Year in review....and looking ahead

We had another successful year this year despite some weather related and crop disease challenges. Mother Nature has a way of keeping farmers on their toes:-) We lost some crops because of the drought and we spent a lot of time scrambling to get water to everything. The strawberries with their relatively short season and high moisture needs seemed to take the worst hit with out crop down about 70%. We also lost most of our tomato crop to late blight. Fortunately the hard work and previous care of the soil paid off and there was still what could be described as a moderate bounty. We were certainly able to keep our CSA customers baskets full and we had only slight less than planned for the market. We actually ended the last few weeks of the season with better market sales than last year. After hearing from my neighbour that it was the worst growing year he had seen in the nearly thirty years since he had bought his farm, I thought maybe we were actually doing pretty well given the circumstances.

As in the past, this year brought a wonderful bunch of young people to the farm to work an learn. Andrea, Ben, Bethany, Christine, Ryan, Trudi spent all or part of the season farming with us this year, and Joe and Jordan also helped with the house construction. I think we were more than ten at the dinner table sometimes. Many thanks to them as our farm is very much a team effort and we couldn't grow such great food for so many people with out their help. Each of them brought something special to the group. I think that watching people learn about growing and food is just as rewarding as growing food itself and although not all of them will become farmers, I am confident that a season spent on this farm will be memorable and change their lives in many ways. I have watched people become more comfortable in their bodies, more thoughtful and observant, and develop skills they never thought they would. I also expect that they will never look at a plate of food in the same way.

One expects that things will get easier as time progresses in a relatively new venture, but this was in  many ways the most challenging year yet. Fortunately, challenges do teach us lessons and drive improvements.  I certainly learned many lessons this year, and many improvements are planned for 2013. Late blight and other diseases have destroyed much of our tomato crop for the last two years so we will be moving them into plastic tunnels. We also continue to refine our crop planning and marketing. Farming is a low margin business and although we have been successful, there is plenty of room for improvement in our bottom line. This year we may have taken on to many projects at once and it was a little overwhelming at times. In addition to expanding our acreage, we were building a house and also developing and running a compost project that took more hours a week than expected. Sometime the weeks did not seem to have enough hours for everything.

Although there is a surprising amount to do at this time of year, winter for a vegetable farmer is a great time for reflection and I have already thought a lot about the year to come. I  have also been reflecting on how lucky I am to be able to pursue my dream as many people cannot for various reasons. I love what I am doing. I love being on this beautiful piece of land and caring for it. I love that my community is expanding as customers become our friends. I love that I eat the best food in the world and I get to share it with so many people. I am lucky that I have friends around me that are so supportive and customers that are so appreciative. It is a good time to be a farmer.  


New Years resolution #1
Blog once a week!
 

The 2012 season has officially started!

Late winter and even early spring sounds are returning to the farm these days. The crows and ravens are making a lot of noise as they are now in mating season and I expect the pileated woodpeckers and partridge will start their drumming soon. We have had a resident flock of snow buntings hanging around the fields all winter. I love those little birds and love to watch them gracefully move across the fields as a flock, swooping this way and that. I was also amazed at their ability to clean the seeds off of weeds that escaped us during the summer:-).

We are now ramping up to our third season. We had a great year last year despite the damp weather and are hoping for a sunnier season this year...farmers are always hopeful about the weather:-) Our milder winter has made life relatively easy for a farmer and I am feeling rejuvenated after the winter break. Even though there are no crops to look after in the winter, there seems to be plenty to do in the winter including cutting firewood, hauling and turning compost, planning, bookkeeping, ordering plants and seeds, sorting and delivering storage vegetables...the list goes on. The pace is definitely a little less phrenetic though so there is more time for rest, recreation and reflection.  

The seeds are all here and I started planting onions and leeks around the first of March and the tomatoes and peppers are now sprouting as I write. Of course, I have planted too many and will now struggle to fit them all into my field plans:-). We will be expanding our plantings a bit this year, but not too much as we are starting to reach our limits in terms of human resources. We are going to work a bit  the fine tuning of the farm operations, seeking efficiency and making our work easier. It is always tempting to plant more than we can handle, but crops always end up being neglected or wasted somewhere as a result. We are also planning to plant a few perennial crops this year also, including dwarf bush cherries and asparagus.

This years intern crew is almost all confirmed with just one position open at this point. I am really excited about our new working and learning team. A few other folks will be joining us for shorter periods of time and  it should be a very dynamic group. Intern reports from last years interns; Eric Wallace is starting his own farming endeavour in St Adolphe near Winnipeg, Liang Chen is working on developing garden programs at summer camps, and Miles Clayden is doing brilliantly at medical school in Saint John.  

We now have a waiting list for our weekly vegetable boxes (CSA) but should be able to add some folks on depending on how many return subscribers we have.  We got great feedback from our customer survey last year and are making small improvements there also. It was so great to see all the positive feedback we got when I received the survey results in January... quite reaffirming. We have to change our on line sign up  service as our old service provider raised their prices, from affordable to ridiculous, but we should have a new system up and running soon.

 Lots of other plans on the go this year including a new farmhouse and hopefully a little music festival in the late summer if all goes well.

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.