RIP Flower

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While not a food related post, I didn’t know where else to put this.

I am sad to announce the passing of our resident, abandoned cat Flower.

Flower was a gentle soul who wandered this world in search of companionship.  While she might have thrived in a non-farm environment, her life here was not a bad one.  She had food and shelter and people who greeted her every morning, afternoon and night.  I hope that Flower is now at peace and I am sure that she is purring(and meowing) loudly wherever she is.  Goodnight Flower.  

What’s growin on?

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So, I have been putting off this update for awhile. Not because I wasn’t looking forward to it, but because free time is getting more and more precious these days and blog updates don’t compete well with sleep and relaxing. Well, I finally got off my behind, went down to the field with my phone/camera and took some pictures. Here is what I found:

Onions, leeks and shallots – These little guys get get seeded at the beginning of February so they are already 3 months old and still not much bigger than a couple of hairs.  With a little luck and ALOT of weeding, these members of the Allium/Lily family will become a large, juicy, eye-tearing vegetable which forms the basis of all great soups.  Onions and shallots get harvested late summer and then must cure(dry) for a couple of weeks so you can expect this crop in the last couple of boxes.  Leeks and sweet onions because they don’t need to cure, are ready earlier.

Lettuce – Starts so small and ends up so BIG!  Lettuce is usually a staple crop on our farm, available from the end of may until the weather gets frosty.  Fast to grow and easy to harvest, lettuce is somethings we can reliably produce at a bargain price.

 

 

 Garlic – I hope everyone loves garlic, because there is lots of it this year.  We planted probably almost triple the amount as in previous years and right now, it looks great.  Garlic gets planted in November(last year), gets pulled out of the ground in July’ish and then cures for a couple of weeks.  Expect green garlic in June, fresh garlic in July and dry, storable garlic in August.

Fabulous Florence Fennel – Florence fennel is the bulbing version of regular fennel which is the plant which produces the spice fennel seed.  While not a common vegetable in everyones fridge, it should be.  Fennel is fresh and fragrant and once you learn to like it, you will wonder why it took you so long.  The challenge with growing fennel is keeping it from bolting(flowering) which means giving it lots of water.  That means that the fennel is at it’s best in early summer and fall, when we have lots of water.

Spinach – While normally easy to grow in cool, wet weather, spinach is having trouble this year.  Along with the trouble we are having getting good germination rates in the field, the recent mega hailstorm has caused havoc with our early spinach plantings.  You can see the hail damage(ripped and torn leaves) on the young, tender spinach plants.  I try hard be successful on these early spinach plantings because once the hot, dry weather comes, spinach is almost impossible to grow well.  People have come to expect spinach all season but we are going to focus on spinach in the shoulder seasons when they should be grown and are at their best(taste and nutrition wise).

Potatoes – Other than garlic(which gets planted the year before), potatoes are usually the first crop to get planted outside every year.  We used to aim for St. Patrick’s day(March 17) to start planting potatoes but over the past few years and our changing weather patterns, I am lucky to get them in by the end of March.  The 2 pictures here are the difference between planting them outside vs planting them in a cold frame/hoophouse(quite the difference as you can see).  With some nice weather(and no rodent damage), you might get some cold frame potatoes in the first or second box of the season.  Potatoes are a gamble each year because of a devastating

disease called late blight which can acompletely destroy your entire potato crop.  By growing early potatoes, you can beat the blight with earliness but potatoes are such a staple that we roll the dice every year and hope that the weather cooperates(blight is triggered by wet, warm weather) and will let us have a successful potato crop.

 

Reliable Rhubarb – Rhubarb is a perennial we grow lots and lots and lots of on the farm.  Rhubarb is at it’s best now and you will get alot of it in your first box or two.  Whatever rhubarb we don’t sell fresh in stalk form, we cut up and sell to a restaurant/bakery to use in pies in Vancouver(Aphrodies Cafe and Pie Shop).  Technically a vegetable, rhubarb is usually cooked in sweet dishes and a famous combination is strawberry-rhubarb pie.  You should be getting both of these this year so make sure you save some rhubarb(it freezes well) to use with your strawberries in June and July.

Strawberries – Speaking of rhubarb and strawberries, these are the first berries of the year(other than the native salmonberry which we don’t market commercially).  The two biggest pests of strawberries are weather and slugs.  Slug patrol and trapping starts now(when flowers appear) and goes until the first fruit is ready.  Juneuary (cold and rainy June) is something that we can’t control and causes a poor harvest when it occurs.

Carrots – What is under that big, white cloth in the middle of the field you ask?  Well, usually it’s carrots.  Why you ask?  Carrot rust fly.  This pest is quite common in our area and without this cover (called floating row cover or Remay) we wouldn’t be able to grow carrots for sale.  While a couple of carrots with a couple of worms would be acceptable, without this cover on the carrots, there is a good chance that almost all the carrots would have lots of worms by the end of the season.  Carrots take a long time to grow, are hard to weed and need to be covered all the time.  So why do we grow them?  Because they taste so delicious and once you eat a Glen Valley carrot, you will understand why we go through all this trouble too.

Ok, I have lots of other pictures and there are lots of other crops planted and growing now but hopefully this is enough to get you interested and excited about the upcoming season.  If you are interested in seeing more, feel free to come out to the farm and see things for yourself.  While I may not be available to give a proper tour, if you are a CSA member, you are welcome here anytime to see YOUR food in the ground growing.  Just give me some notice so I know to expect you.

 

 

 

Here Chicky Chick Chick

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So, we finally got some chicks here at the farm!  For many years, we have been buying ready to lay, hybrid pullets(a pullet is a hen at the ready to lay stage, approximately 20 weeks old).  These hybrid pullets while certified organic, have usually been raised in the big agi-industry style of mass production with de-beakings and vaccinations.  Those chickens have been bred to lay lots of eggs and that usually means they don’t have a very long lifespan and are generally not well adapted to living in a natural system.  Just like the hybrid seeds that we buy, the hybrid chickens do well with lots of inputs, which in the case of poultry, means feed.  They are very efficient at converting feed to eggs but loose that efficiency once you take that feed(usually in the form of grain) away.  Old varieties or breeds of chickens might not lay as many eggs as the hybrid layers, but they also don’t need as much feed to do so.  They are better able to range in the pasture and get their own food.  One of the things I  have wanted to do for many years is to see what would happen if you bought different breeds of chickens, raised then on the farm in a pastured setting and used them to generate more chickens.  Would these chickens be healthier, happier and better adapted to our environment?  Would we save money and fossil fuel not having to import the increasingly expensive feed?  Well, let the experiment begin!

 

 

 

 

 

It all began a couple of weeks ago when we bought around 40 fertilized eggs from a couple of chicken enthusiasts nearby.  We ended up with 3 different breeds and a couple of varieties within 2 of the breeds(Coronation Sussex, Silver Sussex, Ameraucana, Blue Orpington, Lavender Orpington and Buff Orpington).  We borrowed an incubator which would keep the eggs warm(100 fahrenheit), moist and turned for the 21 days required to hatch them.  It is amazing to think that all the work of this somewhat complicated machine can be accomplished by a mother hen sitting on her eggs.  We are hoping to not need the incubator in the future and instead use a ‘broody’ hen to hatch the next round of chicks.

After 20 days, the literal ‘early bird’ hatched a full 8 hours before the next one.  This bird had a distinct racing stripe down it’s back and now is the only one with a name.  We called it Kevin but we may need to rename it Kathy as we are not skilled at sexing the chicks yet. A freshly hatched chick takes a good 4-8 hours before it becomes the cute fluff ball that people can recognize.  They are usually kept in the incubator until they begin to dry out or else they can chill if you take them out too early.  At this early stage, the chicks are unable to regulate their temperature.  From the 40 eggs we originally bought, 22 hatched and 20 made it past the first 48 hours(it is common for some of the chicks which hatch to not make it past the first week).  Of the 18 eggs which didn’t hatch, most of them appeared not to have been fertilized so didn’t really have a chance to begin with.  After a week and a half, we still have all 20 chicks alive.

After the chicks have dried out a bit, they need to go into a ‘brooder’ for the next 4-8 weeks until they are big enough to go into the coop.  A brooder is so named because it is replacing a ‘broody’ hen which would normally be the one who keeps them warm and shows them to food and water.  Without the hen, we need to create a warm space with access to clean water and good feed.  It is also important to give them enough space and a proper floor(litter) so that they can run around, scratch and peck the litter.  Allowing birds to exhibit their natural behaviors will reduce stress and prevent problems such as cannibalism which is why almost all commercial poultry is de-beaked.  Once they have feathers and once the weather warms up, they can be put outside in the chicken coop.  We are in the process of planning out the coop and deciding whether we should build a mobile coop on an old trailer.  More to come on that in the future.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is just a skimming of what we are doing and why but I hope that this has given you a little more insight into the world of chickens.  A great book which I would recommend on this subject is “The Small-Scale Poultry Flock” by Harvey Ussery.  This book will take you from selecting a breed to breeding your own with lots of good pictures and a focus on self-sufficiency and sustainability.  So, hopefully you are ready now to go out and start your own flock of backyard chickens!

 

 

Water, Water, Everywhere

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Farming in the Fraser river floodplain in the pacific northwest, we have a challenging relationship with water.  In the fall, winter and spring, there is usually a surplus of water.  Our challenge at this time of the year is to drain and remove excess water in the field.  During the summer, there is usually a shortage of water.  Our challenge then is to provide enough water to keep the crops healthy and germinate the seeds that we plant.  This challenge of feast and famine when dealing with water is a common challenge to farmers in the pacific northwest.

So why do we farm here then?  Why not move to an area with a more constant and moderated water supply?  Well, one reason is that along with the wet weather that is coming in from the pacific ocean is a good amount of warm weather as well.  It is these warm, wet weather systems which give us such a long, frost free growing season that allow us to grow such a diverse variety of crops for such a long time. It is a great thing to be able to walk down to the field in the middle of winter and pick winter vegetables to prepare for dinner.  Another reason we like farming in this area is the rich soil found in the old floodplain given to us by the Fraser River.  This rich soil, high in organic matter and nutrients and low in rocks is probably THE BEST farmland in Canada.  This amazing soil combined with our moderate climate give us an ideal situation for growing food.  This is why it is so important to maintain this land as FARMLAND and not develop it.

It is not the cold which prevents us from planting at this time of the year, it is the wet.  One of the drawbacks of using tractors to farm is the compaction that they produce and moisture in the soil magnifies this compaction.  We need almost a week of dry weather before we can get into the field with a tiller but we have another tool we can use to get the fields ready for planting, it is called a disc and looks like this:

 

 

 

 

 

This tool is simply a bunch of sharp metal discs, lined up in a row, which you drag through the field.  These discs cut into the soil and the plants, opening the soil up to air and drainage and killing the plants.  In the fall, we plant cover crops into our fields as a way to protect the soil structure from erosion and compaction while adding organic matter and maintaining soil biology.  These cover crops must be broken down in advance of planting in the spring time.  Sometimes, cold weather will kill our cover crops but this year was a mild winter and our barley did not die which means we need to kill the barley mechanically.  We can get into the fields and work the soil with our disc earlier than with our tiller because the disc will not create as much compaction.  Here is a picture of what the disc can do to an established barley cover crop and what a field looks like after a good discing:

 

 

 

 

 

Now we wait until the next stretch of dry weather so we can compost, till and plant the first round of crops which will grow into the food which we will eat this year.

COABC Conference

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From their website “The Certified Organic Associations of British Columbia (COABC) is an umbrella association representing organic certifying agencies in the province. COABC is empowered by the British Columbia Organic Agricultural Products Regulation under the British Columbia Food Choice and Disclosure Act to implement an organic certification accreditation province-wide. COABC was incorporated under the Society’s Act in March of 1993. ”

So what exactly does this mean?

Well, organic certification usually has 3 main players; the farm, the certifier and the accreditor.  The farm is certified by the certifying body(in our case, BCARA is our certifier) and the certifying body is accredited by the accreditor.  This is important to ensure the integrity of the organic process so that there is oversight of the people certifying the farms, ensuring that they are doing a good job.  COABC is a provincial accreditor which overseas all the provincial certification bodies.  Things are a little different now that the federal government has taken over the organic standards nationwide.  If you are interested in finding out more about the current certification process, check out the CFIA website which also includes the actual standards.

This past weekend(Feb 24-26), in Chilliwack, was the annual COABC conference and AGM.  The theme of this conference was innovation and there were many opportunities to learn at various workshops and network with other organic farmers.  As a farmer, I find it difficult to connect with other farmers either because they are located in remote, rural far away parts of BC or I am too busy most of the year farming to find the time.  The COABC conference gives a chance every year for us organic farmers to come together and connect in a supportive and fun environment.

A farm-made weeding/planting/harvesting machine. One of the many innovations at the recent COABC conference in Chilliwack.

Since we are talking about organic certification, I would like to talk about certified organic.  Over the past few years, I have seen a proliferation of “no-spray” and “uncertified organic” and “naturally grown” farms, just to name a few of these new branding labels.  Let me also be clear that I don’t think certified organic is the answer to sustainable agriculture.  I also don’t think that just because you aren’t certified organic, that you don’t grow organically or even go beyond.  One of the biggest comments I hear from farmers who don’t want to certify is that it is too expensive, cumbersome and that they just don’t see the point because they are marketing directly to the customers who can see how they are producing their food.  It is also these same farmers who like to use the word organic and tell people that they grow organically.  I used to be one of these farmers myself but have recently come to an important realization.  It is because of the hard work of many organic farming pioneers in the world over the past few decades that I am able to be an organic farmer.  It is these farmers who have developed and refined the organic production methods that I use to farm.  It is these farmers who have developed the organic seeds and managed the organic land that I use today.  It is these farmers who worked to educated the public and created an awareness of the importance of eating organic food and avoiding conventional food.  Finally, it is these farmers who struggled to make a living selling small amounts of produce to small, local, niche markets for many years.  These small markets grew and along with new markets now allow me to easily sell into a high-demand organic food marketplace.

So in the end, this is why I support organic certification and organizations like COABC.  It is a way for me to continue the fight against an international, corporately owned food system, the fight which was started by a small group of good intentioned people many years ago.

The start of the season

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Every year, on or near February 1st, the new season unofficially begins.  While we have already been busy ordering seeds and supplies and signing up CSA customers, the real farming doesn’t begin for me until the first seeds are in some dirt.  At Glen Valley, the first seeds in the dirt are usually members of the Allium/Lily family, or as most people know them, onions.

We begin by transforming our dry storage room full of squash and last years onions into the ‘start’ room.  This way, we can start plants inside where it is bright and warm instead of outside where it is cold and dark.

 

 

 

We make up potting soil which is a mixture of peat moss, vermiculite and various organic approved nutrients and put them into plastic seeding trays.  We use a simple tool(our hands) to place seeds into the trays.  Depending on the crop, we either place them one at a time(cabbages, tomatoes, squash, etc) or many at a time(onions, lettuce, etc).

 

Pest control in organic farming begins early.  It is a good idea to cover your ungerminated seeds with something (we use wire mesh) to prevent unauthorized access by hungry rodents who are pretty desperate for food at this time of the year.  As you can see, there is a great buffet here for ambitious critters.

 

One of the miracles of farming is seeing the seeds we plant germinate and emerge from the soil.  This is the beginning of the long cycle that will eventually produce the food that we need to survive and thrive.  Here are some tiny leeks breaking through the soil, reaching up for the light.  Imagine how good they must feel to stretch out like this for the first time after hibernating in storage for years and years.

The next stage, when we run out of room inside, is to move the hardier things outdoors.  While it is still too cold to put them out in the elements, it is not too early to put them underneath a layer of plastic.  Called a cold frame, they grow tomatoes and cucumbers in the summer and double as a seedling house in the early spring.  The one pictured here is a special cold frame with a heated table inside.  As the weather can be unpredictable this early(frosts and freezes are still possible and even probable), we take another layer of plastic and can pull it up over the table to make a greenhouse within the cold frame.  The heated wires under the table top along with the two layers of plastic can keep things warm and toasty when things outside are frozen solid.

 

Local Seed and Local Food

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Just got back from the 6th Organic Seed Growers Conference in Port Townsend, WA.  I find that seeds are one aspect of local food production which does not get talked about much.  It is a little know fact that there are a hand full of companies which control almost all of the commercial seed production in the world(click here to see the current consolidation in the seed industry).  Every year, there are varieties  that we grow which are discontinued.  These are varieties that we have been growing for years and that do well in our climate and soil.  Once this happens, we need to spend years testing new varieties to replace the one that was lost.

One way to prevent this from happening is to grow open pollinated seeds.  Open pollinated varieties(OP’s) are varieties that when seed is saved from them properly, the next generation will look the same as before.  Hybrid seeds are varieties that are controlled by the seed producer and when seed is saved from them, the next generation will rarely do well or look the same as the parents.  After many years of saving open pollinated seed on your farm, they will begin to adapt to your soil and climate.  They should also become more resistant to the local pests and diseases.

Without a supply of locally adapted and produced seed, local food production will still be dependent on large, international petro-chemical companies.  We will be at the mercy of these companies and be forced to grow the varieties they choose and pay the price that they determine.  This is why I think it is important to discuss local seeds when we talk about local food.  We can’t have one without the other.