Farming for One

Christmas Lima beans....so cool

 So what happens when a person is left all by themselves for a week on a farm? Well one thing is for sure no blog updates are done and you spend your time running around like a crazy person picking for 37 CSA baskets and getting ready for marker. I was lucky to have Jesslyn come on Friday to help me out in the morning though. Our week was made extra busy because Scotiabank came and shot a little video and we had a cooking show come and do an episode here on the farm. Both were lots of fun but we obviously didn't get much done on those days.

 This is a bean plant from our winter crop section. They are coming up like crazy but so are the weeds. This afternoon/morning I am going to spend some time doing lots of hoeing. It is supposed to rain later so I think I will work on putting more tomatoes in the freezer.

 When one is alone and there are cute kittens they also take up a lot of ones time. I mean who could just leave that cute face all alone in a barn all day???

A fun project, dehydrating hot peppers. They turned out really well but too longer than I expected to dehydrate about a day and a half! Warning they do make your house smell/ stink a lot like hot pepper and remain spicy even when dried.

Well I had better go do some work now. I just got back from picking up 16 bags of food and everyone is happily fed which means its off to the field.

Freezing

So when you decide to freeze some corn on a warm Saturday afternoon (last Saturday) these are the things that I collected to do it. Computer to keep myself entertained, bowl to catch the corn, bags to put the corn in , a corn peeler and of course some water.

Oh and of course a big bucket of fresh picked corn!

This is the corn peeler that I picked up at the hardware store actually. I have seen it at kitchen stores as well but was glad to pick it up here locally. It is just like a peeler but it has a curved blade to cut the corn.

Ryan was so excited about the corn zipper that he came to help making the computer unnecessary. You can see that it works very well. Much faster than a knife I think.

That's a close up of the corn zipper after use. It cleaned really well I just washed it carefully because I imagine it is very sharp. We have some other peelers by Khun and they are all very sharp.

That is all the corn we got from that big bucket. It tempts us now every time we open the freezer. But we are going to save it for the dead of winter when we are really craving some corn.

weeding, canning and growing

Well despite the fact that we are reaching the end of the summer there is still a lot going on around here. Not only are we busy growing new things we are still weeding. Luckily we are more on top the weeding now then we were in the spring. Today my dad and I weeded cabbage, leek, and asparagus transplants. We did about 16 rows in an hour and a half which just goes to show that there are not too many weeds out there yet.

After we finished the rows we went over to take a look at my row of sweet potatoes. Ryan had little faith that I would be able to grow the sweet potatoes but over half of the slips survived and are now growing like crazy. The weeds were also growing like crazy around them so we started to dig them out. I think there is going to be a great bunch of sweet potatoes come the fall!

Sweet Potato Vine

For a little bit of fun today we also made a batch of applesauce. I may be a bit biased but i have to say it turned out fabulously. I also think that applesauce is super simple to do. If you have never done it you should give it a try. All you have to do is through some apple chunks in a pot with a pit of water, boil until soft and voila applesauce. If you like it not so chunky just use an immersion blender to get rid of the lumps.

We also have two new members here on the farm. As you can see from the photo they are the two cutest kittens ever. We have named them oats (the gray one) and beans (the orange one). They are both very spirited and are adjusting to life here on the farm very well.

Well I think I will make some more muffins now and maybe another pot of applesauce.

Fall is in the air

Well it seems that fall is on its way here with the wonderful cool that we have been having. It is definitely a nice change to be out working in cooler weather. This week has been a filled with planting, weeding and getting ready for our winter CSA. Yesterday I was out hoeing in the asparagus and found that our farm seems to be very happy.

The happy face which I found just as you see it is made of two peach pits and a stick.

New Chicks

It has continued to be a busy week with lots of picking and some planting for our winter CSA (information can be found on our website www.creekshorefarms.ca). We also received a bunch of new chickens. We got 120 new chickens 100 of them were baby chicks who are jut adorable and 20 were ready to lay hens. The baby chicks went into one of our moveable pens that has chicken wire as part of the pen structure. Well I was a little concerned that because the chicks were so small they would be able to fit through the holes. And of course they good. So my dad had to deal with a stream of chicks who thought they should be out wandering the yard. We solved the problem by putting boards up around the outside of the pen, which has seemed to deter them so far.

This is what I like to call exploded corn!
I don't know what causes it.

This week we also picked our first batch of corn. Growing corn organically can be a bit risky because you can easily get lots of bug damage. However it seems this year we have only had a little bit so far which is great. This week we picked peaches and cream corn (it is actually the variety peaches and cream not just bi-colour corn). We have not eaten any yet but it is on the menu for tonight diner.

Garlic Day's

Yesterday was another great day despite the fact that they had called for a bit of rain we only received some late in the evening. So if you have a splendid day to work with what do you do? Well my father (David) and I decided that we had best be getting our garlic out of the ground. We probably could have done this two weeks ago but it is one of those things that is in the forefront of ones mind. So we harvested 1 3/4 of a row all of which was Music garlic. Our first batch was a bit small but our second batch all of the bulbs were very large.

Garlic right after it was pulled out of the ground

My dad shoveling garlic out of a very grassy patch

So after the garlic was all picked we took it back to the barn where it has to be dried for a number of weeks. It is important to keep lots of air circulation around the bulbs so that they dry well. You can see in the picture below that they are on wooden boards with slats between to encourage air circulation.

Once the garlic is dry we will clean them (they are pretty dirty), cut off the stems and roots and have them ready for our winter csa (information available on our website www.creekshorefarms.ca).

So because I don't have enough to do already I have again been making raisins. I bought my first batch of grapes at the farmers market from my neighbour vendor Kathrine. They were sovereign coronation grapes and they make wonderful raisins. They are very sweet but they make wonderful snacks and are excellent in muffins or any baked good.

Dried grapes!

You may ask well what is the process to make raisins. All I can say is simple. So purchase some grapes i did a 1.5 liter basket. This only made one ziplock bag full of raisins. Remove them from the stems place on dehydrator sheets whole (I sliced them last year to make the processes quicker but I would not do it again. The whole raisins are better). Slide the sheet into the dehydrator and turn onto high. Let them stay in there for about 48hours. And you have raisins. Making raisins may not be cost effective but it sure beats store raisins!

There is a falcon in this picture possibly an ospray?
It is basically impossible to see though. It is around the
farm all the time.

Another visitor to our farm last week. A blue heron.

CSA veggies

The sheep eating some Kale

Our stand at the Niagara on the Lake farmers market

Pictures from around the farm

Eggplant and Peppers

Beets

Chickens enjoying some tomatoes and summer squash

CSA basket

Apricot that rolled under the stool at market

My dad hard at work