sosnicki organics

(This post is specifically for my stepdaughter today...) We have a mother cat that is not friendly. She is elusive, I don't know where she came from. I've never pet her once. We even caught her once, took her to a neighbours farm that needed cats for his cow barn - she came back home. She has produced a lot of 'mousers' - infact way too many mousers for this farm!! The majority of all of them orange. Well, we all knew she had had another batch, but never could find them, until Thursday! I was grading beets, looked over in the corner of the barn by the big straw bails and saw little kittens playing in a basket! Ben and I caught them all by Saturday (4 in total) and brought them in the house to 'calm them down'. The last thing I want is more wild cats on the farm! Anyhow, last night they all got out of their cage, were howling all over the house and all day today I could not find them. Well, I kid you not, while I was doing my 3 previous blogs regarding 'crop ...

By next week, we will be harvesting broccoli! It has enjoyed the moisture and the cooler days. Any time it was hot outside, the broccoli patch just looked 'sad'. It's leaves would just 'droop'. Broccoli is certainly a cooler weather crop! Great for early summer and fall! Beside this patch is our sweet white spanish onions. They are awesome! Ben's mother hoed these 5 times I think! They are clean and sizing wonderfully! I'll be creating my fun little 'pineapple' bunches within a couple weeks to have available at the markets! Boy, by the time I blog again it will be July already! I'm ready, -bring on the harvest!!!

We are going to have pretty nice leeks for this fall I think! We have maintained the care, via hoeing compliments of Ben's mom and our new Mexican guys! These are planted just south of the tomatoes, carrots, beets, bean etc. Next to leeks are the summer salad, the lettuces we have just started harvesting now. We have 'abandoned' the old lettuce patch now. It has bolted nicely, so Ben will be chopping it down shortly. A chop suey of weeds and lettuce! The summer lettuce is nice. We have a really cool batavian variety, which is a cross between a leaf and a romaine. Very, very tastey! More boston (aka butterhead) type, both red and green as well as some triple red 'Fiere' that all love soo much! Just south of this is our main onion patch. We have our cooking onions, sweet spanish and reds planted here. If it would STOP raining so damn much, we'd actually be able to hoe this patch finally! Can't complain though, we are pretty caught up.....

Almost July, so I'm going to put a few posts in today showing the progress of our crops at this date. Potatoes are awesome! We dug our first little batch for supper this afternoon! We won't be digging for market this week, but will for the next! The tomatoes are doing well also! I must say, the concentration of Colorado Potato Beetle is pretty, pretty bad. I'm worried, but Ben says we'll just ride it out, let nature runs it's course. I'm including pics of our potatoes and our first tomatoes (notice the beetles...) that should be ripe and ready to go by the end of July. We put most of our heirloom tomatoes spread far apart this year with various crops (carrots, beans, beets) planting inbetween. We are not 'staking' them, which is not very good, considering that this is so far a very wet year, and when the plant sits on the ground and cannot stay 'dry', that is when blight, disease often steps in! We are spacing them better than last year, so we...

Going to cram a few blogs into one this morn. First is a warm 'welcome' to our new workers Domingo & Miguel, brothers from Mexico. This is their first time in Canada, and now begins the process of learning Spanish for us, English for them! It is strawberry season! They seems to be lacking flavour this year, I think from little sun and cooler temps. No, we do not have our own strawberries YET , instead the last two days we have been planting our own! I'm sharing a picture of Domingo and Miguel planting them out! It is a bit late in the year to be putting the plants in, but with all the moisture, they will establish themselves and be just fine. I've got my new strawberry patch placed in between some heirloom tomatoes and carrots, so if we have a dry summer, all will get a drink! So next year Sosnicki's will bring on their own berries finally! We are selling Peas this coming week (anyone noticed the write up in the Toronto Star last week about Ben's peas?? ...

It's soo important this time of year to make sure I blog enough about how the crops are growing out there! For all you folks learning about organic agriculture, this is an exciting time and as the weeks pass- crops boom in the fields, along with the weeds! It's cooler now, so the lettuce is still holding it's own and not bolting. A few green leaf have, but nothing substantial. Still lots of lettuce harvest left. However the weed concentration is nasty in the lettuce patch, BUT that's ok, lettuce is sized, soon to be all harvested and then this patch will be 'chop suey' soon enough! I'm just concentrating on a few crops, no time for it all. Tomatoes are awesome. Sizing up nice, healthy and fully cultivated and weeded. Potatoes are also very good this year. Our first planting is earlier than last year and we are hoping to harvest new potatoes in two weeks time! Beets & Peas are heading to market tomorrow! Beets are tiny, and I am creating bunches of...

On the way home from the Brickworks and Withrow Park farmer's markets today, Ben and I stopped at a 24 hour big chain grocery store. We like to see what they are selling, what it looks like and for how much. Let me just say I just shook my head yet again. We have a vast field of gorgeous certified organic lettuces now and this store is selling smaller, conventional heads imported from the good ol' USA for almost the same price as we sell at our farm markets. Wandering around I notice the magazine rack. On it I spy 'Toronto Life' and take a peak once I read the cover. I made this purchase. I remember my meeting with the writter Chris Nuttall-Smith this past March at a local event where I was selling my perogies. It was a wonderful article and just neat to read about all our fellow vendors/friends titled "Get Fresh'. Not to mention my favourite part: "Black Krim Tomatoes - Ben and Jessie Sosnicki, the husband and wife team behind Norfolk County's Sosnic...

Ben and I are harvesting FRESH right now for each market: Green Leaf lettuce, 3 types of gorgeous Red Leaf Lettuce, Boston/Butterhead Lettuce, Romaine Lettuce, Baby Kale, Fresh Field Spinach & Radishes! I am sharing an awesome recipe! Strawberries will be a bit yet, BUT man, keep this recipe in mind! Grape Spinach Greens Salad For each person you are serving, per plate: arrange 1/2 cup of Spinach leaves & 1/2 cup of Dark Red Leaf Lettuce. Top with (as many as you desire for each) strawberries halved, green grapes halved, red grapes halved, & toasted sunflower seeds. Dressing: Mix together 2 tbs peanut or olive oil, 2 tbs balasmic vinegar, 1 tbs maple syrup (get yours from FORBES WILD FOODS! My buddy Seth from Dufferin!) , 1 tbs Poppy Seeds and a pinch of salt. Drizzle over each serving. Oh yes! ~Enjoy!

Yes, I am very excited! Finally some new and different animals around here! I've been wanting to raise pigs for quite some time now. Given that we grow such a diverse cropping, we have soo much awesome 'slop' for piggies! From melons to sweet corn, these are going to be well fed pigs! We are probably getting about 6 or so. Neighbours are already putting their orders in for 'fall pork' ! Yes, we are going to eat them, BUT I think one or perhaps two may end up becoming 'life long' friends on the Sosnicki Farm!! My dad, Ted, is one in a million. For nothing but the price of some lag bolts, the guy used bull pen gates and steel from around here and constructed the new 'pig pen'. They are housing with our horse, and my stepdaughter will notice how 'small' her tack area has become! Man, I love my dad. Within a day and a half, he had everything welded and bolted into place. Since he farms too, and with the 'wet weather', it was the perfec...