Farm Blog

There’s so much good food coming from our farm with lots of “firsts” coming from the field, squash & their lovely blossoms, potatoes, berries, cukes, shelling peas, tomatoes and beans really soon- enjoy the bounty of early summer. Come see us at Sooke Country Market or Moss Street Market- come out for the Moss Street Paint in this Saturday 10-4

Strawberry Balsamic Jam

• 4 ½ cup crushed berries
• 1 box pectin
• 7 cups sugar
• 3 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
• ½ teaspoon pepper
• Stir together fruit and pectin
• Bring to a boil over high heat
• Add all the sugar- stir
• Return to a hard boil for 1 minute
• Remove from the heat, stir and skim for 5 minute. Add pepper and balsamic, stir
• Pour into sterilized jars, process or seal with paraffin wax

Join us this Saturday for our on-farm plant and seed sale,

lots of good treasures, knowledge and chance  to come us!

We had a great first Moss Street Market last Saturday. Two weeks earlier than usual and we still had an abundant table! Great to see folks both  returning and new faces. Looking forward to the season ahead!

We did it- we’ve seen winter through to spring.

It’s here in all it’s flowering, mucky, sunny, hopeful glory. We’re busy and happy and only getting busier. We had excellent Seedy Saturdays this year and was happy to see familiar faces, meet new growers and talk about our seed collection. Our workshops are underway, box program holding steady and first Moss Street half market this weekend.

Welcome spring to our little farm.

We had a little weather throwback recently. After retiring for the evening we all awoke to the brightness that filled our rooms from the reflection of fresh snow. Such a beautiful blanket covered the farm, hushed the world a bit and gently reminded us it’s not quite spring yet. It was a good chance to finish inside jobs, and be very thankful for the wonderful greenhouses we have. Here’s to daylight savings and spring just around the corner.

Spring is sneaking up on us, day by day we’re getting busier as the days are getting longer. It’s a great time to ready for the season cleaning tools, amending rhubarb, pruning, starting seeds and spending our weekends at Seedy Saturdays. Some of my favorite tasks have been collecting seaweed and cleaning up areas that we usually don’t have time for- it’s a great sense of accomplishment and good way for my body to warm up to more and more physical work after a winter of seed work inside.

Here are some pictures of the oven workshop at ALM farm. For more information on building ovens here are two excellent books on the subject:
‘The bread builders’ by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott and

‘Build your own earth oven’ by Kiko Denzer

Laying out the arch

A practice arch with pebbles before actually mortaring it in. There are two plywood arches with a 2×4 spacer in between as support for the bricks.

Retaining wall and rubble

The sketch shows details of the oven base foundation.

This photo shows the retaining wall complete with posts for the roof supports and rubble fill.

Metal scrap in place for pouring concrete slab

The reason for pouring the slab is to keep the oven from settling unevenly.  Since the rubble may still move as it settles, the slab makes sure the oven doesn’t crack as this happens.

Wine bottles

Wine bottles are set in clay slip perlite mix to insulate oven so that heat doesn’t escape into the rubble below.

laying out the bricks

Starting the center line of the bricks on the leveled sand before completing the fire brick floor.

Ian King hosted us at his farm last week.  What a great place!

Folks were asked to bring favourite tools.  Here is one that Bill Metcalkf showed us. You can see it in action at <http://www.knipex.com/en/zangen-abc/wie-funktioniert-produktanimationen/86-03-250-zangenschluessel/>

Robert Prinz likes to keep a box cutter in his pocket for cutting weeds, etc.