CSA For The Last Day of July!

Everyday starts and ends this way..for about another month!

It finally feels like summer! We had to wait until the end of July - but summer seems to be here!  Lovely and warm today, very little breeze, not a lot of bugs - fantastic day for harvesting for our families!  We were actually late for Tuesday's meet-up because there is so much to harvest right now!  We used our time a bit more wisely today and think we'll be on time!  There's so much labour-intensive veggies to harvest right now we could sure use some help - especially with raspberries!  If you'd like to find more raspberries in your basket and have time on Thursday mornings please let us know!

Beans will come hot-and-heavy for the next few weeks.  Here's a great link, with links at the bottom of the page, to a lot of ways to keep beans for winter use!  We've never dehydrated beans, but it seems like a good idea! They'll take up shelf space only, and a small space at that!  We regularly freeze beans and pack them in portions in freezer bags.  They stack nicely in the freezer, thaw quickly for use in soups, stews and stir fries!  We've picked the first of the Dragons Tongue - a Romano type bean, big and flat but tender and tasty!  Treat just like any other bean; unfortunately the purple stripes fade on cooking.

Our growing partners Amanda and Ed have provided beautiful cabbage again today.  They've also brought the first harvest of some fresh herbs.  The ferny leaf of the dill will be wonderful chopped for the new potatoes or in your salad - very different from the dried dill in the stores.  The heads of dill will flavor jars of the 'Dilly Beans' from the link above or a wonder to flavour vinegar for homemade salad dressing.  The flat leaf Parsley will be excellent chopped into salads or sprinkled on grilled chicken or pork.  It's also excellent for stuffing a roast chicken and I believe the first chickens from Luna Field Farm are available this week.  The herb with the flowers is Greek oregano - a zesty herb that will also be excellent in your salads.  It's fantastic to add a little Greek flavour to meats and pastas.  Try a little of the herb in your box straight, to give you an idea of the flavour.

The first share of new potatoes for Thursday's families- a lovely red Norland.  Please don't over-cook young potatoes.  We usually simply steam them for about fifteen minutes but you can boil them, too, just not too long!  New potatoes sometimes can get mushy if roasted in tin foil on the BBQ, so perhaps wait a couple of weeks until we've got older spuds for you!

Last week everyone got Boyne raspberries - the standard hardy raspberry for the Prairies grown here for decades.  For this Thursday, we got a small pick on Mammoth, a newer variety developed at the U of S.  There's just enough today for the Full Shares.  We'll be interested to see if you notice a difference.  We won't make any comment here 'cause we don't want to influence you!

So, for the Full Shares: Lg. cabbage, 3/4 lb. each of green, yellow, Royal Burgundy and Dragon's Tongue beans, 4 lbs. new potatoes, Lg. Mammoth raspberries, bag each Mesclun mixed lettuces and Grand Rapids, fresh dill.

For the Part Shares:  Lg. cabbage, 1/2 lb. each green, Royal Burgundy and Dragon's Tongue beans, 3/4 lb. yellow wax beans, 3 lbs. new potatoes, 1 lb. shelling peas, Boyne raspberries, bag each Mesclun Mix and Grand Rapids lettuce, fresh flat leaf parsley.

For the Single Shares: Sm. cabbage, 1/2 lb each green, yellow wax, Royal Burgundy and Dragon's Tongue beans, 3 lbs. new potatoes, Boyne raspberries, bag each Mesclun Mix and Grand Rapids lettuce, fresh Greek oregano.

CSA for the Last Tuesday in July!

New Game in Town: Chasing Baby Goats From The Raspberries!

Hard to believe July is almost done!  We've hardly had any summer at all.  The local flooding, the storms, the lateness of the gardens make it feel like late Spring, maybe end of June!  However, vegetables are starting to come on strong now.  First pick of beans, first dig of baby potatoes, first couple of little Hungarian Hot peppers - good things are happening!  Right now it's a matter of time - many of these veggies take a while to pick so we could have had a bigger basket but just ran out of time!  Of course we had a couple of interruptions: The baby goats, led by that mischievous  Pygmy goat Dan-Dan, have developed a taste for raspberry leaves.  Every chance they get they're breaking out and heading for the north row!  Fortunately, they same to have to interest in the berries, just the leaves.

We've got a great pick on snap beans for everyone!  I'm sure you've all had the basic yellow wax bean and probably the common green bean.  The purple bean, Royal Burgundy, may be new to some.  Similar in flavour to the green bean, it will turn a dark green when it cooks.  That's always been such a disappointment to me because I love the colour purple!  Tasty, tasty bean, though!  The beans will be prolific over the next two to three weeks.  If they get to be a bit much for fresh eating please, please, please freeze some to enjoy in the winter!  Here's some great, simple instructions for freezing beans.  Of course, you can water-bath can beans - in vinegar, pickled!  If you've got a pressure canner, you can pressure can beans in water - just like store bought.  We freeze beans in the zippered plastic bags; we do a portion appropriate for the two of us, and freeze flat for good stacking in the freezer!  Don't want to can?  Here's an easy refrigerator Dilled Bean, which will last in the refrigerator for a couple of months!

So, for the Full Shares:  Large cabbage, 3 lbs. Norland baby potatoes, a few wee Hungarian Hot peppers, large bag mixed yellow and green beans, medium bag purple beans, bag each of Grand Rapids, Buttercrunch, and Mesclun mixed lettuce, pound of shelling peas, large Red Mammoth raspberries.

For the Part Shares:  Large cabbage, 2 lbs. Norland Red baby potatoes, medium bag mixed yellow and green beans, bag each of Grand Rapids, Buttercrunch and Mesclun mixed lettuces, pound of shelling peas, regular size Boyne raspberries.

For the Single Shares: Medium cabbage, 1.5 lbs. Norland baby potatoes, mixed yellow and green beans, bag each of Grand Rapids, Buttercrunch and Mesclun mixed lettuces, Snow Peas, reg. Boyne raspberries.

It's CSA Thursday!

Some of Amanda and Ed's lovely cabbage!

A dreary, damp morning for CSA!  We had The Odd Job Squad out today to help pick raspberries.  This is a government program to help find work and activities for kids under sixteen.  Nice group of kids!  If you have 'odd jobs', chores, cleaning, packing, stacking, gardening or other such work please do consider giving them a call at 726-6199.  The kids get paid minimum wage, of course, and are enthusiastic and industrious.  They could be a boon, too, for small businesses looking for a little help packing orders or something!  Anyway, we were picking raspberries in a light rain so we highly recommend that you get them out of the containers and spread out on a cookie sheet or towel, because we're quite afraid mould will start quickly in the bottom layers!

Returning members will know this from previous years but for new members: our neighbours, Amanda and Ed, help grow for our CSA.  They are a retired couple, like-minded in terms of not using chemicals, they are enthusiastic, experienced gardeners and we're so happy to have them grow for you!  Once again this year, they've come up with some beautiful cabbage.  Amanda keeps these looking so good with a mix of flour and cayenne pepper to keep the bugs off!  Everyone is getting a lovely summer cabbage today!  Here's a round up of coleslaw recipes from simple to spicy Asian and more!  Of course, there is cabbage soup (along with the blogger's 7-day diet plan), cabbage fried, in sautees or steamed and cabbage rolls!  You'll probably get more cabbage, at least next week, so familiarize yourself with some recipes!  It stores well just in the fridge, so you don't need to get frantic about using it up in the next few days!

So, for today: for the Full Shares: a large cabbage, bag of Grande Rapids lettuce, bundle of baby Romaine lettuce, Swiss chard, onions, large bag of shelling peas, small bag of snow peas, 2 pints raspberries.

For the Part Shares: large cabbage, bag of Grande Rapids lettuce, bundle of baby Romaine lettuce, Swiss chard, onions, medium bag of shelling peas, two pints raspberries.

For the Single Shares:  small cabbage, bag of Grande Rapids lettuce, bundle of baby Romaine lettuce, Swiss chard, onions, small bag of shelling peas, pint of raspberries.

We've got volunteer opportunities next week!  If you'd like to come help at the farm we need raspberry pickers on both Tuesday and Thursday mornings!  Volunteers always go home with bonuses!  We're also looking for help on Weeding Wednesdays, morning or evening come help pull a few of those weeds!  Pet a baby goat, cluck at a chicken, play with a small doggie or pet a barn cat - lots to do while you're here!  Email us if you're interested!

CSA, July 22nd.

Peas are coming nicely!

A couple of hot days, a couple of cool days, lots of bugs...not much has changed in the gardens since last Tuesday!  However, it's a day of firsts: 1st pick on the raspberries, 1st pick on the shelling peas!  Neither are big picks - but both are coming nicely!  We don't think it's going to be a great year for raspberries, but it will be a decent year!  We had trouble getting into the raspberries early on for pruning and weeding: it was just too wet and mucky!  We're also seeing lots of mechanical damage: berries have been 'smacked' into surrounding bushes and canes by the extreme high winds of some of our recent storms.  Lots of bits and pieces of willow have been blown in, breaking branches.  We're also seeing a bit of 'bloom' on the berries: a whitish tinge to the berry.  That's a cold, wet weather thing, not pretty but totally edible.  Bit of a mess in the raspberry rows!

We got a wee pick on snow peas for Saturday's Global Market.  Got another wee pick today, just enough for the Part Shares.  Shelling peas we got a better pick so enough for a decent share for all the Full Shares.  Sorry, no peas for Single Shares this week, but we'll keep you top of mind next week!

We've got some lovely baby Romaine lettuce for everyone today.  Of course, it's the main ingredient in a classic Caesar Salad!  It's got more crunch that the Grand Rapids, which you're also getting!  We've actually pulled the Romaine lettuce - roots and all.  Stand it in a vase or glass of water like a bouquet, with the roots just covered, for maximum freshness!

So, for the Full Shares:  Small bag of Swiss Chard, shelling peas, Romaine lettuce, Grand Rapids lettuce, bundle of onions, container of raspberries.

For the Part Shares:  Small bag of Swiss Chard, Snow peas, Romaine lettuce, Grand Rapids lettuce, bundle of onions, container of raspberries.

Single Shares:  Small bag of Swiss Chard, Romaine lettuce, Grand Rapids lettuce, bundle of onions, container of raspberries.

If you're looking for volunteer opportunities...we'd love some help picking raspberries the next few weeks.  They are quite labour intensive, so the more help the more berries for everybody.  Volunteers go home with a bonus!  Plus, every Wednesday here is Weeding Wednesday.  Lots of jobs, big and small, day or evening if you'd like to come out and pull a few, we'd welcome you!

CSA Today: Looks a Lot Like Tuesday's Share!

We're looking forward to meeting some new members today!  I always think it is rather incredible that people will give us money to grow their food without meeting us face to face!  I've had lots of email 'conversations' with people but we've never actually met!  Today is the day!

Not much development in the last two days.  Thursday's CSA share looks, well, exactly like Tuesdays! Check out Tuesdays' blog post for some great tips on storing fresh veggies throughout the season, as well as a nice link for homemade salad dressings where you can control the amount of sugar and other ingredients!

Although flooding continues in this region, water levels are receding slowly.  What remains is the perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes - and they are out in clouds.  Forget 'The Cloud' or the 'iCloud'! Brandon has numerous clouds.  Sand flies are also a huge problem today: the little nuisances are getting into ears, noses, behind glasses, down shirts!  The worst is when you try to talk to your harvesting companion and they fly in your mouth!  Not exactly the kind of protein I'm looking for!

Today's heat may help the vegetables.  Our worry is that in all the cool, wet soil plants didn't root very deeply and will now not be able to withstand high heat and little rain.  Our irrigation system is acting up (again!) so we'll have to have a visit from our pals at D & B Sprinklers real soon!

We were kind of surprised by the number of Tuesday's members who weren't familiar with Swiss Chard.  It's a nutrition super food, just not getting the attention kale seems to be getting right now!  Here's some detailed information on the health benefits of Chard!  You may have seen big, white-ribbed leaves in Grandma's garden, but we grow a variety called 'Bright Lights' with colourful stems and a milder taste.  Chard can be used raw in salads or cooked - like spinach.  Here's a great link with five easy Chard preparations!

So, today's share, everybody gets the same thing: a large bag of bright green 'Grand Rapids' lettuce, a bag of 'Red Sails' lettuce, a bag of Swiss Chard called 'Bright Lights' and a bundle of winter onions.  These onions have been in the ground all winter and are very tasty.  However, a few are getting ready to bloom and the stem may be hard.  The bulb and the greens still completely usable!

Enjoy your first taste of fresh-from-the-farm for this season!

First CSA Share of 2014 - Not Much in the Basket!

We're sorry - the spinach didn't make it!

The first CSA share of the season! Later than most years due to odd, very odd, weather!  And not a big share, at that.  This year has seemed more of a struggle then any other.  After a long cold winter, a long cold spring has made gardening challenging.  In the last month, a few weird storms have set us back even more.  At least we're not flooding, like some of our neighbours!

Veggies struggled early on.  We basically lost the spinach: it was tiny and yellowed and much died in cold, wet soil.  As the temperatures have improved, some has come back but only to go straight to seed!  I've never seen spinach two inches high with four poor leaves flowering.  It's a goner!  Some of our winter squash was washed out, as well as some of the beets and carrots.  We've replanted all, but it's rather amusing to see Delicata squash coming up eight feet down the hill from where it was planted!  The early planting of radishes have cracked from too much rain and have baby bugs tunnelling in them, so they're getting plowed under.

There's not a lot to say about today's harvest so I figured we'd start with some basics.  Here's a great link to storing and keeping your fresh vegetables and fruits: http://www.thekitchn.com/the-kitchns-guide-to-storing-fruits-and-vegetables-tip-roundup-176308.  This one is worth bookmarking: it has basic tips as well as links for specific vegetables and fruits.  We bring our vegetables as 'fresh from the field' as we can, with a basic rinse but I wouldn't consider them well washed.  We recommend getting everything out of plastic as soon as you can.  Here's a good link for vegetable 'washes', very useful for store-bought veggies which are more likely to have waxes, pesticide residues and such.  Our veggies are just...somewhat dirty but the washes are helpful to keep them fresh longer.  Since this first few weeks will be all about greens here's a great link for DIY salad dressings.  Homemade salad dressings can be made free of extra sugar and additives, and can be made fresh in small quantities.

The rejected lettuce will make excellent goat food!

So today is simple: Everyone gets a bag of Grand Rapids lettuce, a bright green, frilly lettuce perfect for salads or sandwiches.  Everyone gets a bag of Red Sails lettuce, pretty in a salad.  There are winter onions, in the ground since last fall.  Some are starting to go to seed, so if the stem is very hard it cannot be used, otherwise all parts will be very tasty in salads or cooking.  Everyone is getting Swiss Chard, a variety called Rainbow Lights with bright coloured stems.  Chard can be eaten raw or cooked like spinach: braised, sauteed or simply steamed.  We've used it in a quiche and it was very good!



So, a slow start to our CSA, but it's all fresh and chemical-free!  Just FYI...the raspberries and the beans are coming very well.......

Plant...Then Wait...Plant...

Stuff's happening in the garden!  It has been very much a start-and-stop season, so far.  It took us forever to dry out enough to work the land.  Even then, there were tractors stuck and such fun farm things!  You know you're in trouble when you have to go borrow a big tractor 'cause the little tractor can't pull out the medium tractor, which is mired in the middle of the field.  When we did get going it was a couple of days of planting, a couple of days of rain, a day to dry out, a day of planting, a couple of days of rain.  Potatoes were planted first and I still worry a bit about them....was it too wet shortly after planting?  Was it too cold?

 

Now, at June 10th, most of our seed planting is almost done.  Garlic, onions, beans are looking good.  Lettuces, spinach, kale are peeking out.  Carrots seem to be a 'no-show', so just yesterday I purchased a whole new round of seed at Lindenberg's.  Beets, chard, snow peas, summer squash and winter squash are in, but no signs yet.  We still have second or third succession plantings to do of greens and beans.

Still on the agenda: all our seedlings of tomatoes, peppers, ground cherry and tomatillos, as well as herb seeds.  The greenhouse is almost full with about 20 flats of mostly tomatoes and a few peppers.  Inside, in the sun room, there are another fifteen flats of peppers, tomatillos and ground cherry.  Forecast looks good for the next couple of days!

Then, of course, it's the never ending weeding.  Easy to get distracted from the work with so many baby goats to play with!  And really, at some point, we should take a look at our ornamental beds in front of the house - the quack grass seems to be taking over!

Hand Milled Soap

Hard to spoon the glop into molds!

Sometimes you will come across fancy soap in the stores labeled as hand milled or French milled.  It means the soap has been processed a second or third time.  The soap is made, grated, dried and then heated and re-poured.  Some of the big firms use big rollers to press the soap.  The result, apparently, is a finer bar of soap: hard, firm, no traces of lye.  Grated soap is often sold at craft places for people who don't want to make soap from scratch.  You can buy pre-made soap already grated, melt in the oven or crock pot, add your own scents and additives without ever going near a jug of lye.  Milling or re-batching, as it is also called, can be used on a batch of soap that has failed for some reason.  For the DIYer, scents and additives go farther and it's much easier.

I had read about hand milled soap during my learning process before making soap.  I was interested in making soap from scratch with our fresh goats milk, so I didn't pay the process much attention.  As I got into soap making, I chose to use flat molds, rather than loaf molds, so that less heat would build up in our soaps, potentially damaging the goats milk.  To get a nice fat bar I was always over-filling the molds and had to trim away the excess, which I saved - largely because I couldn't bear to throw it away!  After a couple of years of making soap, I had quite a collection of these trimmings, long thin pieces cut from the sides of my batches.  So, I decided to try hand milling to use up the bits.

At home, this involved leaving the bits out to dry, then using my food processor to grate them into smaller bits.  Then a little more milk is added for moisture and I heated the whole thing in the oven at low temperature.  I took my basic method from these instructions and this info.  Grating the soap in my food processor was a bit of a mess: Even though the soap was well cured it stuck to the blade and gooped up.  Pour into a casserole, mix in some milk and heat - quite simple.  It took longer to melt to a nice texture but the mixture was still hard to pour, even after being returned to the oven.  I had used bits of our Simple Soap; apparently heating fragranced soap or soaps with herbs just turns into an ugly mess.

Even after sitting out for over a week...

Unfortunately, the resulting soap is a soft, gooey mess.  Too much milk?  Whatever the problem, I've decided that it's not worth fussing over.  The time involved in re-batching is just not worth my while.  If I can only re-batch unscented soaps that doesn't solve my problem of left over trimmings from soaps with essential oils and herbs.  And, with the time involved, a bar of Simple Soap, which sells for $4 normally, would have to sell for $7 or $8!  I don't think my customers would see the advantage.  I cure my soaps long enough that the lye is all used up and they are nice and firm, so I'm not worrying about those concerns.  As I thought about it I realized that the best thing to do is not over-pour and have all the trimmings left over in the first place!  Soaps were going to have to go up in price this summer due to inevitably rising costs, so instead of raising the price, I'll just have a slightly smaller bar of soap without waste.

Weird...but true!

Cloves of garlic getting tucked in.

It is so weird: It's May 18th and we are just starting to plant!  Even weirder: We're starting with garlic!  Most years we would be almost done with seeding the gardens.  This year, between the Winter-that-wouldn't-go-away and the Spring-that-wouldn't-come we've just barely started.  It took seemingly forever for the gardens to dry out and warm up, then we had a cold, rainy spell.  If you follow our Facebook page, you know last week we had a day when tractors got stuck in the field a couple of times.

And garlic!  We usually plant garlic in the Fall, but last Fall we were a little distracted by jobs, life, harvest, breeding goats, etcetera and missed our opportunity to purchase seed bulbs.  The last few seasons we had saved our own garlic to replant, but a poor harvest and disease left nothing.  Fortunately, we were able to purchase some lovely garlic through Lindenberg Seeds this Spring.  I spent an afternoon two days ago breaking up the heads into the cloves on ten pounds of garlic!  When Farmer Man finally managed to get most of the cultivation done, we were waiting for a decent day (like today), when both of us were home and we got busy!

We and our CSA members can all breath a sigh of relief now that the garlic is in.  We, personally, love garlic and the taste of naturally grown, farm fresh garlic is head-and-shoulders above the store bought stuff!  CSA members have come to love garlic scapes, too!  Have you had them?  The scapes are the flowering stems of garlic; raw, they have a lovely mild, green garlic taste.  Cooked they taste something like asparagus.  We think they are best raw and make an awesome pesto, a great addition to salads or a delightful topping on pizza or pasta.  And they are in the ground, with more rain in the forecast.

Some peas, chard, some beets, some carrots, some onions and some lettuces are also in the ground as of today.  So, a good start has been made!  Rain tomorrow, then we're going to spend a day planting potatoes.  Shortly, we'll get back to successive plantings of many of the vegetables.  Corn and many of the winter squash will go in when the soil is just a little warmer.  Beans and summer squash can go in anytime now.  In the meantime, the sun room is bursting with seedlings of tomatoes, peppers, watermelon, cantaloupe, ground cherry and tomatillos.  They will go into the ground in June - we're never in any hurry because we can easily still have frosts for the next two to three weeks.

It feels good to get a start made!  Were you working in the garden this May long weekend?

This Changes Everything!

No, it's not some fancy new design for a watering wand or some earth-shattering invention of a new hose.  It's just the fact that we once again have outdoor running water that changes everything!

All winter, every winter, we have no outdoor running water.  We've looked into installing something from our well, which is located between the house and the barn.  Setting up for weather-proof running water in the barn has proved just too expensive for our modest budget.  So all winter we're hauling water from the house to the barn and the chicken coop.  There is only one power outlet in the barn itself and we're afraid to be running extension cords around so much straw, hay and wood so one goat stall has a heated bucket.  Every other stall has just a plain, old plastic bucket of water, which freezes.  The chicken coop has one waterer which doesn't freeze, but the chickens go through the supply almost every day.

So, winter is interesting here at Aagaard Farms.  And this was an especially looooong, very cold winter.  We have multiples of everything: two chicken waters, eight plastic buckets.  Buckets of water are thawing in our foyer all the winter.  Half thawed water is dumped in the kitchen sink, the bath tub or outside if we're ready to go out, making for interesting ice sculptures everywhere.  Buckets sitting in the pens always have frozen 'stuff' on the bottoms, which softens and falls off or melts into a puddle.  So winter is messy here at the wee farm.  Old newspapers holding dirty pails are always in the foyer or in front of the heater.

Getting water up is a relay event.  Four buckets go at a time, so it's carry two outside, carry two more outside, carry two up to the barn, return, carry two more up to the barn, all bundled up like the Pillsbury Dough Boy.  At least once a day a chicken water has to go up for another trip.  We haul a frozen bucket out of a stall, replace with a new bucket.  Do the rounds, haul all the frozen buckets back to the house to thaw for the next time, make hot chocolate (very important!).  When it was very cold, the water would freeze in a few hours so we were doing this little chore three, sometimes four times a day.  Goats also have some natural talent for pooping into their water buckets so sometimes an extra bucket had to go.  Since our does were pregnant, we were keeping an eye on both water and hay regularly through the day, trying to get them through the cold weather.  At -30 C, with a wind chill the trip can seem like a hike to the Arctic Circle!

So, you can see why a simple garden hose makes such a difference!  First, water is no longer freezing.  And, if water is dirty, it's just a matter of dumping it out the door, fill and replace.  The chicken waterer, too, is just taken outside, emptied and re-filled.  It makes life so much simpler and lessens the time involved in the chore substantially.  And that's a good thing, 'cause we're getting a little busy with other stuff!

The Great Potato Search!

Last season we experienced an awful potato season.  We've made a bit of a name for ourselves with thirty varieties of potatoes, many heirlooms.  It was a combination of things: a cool wet spring led to some rot in the field early, the weather also brought us a bit of blight.  Then, in about a two day period when we were busy with markets, the potato beetle descended and nearly wiped us out!  Very few plants rebounded from the onslaught of the potato beetle.

Most of the potatoes we did harvest went to our CSA families, always our first priority.  I know many of them missed the variety we usually offer.  Not having potatoes to take to the Farmers Market was quite a financial loss for us, as well as a disappointment for our customers. And, this winter we've eaten a lot more rice than usual!  Perhaps the biggest problem, though, was the loss of seed potato, for this years' crop.  We've been virtually self-sufficient in seed for a number of years now; not only is it an expense, but we knew we'd have trouble finding some of our heirloom varieties.

So, the search began...well, it began last fall when pal Reta noticed Crampton's Market in Winnipeg had Pink Fir Apple potatoes - an awesome tasty heirloom and one of our favourites for soups and stews.  Erin at Crampton's was able to give us contact info for her supplier and we met the delightful Dennis, a chemical-free grower and wholesaler from the Winkler area.  Dennis could, indeed, supply us with some seed for Pink Fir Apple, as well as All-Red, an unusual pink-fleshed, dense and flavourful variety.  We had a nice meeting with Dennis at Neechi Common in Winnipeg on one of his delivery days.  Always fun to chat with and compare notes from someone doing the same thing we are!

We kept in touch with Dennis and he helped us find some Russian Blue, the all-purple potato and he shared with us some of his own French Fingerling, another of our favourites.  He also hooked us up with Kroeker Farms where we could find Sangre - our all-time favourites multi-purpose potato!  We scored some Yukon Gold from them, too.  Kroeker's offering are not chemical-free, but we're okay with that since they will be grown using all organic methods.

Then, Roger got in touch.  Roger is, well, a potato addict like Farmer Man.  He'd purchased seed from us in previous years, especially some of our interesting varieties.  Roger had run into Farmer Man and heard about our losses, and as he was getting ready this spring to plant, he found he could share some seed with us!  He's able to provide seed for Linzer Delicatesse, a beautiful fingerling and some more Pink Fir Apple; it sounds like he may be able to spare a bit of German Butterball - one of my personal favourites!    He also brought along some tiny quantities of some others, including one he believes is named Klondike Rose.  He gifted us a few bigger, eating spuds of Klondike Rose and it was quite yummy.

Perhaps the most interesting thing Roger has shared is true seed - harvested from the flower of the potato plant.  This is not how potatoes are usually grown!  Roger has been experimenting with saving true seed and following the work of a fellow named, I think, Tom Wagneg.  Roger left us with a small bag of seed he had gleaned and cleaned from those little round balls that grow from your flowers - you know those little balls we all ignore!  This is going to be quite a fun experiment: we're going to plant a bit of the seed now and save some to stratify, probably by freezing.  Should be fascinating!

In the meantime, the great seed potato search goes on!  At least we have the confidence of knowing we've got a decent quantity of some great potatoes for this upcoming season.  We've got to be careful this year to allow the soil to dry up and warm up properly: it's been such a long cold winter that that might take a while!

Have you a favourite potato variety?  Some of our Facebook friends have mentioned Adora, which I've never eaten but may try to find some!  Have you any recommendations?

The Last Garden Chores of 2013

Yes, it's 2014 and I'm just finishing garden chores from last year!  It is always so - some things can just wait and since I always seem to be busy, wait they do!  The chores involve food, food for storage.  More specifically, dried beans and onions.  Both were fine: the beans were unshelled in pails, the onions had been properly cured and were in crates.  They were fine, but not particularly easy to access.  What finally got me going?  Well, it's time to clear and clean the sun room and get ready to start growing in 2014.

The beans are one of our favourites: Jacob's Cattle.  They are excellent for soups, stews, pork-and-beans and refried beans.  They matured on the bushes and I got them picked in early October, when the pods were brown and crispy.  I had them in a crate for a few days to dry, then they went into pails and into the sun room.  I like to clean them by hand - I sit in front of the TV in the evenings and shell them.  I've tried a lot of different methods like putting the pods in a sack and whacking it on a wall or post but I find it all messy.  I think I get a cleaner product just shelling gently into a pail and discarding the largely intact pod.  I still go through the shelled beans carefully for debris and bad beans before storing in glass jars.  I'll look through them again before I cook them, but I find less debris then beans I've bought at the store!  You do always go through dried beans, right?

The onions were just fine, I just wanted to get them into smaller storage and in a mesh bag that I could hang in the back room.  I cleaned some of the dried skin off and have a beautiful bag ready to use.  A little dusty and messy; perhaps it was a job better for doing outdoors last fall but that's what vacuums are for, right?

Now that's two pails and two crates out of the sun room.  What remains are four crates of assorted winter squash and a few loose squash on the floor.  We're still eating winter squash, I'm still going to bake and freeze some for muffins and such, and the goats and chickens are still getting some real food snacks!  But the sun room is almost clear and ready for the seed starting unit to come back inside.  It's time to get growing again!