rural ontario

WEEKS 21-24: Working for a radical; other thoughts and news

With the season winding down and the workforce dwindling, farmer Chris has been spending more time out in the fields with us- guaranteeing a stimulating dialogue. While mulching the garlic (10 000 cloves planted with the help of some able volunteers from the garlic-savvy Cutting Veg Organic Farm in Toronto) we got to talking about charity and "the system", and I realized I was working for a true radical. Having left a career in social work for charitable organizations to farm, Chris is convinced that charity is a feel-good formula for propagating the dysfunctional system we live in. He argues that "progressive" ideas that have farmers growing food directly for food banks are missing the mark, and adamantly opposes cheap food of any kind. Farmers need to make a good wage, allowing them to employ people locally, supporting a vibrant economy and community from the ground up, instead of trying to bandage it from the rich top down. Food for thought, that is...

Visitors, volunteers, and events around here have provided other food for thought. 20 Hamilton highschool students were here for a week of their Social Justice class, hearing farmers lecture, touring other farms, and working alongside us. Field time is a great occasion for disussing social justice in an informal setting, of course.
It was a lesson in youth management, which turns out to be quite a bit harder than just doing the work yourself... Despite some inefficiency, they got a lot more than we could have done, and a lot of the big fall tasks got crossed off the list: potato harvest; black mulch take-out; and tomato trellis take-down.

Chef Ken Lefebour came out twice to gratify us with his gourmet meals, once as a gift of gratitude from the farm family to the interns, and once to celebrate the bounty of the farm with our CSA members and the public. It was inspiring to see what he could produce with a bar-b-cue and a wood-fired oven.

Field trips have led us to some great farms, like the first Ontario C.R.A.F.T. farm that operates at the Ignatius Jesuit Centre and Retreat, neighbouring Fenwood Farms, a large scale organic poultry farm, and Richardson's Farm, a conventional but sustainably-minded fruit and vegetable farm outside of Dunville with lots of value-added products and promising touristic and educational components.

Members picked up their final veggie shares this past week, and our markets will wrap up this coming week. David is gone back to New York (and married! Congrats David and Marissa!) and Jocelyn left us just yesterday. Next weekend we aim to be closed down for the winter (although winter shares are likely on offer), and the farm family will have no more interns traipsing through the house until spring.

WEEK 20: Harvest evolution and season celebrations

Again this week harvest took up most of our time, but the harvest is changing as we go. The tomatoes, decrepit and laying rotting on the ground (failed trellising disaster area) are slowing but still producing bushels, with the red roman stripes now dominating. The new timelines of bean and zucchini are finally producing sale-worthy fruit (in charmingly clean beds). Leek and parsnip and sweet potato and sunchoke (a sunflower relative, native to these parts, that produces delicious, water chestnutty/potato-like tubers) prove it's fall, and prove delicious in fall soups and roasts!

We hosted the CRAFT interns at Manorun last week, and it was reaffirming to see through their eyes how great our farm is and how beautiful the space is. It was heartening to see so many young people inspired and motivated and cooperative during our work-bee. A farmer panel on weeds and weather gave us some varied perspectives and ideas, and our pizza party potluck was delish.

Aside from harvesting and hosting, we managed to get some planting done (the hoophouse greens and turnips for a winter share), as well as some thinning and cultivating in the many carrot and beet beds planted a few weeks ago. We've applied a dose of boron, a micronutrient in which our soil is apparently deficient, to the beets. We put more good stuff away for the winter, making blueberry jam and roasting red peppers for the freezer. And we studied our planting maps and recorded rough yield impressions, reconsidering varieties (and other factors like location, soil and weather conditions, weed and pest pressure) for next year's planting.

As I write, away in New Jersey for a family event, my fellow interns are preparing to enjoy a traditional end-of-season gourmet thank you meal that Chris and Denise have hired chef Ken Lefebour to create in gratitude for our hard work and contributions to Manorun. Ken will be back next week for an even more elaborate farm dinner, tickets still available to the public. Check out
http://www.manorun.com/pdf/farm_dinner_2010.pdf for more information.

It's the countdown to the end, and while there's work to be done before we kick up our feet, we are all thinking back over the summer's work and play, and ahead to our varied winter plans... No doubt blog posts ahead will get more philosophical and big-picture...

WEEK 18: Harvest to weeding ratio improves

A farming friend of mine once told me that you could measure the success of your farm by determining if you spend more time harvesting than weeding- if so, you're on your game. I'm not sure if that has been the case for us every week here at Manorun, but this past week it surely was. The weeds have backed off in the cooler weather, and our little half-crew spent the better part of the week getting the crops in for market and members. And it was bountiful! The tomatoes are gorgeous, our heirlooms catching the eyes of savvy foodies all week: the brandywines, red roman stripes, orange hearts, "Dundurn yellows" (Chris swiped the seeds from a tomato at the Dundurn Castle last year)... and many more I've forgotten already. The greens are great, the radish is back, the carrots (gnarly lovers and wrestlers) are actually quite large, and the sweet corn is ever so sweet (candy belly aches in the field if you eat too much of it!). The list goes on...

Friday we were treated to a tour of Dave and Keira's place, friends of Chris, who have a couple hives and allowed us to help do some honey extraction, in exchange for some information, some taste testing, and even some of the goldstuff to take home.

I'm curious to see what kind of a new harvest routine, if any, we will settle into- we are always in flux, it seems, and nothing ever stays the same. I guess that's the beauty of life, on display at it's finest here in the growing of things.

WEEK 17: Coasting into Fall

Another breezy week of harvesting and processing (another 50 litres of tomato sauce; pickled beans; pickled peppers and strawberry jam on my own focus time) ended with a field trip to a beautiful organic sheep farm, Black Crow, which showed us the happy, pastured, unstressed alternative to the conventional sheep at Black Walnut. A bit of work digging up their potatoes and garlic in the rain, a good hearty lunch, and we were off to shake down some apples from the Sargeant's trees for cider.

The week to come brings big changes- the daughters gone to school, Meghan gone to her sugar testing job in Niagara, the chickens gone to slaughter, and a fall intern, Jen, joining us for the final stretch.

"When you kill a beast, say to him in your heart:

By the same power that slays you, I am too slain, and I too shall be consumed.

For the law that delivers you into my hand shall deliver me into a mightier hand.

Your blood and my blood is naught but the sap that feeds the tree of heaven."

Kahlil Gibran

WEEK 16: Winter will come...

Maybe it was that bout of frisky fall-like weather that got us thinking about the cold winter months that lie ahead (or maybe it was the 100lbs of tomatoes sitting on the hay wagon ripening/rotting in the sun...), and preserving the bountiful summer crops made it onto the work board. The weeds have let up a little, and we've gotten pretty efficient with the harvesting, so Wednesday we spent the better part of a day producing 45L of tomato sauce, and this weekend I made peach jam with seconds from the Hamilton Mountain Farmer's market.

Chris and Denise celebrated their 20th wedding anniversary (hurrah!) and left on Thursday for a romantic Stratford getaway (A Winter's Tale, it so happens).
We had harvested everything from the Sargeants on Wednesday for Thursday's markets, so we were way ahead and actually left early to head into town with the truck and trailer loaded. The harvest is kick-ass, by the way: juicy watermelon and cantaloupe and sweeet sweet corn and beautiful long straight english cucumbers and cool stripy beets and purple haze carrots and fine fingerling potatoes and... no room for it all on the market tables!

Friday we hosted a dozen or so teenagers from a YMCA employment camp, and the interns did a pretty decent job at keeping them entertained and informed on our "cycle of the farm" tour of the main attractions here at Manorun (the veggies, the pasture/livestock, the hoophouse, and the compost pile:)
We are conducting an experiment with our young beets: one bed got sprinkled with boron, a micronutrient which our soil is lacking according to previous years' soil sampling (lesson: it's not all about the NPK folks); another bed got a good douse of compost tea. Will they turn out drastically different? Only time will tell...

We picked apples down the street at Myers after work, and Meghan returned refreshed from her week at the cottage right on time for David to take his vacation in New York. Next week we lose Meghan again to her sweet wine testing job, and all the farm daughters go back to school. Times they are a changin'.