Farm Security

Name: Lucy
Species: Chicken
Location: Creek Shore Farms
Job: Head Chicken in charge of farm security and egg production

Hello good readers my name is Lucy and I will be your guide to life on the farm. I will provide you with a chicken's eye view of what is going on around here. I have a patrol of chickens that keep an eye on things and report to me on a daily basis. We will be providing you with photographic evidence of all weird and wonderful things that happen here on our farm.

My link of the day is for all those young folks out there: http://www.foodland.gov.on.ca/english/kids.html

Next Generation Farmers

It has been said that we are the next generation of farmer. We are young innovative and in a small minority of people who pick farming as a life style in the 21st century. People seem to love to come and visit our farm, hear our story and see what kind of crazy things we are up to. Of course I like to remain in the loop http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifabout what is going on the farming world. So upon doing a little reading on the Internet this evening I came across Lufa farms in Montreal https://lufa.com/en. It is a very interesting operation. It is a 31'000 square foot greenhouse on a rooftop. They run what appears to be a large CSA which consists of 25 variates of veggies that they grow year round (they do also have an option to add root veggies from other local farmers).
I will admit I don't know how I feel about growing veggies in a greenhouse. In a way I feel like it is a modern contraption that says its okay to continue loosing our farmland because we can just grow everything inside. On the other hand I feel like this team has a great innovation in saying that hey we can grow good healthy organic food anywhere. It doesn't matter if you live in a city you can eat well. I wonder if in the long run this kind of farming would actually hurt rural farmer, many of who rely on big cities to support there farm. Many farmers drive into urban areas to sell there goods, where do they sell if roof top farms pop up everywhere. I know a bit unrealistic that suddenly there are going to roof top farms everywhere but down the road say 50 or 100 years maybe this will be a concern.
I will finish up my rant there but you should really check out there website it is pretty cool what they are doing.
You may ask how are there next generation farmers doing?? Well great so far. We feel that we are much more organized this year and we don't have tree high weeds encroaching upon us. There are definitely weeds but nothing like last. Things are starting to get dry around the farm and little rain would not be appreciated, the forecast however does not make this look promising. We have lots of new items coming out including: broccoli, tomatoes, summer squash, eggplant and hopefully carrots in the next week or two.
Everyone is feeling pretty tired this week. With the hot heat we have been starting work at 6am, working until 12 noon then back to work at six for a few hours. As tired as we are at least no one is dropping dead from the heat.
On a cheerful note our first duckling was born last week we named him (or her) cheepy. I will post a picture.

Potato Time

It is another beautiful Monday morning and we are just about to get things rolling along for another warm one. The weekend was a busy time for us here on the farm because we planted our fall potato crop. It took almost the whole day to cut and plant the potatoes but it sure is a nice feeling to have it all done. We have a great selection of potatoes this year including: fingerlings, blue, red, russet, white and more. It was fun cutting up the seed potatoes and seeing the fun colours that were inside. Planting them was pretty easy and went fairly quickly with four people planting. Needless to say we were all tired on Friday evening.
Saturday we attend both Niagara on the Lake and Beamsville farmers markets it was a beautiful day and lots of people were through the market. On Saturday afternoon Ryan and I watered the potatoes and went to pick up some hay. It was just a short drive to the hay place about 20 min or so. It was a fun little afternoon side trip as the hay place has a dairy cows and there were a bunch of young cows who were very friendly.
Today promises to be another busy day as we work on weeding in what looks like another warm day!