Farm Blog

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.

Thinking about good displays at our local Sooke Farmers’ Market and the Victoria Moss Street Market.  Letting the customers see clearly what’s available is important.  Here is the difference Lindsey Snelling made by changing the position of her beets.

Hard to see the beets

Easy to see from a distance that these are beets

Ian King has a great farmer’s table at Moss Street Market.

Ian's Kings stand at Moss Street Market is a beautiful display - easy to see

Teresa Wilman from Silver Cloud Farm puts together a great display.  She bought herself a laminator which makes her signs look great.

Great stackable baskets and laminated signs in metal stands

Everything is pretty much sold but I like Teresa's colours and signage

Today Kit Warren sprayed our beds, chicken houses, and seedlings with EM, Effective Micro-organisms.  To learn more  you can check out <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_microorganism>.  In return, I’ll spend some time with Kit at his farm.

Here are some photos of Kit and his sprayer:

Kit Warren spraying celeriac seedlings before they get planted

spraying Em on beds waiting for transplants using a power sprayer

Last week, Steve, who has been visiting time on our farm for several years, spent a week with us.  His energy was phenomenal.  He helped hill up potatoes, weed onions, plant squash, drench tomatoes with compost tea, prune tomatoes, and more.  Most exciting, he finished a rock wall below our  new movable greenhouse. His wife, Mary, and daughter Cloe, and son Finn planted the rock wall with Rene’s great nasturtiums – cherry’s jubilee, moonlight, copper sunset, vanilla berry, and creamsicle, and transplanted in wooly thyme.  Here is a photo of the wall and the children planting the nasturtiums:

The chicks went out into one of our chicken houses last week.  Jess had the chicken yard planted with old lettuce and brassica seeds which the baby chicks wiped out in no time.  We still have the heat lamp for cool evenings.  

Later in the week I visited Sandy and Don who live on Sooke River Road.  They have a practical way to protect there tomato plants when they put them out.  Here is a photo.

Coverings for tomato cages

tomato cage from page wire

Thursday evening we had our May COG-VI meeting with a good turn out.  We saw goats, milking set up ,cheese making description, chickens(layers), poly tunnels (salad greens, tomatoes. several raised beds for veggies, fruit trees,  kitchen set up for baking.  Diane is President of the VANCOUVER ISLAND GOAT ASSOCIATION.

John Lawler took these photos:

nubian goats

goat house

pasture

milking equipment

milking equipment

milking chute

sawdust shed

useful byproduct

Diane is getting into more vegetable production with her partner.  They are producing salad mix and tomatoes.

tomatos in greenhouse

raised beds for salad

rototiller for greenhouse

greenhouse raised beds

Diane also raises chickens for eggs.

We had a walkabout this Monday.  We try to do this once a week as a group.  It’s a good time to make note of tasks to be done, the arrival of pests, germination and crops to harvest for our box program on Tuesday.  It’s also a good time to pass information on to our apprentices.

Here are some photos from today’s walkabout:

These are sugar snap peas planted in February in our hot house.  We harvested 5 pounds for restaurants on Tuesday, May 18th.  We had already harvested about 4 pounds last week.

asparagus beetle

If you look carefully through the weeds, you will see an asparagus beetle on a stalk of asparagus.  I know to look for them at this time because I have noted in past years in my journal that they show up at this time.  It’s worthwhile to try to kill them before they mate and hatch eggs.

ground beetle on floating row cover

Luckily, we are also seeing good bugs- the great ground beetle predator of wireworms and other pests.

summer squash under remay

We stopped to look how the baby summer squash is doing.  We planted it last week into black plastic and covered it with floating row cover, often called remay, to hold in the heat, protect the little plants from the wind, and how down the weeds.

racks for nursery

We were able to scavenge these racks from Sooke Home Hardware.  They get their potted plants this way every spring and then put them out for folks to pick up.  We like to use them for our seedlings.

Holger was out today  planning two workshops to build an earth oven at the farm. We chose a site and drew up plans.  We need to get a small excavator in to prep the site and move some rocks.  I’ll try to update this blog as the work progresses.

Here are descriptions of the workshops:
Earth Oven Building Workshop
We are building a wood fired oven using local building materials including cob. Join us in community, learn by doing, and help build an oven. Holger will share various oven designs, materials, and techniques to inspire you to build your own. Bring your own lunch or enjoy an organic farm lunch for $14. Taught by Holger Laerad at ALM farm
Saturday July 31. 10am-5pm
Fee: $55

Earth Oven Finishing and Baking
Time to put the finishing touches on the oven and test it out! This course will cover plasters, finishing and sculpting the oven, firing the oven and baking in it. Please bring your favorite pizza toppings to create your own edible masterpiece as this course includes making and baking pizzas.
Sunday Aug 22. 10:00 – 2:00pm
Fee $45

Here are some photos of earth ovens

After newly seeded tomatoes have germinated and got their true leaves, they should be transplanted into 4″ pots which have richer soil. Here is a video of the process: Transplanting tomato seedlings

Here’s a video of how we transplant tomatoes from 4″ pots into the ground.

Transplanting tomatoes from 4' pots to the ground

Carrots take a long time to germinate and can’t take a heavy weed load.  Therefore, we prepare a carrot bed about 1 or 2 weeks ahead of planting and then flame the bed with a tiger torch. Here is a video of Marika flaming a carrot bed to reduce weed load.flaming 2

We've put a glass down after seeding our carrots. As soon as they germinate under the glass, we know they will be up soon in the rest of the bed so we can flame one more time before they germinate.

After flaming carrot beds we plant radishes in between the rows. The radishes will be up and harvested before the carrots get too big.

Planting carrots and radishes together

Carrots planted in our hot house Feb. 1st. Photo taken May 17th.