Category Archives: on the Farm

Love, love, love Raspberries!

Posted by Danielle in on the Farm

It’s raspberry time! I love berries, but I think raspberries are my favourite. Mostly because of the taste, but also maybe because it “brings me back” to picking wild ones when I was younger.

Spencer says we should get over 5000 pints this year, and they’re so good…he even says he wants to expand their production. So in true Spencer fashion, he is researching raspberries to order and plant for next year. If anybody has any recommendations for varieties, feel free to let me know so I can close some of the 10 tabs he has open on the browser.

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Operation: Scare the birds

Posted by Danielle in on the Farm and tagged with

There is an osprey in my kitchen, holographic tape dangling in the breeze on branches, and giant beach ball type scare-eye balloons on stand-by ready to be hung in the orchard. The mission is to scare the birds and keep them from snacking on the crop of cherries and early apples. image The cherries have cropped very well this year, and so far the birds haven’t hung around long enough to pose a major problem, not compared to the last two years anyway. The lack of rain fueled their hunger for sweet, juicy cherries and apples. So this year we decided to implement bird scare tactics as necessary. We will see if they work. So far the osprey kite has done a good job at freaking out my cat, and he is pretty smart. image

We grow…

Posted by Danielle in on the Farm and tagged with

So all the things we grow…. Lets start with the fruits. Apples, peaches, plums, pears, sweet cherries, nectarines, strawberries, and raspberries.

Now for the veggies. Potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, peas, lettuce, radishes, squash, beets, pumpkins, and sweet corn. I think that’s it. Of course there are different varieties grown of most of these fruits and vegetables.

The Apples…Honestly before meeting Spencer, I only knew of the few varieties of apples we stocked at Farm Boy, the grocery store I had worked at back home in Ottawa. Little did I know. Just sitting here making a list I can think of 20 varieties that we grow, and I will probably think of the one’s I’m forgetting later.

There are the “go to” apples everyone knows like MacIntosh and Red Delicious, and newer varieties that people are starting to recognize and love like Honey Crisp and Ambrosia. I myself have always liked the deep red colour, crispness, and sweetness of Red Delicious, but these Ambrosias are swaying me for sure.

I love that we grow so many things. There is a window of time in the season, (which will be coming soon) that I can go into the cold storage in our barn and “shop” for most of our weekly produce. You can’t get more local than that. Speaking of… time to go try the strawberries just in from the field.