This Saturday a group of people got together to do some garlic planting at Steel Pony Farm. This was a root day according to the StellaNatura, and so I decided that it would be a good day to get out there and plant garlic. 17 of us planted almost 1700 cloves of garlic. After planting, we watered and mulched the garlic with some straw I purchased from Kris Vester at BlueMountain Biodynamic Farm by Carstairs.

Last year about this time, garlic was the very first crop seeded on Steel Pony Farm. This year, the garlic is the last crop that I will seed this year; from now until early May the field will go dormant, and garlic will be the first thing to grow up in the spring. It’s really a crop that measures the passing of time.

So 1700 cloves is quite a lot, and I’m looking forward to having a good quantity of garlic for next year. Last year we did about 1000 cloves, but a little bit less than half of those were from bad seed stock and so didn’t end up  making very good bulbs. This year I planted seeds that I had saved from the good part of last year’s crop, and so I’m pretty confident that we’ll get some amazing garlic for 2012.

Love these beautiful green onions harvested this past Monday. A lot of folks that I’ve been chatting with expect that the farming season is pretty much over. Even though we’re creeping toward October, we’ve still got a lot of food coming out of the field. It’s pretty exciting. The CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farmer must time plantings and choose varieties that to ensure that there is a good early, mid and late season harvest. Still maturing in our field are parsnips, carrots, beets, rutabaga, diakon radishes, watermelon radishes, brussel sprouts, spinach, arugula, and mesclun greens. We’ve got at least two weeks of food boxes left, and if after that point there is still food in the field, then we’ll do another week.

Grateful for all the moisture we had at the beginning of the season. With such a dry August and September I’m more and more aware of how much the early rains set us up for a great season.

Still many farm tasks to focus on- clean up/tear down, prepping beds for garlic, adding to the compost pile, harvesting, transporting pumpkins, garlic, onions, potatoes in to town, the list goes on. Grateful for cooler days, but wishing for more daylight hours!

So, with a few frost warnings already this fall, and one very light itsy bitsy frost, Andy and I decided to harvest all of our green tomatoes yesterday. We must have got a few hundred pounds out of the field. We brought them home and put them in cardboard boxes, and are hoping that they will ripen up in the next three weeks or so.

Generally, we have been transferring all of our veggies by bike and trailer, but the few times that we have transported a bigger load of tomatoes, we have found that they do not transfer well by trailer. They are too delicate and because the trailer does not have any suspension, they bruise easily. So yesterday we borrowed Andy’s car to run out the to farm and pick up this load. We also harvested all the corn in the field. We didn’t get much as the heat units were so low this year, but we’ve got enough for a token ear for CSA members.

The beans just keep coming! I’m happy to have planted one succession of yellow and green beans quite late in the summer. It was a gamble, but this warm weather and the frost free fall means that we’ve got another wave of beans on the way. I picked through them this weekend for the bigger ones and got a great harvest.

Still lots of veggies in the field for fall boxes and market. Tonnes of swiss chard and kale, lots of spinach and arugula on the way, and turnips, brussel sprouts, parsnips, pumpkins and winter radishes are not too far off. Woot!

Mike

Finally!

Joe the Scarecrow

Meet our new volunteer Joe, he doesn’t talk much but he listens well and sees all.

Hello, Andy here with a few thoughts/words from the field. We’ve been working away out here bending our backs together and keeping busy with the weeding and harvesting these days but still putting a few seeds in the ground here and there, but the seeding has slowed down as we move into late August. All the while I think we’ve all been keeping a keen eye as we wait and look forward to those bountiful root vegetables to mature, the potatoes, beets, parsnips, garlic, onions, leeks and especially the prized garden fresh carrots. Sounds like soup to me!

Last fall an artist would have looked at a canvas and seen what potential it could hold if he/she brought to it the right colors and applied just the right brush stroke to form the vision/idea in their mind. Mixing colors and setting each stroke onto the canvas, sometimes with care and thought and sometimes in the heat of the moment with great haste or a burst of energy and inspiration. Watching and observing as the picture came to life. There seems to be a lot of green in our picture as we’ve seen our vision come to life in a real way throughout the past 14 weeks of working the soil, seeding, weeding and harvesting. The other night we stopped to take a look at a photo from October and we looked in amazement at a flat empty 2 acre plot of soil with no sign of green to be seen. Today we’ve got all shades of green, and a full rainbow of colors, not to mention all the different shapes and designs of each crop. And then there’s all the other life that it brings, the birds and their songs, and also our great allies the worms, garter snakes, ladybugs and the dragonflies. With all of these the picture is looking bright and full! Very full! I never cease to be amazed at all of the food that we pull out of the field every week or the transformation of those tiny seeds into such big and juicy vegetables. Sure is nice to be able to “reap what we sow”, and enjoy all the efforts/fuits and vegetables of our labour which are now so richly filling our bodies and bringing us a new energy and state of health.

Here’s a few last words/thoughts collected from out in the field. To download an .m4a version click here:

Well, I’ve been working with a shovel and a hoe,
digging that soil getting it ready to go,
Well, It’s a hell of a lot of work you know,
to get those vegetables to grow,

Peas and carrots, garlic and corn,
Up with the sun nearly every morn,
Cucumbers, onions and spuds,
Rained last night and now I’m stuck in the mud,
When the sun comes up well it shines and shines,
My necks red like tomatoes on the vines,

Well here we are so let’s get down to it,
Come on Y’all lets shovel that shit,
Manure’s good for the soil it’s true,
And vegetables are good for you!

Warmly,

Andy