A Lazy Summer Sunday

After spending yesterday out and about marketing, we got down to the business of farming today. We seeded fall crops in all the empty spaces in our gardens that remained after our recent garlic, cabbage, and snap pea harvests. The crops we plant now will be ready after our CSA program concludes so we made sure to plant the vegetables that our family really likes to eat and that will either grow quickly or can withstand any early fall frosts. 

Given our farm's microclimate, we have found through trial and error over the past decade that this is typically too late in the growing season for us to plant green beans, beets, or turnips since they often don't have long enough to grow big enough to be worthwhile or the plants die from frost within days of the first beans being ready (disappointing). Playing it safe, today we decided to stick with sowing lots of carrots (frost tolerant), snap peas, spinach, leaf lettuce, and swiss chard. We also planted our fall cabbage and head lettuce seedlings that I started a month ago in pots. We then fertilized all the gardens with chicken manure and watered everything thoroughly.

In addition to this, we harvested some borage blossoms to start making vinegar infusions for our upcoming CSA baskets. These pretty blue blossoms are honey bee magnets so we were extra careful when picking to avoid accidental stings and we left lots of blooms for our honey bee ladies to enjoy too. Sharing is caring. I planned to get in to do hive checks this afternoon but Alistair refused to nap, so this task had to be delayed.

Borage blossoms

Instead of hive inspections, Ali and I spent part of our afternoon swinging in the hammock and watching the leafy canopy of our maple trees rustle in the breeze. A lazy summer Sunday, indeed.

Our Walking Tour of Carp

This morning Alistair and I prepared our wares for the kickoff event for Eldon's Open Air Food Market.  Check out the cool article in the Ottawa Citizen about this event!

Ali and I tied labels on jars and picked and washed some cabbages, peppers, and onions from our gardens.  Alistair was very proud to be Mama's best helper and by 8am, I thought...hmmm...he might actually make it to the Market (from 1-5pm). By 10:30am, Ali was on the decline and I could see that a nap was on the horizon so we headed off to the market spot for an early drop off.  After lunch and a nap, Ali was ready for round 2, so we headed back to the Market. He lasted politely for half an hour (under bribe of ice cream). For some reason Ali did not consider a reward zucchini a sufficient motivator for good behaviour. Shocking - maybe if there had been cherry tomatoes?

The rest of our afternoon was spent on a self-guided walking tour of Carp. We walked ourselves from Eldon's Market, past Eldon's Pantry, and Ridge Rock Brewing Co. We found ice cream at Carp Custom Creamery, past by Alice's Village Café, and wandered through the Carp Fairgrounds to the playground. We found some dancing horses along the way and walked past a pretty church with the little library out front, no kids books though. We ended up back at the Market at precisely 5pm - just in time for Alistair to sell one of his cabbages to a very nice lady who shook his hand and thanked him for growing her supper. He was pretty proud of himself.

We never have the opportunity to slow down and play tourists in our own town so this afternoon was a gem.

The Great Friday Supper Search

It is very unusual for Alistair and I to get a weekend to spend time together just the two of us. It usually happens only once a year when Ian takes the older two boys camping with Uncle Brian. Alistair and I are very much looking forward to the next three days. I have a big farm to do list so hopefully we will be both productive and have fun. 

Upon Friday afternoon pick up, I gave Ali the choice of what to have for dinner. For context, he's three. I'll give you one guess.  Yep. Chicken fingers and French fries. I know, thanks to his older brothers, that this phase does pass, but for now, we'll roll with it.

Root Cellar & Eldon's Open Air Food Market

As part of my orientation to the Board of Directors of the non-profit organization, the Deep Roots Ottawa*, I toured their state of the art root cellar today with Dr. Barry Bruce as my tour guide. It is very fancy! I am looking forward to working with them both as a board member but also to pilot test storing some of Gael Glen Farm's cabbage, onion, and root vegetable crop in the cellar over the winter. Fun on all fronts!

Be sure to check out the Eldon's Open Air Food Market kickoff event this Saturday August 30th in the afternoon (1-5pm) if you are in Carp. This is part of a Deep Roots collaboration to create a weekday farm stand at 405 Donald B. Munro. Some of our cabbages, onions, and other farm produce will be available for purchase!

*The Deep Roots Food Hub is a non-profit, grassroots organization made up of local farmers, market gardeners, health professionals, entrepreneurs and residents of West Carleton committed to creating a more secure and sustainable food system in our communities. Through collaborations with a variety of community partners we are working to launch programs that will make it easier for West Carleton residents to access, grow, and sell affordable, healthy food.

Soccer Seamus

 It was a beautiful day for an early evening soccer game. We not only remembered but made it on time!

After receiving a ball to the face during warm-up, Seamus persevered
and was an amazing goalie for the second half of the game.
He didn't let any balls through!

CSA Week #8

It was a beautiful morning for harvest day! 16 degrees C and a heavy dew - it almost felt like fall. Our CSA baskets are starting to get heavy. All these root vegetables require our CSA families to use their arm muscles to get their produce home. Good thing they should lots of energy from eating all these healthy veggies. These are jam packed baskets!

This week's baskets include: snap peas, French beans, cabbage, kale, lettuce, onions, hot and sweet peppers, basil, apple mint, sage, thyme, oregano, rosemary, zucchini, turnips, carrots, beets, spicy nasturtium blossoms, and a dozen eggs.

The special items this week are a loaf of cinnamon raisin bread, a big bouquet of hydrangeas, and more eggs as we try to work through the backlog after our vacation.

Dropping the Ball

With Ian away on business, I have a few extra balls in the air.

Even with Grandma Cora here to help out, some things still manage to slip through the cracks.

Things like egg delivery (even though I must have reminded myself of this at least a dozen times) and soccer practice (ditto). Luckily, I was wrong on the timing of soccer practice (in addition to forgetting about it entirely) so even though I remembered 15 minutes "late", we ended up being half an hour early. Sigh.

While I don't foresee my brain making any significant strides in memory in the next week, I have come up with a strategy to help with remembering egg delivery day.

On the bright side, I didn't forget to pick up Ali at daycare - so...win?

I See Trees of Green, I Watch Them Grow

Well, I see tomato "trees" anyway and I can now actually see the tomatoes growing on them! After 12 hours of weeding over the past two days, my vegetable gardens are back to being in workable condition. A huge "thank you" to both grandmas, Ian, and both big boys for helping me in various capacities this weekend to get this weeding work done.  We won't mention that I can barely move today and am covered in thistle scratches and super itchy wild parsnip pustules. But I can see my vegetables, so Farmer Krystal for the win! (The theoretical win since I certainly won't be winning any beauty contests until the rashes on my arms and legs clear up, sob.)

Stocked Up on Vampire Repellant

We got around to harvesting our 2022 garlic crop today before the afternoon rainstorm. We have 175 heads of garlic now hanging on our front porch to cure. I am not worried about any vampire visits tonight!

A Whole Lot of Craziness

The big boys are trying to get into the groove of summer vacation following our trip but with all the special happenings going on at the farm lately it is a tough slog. Not only has our house been overrun with roofers for the past two days, but Grandma Cora showed up to visit this afternoon, and to top it all off - today was Ian's 41st birthday!  All this excitement (and sugary birthday cake) makes for very crazy kids.

CSA Week #7

I went to harvest for today's CSA baskets #7 and found this...

I couldn't even find the cucumber plants, let alone see if there were any cucumbers! Even though harvesting was a bit chaotic with all the weeds that grew while we were away - I was still able to pull together some pretty nice baskets for Week #7 of our CSA program.

This week's harvest includes: snap peas, French beans, cabbage, onions, garlic, lettuce, hot and sweet peppers, basil, apple mint, sage, dill, zucchini, cherry tomatoes, turnips, carrots, spicy nasturtium blossoms, and a dozen eggs.

The special items are basil and oregano pizza dough and MORE eggs! We are overflowing with eggs after our time away.

We also have limited amounts of cucumbers, eggplant, and black raspberries so each basket will get one of these extra special items.

We have some serious weeding to do this weekend to get the garden back into shape. We also still have to wash about two hundred eggs. Oh, the price of going on vacation!

National Parc de Frontenac to Ottawa

 After juicy peaches and fresh croissants from a local boulangerie, we did the short Le Brise hike along the edge of Lake St Francois.

We had a picnic lunch in Sherbrooke at the Marche de Gare. On the menu were Quebec cheeses, locally cured rosemary ham, and a special end-of-trip treat - tarte de syrop d'erable. It was devoured.

With fully bellies we did the final push home rolling into the farm at 4:00 pm.  We visited the animal - all of whom look happy and well - and toured the vegetable gardens which are thriving but totally overrun with weeds.  Dinner was striped bass fish sandwiches with lettuce, dill, and spicy nasturtium blossoms.

We gave the boys thorough top to tail scrubs in a hot bath and they were happy to be tucked in to their own beds.  

What a road trip!  We covered 3,606 km in 14 days.  Ian and I have both had enough of the boys fighting in the back of the van to last us a lifetime but we saw some great things and made some amazing memories. We are sad to see our summer vacation come to an end but, as always, we are happy to be reunited with Charlotte and Emily and glad to be home. 

Back to real life tomorrow with a return to daycare, full-time work, and CSA baskets.  Ian and I are both terrified to check our work inboxes. Eeks!