Off to market we will go!!

It's that time of year when we start getting ready to head back to the Summerside Farmers' Market for our spring sales.  We do not have enough produce yet for our CSA program to start but we do have veggies ready to harvest so going to the market is a win win for us.  It's a great time to see our old customers and our market friends.  We will be selling some potted plants in a few weeks time (tomatoes, peppers, parsley & basil) but this week we will have lots of greens!!  Our greenhouse is just pumping these days and the greens are ready to eat!!  We will have spinach, purple mustard, tatsoi, swiss chard, beet greens, mizuna, arugula and lots of mixed greens for sale. 

It's such a busy time of year, sometimes its hard to know what to do first.  I'm obsessed with my to do list and check it many times a day to make sure I'm not forgetting to do something.  Nothing better than the feeling of crossing something off the list!!!  We have lots of veggies direct seeded in the garden and this week over 1000 transplants were planted which made a bit more room in the greenhouse for more seeding to be done.

Derek started building a raised bed maker last year but the season got busy and that project had to be shelved but he got back at it this spring and after many adjustments it seems that its going to work really great.  We have made 7 or 8 beds in a small section of the garden to use as our "experiment" section.  We will be planting crops that have "deep root systems" like carrots, parsnips and other veggies to compare with the non raised beds to see if there are any differences.

Raised bed maker

Lots of pictures to end this post.  We hope your all enjoying this warm spring we have been having.  It is pretty dry right now so some rain would be appreciated to keep the veggies growing well!!

Beet greens

Lettuce mix

Red kale

Spinach

Purple mustard

Mizuna

Arugula

The early garden, things are starting to grow

Peas are staked

Transplanting Chinese cabbage

Keeping plants covered to protect against insects

The end result with the new bed maker

New weeder is being built for our cultivating tractor, should be here soon!!!

Keep Calm and Farm On

I need to get a shirt with this saying!!!

Tomorrow is May!!

So, today is the last day of April. How did that happen??? Seems I was just working at the ski park and now tomorrow is May!!! Puts a bit of panic in my system but I'm trying to remain calm.
May = crazyness!!! Now, I like a bit of crazy, keeps me on my toes but I hate waiting for it to happen. I like to work, work, work. Ask Derek, its all I do, and I'm a cranky bear when the weather is poor and I'm stuck in side. Well when May hits I turn into a working crazy person driving everyone around me crazy along with me. I worry about getting my seeds in the ground early enough but not too early, about too much/too little moisture, night-time cold temperatures which could zap my tender seedlings in the greenhouse and just overall worry!! Derek always hates this time of year I think!! But this year I'm trying really hard to not go to that crazy place. Trust me, its hard. I get this super anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach and usually I do not handle it very well but this year will be different. I can just see Derek rolling his eyes if he ever reads this, which I'm sure he won't as he's too busy getting things done on the to do list to keep me from going to my "crazy" place.

So, what's different about this year. Firstly I've been taking the boys to a sitter every week 1 or 2 days which has been a LIFE SAVER to me. They are gone all day and I can focus on getting stuff done and prepared so as to not let those anxious feelings take over. Secondly the big move put us just minutes away from my parents and my Mom has been super woman taking the boys every now and then for a few hours so I can get last minute projects such as paper work or seeding finished up which did not get done on the sitter day. Thirdly Derek has been a super star this spring helping to get projects finished up, I think the move has been really good for him and he's really taken on alot of projects which I've really appreciated. Lastly, I decided that this year WILL be different in terms of my addiction to work and obsession over the farm. I kinda want to have a life away from the farm and I'm looking forward to that this year. Time will tell!!!

I'm really excited about this coming season, I've got some super workers lined up which is taking away a lot of the stress that I usually feel this time of year. Kim will be helping again this year which is great, not only do we get work done its like a therapy session for the both of us, needless to say we talk a lot during the work day!! And my friend Sally will be working 2 mornings/week which I'm super excited about. Sally is this hard core say it how it is super star and I'm excited to have her around this summer. Check out her blog if you get a chance, always puts a smile on my face!!

Swiss chard all ready to be transplanted

The greenhouse is coming along really well. Derek spent a lot of time in there this past weekend getting it all cleaned up and organised. All of the tables have been built and are set-up and he also built me a potting bench which I'm pretty excited about. I've got about half of the tables filled with seedlings including leeks, onions, shallots, swiss chard, green onions, lettuce, peppers, eggplants, broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, brussel sprouts, tomatoes, bok choy, chinese cabbage, basil, leaf celery, celery, celeriac and I'm sure others I'm forgetting. Every two weeks I start about 15-20 new trays and I'll be potting my tomatoes on to their 4" pots in the next week or so. I also finally got the greenhouse planted last week to a variety of farm fresh veggies including beets, spinach, red mustard, mizuna, arugula, swiss chard, dill, cilantro, lettuce mix, bok choy and others I'm forgetting!! Many have germinated and little green babies can now be seen in the rows.

Planting in the greenhouse, finally!!!

Beautiful red lettuce

I ran in my first 5k of the season about a month ago but I had to put my running on the back burner for a few weeks due to my sore knee. I'm hoping to get back at it soon as I've got a few races I'd like to complete before the summer heat hits. I never thought I'd enjoy running but its a bit addictive and I can't wait to get back at it again.  I'm also getting a pair of roller blades and I can't wait to hit the pavement!!  It's something I used to really enjoy in college so I'm looking forward to getting back into it.

Playing with my boys

The boys checking out the tiny seedlings

Derek built me a small potting bench, its awesome!!

Tiny seedlings just popped up

Well, the boys have been quiet for a bit now, nap time has taken on a life of its own in the last few weeks.  I used to be able to put them in their cribs and walk away for at least 2 hours with baby monitor in hand.  Now, its party time and it takes a good 30-50 minutes before they decide they are done rocking and rolling and getting to sleep, forces me to sit down and get caught up on e-mails and in this case, blogging!!!  Time to get outside and make the most of these precious nap moments!!

Snack time

Cookie monster

Spring fever

We had a beautiful sunny day this past Monday and the greenhouse was just roasting. Our doors should be here this week which would be nice so that we could open it up to help it finish drying up. It was pretty much dried up but we got a lot of rain last week along with some really warm temperatures that created a super fast melt causing our greenhouse to get saturated again.

We have had a few really windy days and it's sure nerve wracking watching the greenhouse and being terrified its going to blow away but so far so good, hopefully we built it correctly and won't have to worry about anything serious!! We did have to install a jumper hose as the air was not properly inflating to the other side of the greenhouse but that was a simple very cheap fix.

Jumper for inflating both sides

The seedlings are doing really well and are all now growing nice and snug under the lights in the basement. I am waiting for the bulk of my seeds to arrive and then it'll be another round of planting to go. I seed my early veggies like leeks, onions, celery, celeriac and parsley very densely in open trays which allows me to grow a lot of seedlings in a very small space. When the plants get big enough they will be potted up to the trays they will stay in until they get transplanted into the garden.

A few trays under the table in my little "germination chamber" and two trays on the heat mat. Tried to see which worked better and I would say under the chamber was the winner!!

A very simple yet effective light stand. It can hold up to 20 trays. The plan is to only use it while the weather is still unpredictable and for heat loving crops like peppers, basil, tomatoes, eggplants, etc.

I finished my spring public speaking events last week and its nice to be getting back to focusing on the upcoming season. I still wonder why I'm asked to speak at these events with the amount of other young farmers around this Island but very grateful for the opportunity to share our story.

Big congratulations goes out to Mark & Sally Bernard of Freetown, Barnyard Organics, for being chosen as the Atlantic Outstanding Young Farmers for 2012. I feel like we know celebrities now!! Great job guys!!!

Derek has been busy learning about maple syrup production and has tapped a few trees around our property. The boys love going out to collect "tree juice" and often insist on having samples. We boiled off our first batch this week and it sure was yummy. Took alot of sap to produce that little bit of syrup but its like liquid gold around here now!! Check out our youtube channel for some short very unprofessional videos of our first maple syrup adventure.

Getting the buckets on the taps

Getting ready to tap the trees

My favourite dudes

And it begins again

I planted the first seeds of the 2012 season today. Leeks, shallots, red & yellow storage onions as well as sweet white onions. I could not find my germination mat so we just covered the table Derek built me for seeding with plastic and put the trays underneath with a small space heater. Hopefully they will all germinate with great success and grow into wonderful farm fresh veggies!! The batteries died in my camera but I'll add some pictures soon.

happy planting!!!!!

Junk Yard Wars

I came across this picture tonight as I was searching through my photo albums for a presentation I'm doing on Tuesday. It was taken the day all of our equipment was moved from Brookvale to the new farm. It struck me funny that sitting there on that truck was all our farm equipment that we use and really appreciate and I'm sure to many folks seeing that truck driving down the road that day thought "what a load of junk". I guess its true what they say, one person's junk is another person's treasures!!

My yearly seed inventory was all completed last week and I'm about 75% done of my seed order. I've been really busy at the ski park this winter but I've been taking the boys to the baby sitter every Tuesday all winter to try and focus on farm paper work which has helped to focus on tasks that really need to get done.


2012 Inventory

Derek and I are really looking forward to getting away to Nova Scotia for a two day greenhouse seminar in a few weeks. We have not been away from the boys since they were born and luckily my Mom has agreed to baby-sit, thanks Mom!!! Our greenhouse is still pretty mucky inside but its drying up every day. I will be starting my leeks, onions, parsley, celery, celeriac and a few others in two weeks in the basement under lights and then hopefully by the end of March most of them will be able to make the big move to the greenhouse!! No worries this year about running out of room.

It seems crazy that its coming on to the end of February already!!! Where does the time go.

And we're done - well almost

The view from the end of the driveway

***I started this blog a few days ago and am just finally getting it posted***

I'm sitting here typing waiting for the boys to wake up and looking outside to a very green looking January 26th. It was been a very strange winter so far with pretty mild temperatures, not great for the local ski hill (which I'm employed part time) but its been great for us being able to get work done on the greenhouse. We finally got the plastic on so I can now say the greenhouse is officially done, well officially sort of. We still need to get the end doors installed and of course now we need to plan and focus on the inside stuff like benches and stuff like that but for now the greenhouse is covered and we are so glad!!

We had been planning on putting the first layer of plastic on the greenhouse last Saturday (January 20th) morning but the weather was calling for snow the night before so we decided last minute to do it Friday morning. Derek was home anyway as it was his day off and we had Larry coming anyway to close in the end doors with plywood until the doors get installed. We got ahold of my Dad and my uncle who were working on a tractor just down the road and called my Mom to watch the boys while I went to help. Derek's brother was also going to come out later on. The winds were about 15km/h when we started which was fine but as soon as we got started they started to pick up. We had read lots of info about how to put plastic on a greenhouse and the biggest piece of advice was to it when the winds were calm. Well the weather forecast seemed ok but we should have know better. The winds picked up and that sheet of plastic started acting as a bit of a sail.

The other problem was the way we had decided to pull the plastic over. We talked to some folks and read a bunch of methods online and decided to pull a rope over and pull the plastic over with someone using a stick underneath helping the plastic to go over the hoops. Well that turned out to be NOT a very good idea. The plastic was too heavy and would not easily pull over. We ended up putting some not so nice stretch marks along several parts of that sheet. About forty five minutes in I was tempted to just tell everyone to let it go and let the wind take it where it wanted. But I got on the phone and called my brother and he and my other uncle came over and gave us an extra hand. It was still hairy but we managed to get it on and fastened down with the channel lock. The winds had gotten pretty strong by the time that was done so there was no chance of doing the second layer.


First layer all done, very stressfull!!!

Monday (Jan 23rd) morning we started again but this time with more hands right at the first and with 15km wind forecasted until noon. We put 5 ropes over the first layer and pulled the second layer over in about 3 minutes, brilliant!! It took another hour or so to get all the channel lock on and everything tightened up. Derek cut a small hole in the first layer of plastic and hooked up the inflator fan which blows air between the two layers keeping the plastic fairly tight and ridgid to keep it from flopping around against the hoops of the greenhouse.

We must have pulled the top of the plastic a bit too tight as we could not get the opposite side of the greenhouse to inflate. We made a quick call to the greenhouse company and they suggested putting a piece of hose along the top to create a spot for the air to go across to inflate the opposite side. Derek found a piece of pipe insulation and put it up and it inflated right away. It's been a little over a week since both layers have been on and I'm still noticing that sometimes the opposite side does not seem as inflated as the first side. We might have to make some small adjustments to get that working better.


Second piece of plastic waiting to be installed


Allan and Ronald finishing up the South side


Andrew and Mark getting the north side all tight


Pulling the plastic tight and putting on the wiggle wire



We had lots of help, we were very grateful!!


Finishing the east end


Going in to check it out after the plastic was installed


The inflator fan

Ben & Jake love going in there with their trucks as its great fun driving back and forth, there is a bit of ice in there as well so its a bit of a skating rink at times. We haven't had that much sun this week, just a bit here and there so it hasn't been that warm in there yet.


Looks like they are playing "chicken"


Enjoying a nice bit of afternoon sun climbing on the swing set

We still have to wait to get the end doors installed and as soon as the frost is out of the ground we'll be thinking of planting. We have to decide what kind of benches we are going to build for our transplants but we're thinking for now just cinder blocks and pallets.

So we're not completely finished but it sure feels great to have the plastic on. Just want to say a quick thanks to everyone who's helped us during this latest adventure!!
Gordon Waugh, Andrew Waugh, Allan Waugh, Ronald Waugh, John Campbell, Mark Bernard, Larry Lecky, Gerry Reicheld, Natalie Woodburn-Heron, Andrew Chappel, Mike Cormier and of course my Mom who got those last minute early morning phone calls to come watch the boys.

***January 31st update***

We had some really nice sun yesterday and the thermometer was reading 29degress but that's not really an accurate reading since it was in the sun. But it sure felt nice but now the ice of the above picture is now a foot of water, not so nice!!


Beautiful sunny day


Very muddy boots


Mud bath anyone??