sosnicki organics

This is my LAST post to this blog! So I need all of you to "subscribe for delicious updates" on our new website: www.sosnickiorganics.com! The new site/blog/shop is easier to navigate and everything is now updated and in one spot! I don't want any of you to miss out on our new newsletters I'll be sending about new crops and the opportunity to buy and have it delivered to your home in Toronto! Sorry for the hassle, but please sign up there! We cannot wait to share the new seasons harvests with as many as we can!!!! (We will keep this blog here as a time capsule, for memories sake and a nice blast from the past!) ~Jessie

We have decided to deliver Saturday AND Sunday, so if you need to get on our delivery list, read below!  (If you've already emailed an order in for April 4th, don't worry, I've got it, please don't resend! I will confirm on Friday :)  Home Delivery in Mississauga, Etobicoke, West/East - Downtown Toronto. Just south of the 401 please :) Week 2 of home delivery!  During these strange and scary times, we are really looking at a worse case scenario which could possibly be that farmers markets don't open for the duration of the season. Beginning in MAY we will have fresh bunches of Carrots, Radish, Spinach, Lettuces, fresh bunches of local Kale too! JUNE we have an entire 2 acre patch of organic Strawberries! Currently for now we have our storage staples and prepared foods. I encourage everyone to STAY CONNECTED. As the new season progresses we hopefully will find a way to get our veggies to you! ….And so we begin home delivery!  Please email me at jb@sosnickiorganics.co...

Wow.  I'm really overwhelmed in a great way.  I was flooded with emails and orders and now our van is full for deliveries this weekend! If you've placed an order and I am able to fulfill and deliver it you will receive an email from me TOMORROW, Thursday, March 26th. Please DO NOT send funds until I confirm your order.  We will be delivering both Saturday and Sunday! THANK YOU for your orders and interest.  If you don't hear back from me at all, unfortunately we are at capacity.  As soon as we grade up this weekends veggies, I will post if we have enough available to do another van delivery for next weekend. Stay tuned! Please do not get discouraged if we were unable to get an order out to you.  We will have lots more variety and volume coming in a few short weeks!  (Look below at the picture of baby spinach!!) Our availability of storage veggies is quickly finishing up - which is what always happens this time of year! Once May is underway we will ...

No delivery fee!  No minimums!  Market prices remain the same!  Certified Organic!  Grown with love! Beginning this Saturday, March 28th, we are sending the van to the GTA to drop veggies at your door! Payments can be made by e-transfer or cash in an envelope when we deliver to your door!  "Subscribe" to this blog for updates. Email your interest to jb@sosnickiorganics.com subject line: "Feed Me Local Organic!" and I will send availability/prices!  So while the farmers markets are closed for a while, we keep going while maintaining ultimate social distancing to stop the spread of Covid-19!!!  *Cut off for orders is Wednesday, March 25th at midnight*. We will do weekly deliveries each Saturday going forward :) 

We carry on in the greenhouses and are getting lots of crops seeded! Sadie is almost 7, and thou her birthday party this weekend has to be 'postponed' she will still have a party with her family! She's a great help in the greenhouse this year. I feel very fortunate we have the farm so the kids are able to get out and about and keep themselves totally preoccupied with farm play while in 'isolation'. The farmer's markets remain closed and we keep a close eye on how this Covid situation plays out. We are happy to social distance and sell direct from the farm in a very responsible fashion.  We are offering veggie pickups and some deliveries as well.  Email me at jb@sosnickiorganics.com if you need a decent amount of potatoes, carrots, onions, beets, cabbage, and we still have a few perogies and cabbabe rolls! We are crafting more raw sauerkraut as well. I'm happy to report our workers will be arriving to work on the farm this year, as they are considered esse...

Like everyone else right now we are experiencing a range of emotions. Worry and fear of the unknown is weighing heavily. Our migrant workers were set to come April 3rd and thats not happening. The Farmers Markets are closed without an idea of when public gatherings will be less risky and they will once again be allowed. Trying to produce good organic local food which should be a #1 essential service just got a lot more difficult.  ***THE POSITIVE!*** BUT what do we do when the going gets tough? We tough Sosnicki's get going! At this point we usually have very little in the way of storage crops and we usually stop going to markets anyhow to concentrate on growing our new seasons veggie plants. We are definitely full speed a head in the greenhouses! The farm is a slow grinding wheel that doesn't just stop! We carry on :) Folks have been buying direct from the farm, a new health store (Easy Health Food - Bloor/Lansdowne) even came down to load her car full of veggies! While we pra...

I cleaned off my greenhouse desk today and went through old seeds. Set up Ben's chair, where he likes to sit beside me as we plan out what to plant and when.  Or have a cold drink while we bask in the sun (coming soon - a bit cold in there right now!). It's an exciting time of year where we reflect on the previous season and shake things up and always try new things! I will have a lot of time to concentrate on the fields and our own farm this spring - as I am not growing wholesale plants for Evergreen Garden Market this year.  Not that I didn't love doing it - it's just not profitable enough when I have to hire extra hands while I'm raising small babes.  Whole other story when you can do most everything yourself.  So until my kids are older, we won't have our plants there.  As soon as we are able - we WILL bring plants to the farmers markets!! Retail sales are always best for small farms like ours anyways. Another year or two yet for this glass beast until w...

...ah yes.  I've had 4 kids and we are farming more land!!  So I didn't blog once during 2019.  But I'm always on Instagram!  So easy to snap a pic, write and post quick. So you can follow our adventures there. We have a lot going on!  We are farming just under 100 acres now, all certified organic. We continue to do the value add foods, which I am just wrapping up now. (The perogies, cabbage rolls and sauerkraut - available for the next two months or so at our two farmers markets and thru Mama Earth Organics) Our first seedlings are up! We have created a new growing area in our barn that is so nice and heat efficient compared to the old glass beasts! (Yes, we still use them - but their days are numbered). We are at two Saturday markets (Brickworks and Wychwood) but you can also find our storage cabbages at The Big Carrot and Mama Earth Organics. And Mike & Mike's Organics have been sending their truck down weekly to nab the cabbages too - which are sellin...

With the addition of conventional manure on our land growing our upcoming fall veggies, we felt we needed to address it straight on, rip open that can of worms.  We’ve been so fortunate for being able to use certified organic manure for over 14 years on our land since going organic!  Our organic dairy neighbor simply needs his manure for his own land.  We will always continue to provide utmost transparency with regards to all inputs used on our land and in your food.  We know our customers, and we know that being honest is vital to our relationships with everyone whom chooses to buy and consume the veggies we produce.  We will always update our website including every single input we use on our farm.  We continue to be certified organic by Pro-Cert Organic Systems Ltd.  We continue to use 0 herbicides on our land, 0 fungicides, 0 synthetic fertilizers on our land and only 2 approved pesicides ‘Entrust’ and ‘Bioprotec’ on select crops when needed....

It's officially a tomato year!  Tomato patch of romas, beefsteak and cherry field tomatoes are booming!  Very plentiful.  This will help to make up for the craptastic year we had last year with nothing but blight riddled tomatoes.  So, get your fill!  An exciting addition to the bulk offerings this year *for the first time* is our sun sugar cherry tomatoes!  For $5 we are selling 1.5lbs. So for $20 you can score 6lbs of these gorgeous gems to ROAST and freeze!  (or make sauce!). **Roma cases $30 for 25lbs.  (this is a half bushel case. A full bushel amount is 50lbs).**   **Add to that as many 1.5lb clams (pictured here) of the sun sugar cherry tomatoes for $5 each!** To order: 1. Send me an email to: jb@sosnickiorganics.com.  Let me know how many cases of roma and sun sugar you so desire.   2. Within that email include the farmer's market you wish to pick up at STARTING NEXT WEEK, AUGUST 22nd. (Wednesday - Wat...

Yep, long overdue, but I finally assembled my crew of fine ladies (and Ben!) and we are crafting our organic winter foods again!  These are handmade foods of the finest ingredients. PEROGIES! CABBAGE ROLLS!  Four kinds of perogies to choose from including a really, really good vegan one (that is actually cheaper to buy because it has no organic dairy or eggs!) The perogies are huge - twice the size of normal ones! Cabbage rolls are all vegan, (no meat ones sorry) and loaded with kale, onions, brown rice and garlic smothered in tomato sauce.  They. Are. Awesome. If Ben doesn't miss the beef - you won't either!  Processing multi-ingredient foods and getting them certified organic has intensified over the years, no doubt to the growing demand of organic foodstuffs.  It makes it a bit hard for someone who is a small-time processor like me, but I feel it to be necessary step.  Ingredient integrity is very important to us. All perogies and the cabbage rol...

I hope you've been keeping up with our farm's progress on Instagram, facebook and twitter! I've seriously not kept up with my poor blog. Life is just too busy for everything. I'm getting all the lovely emails about our romas, so unfortunately here's the news: We won't have our bulk organic romas for sauce this year. Sorry folks, there is late blight out in the patch and though the romas don't look too bad its too risky to start taking orders and packing boxes.  We know there are a lot of you out there that understand how to cut some rot off your tomatoes and the odd spot but unfortunately there are some really picky folks who need close to perfection and I just can't bother with the complaints.  So, unfortunately there are a few out there that ruin it for the majority.  What we will do is pack into our baskets and sell at market. For those that need sauce you will probably be able to score 5 baskets which is 25lbs, which is half a bushel. Which happens...

Looking across our field at our neighbours barn peaking through.   We are pretty stoked for 2017!  We have a new opportunity to transition another 30 acres into organic. And this opportunity is right next door.  The Jopko family has graciously rented us a most unique property comprised of 5 small fields with very good buffer zones. By the summer of 2019 we will be able to pull organic veggies from this newly replenished soil. It takes a total of 36 months after the last application of prohibited substances to have the crops certified organic. The past farmer (whom I will get to fill out a prior land use affidavit with all information including past substance use.) grew conventional cabbage then corn and soybeans for quite a few years, so we have some work to do. During the next few growing seasons we will be cultivating green manures on this land, minimal grain crops that will be sold conventional/transitional, and soil testing will be done. We'll do the best we can...

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...