Tag Archives: garlic

A Year of Re-Skilling

My Kitchen Garden

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With 6 acres of organic vegetables in production on our farm every summer, it may seem odd that I want to have a garden. And inefficient. Doesn’t it make more sense to wander out to the fields and cut myself some fresh salad greens, a head of broccoli, dig up the potatoes and yank a bulb of fresh garlic for dinner?

Actually, yes, that makes a lot more sense…

January 1

When we bought our land in March 2007 I was a complete newbie to the notion of growing food. Aside from an adorable 10′ by 10′ garden that my parents kindly built me in my teens (which I forsake once the aphids attacked), I had never planted, weeded, or harvested a thing. I learned how to grow garlic from Ken of Gabriola Garlic at the farmer’s market our first summer in Duncan, and those first 10 or 20 bulbs were the first food I ever really planted. And harvested. And ate.

In the last 3.5 years I’ve learned more than I ever thought I wanted to learn about organic soil management, microbiology, N-P-K ratios, and the logistics of planting, tending, picking and preparing food. Last summer I attempted to work full-time on our farm, assuming that I would relish every filthy minute. But this was not the case. Perhaps it’s my Generation Y attention span deficiencies, or my distaste of routine physical labour, but by the end of the season I knew I wasn’t a farmer, certainly not like Brock is. This man reads tractor catalogues in bed. He watches YouTube videos of farm tours. I’d much rather watch Mad Men episodes and do a Sudoku puzzle.

So I’ve returned to my indoor career as a communications professional, and am grateful for it.

But still … I love sunshine, I love planting seeds. Exercise is especially important when I’m staring at a computer for the majority of my day.

Therefore: my kitchen garden. We’ve set aside approximately 3,000 sq.ft. at the front of our farming area for me to grow all the things that our farm doesn’t grow on a large scale. For example: sweet potatoes. I’ll also plant flowers, establish some perennials, and test out some medicinal herbs.

I’m looking forward to ending my work day with a few hours in the sunshine playing with my plants, experimenting with herbal teas and adding random vegetables to our meals. I might not use the entire 3,000 sq.ft. (that’s a lot of weeding). But having this much soil to play with is a luxury, and I am grateful for it.

DINKS on the Farm

July 2008

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Tuesday, July 15, 2008 – The chickens and the egg

Makaria Farm became the home of 50 18-week old hens late last week. Today, when I went into their coop to open the door to their yard, I found OUR VERY FIRST EGG!!!! So exciting. We weren’t expecting eggs for another week or two! This weekend, we might actually be eating eggs from our own free-range, organic-fed chickens along with our farm-fresh new potatoes and homemade bread. SO cool.

Also, the mosquitoes are brutal out there. Once the sun starts to go down, it’s a madcap race to harvest potatoes/peas/strawberries for dinner and the farm gate stand before we’re eaten by the stupid bugs. Other veggies we are now harvesting from our farm include: zucchini, kohlrabi (ate my first one tonight, sliced and fried with fresh garlic from the garden), the aforementioned garlic, carrots, herbs (mint, chocolate mint, lemon chamomile and tea tree make the best herbal tea ever), basil, stevia, cherry tomatoes and one roma, and the occasional blueberry or raspberry that we split between us because it’s too good and we have to share. Our lettuce is the greatest disappointment this season: it looks stunning, but is much too bitter to eat. We also have one “stirfry green” that looks like purple lettuce but tastes like horseradish — it goes right into your sinuses. Bizarre.

We’re now old hands at the weekly farmer’s market, except that I forgot to load our table into the truck last Saturday. Our Harvest Box Program has officially begun, and we fill regular orders for flats of shelling peas for people who still know how to (gasp) preserve the harvest. All in all, there’s much more demand out there for our produce than we can supply, which is exciting and frustrating, because we want to grow MORE MORE MORE! We take elaborate notes for what we want to do next year: install the irrigation BEFORE the peas grow a foot high; trellising isn’t just for pussies; and you can never have too many potatoes (which were edible a full two weeks before we even thought to look for them).

We’ve also met numerous farmers: the veterans in the neighbourhood, whom we’re sure have cancelled their cable since we amuse them so much; the newbies, who face the same shocking obstacles as us (“what do you mean, you can’t build our house in two days for $1,000??”); and the almost-newbies, who are investigating land options, farm mortgages and loans, and gobbling Harrowsmith magazines like we used to . . . back when we had spare time.

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Sunday, July 20, 2008 – And then things started to happen

Brock and I eat bacon and eggs at least once every week. For more than a year and a half, we have been aware that our traditional breakfast is 100% locally-growable: we looked forward to our own eggs, bread and bacon. Saturday morning we actually ate eggs from our own free-range, organic hens for the first time ever.

The coolest part was that not only were the egg shells tiny (being the first eggs our hens had ever laid), the eggs themselves were tiny: the yolks were the size of dimes, the white a large toonie around. It was adorable, like eating Barbie-scale breakfast. The second egg I cracked had two yolks in it: my first ever double yolker. It took five eggs to feed us both, but they were so yummy and amazing, and they were (I realized with shock) not just 100 mile eggs, but 100 ft eggs, having been created by our very own (locally purchased) hens.

I suppose it’s bizarre that eggs were the highlight of my week. Try this: today I picked strawberries and managed to fill over five pints with ripe, perfect berries. We’ve averaged 2 pints/day or less up until now. Even better: I put them out at our farm stand, and we’ve already sold 4 at $5/pint in the past hour. The less-than-perfect berries filled about three pints, and I will wash and freeze them for future pies — I already have two pies’ worth of frozen strawberries in the freezer.

And: I filled a pint with ripe tomatoes from a variety of plants for the market Saturday, and in accordance with our quality control policies I had to try my first Black Krim tomato, which was so ugly that I was tempted to throw it to the chickens. I sliced it up and ate it with prejudice, and was shocked to discover that it was the best tomato I have ever eaten. Ugly or not, those babies are getting a premium price sticker at the market from now on. If I can bear to part with them . . .