More Than Just Frost....

Another bucket load to unload at the garage!

With just a touch of Mother Nature's hand, the growing season is largely done for us!  Friday night was not just frost, or even hard frost: Friday's night's temperatures went well below the freezing mark.  Our thermometer read -7 C (about 18 F) at 6 AM Saturday morning.  Vegetables are done growing for this year!  There had been hope for the summer squash and cucumbers after the touch of frost last week: the tops had been touched but the inner plant was okay and they had started to flower again and had some new growth.  Now, all hope is gone and the plants are all blackened, collapsed heaps, almost unrecognizable.

We had some warning in the weather forecast - although it did get even colder than predicted!  Thursday was CSA day for us so we were busy harvesting for our families, but taking a little extra of everything when we could.  Friday was all-out last-chance harvesting.  Where do you start when it might be your last chance to harvest?  Well, first you prioritize:  anything in the ground like potatoes and beets will be fine.  Then you look at the economic value of our products and those products in demand.  For us, priorities were winter squash and tomatoes.  Everyone is tired of summer squash: they've sauteed, muffined, loaved and frozen to the max!  Winter squash, from pumpkins to Kabocha to Delicata, that's what customers and CSA families are looking for now.  And tomatoes - well, you can never have enough!  Lots of customers are still looking for good paste or plum tomatoes for canning sauces and salsas!

The tomato plants are just crispy now!

So, Friday morning right after milking, the harvesting frenzy began.  I set to work on tomatoes, Farmer Man to winter squash.  Farmer Man definitely had the harder task (as is also so!), because he was cutting squash, filling the tractor bucket, unloading at the garage and doing it all again.  That included twenty pound carving pumpkins, fifteen pound Marina di Chioggia, heavy Australian Blue pumpkins, ten pound Red Kuri and numerous five to ten pounders of everything else.  We briefly considered not attending the Global Market, to get in as much as we could.  We decided we could get enough done, and still be there to sell as expected - just a wee bit more disorganized then usually.  I set to work in the tomatoes, starting with the Romas, Margeritas and Opalkas, using a three bucket system: ripe, almost ripe and green.  We both left lots of small, under ripe product in the field - just not worth our time and space!

Fortunately, Henry and Derrick came to help and got right to work in the tomatoes with me.  We worked feverishly all morning.  About 1:30 we stopped to prepare for the market.  Fortunately, much was at hand and we knew how much we needed to prepare.  Potatoes were already curing in the garage, getting ready for winter storage in the root cellar.  Farmer Man bagged potatoes, I portioned tomatoes, we both weighed and labelled winter squash.  Off to Global Market for me, Farmer Man returned to the farm to keep harvesting!

Basil in the hoop house is largely okay,
except for a little patch right by the wall.

I must admit, even with the knowledge I had, I was not fully prepared for the temperature drop at the market Friday night.  I was freezing, just freezing by the time Farmer Man came to pick me up!  I had big plans to keep harvesting, but after milking the goats, I was assured that there was not much more to do except cover excess squash that was on tables outside the garage.  Up early Saturday morning to prepare for market and we could see the damage had been done!  Prepping for the Global Market Saturday morning was quite easy because everything was right at hand!  A peak in the hoop house, and everything there seemed largely okay!

Even though the 'growing' season may be finished, the work is not done by any means.  There are still potatoes and beets to take up.  Garlic still has to be planted.  Stakes and cages have to be removed from tomatoes, assorted other tags, fencing and such has to be picked up.  We'll leave a lot of plants in the ground, as is, for winter, to help capture snow and decrease soil erosion.  And maybe, just maybe, our late planting of lettuce will still grow and we'll have a fresh salad in a couple of weeks!

It May Be Time To Boot Up the Greenhouse!

The potting up of little seedlings continues unabated.  And there are more seeds to start!  The tomatoes and peppers are pretty much all started; there are herbs to finish, and then it's broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, celery and some of our winter squash that require a hundred days or more to mature!  It's getting hard to move around in the sun room: it is stuffed with folding tables with grow light stands on top, grow lights or fluorescent lights strung beneath.  Watering requires crawling around on the floor, inevitably bumping our heads on tables!  Some of our vegetable crates are holding the trays of seedlings closer to the lights - we're constantly stubbing our toes on those!

Looking around this morning, it seems obvious that it's time to move to the greenhouse.  Nights have been chilly here this week, dropping to below freezing!  Our concern is that the greenhouse, built by Farmer Man's Father from mostly found materials, is not very energy efficient.  It is south facing, so the lighting will be excellent (the sun room is east facing, hence all the lights!), but it's not very air tight, and it's heated electrically so our concern is a large electricity bill!  But, you've-got-to-do-what-you've-got-to-do, right?

Seedlings need to be 'hardened off' - meaning they have to get used to outdoor temperatures gradually after being somewhat coddled in sun rooms and greenhouses.  We're looking to move into our hoop house (or high tunnel) shortly - as soon as we re-cover it!  The poly covering has been damaged beyond repair this winter, so first it must be stripped, a new roll purchased and then, on a calm day, the poly must be re-floated and attached.  That's a big chore (and a calm day can be hard to find in Manitoba)!  Then we can seed some greens directly and we'll move out some of our seedlings.  We have 'water walls', plastic 'teepees' whose walls can be filled with water.  These absorb heat during the day which they release at night, protecting the plants within.  This can also be done by using a group of plastic milk containers filled with water, surrounding each plant!  We're a little uneasy about planting out seedlings into our straw bale cold frame quite yet, because the temperature fluctuations are a little more extreme!  I think we will put some onion sets out there soon, though!  Busy, busy, busy - how about you?

Raised Bed/Cold Frame Aagaard Farms' Style!

North side, high side.

We've been talking for a couple of years about building cold frames and raised beds.  Both have big advantages for extending the season - a boon in our cold Manitoba climate where our last frost date is June 6th and our first Fall frost date is September 9th.  Yes, that's right - we've got four months to grow everything.  Manitoba has been known to get snow in mid-June and we've gotten frost as early as August 21st!  It's a good idea, especially if you grow vegetables for a living, to have protection, back up plans so to speak!  To that end, we've had great luck with our hoop houses or high tunnels over the last few years and we do plan to build a second this year.  After we fix the first one....again.  Even with a heavy-duty plastic cover, the hoop houses are prone to winter damage from the weight of snow and high winds.

Cold frames are in-ground beds with a glass or plastic cover.  The glass cover creates a solar affect, heating up the soil inside faster than the surrounding ground.  Seedlings are protected from wind and excessive moisture, the soil retains some heat in the evening and they'll provide some degrees of frost protection if the temperature dips or it snows.  If electricity is available, soil warming cables can be put in the bed to ensure good night-time temperatures!  As daytime temperatures increase, the glass covers can be opened or moved to keep temperatures at a reasonable level, then returned later in the day.

Raised beds are beds built above the existing soil.  They can be constructed of various materials and you can pretty much choose your height.  They can be built over soil that is of questionable quality and filled with a rich, nutritious mix.  They also raise the working area - a bonus for bad backs for both weeding and harvesting.  Raised beds have become popular features in retirement communities where, with a solid walkway, even people in wheelchairs can continue to garden.  They are also really useful in urban areas where they can be constructed over concrete or really depleted city soils and be really productive.  They are also visually appealing, providing some variance in height.  We've seen beds built of natural stone, old brick, reclaimed chunks of concrete, lumber and timber.  If growing food in your raised beds we would highly recommend avoiding treated wood of any kind, including railroad ties!


So, Farmer Man has been reading and thinking on these things for a couple of years.  When a neighbor offered free small bales of straw, Farmer Man saw an opportunity!  This being such a mellow winter, the snow has already melted from the area he had in mind.  He'd been thinking about an area along our front driveway, close to the road.  It's an area of poor soil, prone to erosion.  He started by discing the whole area to chop up last year's plant debris and loosen up the soil.  He next used the tractor to take one scoop of soil to create a mound.  You see, cold frames should be oriented south, to catch maximum sunlight!  He started the frame of the bed, in straw, on the mound, as the high point and back.  He then continued to lay out bales until he had a rectangle, lower in the front, south side.  The opening is about seven feet long and three and a half feed wide.  He then filled the bed with a screened mix of our own two year old compost and well-aged manure purchased last year from the Research Centre.  The opening was then covered with some old windows he had stashed.  He weighted down the windows, just to be safe.

All this just happened yesterday, two beds were created.  I went searching today for a spare thermometer and got it in place, on the shady side, so we can monitor the temperature over the next few days to get an idea of how these beds are working.  The straw bale construction is certainly being tested today, as we've had winds all day of 35 kph with gust to 55kph (about 24 mph with gusts to 40 mph)!  If temperatures seem reasonable, we'll probably start by seeding some lettuce and maybe some onions early next week!  We'll keep you posted!

Spring To-Do List

As we're out walking the dogs and goats, or gathering firewood, or just strolling we're taking a good look around the farm.  Now is the time that our Spring list of chores is formulated!  This is a list separate from the on-going daily and weekly chores like feeding and watering critters, cleaning pens and coops, collecting eggs.  These are 'special' chores that, largely, fate has brought us.  It's different every spring, always full of surprises!

We notices, as seen in the picture on the left, that the hoop house has sustained some damage this year.  We love our hoop house!  It was so successful last year in supplying a steady supply of tomatoes to our CSA families, with some extra for Farmers' Markets!  We also had a much nicer crop of basil and peppers in the hoop house than what came from outside beds.  We won't know until we get a ladder out and have a good look just how big this chore will be.  Hopefully, it's just a repair and won't require replacing the entire covering of plastic: a much more expensive and time consuming event!  We are also putting on the to-do list the building of a second hoop house - they are wonderful for earlier and later harvests and protecting from damage.  Both of these are chores we'd like to have done in April, once we start planting in May, everything is about the growing!  Farmer Man is also putting some cold frames on the list - great mini, in-ground greenhouses which can ease some of the over-crowding that happens every April and May in our sun room and greenhouse as the seedlings start to take over!

Late last growing season a garden renter accidentally ran over one of the hose bibs for the rental gardens.  We were in the middle of potato harvest, still doing October Farmers Markets and just didn't get to the repair before the ground froze up.  So, that repair is on the to-do list.  We'll have to dig up the area and find the break, repair it, let it set and then re-bury the main line.  I say 'we' but Farmer Man will be doing most of the work,  I'm not a very efficient digger.  Also, in the rental gardens, as more and more people get interested in growing their food and our plots expand, we've got to build and place a couple more compost receptacles.  We make these from used wooden pallets, and some of the time involved will be cruising back alleys and commercial zones looking for the pallets!

Dealing with compost is another big to-do!  Compost is pretty much the only fertilizer we use.  For the seedlings and containers, we're using a kelp seaweed liquid fertilizer, but once things are planted in the garden we rely on the nutrition in the soil.  We purchased a load of compost last year and although the product was very nice, it was full of stones!  A number as big as a man's fist and lots of pebbles of various sizes.  We have to create a more efficient screening process to clean it before we apply it.  This chore also needs to be completed in April, so we can apply compost before planting.  We also have to turn an awesome pile of chicken coop and goat pen bedding.  Through the winter, as we remove it to clean the coop or stalls, it goes outside and largely freezes right away.  We'll need to mix it, pile it and leave it to compost this year!

We'll have Berkshire piglets coming in April or May so we've got to create new pasture.  We like to rotate the pasture around, so there is fresh grass, a clean area and no chance of passing on any parasites or disease.  It's like rotating your plantings - you don't want to keep animals in the same area year after year.  The pigs, goats and chickens really 'eat up' any pasture so the previous pasture needs a chance to re-grow.  We'll also need a nice area for Randie, our buck goat.  When we, fingers crossed, have baby goats in late Spring, we need him separate so that he doesn't hurt any babies and, later in the season, doesn't try to breed with any of his children.  Fencing is never a good time, but a chore that needs doing!

We've got to get some pruning on the list!  Our raspberries need pruning every Spring to take out old, spent canes.  We could also use some maintenance pruning on the fruit trees - they were somewhat neglected last Spring as we were distracted by flooding and other unusual events.  Good pruning will keep fruit trees producing much better!  I've also been offered some mature grape plants, so we've got to find an area for them and create some sturdy trellising before we go dig them up and transplant them!

Oh, the to-do list just keeps getting longer and longer.  The more I think of it, the more things that come to mind, and not all garden or critter related.  The house could really use painting, we've got a back patio half made (a project that has gone on a couple of seasons already!), we'd love to create a veggies washing area, Farmer Man wants to build a chicken tractor a la Joel Salatin, the two 'Blue Boy' clematis in front of the house could use cutting back, some of the iris in the front border need dividing......it just keeps going!  Have you started a Spring to-do list?

That Was Then...

Yes, things are always changing, always growing at Aagaard Farms, in the summer season.  What was a chick in the hand two months ago is now a big, healthy Ameraucana hen.  The one classically golden chick in our flock of forty has grown up to be a healthy, rather large all-white Ameraucana hen!  These Ameraucanas are quite impressive birds but I fear the only white is getting picked on, or shall I say pecked on, because she really stands out from the crowd of black, gray and beige birds.  When we consider the growth in just two months, it really is tremendous!  On a day-to-day basis we're not really aware of the change; it's not until we look at some photos from the beginning of June that we realize just how quickly they grow up!

The hoop house, too, is a cause for wonder.  From a sparse planting in June of well-spaced tomatoes and peppers to the jungle we have today, it is quite astounding!  The hoop house is proving to be very productive and we hope it will extend our season for at least a few weeks, if not a month!  Pretty soon we'll need a machete to work our way in to harvest!  The sweet potatoes, planted between tomatoes, are doing very well, but that's another blog post!  How are things growing in your area?

Field of (Tomato) Dreams!

We've gone big on tomatoes this year.  With the help of our little crew we've got almost four  hundred plants in the ground!  All of them we started from seed in our little sun room.  We've got a wide variety: heirlooms like 'Brandywine', 'Opalka' and 'Black Krim', proven Prairie winners like 'Manitoba' and 'First Lady',  paste tomatoes, cherry tomatoes, grape tomatoes and some of the low acid goldens.  We've got about twenty in the hoop house, which appear to be thriving.  The field tomatoes are, well, a little wind whipped, a little soggy.  Yes, we got more rain last night, along with some awesome lightening and rolling thunder.

All the tomatoes were planted in long rows, with the width of the tractor's rototiller between them, for ease of weed control.  One person dug holes every foot or so, one person came along with a wheelbarrow of compost and amended each hole, one person came along with a bucket of bone meal and threw about an eighth of a cup in each hole (that's to supply calcium, to prevent blossom end rot).  Then, a couple of people came along with trays of seedlings, planted and back-filled the hole.  Then, until they ran out, we put collars around the plants, to ward off cutworm.  We ran out of the collars (largely old cans) about half way through, so some little tomatoes are left to their own devices.  We already see a bit of cutworm damage: a plant seemingly cut off at soil level.  We still have a mornings' work to put tomato cages on as many as we can, until we run out of those.  These are closely planted, we may end up with a hedge of tomatoes, but that is okay!  I just want tomatoes, lots and lots of tomatoes!  I'm really serious this year about canning a lot of tomatoes, sauces and salsas, plus we need a good supply for our CSA families and to sell at the Farmers Markets!  Now, if only we would get a little sunshine and heat!

Hoop House: Almost Fully Loaded!

It's odd being a Prairie blogger.  All during the long winter I have little to say and much time.  Now, I have much to say and little time.  We're getting things done around here: we're late, and we're working in between thundershowers, hail and standing water.  The hoop house is almost fully planted.  We've put in a row of tomatoes along one wall, on the left in the picture.  We left a narrow walkway, planted a double 'hedge' of bell peppers and then, along the other wall we have patches of other peppers, including jalapeno, habanero and chili.  All that is left to plant are sweet potato cuttings that just arrived a few days ago.  Apparently, it was cold in North Carolina (!), so the cuttings arrived a little late again this year.  The Manitoba sweet potato experiment will continue; the wee tubers we saved from last year were not worth planting, they were shrunken and mushy.  We're going to plant the cuttings between the tomatoes and cross our fingers!  There is also a small patch of flowers including sunflowers and cosmos, which I hope to be able to cut for a wedding in late July.  Don't you love the 'artistic' curve to the pepper hedge?

Hoop House reconstructed!

Hoop House, Deconstructed

Hoop House, Reconstructed

OK, we're definitely a little behind this year.  Behind in blogging, too, because we reconstructed the hoop house about two weeks ago.  I've had the pictures, had the story, didn't get it posted because other things kept coming up - like baby goats!  Last summer our hoop house suffered fatal damage in a summer storm.  We had a little trouble this Spring finding the plastic because everything in town had been purchased to help build flood protection.  We finally got our hands on a good roll of appropriate plastic and made a date with some friends.  Deb, Calla and Joe came over on an evening to help put the house back together.  While us ladies were looking at kittens, Joe and Farmer Man got the plastic over the hoops very easily.  They secured it by shoveling dirt on the bottom edges.  It was quite calm that night, but started to rain on us.  Once the plastic was over the hoop house, we had to nail in wood slats along the sides, which holds the plastic in place.  The three ladies worked together on one side, the men on the other side.  A bit of a challenge to straighten the plastic and then nail in used, warped boards.  Obviously, we got it done.  Farmer Man just had to reattach the doors on both ends and it's good to go another year!  I've already planted some flower seeds because I'm hoping to supply a wedding in July!  Soon, some of the tomatoes and peppers will get transplanted out there for a fast start in the high temperatures and wind protection it affords.  A hoop house is a good thing to have!  

Going thru the Hoops!

Farmer Boy built us a hoop house or high tunnel a few weeks ago. We'd love to be using it but our nights have really been too cold. The house is a single layer of poly so it does not have any insulating value. If the night is below freezing, the hoop house is below freezing. Well, the weather is on the up-and-up so we're getting ready to move in. We intend it for growing sensitive crops like tomatoes and peppers. It will provide us with a longer season of harvest, offering some protection from fall frosts. Right now, we're going to move in some of our cold tolerant seedlings like cabbage. (Yeah, I'm getting some of this stuff out of my house!!). Farmer Boy is going to do a little hoeing and then laying down landscape cloth to suppress weeds. We'll plant tomatoes and peppers right into the soil. But for now, at least a few of the flats are going out of the house. We knew we were on the right track after reading an excellent article in 'Small Farm Canada' magazine,http://www.smallfarmcanada.ca