Late Summer at the Farm

All sorts of tiny frogs emerging

Late corn is  almost ready.

The garden is getting that late fall overgrown look.

Signs of Spring

The first snowdrops.

Pruning the fruit trees in February. It is an act of faith that one day, the sky will clear, and there will be sun.

The first snowdrops came out in the middle of February. A hopeful sign of the spring to come.

The winter garden. Before we begin preparing for the spring.

The first rhubarb.

Fall Scenes from the Farm

The last of the bounty

Halloween Prep

The treeline 

Cranberry harvest

Mouser

Opportunist

The Garden at the Start of Summer (Maybe)

The garden as of June 30, 2012

The gardener standing in front of the mock orange

 The garden is growing very fast due to the excess amounts of rain. 

The strawberries are ripe now, but the have had too much rain. They taste more like water than berry. Same with the raspberries and cherries. They have a hint of flavour, and are no doubt still very good for you.

There hasn't been too much trouble with bugs, mostly because it is too cold.

The cabbage and the onions are all very content. It is only the water logged gardeners that are complaining!

Lush new growth due to the endless rain.

First harvest from the New Garden

There is a brief window of opportunity to harvest garlic scapes. Great for pasta, bread, and soup.

Cabbage loves this cold June weather.

Finally, strawberries before the robins eat them all.

Preparing the Garden 2012

 Finally managed to get the rototiller into the garden.

Dandelion Jelly

Scot made some Dandelion Jelly this weekend. We used our special dandelion sniffing dog to help find the star ingredient.
Scot had to use scissors and trim the petals from the flower stem, and then he collected about four cup fulls. (We have a lot of dandelions.) The petals of the flower are surprisingly sweet, not bitter like the rest of the plant.

The final result! Beautiful honey coloured jelly. It has a mild flavour but quite tasty. We used our certo mint jelly recipe to make it. It set-up quite well.

It Begins Again

Come to historic Ladner Sat. Jan 28/12 from 10 to 2 pm. Seedy Saturday will be located at the Ladner Baptist Church Hall at 5624 Ladner Trunk Road. The venue is wheelchair friendly with plenty of free parking, located on bus route # 601 and admission is by donation.''''

http://www.richmondfoodsecurity.org/ai1ec_event/ladner-seedy-saturday/?instance_id=

The Fall

The Garden July 15th

It has been a cold spring and summer, which means all the plants are a growing a little slower, but so are the aphids and cabbage moths, so the garden is looking really beautiful right now. I am especially proud of my cabbages, which look like display cabbages they are so beautiful.

Why I haven't Been Posting

What I Like About Spring

What's Up

It has been another cold wet spring and we are even further behind this year than last year. The first crop of peas are up. They are about an inch or so high. One advantage of being so cold is that the slugs are still sleeping.

The asparagus is finally surfacing. It looks like we might have a nice asparagus and egg breakfast next weekend. Fingers crossed.

We also have ten new laying hens. But they are still very young. They look like tiny dinosaurs at the moment. They haven't quite grown all their feathers.

In the greenhouse, my first round of tomatoes are up. I planted them two weeks ago.
This morning I added another three varieties.

The list is:
Legend
Beefsteak (Ukrainian)
Czech
Brown plum
And a mixed package of heirloom seeds that I accidentally bought at the seed sale.

A New Gardening Season

It is hard to imagine that there is still snow on the ground in Banff. It is cold, but it is still spring on the west coast. Ever since I returned from Banff, we have digging a small section of the garden at a time. We are now almost three quarters of the way through.

We lost most of our raspberry crop last year. I spent all day yesterday digging out the old bed, trying to take the first four inches of soil away. I ended up digging out fifteen wheelbarrows full of very wet sod topped clay soil. We will replace this soil with a sandy mixture to improve drainage. We will then transplant some raspberry canes from a very old bed that was unaffected by the blight.

It might have been better to just relocate the canes, but we really didn’t have a place for them to go this year. If they fail again, we will move them next year. Also, from what I read replacing the soil should suffice.

We lost all but two of our Tulameen raspberries which is a real shame. They are such a nice berry. Big and sweet and no prickles. I don’t know why they are not more well known. Nobody seems to grow them around here. Maybe they are prone to blight? Which would explain why we lost so many, although we lost almost as many of the hardy regular plants.