Canada Day with the crew - they've been doing such a great job hustling out there in this crazy heat.
Systems
"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems" - James Clear
I read this quote from another farmer this week and it really resonated with me. No matter how high your goals are, you can only get so far if your systems are lacking. This is a truth that has been dawning on us for quite some time and our systems are the next big thing we need to tackle on the farm. The first focus for us when coming to the new farm was building infrastructure, and it's still something we're not quite finished with. This year, we got to work more with our systems but still had to put a lot of time and energy into our infrastructure. Next year will be the year of systems, I hope!
Our Irrigation System over the years
Our irrigation system is a good example of the various levels we've been at, and the room we still have to grow. At the old farm, we started with no irrigation. During drought, we would haul giant water barrels into the field and water by hand. You can imagine how much time that took us, and how inefficient it was. When you have only so much time, and so many tasks to be accomplished, it's really imperative that your systems are efficient. Not only did our time management struggle, but we lost crops as well.
We moved from that system to sprinklers that had to be moved around the field all day. Better, but not great. It took so much time to move those sprinklers, and they could only water a small amount of the field at a time.
Last year, here on this farm, we began a drip tape irrigation system. You lay down strips of tape in the bed beside the veggies, and the roots get gently watered drip by drip. It's efficient in terms of water use. And, once you lay down the drip tape, your job is basically done - now that's efficient. However, we didn't have enough for the whole field, so we had to pick and choose what got watered. That involved turning on different taps at different times, not to mention the mental weight and energy required and the fact that some crops don't get the water they need. So, room still for improvement.
This year we purchased a lot more drip tape. Enough for almost everything in the field. We also purchased a timer that will allow us to pre-set what gets watered, when. We also invested in some wobbler sprinklers for certain crops that benefit more from a top-down watering system. Those sprinklers are way more efficient than our old ones because they are so easy to move around the field. Still, we could use more because we're still spending time moving sprinklers and mental energy deciding which sprinklers will go where, when. Our irrigation system this year is a huge improvement, certainly the best we've had. Not top-level yet, but it's been making a big difference especially in this intensely dry and hot summer.
So, as you can see, one can have systems in place that are at varying levels of efficiency and productivity, and it all makes a big impact on production as well as our ability to accomplish the many tasks we have before us. And the irrigation is but one system of many! A more simple example would be the pea trellis. For many years we never had one, but this year we purchased and installed a trellis for our peas. It significantly cut down on the amount of time it took to pick peas! Building these systems requires a mixture of experience, planning, and financial investment. And, of course, time.
Infrastructure Virtual Farm Tour
Hey, speaking of infrastructure - we created a virtual farm tour as an event for our very favourite farm association - the EFAO or Ecological Farmers Association of Ontario - as well as Ignatius Farm Farmer Training Course.
(Check out EFAO here https://efao.ca/ and Ignatius here https://ignatiusguelph.ca/ignatius-farm/)
Here is the link to the video we made: https://youtu.be/yEQDekH9kQ4 You can learn about how we moved to the farm and what we did to get it to the point where it is now, with a specific focus on the infrastructure we built. If the video is blurry, increase the quality settings while watching it.
Veggies this Week
We've got sugarsnap peas and shelling peas again this week - likely the last week for our first planting. With this kind of heat, no pea wants to continue flowering or growing. We're harvesting our red cabbage, and then we'll be done with cabbages until the fall. In the future I'd like to plant more spring cabbage, because the texture and flavour (the lightness, crispness, and freshness) is really out of this world. We have more romaine this week, and next week we'll be diving into our next bed of head lettuce which has some lovely green oak leaf and red butterhead.
Red cabbage in the morning dew
We have the last of the season's radishes this week - bagged in mixed 1lb bags like last week. One of our members shared that she made radish relish last week! What a great use for radishes that I hadn't encountered before! It looked so pretty too. I think we'll have to try our hand at it.
New this week is young garlic! Not to be confused with spring/green garlic. At this point, our garlic is beginning to form bulbs. We wait to do our big harvest when 75% of the leaves have browned. Then, we can pull it out and begin to cure it so it will last into the spring. But at this point, the garlic is very nice to eat. Less hot/pungent then it will be later in the season. Just treat it like you would regular garlic.
CHERRY TOMATOES - these guys are ripening like crazy now. We have quite a few available this week! I hope you'll enjoy the assortment of varieties and colours we have planted this year. Right now we're packing them in little plastic bags. They're ok for short term storage but when you get home, please take them out of those bags and leave them in a bowl or open container in your kitchen. Leaving them in the bag will make them go bad faster, and putting them in the fridge will rob them of texture and flavour.
Cucumbers and zucchinis are loving this sun and heat, so we've got lots of those this week as well. We even have the first of the season's eggplants!
The joy of a happy zucchini/melon/winter squash patch
Happy eating everyone! And keep asking the universe for some rain for us, will ya?
Your farmers,
Kim and Alex
