Category Archives: garden

Birch sap in a jar

Invigorating, confusing joyous learning

One of my favourite things in life is learning new things. It is when I feel my most alive, when I feel my eyes are widest and the world seems, more amazing somehow. I expect there is a percentage of folks out there to whom things come easily, gifted folks who are “naturals” at certain things. I am not one of them.

Learning is rarely straight forward and most times I find myself excited, confused and exhausted all at the same time. I also fail, a lot. I’m not bragging that I’ve gotten things wrong, I certainly never set out with a mindset of anything other than success, it’s just the way I learn best. Over the last four decades I’ve come to accept that this is how things go. I’ll happily tell you I am bound to make every mistake acquiring a new skill might entail, but so long as I am not repeating those mistakes and getting stuck, then in my mind at least, it’s a win.

With that in mind, so far in 2017 there has been a lot of learning along side some marginal gains. Our first succession sowing of heirloom and heritage beans are off to an amazing start, the tomatoes are tentatively stretching up out of the seedling soils and the sap collection from our Birch is in the final quarter of what might be the shortest season on record! The same unusually high temperatures that are helping the seedlings yawn to life has also put the bushes and trees into overdrive and “bud burst” is just around the corner. I’m guessing we’ll start seeing leaves in 48 to 72hrs. I love this time of year, the rush of life and sense of urgency in the awakening of things. Conversely, it also means our new venture into Birch Syrup is at risk of being cut short this year which will probably mean more trials next year!

 

 

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Closed loop systems and why they’re important

In the last post I mentioned the term “closed loop” in referring to how I would like our farm to run. A closed loop system is one that is self sustaining, ie nothing needs to be brought in from the outside in order for it to continue. This self perpetuation is the same principle people often refer to as “self sufficiency” and you can find versions of it in use in places that practice permaculture, in forest gardening and many organic farms.

Nature itself is a closed loop. She needs nothing from us to go on being self sufficient. Unfortunately, we humans usually need and want elements in addition to what is naturally occurring.  To meet our own needs initial investment or installation of outside elements is necessary.  For us, that means vegetable beds, chickens, turkey, bees and eventually a micro flock of sheep.  Although the addition of a these elements may not sound so large a change, they are. Fortunately by doing each step slowly and in turn and with some forethought it is possible to make each addition into a closed loop so that after the initial investment the cost is one of labor.

Even the addition of vegetable beds impacts the land. Everything we grow does so by withdrawing of nutrients from the soil. It is not enough to simply decide to grow your own food. While doing so is good, it’s not self sufficiency. To be self sufficient you must at the very least consider and replenish those lost nutrients. Best practice in this would be to aim to input more nutrient and organic matter into your growing beds than you take out. Doing so would increase on the soil life incrementally each year so that ultimately the land is healthier year on year. Makes sense, right? I think so.

In our case we began the replenishing cycle this autumn before the veg beds had even been dug or the first seeds even planted. In fact, my very first project here when I arrived in October was the construction of a pair of compost bins and a leaf litter pile. Composting on site is an easy first step to creating a closed loop for vegetable production. Leaf litter piles, which eventually rot down to what is refereed to as “leaf mold” is an excellent addition to soil for the retention of moisture. Our land is sandy loam, with a higher percentage of sand than loam,  so anything we can do to promote retention of water for our growing veg is worthwhile.

One of the helpers I will be introducing into the farm life cycle will be the perennial Bocking 14 Comfrey a well known plant famed for it’s fertilizing properties in the organic world. Comfrey is such an important player in the plans for our farm that I’m going to write an in depth piece on it this year, but I digress.

Creating a closed loop for the vegetable production is essentially as simple as ensuring all of our vegetative growth from grass clippings and twigs to weeds and eventually  the plants themselves gets recycled via compost. In the spirit of returning back more to the soil than what we have taken out, we will be adding Comfrey leaves, nettles and leaf moud.  Overtime this cycle increases the fertility of our land, which increases it’s productivity allowing not only us to thrive but for the farm itself to do so as an ecosystem. Happily the closed loop system can be implemented with our livestock and to most every aspect  of our food system on the farm.

Kitchen Garden covered for winter's arrival.

A new year and a new chapter

The snow is blanketing the slopes and the clouds in the valley are hanging at what seems to be just above head height from my chair. I’ve made my first stock of the year from vegetable peelings and chicken bones, and I’m planning that by the end of the year this simple healthy base food will be all part of a closed loop system here on the farm.

Our goals for this year include raising chickens for meat and eggs, keeping turkeys, growing 50% of our own vegetables and establishing a herb bed. These may seem like the goals of an underachiever to some, I’ll freely admit that my natural inclination is to declare my intent to do “everything” but to make things easier for my other-half I’ve promised to understate my ambitions everywhere including here. It’s not natural for me, but hey, it can’t hurt!

In order to facilitate our plans for 2017 we have been doing some solid ground work. He has been building me a glasshouse from scratch. It’s a time consuming process. Getting the “free” windows was the easy bit. Since then, he’s scraped them all, re-puttied the seals, cut and hauled trees from our wood, milled wood to spec, built walls in sections, oiled, primed them and begun the gables. This week he hauled the second load of logs to our mill, it took 3 straight days. They are very big logs and among other projects they will also be the main frame for the glasshouse. At just under 50 square meters the glasshouse is going to be bigger than our cabin. He’s put in a lot of work to help ensure our growing has every advantage possible.

To compliment the glasshouse I’ve dug and mulched 10 out door beds, which will be our “kitchen garden” at 10m x 1.25m they give us approximately 125 square meters of growing space for the semi-hardy and hardy vegetables that will make up the bulk of our diet. I’ll tell you what, after three months of eating shop bought and mostly non-organic vegetables I am really excited to get back to eating food we know the sources of. Come on Spring!

Our cat who also made the journey to our new home in Norway. He's settling in now and likes to ensure he knows what's going on. Here, he is "owning" the logs that are going to be milled this spring.

Our cat who also made the journey to our new home in Norway. He’s settling in now and likes to ensure he knows what’s going on. Here, he is “owning” the logs that are going to be milled this spring.

 

 

oct-27-2016

Planning for 2017 and beyond

It’s 8am and the sun is just beginning to peak over the far slope of the valley. The Norwegian has been in the barn for just over an hour and has been back to the house to ask me to come see the progress of “my” task for the day which he has had to take over. I’ve spent the last two days raking the abundance of Ash leaves into piles. There’s still a lot of Birch leaves I want to collect as well. I’m thinking ahead, as farmers must, about the soil’s future health.

You can call yourself any sort of farmer you want, but in the end, long term sustainable success means we are all the same. We are all soil builders. For us, that means taking advantage of the gifts mother nature gives us in the Autumn. Mulch, compost and leaf mold feature heavily in my plans this week. The leaves have immediate, short term and long term benefit: mulching around our currant bushes will help them this winter, adding leaves to the compost is helping build critical mass needed for active winter composting and the leaf mold bins will help us create more friable soil in two years time when it’s broken down. It’s three gifts in one and I want them all.

Unfortunately, three weeks ago I played “hero” on the river and stopped a 60 ft steel narrow boat free floating down the river in flood. This resulted in me tearing the muscles in my back on both sides. It laid me out completely for a week. The doctor wrote me off for 6 weeks upon seeing me. Life doesn’t stop however, and I moved to the farm just 72hrs ago. Suffice to say, 52kgs of luggage and a cat did my recovery no good!

I honestly thought raking leaves was an easy enough task. Perhaps it was. Bending down to cut the hardware cloth to make a leaf cage was too much, so I’ve been sent to the cabin to rest. I don’t think he minds, but I think he’s worried that I may not recover. To ruin my health just at the beginning of this great adventure would be devastating. I’m trying not to think about that. I hate feeling I’m not pulling my weight, but he is right, there is only one way to recover; rest.

 

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Salad, it ain’t what it used to be!

This year I planted specifically with a view to have fresh green salad to hand. It might sound like the move of someone who isn’t quite sure about gardening, but for me, it was a first.  I love the  modern version of salad that I have come to learn in the past two years but still harbor strong unpleasant feelings toward its 80s incarnations. Planting salad for the 2016 season was in a way an effort to purge the negative feelings toward something that may just become an important aspect of my future.

It wasn’t until my twenties  that I started to voluntarily eat salad. “Rocket” had just become the new fashionable thing in Toronto usually accompanied by avocado, tomato and either mozzarella or feta. Until then, my only engagement with salad was the lackluster iceberg, cucumber tomato trilogy my mother put on the table whenever she was on a new diet.

It’s not her fault, a whole generation made salad this way. Back then, if anyone had told me I was purposely going to plant myself a salad garden, I would have scoffed.

It’s the first week of summer and I have harvested my first proper salad meal. Over the past two years I have really had my eyes and my taste buds opened to the magic that can be in a bowl of greens. I am grateful. Early in my journey when Ru Litherland first suggested that our smallholding consider salad as a cash crop I had serious prejudice. My mind still holds the bland and boring salads of my youth as it’s go to image of what a salad “is”. But today, when i sat down to eat my lunch and the beauty of what was on my plate began to sink in I gave the idea it’s first serious consideration.  Salad, as a revenue stream has a lot of positive things going for it. It grows quickly, can be done early in a glass house and later in the field, luxurious versions can a relatively profitable. It’s also something I have a lot of harvesting experience with, which is another key consideration.

The banal bowl of my childhood has been replaced by a colorful, fragrant, multi flavored, visually enticing ever changing and exciting mix of herbs, leaves, and flowers. For me there is something decidedly decadent about eating flowers. For starters, it wasn’t something I knew you could do until I started my apprenticeship, and I am not alone. I have to admit, not all of them taste of much, regardless, the fact that they’re there in all their esthetic splendor adds to the enjoyment of eating.

Recently, I’ve been contemplating how the land will generate the capital we will need going forward. Luckily we don’t need much. Salad, might just be the trick.. or one of them.

Today’s salad: Beet leaf, Nasturtium leaf, CCA lettuce, garlic chive flowers, Viola Tri-color and foraged Elderflower.

 

 

 

jerusalem artichoke flower

Five reasons to consider planting Jerusalem Artichokes

Spring is beginning to raise its beautiful green head above the parapet and with it our green fingers begin to itch to get in the soil. Winter time is a great time to plan your next gardening adventures and in case you have a wee bit more room in your beds, I’m going to sing  the praises of Jerusalem Artichokes.

They’re Beautiful. Even someone as dedicated to the mantra of “everything must first be edible and useful” will admit, it is difficult not to smile when the sunny yellow heads of this Sunflower relative are in bloom.

Protection and improvement of cropping. Standing at up to 2m tall Jeruselums make an excellent semipermeable wind break for your less wind tolerant crops. Planting these in a row on the winds prevailing side can shelter more delicate crops and help increase yield.

Crop well with little fuss. Every gardener needs a crop that is less fussy and provides abundance whilst being low maintenance. These guys are it.

Easy to harvest. Once the tops begin to turn golden and the bite is in the air all you need is a fork to lift the lovely tuber and brush off excess mud.

Grade A hotels. Once harvested the stems of the plant should be left in situ. Their hollow stems make great over wintering “hotels” for our beneficial insect friends. This gives your garden a head start in the spring as your good guys are in the correct geographical region to nip out any of the bad guys who have overwintered in your soil. After the risk of frost has passed, the insects will have moved out of the stems, the stems can then be added as an excellent carbonaceous element to your compost pile, completing the circle.

An excellent alternative starch. Jerusalem Artichokes are very versatile in the kitchen and their lightly nutty taste is quite a winner. They can be grated raw as part of salad, sliced and lightly steamed to add crunchy to a stir fry, pureed or scrubbed and roasted with rosemary and sea salt as an attractive side. Some people do experience wind with eating them, so it is best to eat small amounts at any one time.

 

lifting rhubarb

Readying rhubarb for the coming spring

Here in the United Kingdom Rhubarb enjoys a rather prestigious place in the culinary calendar. The pale pink slender stems of “Champagne Rhubarb” are both the ushers of spring and the first reliable cash crop of the year. No matter how much is grown at Organic Lea, the demand far outstrips the supply our mere 2 acres of diverse intensive farming can produce.

Champagne Rhubarb production is lucrative, but it can also be relatively expensive as the crop is grown in heated forcing sheds. Currently, nine square miles of West Yorkshire, is known as “The Rhubarb Triangle” and encompasses twelve farms. In 2010 these farmers approached the European Commission’s Protected Food Name scheme and were awarded Protected Designation of Origin status (PDO) for the term, “Yorkshire forced rhubarb.” Forcing Rhubarb is big business for some, however it can be done with some success in a low tech way small scale using your netting wires and a blackout cloth.

For many growers,  Rhubarb is planted once. It’s widely accepted that some vegetables like Rhubarb, Asparagus and Jerusalem Artichoke, stay put when planted and remain indefinitely. Many successful allotments and growers subscribe to this thinking and harvest successfully year on year. Organic Lea is committed to using two of it’s acres to intensive organic farming and rotation is a key element in keeping both plants and soil healthy. This means that even crops that traditionally stay “forever” in one place are included in rotation, albeit for these crops they move once every four years.

This is year four for our early Rhubarb crop and the first year of it’s rotation, so this week we uprooted one of the four rows of Timperley Early and began the process of splitting and moving it to the area of the farm called The West Bank, or Salad Terrace. Over the years, the team have noticed that the Salad Terrace is the coldest plot on the farm. It is also the most over run with Horsetail. The thinking is, that Timperly Early will not suffer from the slightly colder micro climate and that with it’s maturity it’s wide leaves may also slow the rampant encroachment of one of the world’s oldest known “weeds.” Both of these factors have inhibited the Asparagus from reaching it’s full potential so we are effectively preforming an experimental swap of the two.

Splitting the Rhubarb serves two purposes, the first and most obvious is propagation. Mature crowns are quite easily split to produce multiple plants. To do this effectively one only need ensure each split contains both root and bud, we leave two to three buds in a spit.

The second reason for splitting is to cut away the heart. This may seem counter-intuitive, however the older a plant is, the more susceptible it becomes to disease. By lifting and splitting the crowns and cutting out the old growth we are taking preventative measures against potential disease in the crop. The oldest part, or heart then is added to our compost completing its circle.

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Growing Diversity: saving Jerusalem Artichoke seed

Before the ground freezes, and after the stocks have turned crunchy and golden is the time lift and store our Jerusalem Artichoke tubers. These starchy little wonders will liven up your meals through the dark days of January and February as well as add an element of beauty during the growing season, but you already know that if your now reading about how to save the tubers for next season!

Similar to what we look for when harvesting Garlic for seed, you are again looking to save and replant prime specimens. Those that we plant should be those with the positive traits we want to encourage in order to improve our seed stock and harvest year on year.

With Jerusalem Artichoke, this means setting aside those golfball size tubers, that are knob and blemish free. The should not show any sign of blight, insect damage or disease. One you’ve set aside your seed stock you’ll need to store it before it’s time to go in the ground again. Always try and store a small percentage more than you think you are likely to need as with planting there will always be the chance of failure in a few.

For the best chance of a successful storage, you’ll want a container big enough so you can layer the tubers in without them touching each other. I begin with a layer of moist coir approximately 3cm thick and position my first layer of tubers being careful to ensure a good amount of room around them so that they are not going to shift and touch each other. This is very important. By isolating each tuber you are minimizing the risk of contamination. A rotting tuber which contacts another with expedite the rotting process in the next.

After the first layer I cover it with a thick layer of coir, approximately another 3cm to avoid vertical contact between the layers. This process is repeated until all the seed tubers are bedded into and covered with coir. The whole bucket then sits in the ambient storage until planting begins again in spring.

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Putting the asparagus beds to bed

Kilo for kilo Asparagus consistently rates as one of top performers of the farm. When it’s in season it sells out. That is, by definition, product demand. As someone who spent countless hours over the past year, propagating, planting, weeding, hoeing and harvesting it fills me with pride and pleasure when folks are excited by and buying our veg. Feeling this way, is enough motivation for me personally to grow it.

In our modern society where a trip to the supermarket can supply you with nearly anything at anytime of the year, Asparagus being one of the few hold outs makes it special.  In the south of england, Asparagus season falls in between May and June, an incredibly small harvest season by any standard. Add to this that an Asparagus bed takes four years tending before a first cropping can be expected and it isn’t difficult to see why it is likely to stay a seasonal veg.

After the last harvest in June the plant is allowed to grow to its full potential, the delicate spears transform into beautiful branches and in the late summer and early fall it’s tiny spherical fruits ripen to a deep shade of garnet as the stocks die back transforming to a brittle stand of golden beige. It’s a this stage in the first weeks of December that we put the Asparagus beds “to bed.”

Before the dry stocks are cut back, we weed the bed a final time. Keeping the dry stocks in situ while doing this allows us to easily estimate where on the bed it is safe to dig. The next years growth of asparagus spears are dependent on their crowns sitting just below the surface of the soil and digging weeds too close to them can inadvertently cause damage.

 

blue ballet squash seeds

Growing diversity: Spaghetti squash seed saving

You could argue that relative to the return, buying seeds yearly is a small and justifiable expense. Pouring over the seed catalogues can be incredibly exciting with its’ inspiring descriptions and beautiful photography designed to tempt even the most intrepid gardener into trying new or rare cultivars.

Myself, I fall firmly into the category of growers who plan and purchase seed annually. Only a few years ago did i begin saving seed of my own and like many I began with my Tomato seeds. This autumn, with my mind focusing on narrowing the impending “hunger gap” we will undoubtedly face in the colder climes of Norway I’ve been paying close attention to the various cultivars of squash gracing the Market Stall. Hand on heart, I’ve yet to eat a squash I didn’t like.  Some I definitely like better than others and there are many I’ve only recently come across.

I’ve begun saving seeds from the ones that have gotten thumbs up from both of us. I know that this is slightly risky. Unlike saving tomato seeds which self pollinate and can be counted on to reliably reproduce true to type, squash are able to pollinate each other and if grown in close proximity to another type can cross pollinate. The result would still look like the parent however the seed would then not produce true to type the following year.

Professional seed sellers take great precautions to ensure their specimen plants are pollinated only from the correct male flowers often binding a female flower just before it opens opening it to hand pollinate and then rebinding it to ensure the only pollen present is that which they have introduced. It’s not complicated, it’s something I plan to do next season. But in the spirit of adventure, this year I have harvested seeds from those squash I have eaten and enjoyed. There’s a good chance I’ll be able to raise a successful squash crop from them, but no guarantee the vegetables I get will resemble their parents.

I’ve taken a calculated risk. I’ve done this for some specific reasons. Firstly, I would rather begin learning the successful techniques for cleaning and storing seed before i have to do so with the true type seed of the lovely and rare heritage Themla Saunders Sweet Potato squash I’ve purchased for next year. It took me two years to be able to purchase these 7 seeds as they sell out incredibly early, I want to do everything I can to ensure I don’t have to purchase them again!

clean squash seeds

Spaghetti squash seeds. Left is dried 10 days, with membrane still attached, right is with membrane removed and ready for storage and future propagation

Secondly, I happened upon a Spaghetti Squash grown here in the UK. It’s not popular here, but it’s one of my favourites from when I lived in Canada. Delighted and excited to find it, I’ve waxed lyrical and at great lengths to many people and intend to gift seed to everyone I can. As far as I am concerned It took a brave farmer to plan this little known and lovely squash and people need to know about it to develop the market for it. Knowing that allotment people tend to be adventurous and willing to share their bounty, I feel sharing the seeds may help develop a market.

Sharing the seeds out also lets me do some vaguely scientific research. My theory is since none of the people I have allocated seeds to are experienced in growing Spaghetti Squash but each has experience growing successfully in the past hearing of their successes will allow me to gauge if my seed saving techniques are correct. Like I said, “vaguely scientific”!

My method for cleaning seeds came from the packaging of my purchased Thema Saunders. It stated to remove the seeds, clean and allow to dry separated from each other on a flat surface. Further investigation on line suggested to remove the membrane which closely skins the individual seeds. My first attempts to do this was with the newly liberated seeds, it was slippery and difficult. In my second attempt to remove the membrane I waited until ten days of drying. This was also time consuming but much less slippery and therefore, assuming successful propagation will be how i continue to remove the membranes in future.