March work party at Haliburton

Things are well at Haliburton Farm where I joined the Saturday work party. Seedlings are thriving and will soon be on sale or in the ground.



Having learned, I suspect, the lessons of the fall of Sumerian civilisation (brought about by soil salination caused by poor drainage in an area of rapid evaporation) the farmers are putting lots of drainage in the fields this year.



Gord Hutchings was there for a few hours, offering a native pollinator workshop, and installed a mason bee barn on the property to provide housing for lots of orchard mason bees.



Meanwhile we went in search of invasive species to pull



and found lots of Daphne (spurge) laurel, the scourge of Victoria (alongside the scourges of Himalayan blackberry, broom, English ivy, morning glory/bindweed, holly, garlic mustard, and... a few others).



Discovered that the black sheep standing hopefully at the other side of the fence had a taste for ivy and blackberry leaves (not Daphne which is toxic) and took care of some of that for us. Patches kept watch, as a watchdog should:

Victoria Seedy Saturday 2011

Ah, Spring. Victoria's Seedy Saturday was heaving again this year. I didn't make it to any of the talks, and was too preoccupied to make thorough visits to all the stands, but once again the interest in seeds - both flower and vegetable - was there in (ahem) spades.



The seed swap was as popular as ever. Bring something to trade, or put a loonie down and take your pick of local seeds:



Gabe and I were there representing the Gorge-Tillicum Urban Farmers (GTUF) on the CR-FAIR table, and were pleased to find so much interest in neighbourhood food security.. and meet a couple of new members too.



Linda Geggie's "Test Your Seed Smarts" was hugely popular. A few sniffed they didn't need to see the back of the card to know what the seeds were, but most who stopped found the self-test highly entertaining,





particularly the younger gardeners.



Haliburton Farm was there; and LifeCycles.



Dan Jason with some Salt Spring Seeds.



And many more besides.




Can't believe it's over.



Actually, it's not: many more Seedy Saturdays (and Sundays) still to come across the country.

Things to be thankful for

Thanksgiving weekend has been and gone, but the sweet taste of harvest still lingers.

We enjoyed a thanksgiving salmon - grateful for the sockeye run this year - and baked it swiftly with garnishes of Black Krim tomato, sprigs of lovage, sliced ginger and lemon and a dollop of my brother's white wine.



And it was good.

My neighbour passed a little acorn squash over the fence, and I found a trio of thanksgiving blackberries: tasting a bit Octoberish, but still, a glorious gift.



My carrots got a bit stunted but went well with the last of this fall's epic yield of runner beans. Some organic beets and broccoli from Haliburton, salad of my cucumbers - still producing sweetly - and tomatoes,



a pie of local pumpkin,



and a few postprandial squares of quince paste rounded things out in a quasi-traditional manner.

The preserving marathon continues unabated. A salmon canning frenzy led me to divvy a whole salmon into ten luscious jars yesterday



while I was making quince & apple sauce and more quince jelly, which offset any fishy aromas that might have sullied my kitchen.

Things are wrapping up in gardens everywhere. At Haliburton Farm, the harvest was running full-tilt late last week, bringing lots of colour to the farm stand.



Some late raspberries



a giant turnip;



a couple of farmers bring it in from the fields.



Thanks to time, money, patience and the hard work of volunteers, the greenhouse that was destroyed on Easter weekend has finally been repaired and covered:



Tomorrow is the final vegetable basket of the year, with next year's CSA program already oversubscribed:

Whole lotta baking going on

I passed this summer baking quantities of cookies, cakes, crackers and muffins for the farm stand at Haliburton Farm, and the saga continues through the early autumn.

It has been a busy time and highly instructive in all kinds of ways. For example, if you want to make baked goods made with organic ingredients, you cannot help but notice a certain shrinkage in the profit margins, a certain red tinge to the balance sheet.

But it has been a pleasure to reaquaint myself with old favourite recipes like butter tarts and sticky lemon cake, and to try new ones like lavender cookies and spelt digestives.





Meanwhile... there is a new reason to celebrate organic food in Canada: Organic Week will run from Thanksgiving to World Food Day – October 9-16th, thanks to the organizing efforts of the Canadian Organic Growers, the Canada Organic Trade Association and organic groups across the country.