Broadfork Farm

This good news story was a highlight of my week! The right to a clean environment and the need for precaution of the possible contamination of biodiversity (in this case Mexico's native corn biodiversity) won over the huge amounts of money being spent by the multinationals!

We've been thinking a lot about fungi lately....

I am not a knitter (or at least not yet!). But when I see adorable knitting projects like this, I start to envision myself as a future knitter. For all of you knitters out there that I so admire, here are a few local food patterns.

I love the focus of this article - that animals have accumulated knowledge (just like humans) passed through family and peer groups. Moving animals to a new habitat disrupts that generational knowledge and intimacy with the area. And just a reminder - humans are animals too.... It was hard to choose just one quote from the article to share with you, so I'm sharing 3....but I really hope you read the whole thing. This changes how we think about wildlife habitats. Wildlife res...earchers have always focused on the physical landscape. How much grass is there? How many conifers? Then you can ask how good that habitat is for a sage grouse or a grizzly bear. But our work suggests that the true measure of habitat quality for mobile animals is both the physical attributes of the landscape and the knowledge that animals have of how to make a living there. Put naïve animals into awesome habitats and they may perform really poorly, while animals that know how to exploit landscapes that have been degraded could do really well. "Individuals learn to move through the world by following their mothers, and then augment that inherited know-how with their own experiences. "Each generation, you get this incremental increase in knowledge, Jesmer says. For sheep, he says, learning how to effectively exploit their environment takes around 50 to 60 years. Moose need closer to a century." "When rangers stop poachers from killing an elephant matriarch, they’re also saving her memories. When conservationists preserve routes over which bighorn sheep can travel, they’re keeping the animals’ traditional knowledge alive for future generations."

We've packaged up our Seed Packets and are excited for tomorrow's Seedy Saturday in Amherst! 1-4 pm, Amherst Lions Club. We're really looking forward to seeing you!!!

The greenhouse benches are filling up with green (and red) seedlings. It feels good to hang out with them, exchanging carbon dioxide for oxygen, while we're sowing more! Sometimes we play classical music for them (and us) too (some say they like this).though other times we all listen to podcasts together.

We just started our onions for the year! This particular variety, Rossa di Milano, is a gorgeous, delicious, long-storing red bulb onion. And the seeds we sowed were saved by us. That means that 2 years ago (2019) we grew the onions out, selected the best, stored them through the winter, and re-planted the bulbs the following spring (in 2020). The plants then sent out a flower stalk, which was pollinated by insects, and produced seeds.... This spring we're now planting these saved seeds out and the process can begin again. We sold quite a bit of the seeds to Annapolis Seeds but we'll also have these seeds for sale at this weekend's Seedy Saturday. Once we start selling seedlings at the Dieppe Market and for our annual Organic Plant Sale, we'll have seedlings of these onions for sale (rather than seeds because the seeds need to be started earlier).

It's time to start thinking about buying seeds for your 2021 gardening endeavours! Here's a great list of seed producers in Canada. For our local customers, we'll be bringing seed packets to the Dieppe Market in the spring and also to our annual Organic Plant Sale.... For non-local customers, we currently don't do any mail-order systems, BUT we DO supply seeds that we grow to Annapolis Seeds through whom anyone can order. Annapolis Seeds grows their own seeds and partners with other local seed producers (like us but also other AMAZING seed farmers!) to sell their seeds. It is a fabulous company that I can't recommend highly enough!

Some people have asked for an update on our pond project. So far, so good! Here are 3 pictures of the project - while it was being dug, when it was finished and the deepest part had filled, and the last photo, how it looked today. Bryan dowsed for the location and depth and size for the pond. Dowsing (aka water witching) is fairly controversial in whether people believe it works or not.... It's certainly considered an old-fashioned thing. Bryan learned how to do it from a local farmer who has since passed away and Bryan seems, so far, to have a talent for it. I, on the other hand, have not showcased such a talent. We kept encouraging the excavator to dig deeper, to the depth we wanted (that Bryan had dowsed), and then once he got there, the spring was unearthed. So, the pond has been steadily filling up with water. The "shallow edge" has not totally finished filling up but it's increasing bit by bit. Farming on land with a deep sandy loam, we're always concerned that there won't be enough clay to hold the water and we'll end up with a big mud hole. But our first pond has been great over the past few years and so, we're very much hoping this 2nd pond will also hold the water well. We created a shallow edge around the perimeter because it was something that we found missing from our first pond - now we don't have to worry so much about falling straight into the deep end. It will still take a while before the perimeter will look nice again with plants growing - that part is my least favourite part of pond digging - that it ends up looking barren around the edge for a while and the soil around the edge is all disturbed and compacted. Though, once plants start growing again and filling in all that bare soil, a pond brings me a lot of joy.

I've been loving our daily walks through the woods with our cats following along (and playing, exploring, climbing trees). It's especially beautiful with the heavy snow that weighs down the evergreen branches - it kinda makes me feel like I'm in that scene from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (the scene in my mind while reading the book as a child - if there's a movie version, I don't know what that scene is like) where I just walked through the wardrobe into snowy Nar...nia. Recently, I borrowed a book about Forest Bathing from the library. It's not like, bathing in the stream or snow. But rather if the forest air is similar to a body of water (with its own currents and air waves) - and being surrounded by that air. And it's about focusing on the way all of our senses experience the forest. It's super different that hiking in the woods - especially fast hiking with an end point in mind. I guess maybe it's more of a meandering..... Anyhow, I've been thinking of our walks in the woods as a daily forest bath and I've been enjoying them a lot.

I would expect that everyone interested in the healthy food and farming system, would be interested in expanding their knowledge through the month of January with the Real Organic Project's Virtual Symposium. You can sign up for the whole package (Cultivate) or a limited package (Germinate) of sessions, and even offer a bit extra to support more farmers to attend. And Farmers and Students can sign up for the "Germinate" package for free - so please also share with the farmers... and students in your life! The Real Organic Project is really inspiring to me, personally, and I hope you get inspired too! Oh, and here's the link: https://www.realorganicsymposium.org/

This article saddened and shocked us as I read it aloud to Bryan as we were driving. " At the end of the day, we're feeding people. What's wrong with that? Are you really worried about ... how it gets done?" I really hope that's not a popular sentiment.

Listening to a great workshop by Jon Lundgren of the Ecdysis Foundation at the virtual Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario - EFAO conference called "Understanding the Ecological and Economic Resilience of Regenerative Agriculture." Check out this amazing graph showing that insect pests were much more abundant on conventional (using insecticides) farms compared to regenerative (in the study the common link between these farms was not using insecticides)! This online farm...ing conference is really great! It's going on all week - you can still register for individual days - check out the EFAO website for conference sessions happening each day. #efao2020

This was a very inspiring and paradigm-shifting info series for us to read through and deeply think about today. I hope you enjoy reading and reflecting on the words here too!

This winter, it looks like most farming conferences are happening online. Which makes it easy to attend awesome conferences that otherwise might have been too far away. In a few weeks, the Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario - EFAO conference will be happening. 6 days with incredible sessions! I'm really looking forward to it.... Also, I'll be speaking on a panel called Taming Tillage: Towards No-Till Vegetable Production. If you're interested, check it out and register for one day or the whole thing.

Just finished planting the last of our fall bulbs - the daffodils. We planted them in a new hedgerow, tucked in amongst young shrubs. Looking forward to seeing their cheery blooms in the spring!

A very long time ago, when I was apprenticing on an herb farm in Oregon, I visited the medicinal herb seed farm of this guy and was inspired! Here he shares a short video talking about health benefits of the superfood: kale. There are so many benefits - more than I knew. ... I just watched this video this week and already I've been making sure to incorporate more kale into our meals on the farm. I hope you like it too!

These mini daikon radishes are so beautiful! Daikons are a mild radish - not too spicy. They're typically white, but we also grow purple and red ones for their beauty. These are great raw in salads, grated, fermented, and cooked (we like to add them to soups or roasted veg). We've grown the white and purple ones over the years but this is the 1st year we grew the red ones and we love their colour pop!

This year, we've been part of a national rutabaga variety trial. We've been growing 6 different varieties. Some are purple-topped and some are green/white topped. This is the first week we've harvested some of them (more to come) and will have them at the market. In future weeks, we hope to label them at the market with their variety names in case people want to do taste-tests (that would be so awesome!), though this first harvest was smaller and mostly just for us to see how they were doing.

If you're trying to stay safe and cozy indoors while Hurricane Teddy passes through, and are looking for something to watch on Netflix, the film Kiss the Ground is now available.

Beans, beans the magical fruit.... We don't typically grow dry beans but this year we decided to try some - these are Eclipse black turtle beans. They grew well but now we need to thresh them.....

Frosty, frosty nights.....and Hurricane Teddy on the way! These last 2 nights have been COLD! Last night, at our place the temps went down to -6.7. Hurricanes are so unpredictable - moving around as hurricanes do.... We're nervous about winds but looking forward to the rain - the groundwater levels are still so low. This is a pic of some frosty Echinacea - that was way past its flowering prime - soon we'll dig the roots up and make a batch of tincture.

A reprint of an article about our farm in Saltscapes magazine from a few years back!

We put a lot of care into building our soils because we truly believe that healthy soil = healthy plants = healthy animals (including people) that eat those plants. If you look closely among these carrots, you can see a little mushroom - the above-ground fruiting body of fungi - this is a joy for us to see - knowing that our soil practices can support a diverse ecosystem including fungi which can travel long distances, bringing nutrients that are needed from elsewhere. Nature is so complex and also has beautiful simple solutions that support the work we do as farmers...when we allow it to.

We're constantly checking for new figs ripening - a few days ago we had one of the sweetest of the year. It's sometimes tough for us to leave them on the branch long enough - we're impatient for the deliciousness.

One of the fun activities we did last week was making ourselves some elderberry syrup. Some friends were gracious and generous enough to let us harvest their ripe berries, we cooked them down with ginger and cinnamon, let it cool, then added honey from the hives here at the farm and a bit of rum to preserve it. We also planted a row of elderberries for future harvests. Yes, there was a small mishap with overflowing (that you can see on the exterior of the pot) but it didn't s...tain anything permanently. Despite the labels we put on, we didn't make any to sell, just enough for a winter tonic for ourselves (we just didn't have any other stickers to label the jars with).

Working on our flower seed order for next year! What flowers or colours (or shapes or fragrances) have you especially loved this year?

We recently hosted a visit with the blogger of Eat Local Cumberland. Check out the photos and conversations she blogged about the visit here!

Chilly morning! The farm temperature was below 0 degrees when we left for market. A few new crops we haven't had for a while - raw honey, arugula, seasonal greens mix (that includes some deliciously spicy mustard greens!). Can't wait to see you at the Dieppe Market!

Wow - this article brings up some great points. Here's a small quote: "It’s worth considering what the money we spend at the grocery store actually represents. Yes, some portion of the money represents the cost of actually producing the food, likely in the pitifully small range of 10-15%. The other 85% represents the logistical magic of getting it to the grocery store where it’s conveniently available, the processing necessary to either preserve it or keep it fresh, and a gre...at deal of what is generically called overhead: The cost of selling the food. That overhead is the cost of our cultural attitude that food comes from the store a store is a business, and overhead is the cost of running that business. Put another way, it’s the cost of making that food available in a place and time that is far removed from where the food was grown. The grocery store is the tool we use to enable moving food to where it’s most convenient for the people eating. It’s a very powerful tool, but we sacrifice our food security when we rely on it too heavily, because a side-effect of moving food to where it is convenient is that we become disconnected from the ultimate source of our food. When we are disconnected from our food sources, we are food insecure. When we shop at the grocery store, we are paying to temporarily alleviate that insecurity, but we are not buying a permanent solution." I'm so grateful for all our wonderful customers who we have developed relationships with over the years - that relationship is a method of increasing food security. And our continuing farm work and knowledge-building on saving seeds and building soil are additional steps for food security on our end - before the food is harvested and delivered to the city.

We always have fresh flowers in our old farmhouse, but we also keep them so we can watch as they die - we want to know which ones last the longest and how they look as they begin to break down, readying themselves for the compost pile (to help future plants grow). This excerpt I read recently stood out to me: "A Buddhist monk had a teacup that was his favourite cup. He realized his attachment, so every time he used the cup, he envisioned the cup as broken. ... Using an already broken cup was practice for when the cup would actually break. But much more, this practice reminded him of the transience of everything. The only constant in this life is change, at least on the external level. By learning to accept change, we can begin to hold to the deeper meaning, that of simply being alive, seeing the beauty that always surrounds us. Flowers bloom so beautifully, but they don’t last very long. Does this make them less beautiful? No, actually their beauty intensifies with their brevity." - Don Hamilton

It's so nice to come to the market and see all you beautiful local-and-organic-supporting people! Thanks for brightening our day and inspiring us to continue producing the best way we can. See you at the Dieppe Market! your farmers Shannon and Bryan

Our salad turnips are back! After the heat wave that was this summer (plus the drought added in for good measure), we've been missing these bright little white globes of goodness. But we stir fried up some for lunch today - and they were delicious (thanks Bryan for cooking lunch!) and we'll have them at our Dieppe Market stall on Saturday too.... See you then!

This is one of our favourite garlic books. And garlic is one of our favourite crops (many years ago, we grew over 90 different varieties of it!). We've got a beautiful crop this year - and today at our market stall at the Marché de Dieppe Market. In other news, when we left the farm this morning at 5:30 am, the temperature was 2.2 degrees Celsius - way too close to freezing for August, in our opinions!

I personally am very excited about this update to the Canadian Organic Standards! I'm probably biased though as I was on the working group that worked on the wording of this. Biodiversity is so incredibly important to me (and for organic farming in general). It was surprising that a standard like this wasn't already there.

This is a perennial onion called Egyptian Onion (or walking onion). At this time of year, the onions form on the top of the stems, which makes the plant top-heavy and these onions drop to the ground, form roots, and sprout (creating more onions the next year). Rather than harvest big bulbs, we harvest these as green onions in the spring, and we also eat these mini bulb onions on top.... Now's the time to plant them for harvest next spring, so since many of our customers have a home garden, we thought we'd bring some bulbs to the market this weekend. If you don't have a garden, you can also peel and eat these mini onions as they are.

Our newest obsession this past week has been lemon basil. We planted it this year originally in order to have a wonderfully fragrant foliage for bouquets, but last week we harvested some to make a pesto - and became hooked! It tastes like basil and lemon together - it's perfection. We've basically eaten some every day since.... We've made more pesto and also chopped it up finely to add on top of eggs in the morning, or on soups or stir-fries. It just brightens up every dish. I don't think we'll eat it all - we'll bring some this weekend to the Dieppe Market. Though I'm still keeping some for adding to bouquets (the stems have to be a bit woody on the bottom before they can be cut for bouquets, so that they don't wilt) since they're so lush and pretty and the fragrance is so lovely and fresh.