sosnicki organics

I CANNOT BELIEVE ITS DECEMBER 19TH!!!! Waaaa? Our third baby Jonah has turned 6 months old today and I'm desperately slamming on the brakes because these kids are growing TOO fast man! It was a very busy year and I hope you are all keeping up with our Instagram account, as my blogging time has been slim. We wish all our customers and friends a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year a head! Once again we have a crazy amount of things on our 2017 "to do" list.  Both Ben and I will most DEFINITELY be back at markets. We miss everyone so much. We have learned over the years that for our farm the best approach to paying our bills all winter is growing a couple main storage crops for wholesale and not doing the winter retail markets anymore. So, we will see everyone in May 2017! (Our cabbages can always be enjoyed through The Big Carrot and Mama Earth in the meantime.) Full speed a head 2017, I'm ready for your arrival and a kick ass new season!!!

Well, finally some cool weather!  Fall has officially arrived after that heat wave of a dry summer!  The men are leaving soon, but we use the last few weeks of October and the very beginning of November to get everything in the barn before the snow flies.  Our onions were nice this year.  We got a whole wack of garlic planted. We have a nice cabbage crop to put a way for trimming this winter.  We'll be mass harvesting carrots and beets this coming week for the winter.  This year was very busy, but pretty decent despite the drought. We are still selling peppers!  The red Sheps were AMAZING this year.  To the point we had a bumpercrop and couldn't even sell all of them!  The cauli is small, but at least we have some!  Apples were not as abundant but we found some to sell!  The romas and ALL tomatoes were pretty good out in the fields this season.  Particularly because we had them on drip and plastic mulch.  The ab...

Pepper, like tomatoes are doing well for us this season.  They thrive in this heat and we were fortunate to set up and run drip irrigation with all the pepper patches.  The plants are heavy with peppers and our goal was sweet red, reds and more reds! We have red shepherds, red bells and red pimentos.  All are so sweet when high red and yummy straight up, roasted, grilled, pan fried.... ah I love this time of year. Sweet Corn was almost a bust this year!  F-ing deer and raccoons made a hell-o of a mess back there. Very depressing....BUT the second patch was left alone.  huh.  Ben thinks they just moved on. So more yummy, sweet NO GMO, sprayed with absolutely nothing organic sweet corn at all markets for a while! And a quick selfie with baby Jonah and I checking out the wagon of beefsteaks which have also been amazing this season! We are still taking orders for Romas by the way! So keep making that sauce as the weather cools down! And for any o...

Hamper of our organic romas 2016. We are now taking orders for our certified organic roma tomatoes!  The crop looks nice this year.  We grew them on plastic mulch with drip irrigation and with this dry weather diseases such as blight are staying away.  Insect pressure is not that bad either. Ben anticipates a good harvest and a good month or more of availability.  But, of course, thats never guaranteed. It's farming after all ;) Price is $1.20 per lb.  Which is $30 for a half bushel which is 25 lbs.  A full bushel is 50 lbs, sold as 2 25 lb cases for $60.  This slight increase in price will help pay for irrigation costs this season.  We will bring these half bushel cases to DUFFERIN GROVE market each Thursday.  And to EVERGREEN BRICKWORKS market each Saturday beginning NEXT WEEK, August 18th.  We anticipate to keep shipping the cases into the first week of September and most likely longer.  But if you are a serious sau...

Well, our crops are doing quite well I must say.  Our strawberries were excellent. Our peas, zucchini and lettuces also did decent.  Now we are onto cucumbers and tomatoes as the big(er) crops and smaller item stuff like onions, potatoes and soon to come sweet corn and our colourful carrots and beets!  Growing a way is our cauliflower and cabbages, which look nice so far. We will also be busy harvesting our garlic shortly - but then entire crop is going for seed this year. Yes, it is dry.  But for us, this is not a total tragedy. And I'll share why. Our tomatoes on drip irrigation Heirloom, artisan, cherry, grape, beefsteak and roma from the fields this year. We have 25 acres of market vegetables to care for. We can quickly and efficiently irrigate this amount of food.  By using the drip method and mulch our peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes are thriving. Because of the heat and dryness there is little to no disease we are encountering thus far. Even...

Getting some blogging done before I have baby #3 and things go quiet on my end for a bit ;) The kids and I went out in the field on the quad last evening and took some pictures of the crops to post an update on our veggies!! Field 101: Clockwise: Black and Green Kale, Lettuce, Sweet Onions, Summer Cabbages. Our front field 101 is split in two sections.  We've planted early items such as peas, kale, lettuces, cabbage and sweet onions. These are bare ground transplants, (except for the peas that were direct seeded) and are thriving nicely.  Green kale is already being plucked and lettuces start coming off this week.  Yes, the fields are clean.  Ben has one word for that: wages. We have booked/logged many many hours of cultivating, hand weeding and hoeing and investing in paying wages to have such clean fields.  Our men have the time right now - we are only harvesting a small amount from the greenhouses, therefore the majority of all days can be spent on ma...

I cannot even express how excited we are about this year's strawberry crop.  I still don't like to talk too much about them, boast or brag, as harvest has not begun and I always worry when stuff looks so darn nice that we'll get a blast of stupid hail or something.  Now, that's thinking positive!  lolol Anyhow, they are coming along and there should be a lot of fruit out there this season - hopefully! Our little strawberry Sadie sitting in the patch 2016. Organic strawberries are not easy to grow and take a lot of time and patience.  For this patch we purchased three different varieties last spring from G.W. Allen nurseries in Nova Scotia. We've bought plants from this nursery in the past and love the quality of these hardy perennials. Choosing the right varieties for our winters and growing season is very important.  They are shipped dormant and look like shriveled up half dead frozen plants when they arrive.  Definitely  not much to look ...

Things are speeding right along!  The nicer weather has helped us catch up and get tons done in the field and our covered fields (aka Greenhouses!) In the field we have planted: Peas, lettuces, kale, sweet onions, summer cabbages. In the covered fields we have planted: Heirloom tomatoes, beets, turnips, radishes, salad mix & bok choy ! Ben has been busy plowing , the men have been weeding the garlic and strawberries and chores this week include laying down our organic straw on the strawberries. We plan to be back at market on May 7th (Evergreen Brickworks Market) and May 12th (Dufferin Grove Market). Maybe May 5th for Dufferin - check our social media leading up to the date.  A special early treat this year is overwintered KALE!  We didn't plan for this, didn't mulch it, the weather conditions turned out to be just right and our beloved Darkibor Green Curly Kale is growing back beautifully!! Look for it on May 7th at Brickworks and at Dufferin Grove too o...

We've shipped out a nice selection of early seedlings to Evergreen's Brickworks Garden Market just off the Don Valley in Toronto.  Also The Big Carrot on the Danforth has some of our seedling treats too! At Brickworks you'll find our:   Cabbage, Broccoli, Kohlrabi, Pak Choi, Cauliflower, Swiss Chard, TONS of beautiful Kales, Beets, Arugula etc! At The Big Carrot you'll find our: Big Cilantro Pots, big Swiss Chard Pots and big Salad Mix pots! **Coming soon (weekend before Victoria Day weekend in May) to both locations soon are our awesome HEIRLOOM TOMATOES!! We grow all our seedlings from seed here on farm.  They are all certified organic and all the soils and fish ferts we use are approved for certified organic growing.  The profits of the sale of these seedlings enables us to help with our farm start up costs.  Nothing better than buying seedlings from the actual veggie farmers that grow your food!   New this year:  #ShowWhatYouGrow ...

We know that April is a volatile weather month.  So unpredictable. Last week the family went to Easter breakfast wearing winter coats.  By the afternoon my 1 year old was outside going barefoot in the grass for the first time this season - sun was out and hot.  Now, exactly one week later there has been more freezing rain and snow covers the ground.  Temps hovering around -5 degrees C.  Oye.  But, we roll along here and just ignore it all!! The cost of running the furnace is offset by the custom grow we do, so this is always a good feeling going to bed while the furnaces keep humming away. We use every square inch of greenhouse space to the max of either our own field crops or seedlings for buyers. The heirloom tomatoes are awesome!  This example above will be hardened off and shortly planted directly into the soil in our 'covered fields' (aka greenhouse #1 and #2).  This allows us to offer the late June early July tomatoes we offer at marke...

Now that it's March, we are high speed out in all houses! We were able to start two weeks early this year due to mild temperatures. As small growers we are able to afford firing early as we do custom grow which offsets the cost of running heat in the middle glass beast. Sadly, I had to streamline growing (because of our kidlets) so I was unable to do ALL the custom grow we usually do! To those farmers I couldn't accommodate this season - thanks for understanding! Kids grow fast, so my time with them is most important right now. The kids are just starting to enjoy some time out in the greenhouses too! DIRT! The best toy!! We are seeding down greenhouses #1 and #3 with early root and greens available at market by the end of APRIL! These houses will be brimming with green very soon! Stay tuned for awesome progress pics! Our heirloom tomatoes have been transplanted and are growing away nicely. It is VERY dicey to play around with tomatoes this early. Due to cloudy/snowy ...