Yesterday & Today; market & farm.....

We are in full swing at the brickworks farmers market each Saturday from 8am till 1pm, along with Green Barns & Withrow Park. We have an abundance of fresh dug potatoes, broccoli, swiss chard, beets, peas, last of the strawberries, fresh basil plants, spinach & herbs. Lettuce harvest is officially over. We'll pick up with the salad greens come fall. Cucumbers should arrive next week and more greenhouse heirlooms....Just checked the fields today and it looks like our sweet onions are ready for market next week too! We also have a new helper on the farm and his name is 'Ben' too! This Ben is quickly becoming a familar face at all our weekly markets! He has lived in Cairo, Jordan and is currently living in Guatamala with his mother, and has traveled all over the globe. This student is cleaver as a whip and seems to be enjoying his time on our organic farm! The mornings are tough for both him and my stepdaughter, esp. the 4 am wake time on Saturdays!! Having loads of fun while getting work done and all learning from eachother.

Ahhh, July!

Some pictures taken just this past week! We are harvesting lots of Swiss Chard, Beets & reaping the very first harvests of my greenhouse heirlooms! They are beautiful and their taste is absolutely fabulous! Great soil, great taste!

June photos....

Greenhouse heirlooms!! Coming along nicely during the month of June! We suckered them and have them growing up on tomato twine. The clusters of tomatoes are beautiful...A quick snap of our garlic scapes sauteed with our sugar snap peas...

June farm photos...

Busy, busy times! But what an amazing time of year! I'm just going to post pictures today and quick thoughts about crop produce around here the past few weeks! Strawberries are coming to a close. A successful first year growing. 7 baby chicks born by the end of June, Big Jiggs one of my favourite barn cats doing what he does best - not much at all. And I always take time to smell my own roses....

It's Strawberry Time!!

It's been a cool spring, but the strawberries are making themselves known now! I find the sweetness to be lackluster and am hoping with warmer temperatures this will be remedied. We don't have a huge patch, 11 rows all about 500 ft long, but they are healthy and look like they are going to kick out a lot of berries for the retail markets! We grew two varieties that were planted last year. You can go back in our blog and view pictures of our men planting the strawberries in 2008. I've also posted an 'irrigation picture'. Berries need water, so we fired our guns and will water when they need it. We did not take ONE PIPE out last year at all for any crop! Lots of rain!! Set up this year was nasty, as we had to check each pipe for animals before hooking together. (I've dealt with skunk in the pipes before and it's not fun!!) Our strawberry varieties are not super huge, average sweetness and pretty good shelf life. (Meaning we won't be selling the tiny mushy super sweet ones which a lot of folks assume are the norm on an organic farm. This pissed me off a bit, as I want some tiny mushy super sweet ones!!! Great for jam!! I'll be putting the plants in this year for 2010 for super sweet mushers!) Anyhow, that aside, the ripe ones I've been sampling are fabulous, so they will not disappoint! There are 3 main determining factors for the best strawberries: the variety, good soil and good weather. We have excellent, healthy soil, good varieties and the weather is so-so. They will be just fine! Come to market all next week and find out for yourself! Ben will be running Riverdale on Tuesday, Dufferin on Thursday and we'll be pulling 3 markets on Saturday all over downtown T.O. - Withrow Park (south of the Big Carrot), Evergreen's Brickworks and Wychwood's Green Barn market...

Fields & Greenhouse #3 progress.....

More catching up with blogging. May was colder than I would have liked, but hey, you deal. Greenhouse #3 allowed us to bring on the early greens. Next will be early surprises like heirloom tomatoes and zucchini! All trial runs this year- we are experimenting!! I had to share early pictures of the greenhouse zucs, tomatoes (taken last week) & a nice snap of our field lettuce patch taken today! We will probably begin by cutting fresh romaine for the weekend! Busy, busy, busy! We have planted all our cucumbers, all tomatoes in, basil, eggplants, herbs, etc,etc. Ben just got finished seeding out some 'golden beets' too!! If that's not enough, I get the great news from Revenue Canada to expect an audit within the next few weeks! Yippee perfect timing!! I swear to god, why can't it be the dead of winter?.....anyhow we keep good books, so it won't take too long AND I usually use this opportunity to ask tons of questions. We had a payroll audit a few years back and as the farm's bookkeeper I am required to fill out a ton of various forms 'on time' like source deductions for employees and quarterly GST to name a few. I always have issues and questions. No time more perfect time for answers than having the government sitting right at your dining room table!!! You have to use these opportunities to your full advantage!! Fresh this week at market will be our field spinach.........and perhaps a government agent with a laptop looking over my shoulder..LOLOLOL!!!

Sosnicki's potatoes 2009.......

Yes, I should have completed this blog in May - took all the pics, never blogged. Better late than never. We have planted more potatoes this year than any year prior. With new markets, more winter demand, it is important for us to be able to offer more of our own! We used untreated seed in 3 varieties - a red, yellow (golden) and whites. Our goal is to certainly save our own potato seed, but we always end up selling or 'perogie-ing' every last one!! The glorious 'green' picture is of our early whites which was taken today! They will be available at all markets come mid July!! We actually still have some late yellows to put in the ground yet! They will be late storage. My stepdaughter was over when we were planting some of the potatoes this year, so she got to run the 'stick' and make sure the potatoes were flowing into the planter properly. The planter has spinning arms with spikes on them that are sharp as hell, so my stepdaughter just laughs at me when I instruct her to be 'careful', and not to 'put her arm in there' (really?) LOLOL!! Pics: 2 planting on May 3rd. 2 hilling on May 27th and todays green growth!

May progress in pictures.......

Available at markets during May 2009.....

Greenhouse lettuces, asian greens, radish & beautiful heirloom tomato plants! No time to blog regularly!!

BOOM!!!

The greenhouse greens took a mighty hold!!!! Heat, moisture, perhaps they reached the compost underneath, well, whatever - BOOM, here we go with our mighty first #3 greenhouse harvest!! Next week the markets will get a plentiful blast of early head lettuce and asian greens, and the week after that. I know by the last week in May the Asian wonders will be finished and we'll still have some lettuce. THEN we'll hit the field bounty. Naturally Ben and I are both saying "We need to plant more" as customers just gobble this stuff up hard and fast...we're working on it.....All these pictures taken TODAY, just less than an hour ago!!

My Good Mother....

My mother is a good one. Much to her dismay I'm sure, I have taken what she taught me and turned it into a full-fledged business with Ben. -- I gave her end-all grief about farming and the entire lifestyle growing up. I disliked working in the fields, picking cucs, grading out cucs, hoeing onions, snapping beans, canning veggies, etc,etc growing up. It was like pulling teeth, but she made me do it. My mother sent me to school with a lunch pail full of: homemade bread with homemade peanut butter -(she would go to the local health food store, buy peanuts to grind, 'cause store peanut butter had lots of sugar and other crap in it) dried fruit, (she loved her dehydrator, so we had lots of mason jars adoring the kitchen loaded with peaches, pears, apples) , a thermos of juice, (commercial "drinking boxes" were crappy and too full of sugar) so my siblings and I got homemade grape juice or 'rendered down' concentrate to calm the sugar content. My mother gave a damn about our health at all times. Not about what was 'cool' or what the 'other kids had',- she did what she knew was healthy and right. She never seemed to care what 'advertisers' were up to, as I cried and begged for 'pink' cereal - and it just didn't happen. Besides our daily menu, this was very pivitol in day to day life: I was never in charge of my mother's happiness. She never involved me in any drama or chaos. Sure, my parents had lots of problems while I little and growing up; lots of family issues, money problems, but NEVER ONCE was I EVER directly involved. My mother created an environment which was completely NON STRESSFUL for my siblings and I. I could feel free to be myself, love anyone I wanted too with no worry it might 'hurt mommy'. I love my mother sooo much for LEAVING ME ALONE and letting me be me!!!! My mother and I have never been 'best friends'. She had her own friends, and I had mine. I sure as hell NEVER shared everything with my mother growing up.!!!! I seriously think this is very, very normal and healthy! She never tried to buy my happiness with materialistic goods - didn't work out. My mother didn't play that game. What I have now with my mother is mutual adult respect and love. She made me work during my childhood, BUT she never made me worry, - she let me live my life as a child, a teenager and grow into an adult without worrying about her and life surrounding us. She did her best to protect ME, I never felt the need to have to protect her. THANK YOU MOTHER TERESA, and Happy Mother's Day!!! I am trying to do my best to pass along what you've taught me...you are one of the best.....

Greenhouse #3.....

ALMOST THERE!! In fact, we could harvest some of this amazing arugula for market this week, but I'd like to wait another week to let it really, really size up! The heat has created a surge in the last greenhouse where we direct planted transplants and direct seeded spinach & radish..... early tomatoes will be going in as well as huge transplants compliments of greenhouse #2. We are currently also preparing greenhouse #1 for the same type of scenario for the fall time! So greenhouse #1 and #3 will host early and late greens for all to enjoy when the field crops are not yet ready in spring or when frost has wreaked havoc in the fall! Since we are using our own field soil and our own compost, the flavor is not compromised. We are not growing in synthetic soils.....flavor packed field soil and under GLASS, so the plants are in heaven, not to mention the weeds.....

Green Greenhouse!

These pictures took this morning... plants include our zucchini and big, beautiful heirloom tomatoes! I also tinker with big flowers like Brugmansia (aka "Trumpet Flower") and sun flowers, which I usually just direct seed, but decided to start some earlier in pots..... Also have 'GARDEN BOXES'. Ben and I will be selling these big beasts at market in a week's time. They include a very diverse planting of many favorite garden plants! Folks are more than welcome to keep the wooden box, however we will pay $5 for any returns. We can use these to store our onions in for the winter, so returns are encouraged. ...