A New Season!!

Well the days are getting longer and we have our first set of seedlings growing under lights until the weather warms enough to open up the greenhouse. Onions,shallots, tomatoes and peppers so far. The onions are already three inche tall. All the seeds arrived a few weeks ago and I attended the ACORN conference this past weekend and am excited to get things going again. New seeds and new ideas!

With all the snow, the garden literally looks like a blank 15 acre canvas waiting for us to apply a pallette of seeds, plants and mulches. I spent a lot of time crop planning this winter and every bed has been assigned a crop or cover crop. I can't wait to see this years garden emerge.

We will be trying a few new things this year including sweet potatoes, a first for us. We will also be planting a few more artichokes this year. We experimented with them a bit last year and had some success with a small planting. We will have our first strawberry crop and we should even have a few raspberries. The prospect of all those strawberries is both exciting and daunting. With luck we could have a few thousand boxes and that is a LOT of picking as well as eating.

We are expanding a little this year, slowly building on our successful growing year this year. We will be offering more CSA baskets and be selling for a longer season at the market. We received our organic certification last fall and that will help with our marketing.

There will be lots of projects this year, including a new kitchen and housing for interns and myself. One of our projects for this year is a whole farm plan that utilises the principles of permaculture. This will help insure the long term sustainability of the farm and help us to utilise resources more efficiently.

Keep an eye on our Facebook page for events on the farm We plan to hold a few events at the farm this summer. We will also be a host for the provincial open farm day. The first event will be our second annual soil blocking party. Join us Sunday afternoon March 20th in the greenhouse to help make soil blocks for transplants and have a cup of tea.

It looks like we have a great crew shaping up for the summer and I am looking forward to working with them. Miles will be joining us again this year until he goes to med school and we will have three new interns arriving in May to help and learn. Liang and Scott are coming from Ontario and Eric will be joining us all the way from Winnipeg.
Hope everyone has a good spring!

New Year Reflections

It seems like only yesterday that I was putting together seed orders for last year. Well, the catalogs are here again already and I am planning for next summers crops. The new year and winter weather brings a little time for reflection on the past year. It seems like a bit of a blur now, and I can't believe how it went so quickly. It was a very busy year, so I expect that contributes to the compressed perception of time.

This blog, like so many farmer's blogs completely stalled in late June as there just seemed to be no time to keep up, particularly with no internet access at the time. I mostly used our Facebook page for updates as it was much easier to use and seemed to reach more people with it's surprising popularity. It is at www.Facebook.com/jemseg river if you want to check it out. You don't need a facebook account to see it. Be sure to click on the wall tab if it brings you up to the info tab.

There were many highlights of the year and everyday was special in some way as the farm and the fields full of crops provided an endless imagery of beautiful scenes. Even in the nastiest weather, when one is immersed in Nature, you can be struck by the beauty, diversity and abundance that surrounds you. Our plateau at the edge of the valley, provided an endless supply of sunrises, sunsets, rainbows and incredible skies. The eagles, ospreys and the songbirds were our constant company. The world seems so much more real and alive when you are constantly outdoors.

The gardens did wondrously well for our first year, producing a bounty of incredible variety, despite some first year mistakes. Although I have had generous gardens most of my life, moving to the commercial scale took things to another whole level and many lessons were learned. It was perhaps the harvesting, washing and packing vegetables where the learning curve was the greatest as the volumes were large and the infrastructure a bit sparse. By mid July we were, according to my best estimates growing and selling enough vegetables to feed over 300 people, maybe even a few more at times. Each row takes on a new level of importance when it is slated to fill CSA boxes or sustain our weekly market sales.

The gardens and nature were not the only pleasant part of farming. We were blessed by having many wonderful people participate in the farm activities in different ways. Apprentices Eric and Francie endured the chilly spring mornings cheerfully and toiled through the heat and bugs of summer, exhibiting great patience, perseverance and diligence. Miles generously and gracefully did the same through the frosty mornings and cold fall rains of September and October.

Gerry's constant friendship, support and help through the whole year was invaluable and I am forever grateful. His sister Janet visited us from afar twice this summer and her support and help has been crucial to our success. His brother John even came this summer for a visit too and helped out. Thanks to Jennifer too, her enthusiastic support and wonderful cooking.

Michelle was ever supportive, helping out wherever she could and generously gave up many of here Saturday mornings to help out at the market.

Heather appeared and visited on cool and damp fall Friday evenings during the fall helping us prepare for the market and lifting our spirits.

Andi, Dan, Sylvia, Adam, Christie, Joe, Janet, Natalie, Andrew, and many others too numerous to mention came and helped with the many various tasks on the farm.

Our strawberry planting was done miraculously fast with the generous assistance and guidance of our neighbours Raymond and Cindy. Raymond generously shared his farming experience and provided sound advice throughout the growing season.

We were also blessed by wonderful customers both in our CSA and at the Boyce Farmer's Market. I was blown away by the the level of support and loyalty. Our Tuesday box deliveries were always fun, seeing everyone, telling them about the veggies we had for them that week, creating and strengthening friendships. Although Friday evenings were challenging, getting everything picked, cleaned and packed, Saturday mornings brought the excitement of the market and seeing the rest of our customers and usually meeting a few new ones. The interactions with our customers made farming feel like less of a solitary pursuit and more of a joyful community building exercise. I felt as though we were growing a wonderful community as much as crops. It was incredibly rewarding to provide healthy food to so many appreciative people.

By almost all measures,the year was an incredible success. I am sometimes amazed, particularly when I note all the times things could have gone terribly wrong. Not that little things didn't go wrong from time to time;-), but we avoided any and all sorts of real disasters. I would like to think that it was due entirely to successful planning,preparation and experience, but I know all too well that it involved a bit of luck. Farming is a hopeful enterprise in which your actions can only tilt the odds a towards your favour. Nature doesn't let you cheat... at least not for long, a lesson that modern industrial agriculture has yet to learn.

As I look forward to the new year, new goals are materializing; making the farm more profitable, producing higher quality produce, extending our growing and sales season, finding time to pursue more of our education and community building goals, planting an orchard, developing a whole farm plan along permaculture principles. Building a larger community of interns and customers. Planning more on the farm fun events. There are still some building projects unfinished and some more to begin. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges will be avoiding the end of season exhaustion that seems to plague vegetable growers and crept up on me in November. I expect the farm will operate more efficiently next year and we continue to add infrastructure that will help ease the burden. Getting rested up now in any case:-)

Much to be thankful for indeed!
Happy New Year!

Our First Harvest!!

On Saturday June 19, we went to the Fredericton Boyce market with out first harvest. We had good day, despite the lettuce wilting 30 degree C weather and a less than ideal location. A great big thanks to our first customers!! The response was very positive and many people said they would return again next week. Thanks also to Francie, for the great job working at the stand, and Andi for painting our sign!

The gardens are doing well and our first weekly boxes will be delivered this week at Renaissance College. Subscribers, come pick up your veggies at Renaissance College, 811 Charlotte St in Fredericton. We look forward ot seeing everyone.

Cheers
Mike

Starting to look like a garden!

After a dry month of May and a wet beginnning to June, things are starting to grow now. We have the first round of plantings mostly done and have already started succession plantings for lettuce, peas, beans, and some greens. The flea beetles have been thick this year because of early hot eweather and we do have some cosmetic damage on some of the greens. All of the white floating row cover you can see in the pictures is mostley to prevent insect damage. Lots of weeding to do now aand we will be doing out first real harvest in about 10 days:-)

Come on out for a visit! We are usually busy doing something, but normally have time for a quick tour.

Cheers
Mike
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Where did May go?

Things have been quite busy on the farm through May and now into early June. Francie and Eric both started working full time in mid may and they have been busy transplanting most days. The planting has been going well, but we got slowed down a bit by the very dry weather through most of May. We actually stopped setting things out for a while as it was just to dry and it was easier to water things int he greenhouse. We finally did get lots of rain over the past five or six days and the plants have really responded. A few days of sun now again and things will really take off.

The raspberries, strawberries and rhubarb we planted are doing well and hopefully will provide us with a nice crop next year. We planted quite a few potatoes and they are coming up now, so we should have a very nice crop of early potatoes. I have a feeling we will be having an epic battle with the potatoe beetles though as a few have showed up already.

The dry weather was a signal that we needed to invest in an irrigation systems, so a used drip irrigation sytem has been purchased and will be set up over the next little while. It should improve our production even when things are not critically dry.

The entire first round of plantings is up and growing, as are the weeds. I was able to cultivate between the rows yesterday with the little tractor in the few hours it was dry enough. We still have lots of hoeing to do and a fair bit of handweeding. If any one wants to come help with weeding, just come on out:-). The flea beatles were thriving in the hot weather and they did a lot of damage to some of the brassicas. We have to keep everything covered tightly with row covers to keep them out, but even that doesn't work sometime.

Our first livestock arrived last week! We now have four little pigs, and they are already growing fast. They have a very roomy pen in the barn and they we should be in their outside yard this week. For a treat, we cut them a big pile of grass and clover everyday which they devour with great enthiusiasm. I don't think they had ever had fresh food before they arrived, so they they are loving it, and probably needed the vitamins.

We should be doing a our first harvest in a couple of weeks. For those of you who have ordered boxes, I will be in touch soon.

Greenhouse+ Cabins+ Planting

The Farm News.
We are being catapulted into the growing season with the warm weather this year so it feels like we are behind sometimes, but in reality we are on schedule for a normal year. We got our three thousand strawberries planted as well as 50 rhubarb and 300 raspberries. The first of the potatoes went in on May 1st and we are about one third done planting them. The greenhuose was bursting at the seams but we have begun to set some cold hardy seedling out so there is now some room for things to grow and also to plant the next round of transplnts. We still need to get out the 20 trays of onions out, but they are doing fine. As you can see from the pictures below we are planting seeds directly into the garden now and the first greens and radishes from those planting should be ready around the first of June.

The new 30 x 72 greenhouse went up quickly on a Saturday afternoon with all of the help we had, and many people camped out that night and stayed the next day to help out with the cabins. Thanks again everyone for all the help!! There still is quite bit of work to do , but we are hoping to get the tomatoes,and some eggplants and peppers in there for the summer so they are not so susceptible to late blight.

I am excited that Francie Morgan and Eric MacLean will be joining me for the summer on the farm. They have already been a great help getting things ready to go and I really appreciate their enthusiasm. You can see them planting seed in the pictures below.

It has been very busy lately so it has been hard to get posts up, but I will try to keep things up to date.

Cheers
Mike


Our new greenhouse.
Watch the video on Youtube
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-xsNzc96ok



















Eric amd Joe building the floor for a cabin


















Francie planting some salad greens

























Me on the cub at work in the potato field


















The first rainbow of the season

























One of the lettuce mix beds


















Making garden beds with the cub. This tractor originally belonged to my great uncle Lester Carr who used it on his farm for many years but maintained it in great conditon.We are very happy to have this little tractor and it will save a lot of work this summer.



















Eric planting beets

Greenhouses

April 11 Laying the foundations for the new greenhouse, and pics from the existing greenhouse.

Gerry and Eric maneuvering some very wet and heavy hemlock planks.


















Eric and I nailing the planks together to make a continuous beam.


















Some of the various pieces of the greenhouse. The big curved pieces are the arches that will form the roof.=























The existing greenhouse at sunrise.


















The tomatoes (about 400), Eggplants (300) and peppers (350)


















Some Arugula


















Craciovensis Lettuce























Bull's Blood beets