Hello Fall, Goodbye Turkeys

The leaves are changing, the crops are dwindling and the turkeys are gobbling - no more.  I'm sad about the turkeys because they are the most gentle, passive creatures I've encountered on the farm.  I love the sounds they make - peeps, chirps, barks, gobbles - I could listen to them all day!  I also love their curiosity and sweet demeanor.  I feel so at peace sitting in the grass, watching them eat.  I also love their meat covered in cranberry sauce and brie.  Nope, still not a vegetarian.

Taking Bridget and Roy to the butcher was sad as well but we handled it nicely.  Roy turned out to be one tasty lamb, as many of the people who attended the Ottawa Feast of Fields on Sept 13th would agree.  The Amazon's Garden teamed up with Knox Fine Dinning of Moose Creek to produce a tasty organic treat for the crowd of 600 people; braised Roy with cabbage and quinoa tabouli on a crostini.

We delivered our last vegetable boxes for the CSA on Thursday.  Everyone was sad that they will no longer be receiving fresh veggies weekly to their doorstep.  The last market day was Friday - also sad because Jonny and I had a lot of fun working in Maxville every week.  I can't believe our apprenticeship is almost over!  Jonny and I both agree that the past 7 months have been the best of our lives and we have Christine to thank for it.  I'm inspired, enlightened and have a whole new appreciation for life and it's glorious splendor.

Setting up for Feast of Fields

Roy

Jonny harvesting spinach for the last CSA boxes of the season

Brussel sprouts

Red Curly and Black Russian Kale (looking a little like palm trees)

Our final planting of spinach, arugula, lettuce and carrots

Jonny & Ralph cuddling in the packing shed

Farmers

Fall delights for our final market day in Maxville

My buddies taking a ride in the Ranger

Goodbye friends!

Healthy Hands

 The frost is on its way so we've covered the peppers and eggplants with a porous blanket called row cover.  This will keep the air underneath a degree or two above the temperature outside.  The brassicas can withstand a bit of frost but I plan on harvesting the rest of those brussel sprouts soon so I can blanch and freeze them for the winter.  The tomatoes never ended up looking great this year because of the blight and unfavourable weather conditions (rain, rain and more rain) but I did manage to make a couple of nice sauces.  We still have potatoes to dig up and carrots, which will taste sweeter after a frost.  The next thing on the list to learn is preserving vegetables for the winter.  I've loved shopping in my own backyard - I hope shopping in my freezer is just as fun, although I have my doubts...

Happy Thanksgiver!

Harvesting 101

On Thursdays, we harvest for the CSA in the morning, pack the boxes and by 5pm are on the road to deliver our fresh veggies.  Fridays, after harvesting in the morning, we head to the Maxville market for 3 until 7pm.  It's a small market and fairly steady, even in the rain.  There are approximately twelve vendors and we are the only ones with organic certification.  The first week we went to the market was in June and the garden still hadn't produced enough for a very exciting table.  Our table looks fantastic now, with all of the different colours, shapes and sizes of delicious produce!  YUM!

Our first day at the market wasn't a great success; all we had were peas, swiss chard, kale and lettuce.

Our presentation is much better now!

I sat on the side of Route 900 yesterday, hoping to sell our surplus right in front of the farm.  I made $6.  A lot of people honked and waved but that was about it.  One lady stopped and asked for corn.  We didn't plant corn in our garden because it's a large plant and leaches a lot of nitrogen from the ground.  Christine only planted some for the CSA.  Next year we'll plant enough to entice people to stop at my road-side stand and hopefully they'll buy whatever else I'm selling too!

Jonny and I eat a lot of vegetarian meals now.  It's actually quite easy to make vegetables exciting, even for someone learning to cook, such as myself.  Last night for dinner, I stuffed patty pans with a delicious rice filling mixed with sun dried tomatoes, olives, caramelized onions and garden garlic.  (The stuff from China doesn't even compare!)  Accompanying the baked patty pans were my beet and potato salad peppered with fresh dill, Jonny's tomato and cucumber salad with goat cheese, and a sprig of parsley.  My next mission in the kitchen is to make zucchini bread for the table and freezer.  Anyone have a good recipe?

By next week, we should have a mountain of tomatoes to sell.  Thanks to the cool weather and rain, the tomatoes are really late this year.  The few that I have been able to harvest are so sweet and juicy, unlike any tomato I've ever tasted before.  I'll never buy another tomato from Mexico or California again!!!

Stay tuned for more organic gardening adventures with Daizy and Jonny...

Butchering 101

Hindus believe that every living organism has a soul; from the greatest of whales, to a blade of grass, to the microscopic, single-cell amoeba.  It took me a few sessions of weeding to accept the fact that in order to keep my garden full of vegetables, I must suffer the karmic consequences of killing any weeds, bugs or larvae that may try to destroy my plants.

  

I'm now quite comfortable slicing wire worms in half, crunching the hard shells of Colorado potato beetles against garden stones, and squishing their colourful offspring between my bare fingers.  There's a sadistic sense of satisfaction in destroying these pests once you've seen what they do to the eggplants, potatoes, tomatoes, etc.

On July 22nd, I experienced something a little different.  150 meat chickens were shipped to the butcher, with the exception of 2 ladies that we had to kill at the farm due to a broken wing and immobility.  Meat chickens are bread to eat themselves to death.  It's quite sad to see and I wish I could say that I've become a vegetarian from the experience but I'm not that strong.

I warned onlookers that I may shed a tear or two behind the lens of Jonny's camera.  Christine, the butcher, expressed the same sentiments and confessed that it had been 25 years since she had to do this at home.  In the end, there were no tears and the whole experience was like a trip back in time to OAC biology class.  I could identify many of the organs and recognized that familiar smell of carcass, minus the formaldehyde.

The pictures are a bit graphic and I ask you to turn away now if you have a weak stomach.  I assure you that the killing was done in a sensitive and humane way.  The birds didn't suffer because they were knocked out with a quick blow to the head before their throats were sliced and the blood drained from their twitching bodies.  Large-scale slaughterhouses don't always have "home delivery" services or "relaxation rooms" where the animals can rest after they have been traumatically removed from their homes and transported to their new temporary home.  The animals in such situations produce stress hormones that circulate through their bodies and create an acidic environment, evidently causing the meat to become contaminated.  Yummy.

New baby chickies, 1 day old

Still babies at 6-7 weeks old and looking like adults 

A knock to the noggin at 11 weeks old

Not for the faint-of-heart

The Killing Board

Hot water dip

De-feathering

This one lost it's skin

OAC biology flash-back (except it was a fetal pig I dissected)

Guts

Lunchtime!

THE END

Coming Soon: Butchering 101

Today was interesting.  It started out very relaxed; I washed the vegetable harvesting bins we'll use tomorrow while Jonny strung up tomato plants in the greenhouse.  Later, I worked away in the greenhouse planting more cucumbers and Jonny continued the endless weeding.  We moved the extremely heavy potato washing machine into the greenhouse with the tractor because we plan on digging up a bunch of new potatoes for the veg boxes tomorrow.  And then we slaughtered two chickens.  I took lots of pictures and helped very little but learned a lot.  Christine's niece was very helpful, surprisingly calm for a twelve-year-old, and called me "the paparazzi".  I guess the word is the same in both languages.  We ended our evening in a fine dining restaurant drinking the local beer (Mmmm Beau's!) and an Ontario Pinot Noir.  I ate duck and Christine's niece ate chicken.  

I'm home now and need to get some sleep for our long day tomorrow of harvesting, packing and delivering veg boxes to customers in Ottawa, Casselman, Embrun and Limoges.  Please stay tuned as the next blog posting will feature my thoughts and feelings about the home-slaughter, along with some great shotz of the stars themselves.  I wonder what we'll be having for lunch tomorrow...

Guten Nacht!

Luxy's Worker Beez, We On Tha Swarm!

That's not a bee - it's a deer fly!  Nasty buggers swarm your head until they can take landing and steal a chunk of your flesh.  We stuck double-sided deer fly tape to our hats and I caught two!

Jonny won this round.

And here are the worker beez!

Steve, Faye, Hazel, Gideon and Ben made a dent in our garage junk pile this weekend, then a dent in the lettuce patch!  Everyone took home a head or two, not to mention what was consumed at every meal.  You CAN make friends with salad!  Thanks dudes!

The infamous Ima battling weeds.  For those who haven't had the pleasure, Ima is my future mother-in-law.  She's tough.  Don't mess with Ima!

Zach and Jill came over the hill all the way from London.  They brought their puppy Hudson and planted our pepper and butternut squash seedlings!

What a workout!
The garden only a few weeks ago

The garden now - it's so lush!  Just wait until August!

Living out here is so majestic.

And I have the Näfs to thank for it all.  I love you guys.
Thanks for the pictures Jonny!  You're my hero.

A Great Success!

On Thursday, we delivered our first vegetable boxes.  At 8AM, Jonny and I were in the field harvesting lettuce, swiss chard, kale, baby turnips, new broccoli flowers, an assortment of herbs, garlic scapes, onions, snow and snap peas, and rhubarb.  

What an amazing feeling; collecting the fruits of our labour, knowing how much care and time we put into these delicate items and that someone is going to enjoy them and feel healthier for doing so.

Not only that but it was a pretty good workout!  I'm proud of the tightness in my hamstrings!  All in a day's work.

Once the boxes were packed, our mentor headed out on her 23-box route and we took our six boxes to the road.  We dropped off two in Embrun, 1 in Limoges and 3 in Ottawa.  By the time we were finished and heading home, it was 8:30.  We had enough energy to make a salad and watch an episode of South Park before hitting the hay.  Our mentor was delivering to families in one town but had to make two trips and didn't get home until 9pm.  She's 47 and way more hard-core than we are.

Friday was our first market day.  Harvesting was less intense but we were rushed for time and didn't get a chance to eat much.  After setting up the table and tent, I bought us Thai Food from a neighbouring stall and we took turns eating in the car while the others manned the table.  We were the only certified organic farmers at the market.  We ended up spending more money than we made but I don't have to go grocery shopping again for a while and I'm happy to support the local businesses!  The rain kept many people at home but there were a few fish who didn't mind the weather and kept us busy for the most part.  Another long day but a feeling of satisfaction and excitement for the second half of the season.  On Monday, we'll be back to weeding (a never-ending endeavor), planting more lettuce seedlings out in the field, and preparing the back of the greenhouse floor for late tomatoes, eggplants and cucumbers.  I can't believe we're halfway through our first year as farmers.  

I hope everyone had a fantastic Canada Day!!!

A quick visit to tha citay

I'm back in Toronto for the first time since I left four months ago.  My mom is here and I'm hangin' with my sisters for less than 2 full days.  Short but worth the travel.  Obviously the city looks the same and I still know how to get around on the subway but I'm realizing that my time here as come and gone.  It's still such a magical place; the Now Magazine is stacked with shows I'd love to see, there are so many stores I would love to wander through if I could afford even a look, and all my peeps are just a token away.  I love to people-watch and drink over-priced lattes on hipster patios, ride my bike through a cacophony of honks, screams and middle fingers to the sky, and sing karaoke under the influence of pint after pint at Hurricanes.  And somehow the sparkle of these misadventures has become a bit dull.

The weird thing is, I feel even dirtier here than I did in the country, covered in dirt.  The subway is full of snotty-nosed people (myself included) replacing limited air with bacteria, cars on congested streets are replacing oxygen with exhaust, and there is little green space to clean it all up.  But I haven't even left Scarborough yet.  Maybe I will be sucked in by flashing lights, glistening martinis and sweet smells of any ethnic food you can imagine this Saturday night, and Jonny will have to come rescue me from the writhing tenticles of the all-consuming city.  Jonny, get out your hacksaw cause you might be coming to town!