July 29, 2021
The Lettuce Rejoice!
Firmly Rooted Farm's Newsletter for their Veggie Loving Farm-ily
On the Farm: Into the Snake Pit
Hello again my veggie loving friends,
It’s a busy (and exciting) time of year at the farm. This week we harvested thousands of bulbs of garlic, which will now hang to dry, then be cleaned and trimmed before being sold or stored over the winter. We are also seeding our last round of fall carrots and transplanting all our fall brassicas. It’s a critical week for planting. We are nearing the end of the planting window for many longer-season crops, which rely on the length of day to dictate their growth rate. Missing this window by even so much as a week could mean the difference between a beautiful head of cauliflower or not. The pressure’s on.
This week also saw the addition of a snake hibernaculum to the ecosystem of the farm. Through the Species at Risk Farm Incentive Program (SARFIP), organized by the Ontario Soil and Crop Improvement Association (OSCIA), Firmly Rooted secured cost share funding to build this hibernaculum. Tamara used to have pet snakes in university. She’s thrilled she can say now say that she provides a home to more snakes than ever before.
Seventeen species of snakes call Ontario home, several of them are species at risk. The main threats facing snakes in Ontario (and all over the world) are habitat loss, degradation, and fragmentation, as well as harmful human interactions based upon false perceptions. Perhaps one of the most detested and misunderstood animals on the planet, snakes evoke disgust in many and fear in others.
Snakes are also powerful religious and spiritual symbols for many cultures. In Australian Aboriginal mythology, the Rainbow Serpent is an inhabitant of waterholes and a controller of water. In ancient Egyptian mythology, Ouroboros depicts a serpent eating its tail, symbolizing the eternal cyclic renewal of life, death, and rebirth. In European legends, the Basilisk is a serpent who can cause death with a single glance. In the Christian story of Adam and Eve, a snake entices them to eat the forbidden fruit, causing God to cast them from the garden and punish the snake by forcing it to crawl on its belly for all eternity.
The snake as a symbol portrays a variety of emotions and moral perceptions. Despite the connotations of these stories, one fact remains true; snakes have been a powerful and influential presence in human lives for thousands of years. They continue to be, filling an important ecological niche that cannot be replicated. They serve as an important predator to several pest species such as mice and voles and provide a food source for many birds of prey, who face a shortage of food due to declining snake populations. If you consider all of life as existing in a web instead of a chain or hierarchy, you begin to understand that the role of each creature impacts the survival of every other creature. Snakes are part of the balance of life. To read more about snake hibernaculum and how to build one, visit this link.
Kitchen Corner
It is cucumber season, and this year we are growing more than we ever have before. In conventional systems, cucumbers are typically heavily sprayed with pesticides, due to the prolific nature of the cucumber beetle. Feasting on cucurbits of all kinds, cucumber beetles damage fruit and spread disease from plant to plant. But we don’t spray, so cucumber beetle damage is unavoidable. The best we can do is attempt to prevent them from entering our greenhouses and squish them if we can ever catch them. So, if you notice a little damage on your cucumbers, blame the beetle. I made the salad I have shared with you and fell in love with the dressing. Peaches are also in season, so I peeled and sliced a few to add to my salad, which was complemented nicely by the miso. Delicious.
Kitchen Clean-Up
We only have a few spots left in our winter Farm Share, so sign up while you still can!
That’s all for now folks, happy eating until next time!
Farmer Erika
