A New Surpise

Things have gotten a little busier the last couple days here at Creek Shore Farms.

To find out why visit Junior Farmer Blog to see the exciting news.

Stay tuned for more farm updates.

Growing in the greenhouse

Over the past couple of weeks we have been doing a lot of seeding in the greenhouse. Everything is growing really well so we have also been doing a lot of up potting. Up potting is simple moving the seedling into a 4 inch pot. Therefore giving them more growing room. This year we also are growing some flowers which is a new venture for us. We have not gone too wild on the flower front just a few variates.
Its been so hot in the greenhouse (35+) that we have been spending over an hour a day watering. This is mainly due to the fact that we water everything by hand. Why do we water by hand?? Well there is a watering system in the greenhouse but they run fertilizer through the line and we just use plain old tap water.

Of course we are still planting but not at a large scale just when we want to top things up here and there

Broccoli. Our first planting was big enough to go into 4inch pots

Basil and Oregano about a week ago. They four times bigger now

Lupins sprouting up they will be ready to uppot soon

Zinnia's

Coreopsis

nasturtiums (started in the dark)

nasturtiums with there leaves opening

It is nice to grow something new and watch it grow. We hope to have good success with the flowers at the farmers market.

Bean and Oats are having a great time with the warm weather. We had them spayed/neutered a couple of weeks ago and are both doing great. We of course are happy that there will be no kittens joining the farm family.

Bean hanging out on the picnic table

Oats using the grass as scratch matt

2012 Summer CSA...is there still room?

Just a quick note to anyone still considering a summer CSA for this year. While the deadline for application has passed we still have a few spots available if you get your forms in soon and since our vegetables are this good its an opportunity you really don't want to miss.

In the News!

The St. Catharines Standard wrote a little diddly about us in the paper yesterday. Here is the link to the article to read it yourselves: Local Farm to Help Food Bank

Business Cards

Well it has been a pretty quiet week so far. Last Saturday was the busiest in the last few days as we took out all the fence post from our sheep fencing. The yard looks a lot different now that it is all open. This year that area will be full of veggies which will look great.
Today we got some new business cards as well. We had some last year but these are a new design and much nicer I think. Any suggestions for improvements let us know as we only got 100 to start.

Front

Back

And We're Back!

Some of you may have noticed our website and blog have been up and down over the last couple of days.  We were making some technical changes behind the scenes which caused a few disruptions.  Needless to say we are back on track and hoping to have some fresh news soon!

Growing outside

Well today after a nice wander through the fields it was easy to see that the early spring is causing some growth out in the fields. The first thing which we knew was growing is garlic. The bulbs already have significant portion growing above the ground. I tried to look up when our garlic sprouted last year but I couldn't find a date so its hard to say how far ahead we are from last year.

Garlic well on its way!

Also arriving out in the field are all the annual herbs that we have planted. A lot of them stayed nice all winter such as oregano and thyme. Others are coming back with a vengeance. As part of spring prep today we trimmed the herbs and cleared any weeds away from them allowing optimal growth.

Garlic chives coming up out of the ground

 

 As part of our herb trimming process we also have a few catnip plants that needed to be trimmed back. While things went smoothly at first our two cats (oats and beans) decided that they should get involved.

This is my plant

No really back off, its mine

Where cats go after catnip

Bean having a go at oats leftovers

Needless to say it is not easy to trim catnip plants when two cats are trying to eat the plants that you trimming. After three plants we gave up on the rest.
Our other project today was putting up a divider in the chicken pen. The purpose of the divider is so that we can plant some pasture mix for the chickens to eat. The plan is to keep the chickens out until there is a good amount of pasture growing on the other side off the divide. Otherwise they would just eat the seed and anything that happened to grow out be consumed before it could grow to any decent size. The divide is not finished yet but this is how it looks so far,

Putting t-posts in to support a length of chicken wire

T-posts in. On the left you can kind of see a  hole in the ground. We will put some straw bales here, otherwise the chicken just walk under the wire.

Here the chicken wire is up. You can maybe see the hole better still on the left. That Ryan's homemade post pounder there on the ground.