritional stress (due to a lack of access to a wide variety of forage plants), and exposure to pesticides which weaken & confuse the bees, leaving them susceptible to a variety of parasite and disease pressures. Native bee populations also suffer due to lack of appropriate habitat for them to build nests. Pollinator health is a key food security issue, as since bees (as the insect group which does the majority of pollination work) are responsible for 30% of the crops produced in the world.

Bee Friendly Farming (BFF) is an initiative that encourages growers to improve pollinator healthy by increasing awareness of the best management practices for bees. Applicants self-certify by answering 10 questions about practices such as growing native plants and appropriate forage, minimizing pesticide exposure, providing water access, and protecting nesting habitats. I'm really excited to learn more, and to host a Pollinator Party/Work Bee at the farm - likely the 1st Saturday of June - where we'll plant some native pollinator-friendly flowers, learn to identify some native bees and learn more about our honeybee hives from our farm beekeeper.
 
Here are some pics of some of our "bee pasture"...

  

This one has a bumblebee in the foreground, and some other kind of bee in the background I don't (yet) know how to identify:

 

Honeybee:

Zucchini blossoms which are often home to sleeping native Squash Bees:

If you're intrigued, you can follow Friendly Farming on their facebook page.