Juney Gloom

While June stays gloomy, we keep our spirits high

Reach clouds without floating; we're on the weirdest climb

Kind of like a pea stock, curling up the vine

Look down from wherever; the world that we find.

There's a world inside the soil

A world inside your mind

No straight edges yet we read between the lines

One big sine wave, but please don't wave goodbye

I'll see you next time yes we'll meet between the chives

I'll dress in freshly woven fleece

Crisp Lettuce Tie.

Not a single crease yet sleeves are rolled up high

Nothing can go wrong when you're needless and you dine

In fresh Salad sneakers, bleachers built from Rye

Find comfort in the creatures!

Find comfort in the slime.

Without them we're not human whats a cone without a pine?

Fingers made of cucumbers... ludicrous reminders!

We come from the soil : shes a beautiful designer

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June 13, 2017

Discovering very little flower germination

Another oddly wet and cold June day. We started our Tuesday with the usual walk around the terraces in preparation for market day. I planted a wildflower seed mix in the area once occupied by green onions, but we have yet to see any flowers germinate there. Mike took the opportunity to give us a bit of a lesson in weeds (there was lots of opportunity presenting itself).

Picturesque Green Onions

Amongst the supposedly germinating wild flowers there was barnyard grass. This plant can be quite a pain in the butt if established (as can many grasses). It is invasive in North America and quite the terrible agricultural pest. It can spread by rhizome, so even if you pull it out of the soil, leaving any small bits behind can allow it to recuperate.

Black Nightshade

The way I like to think of it is, we aren't growing anything at all - all things grow themselves, if they can. We just hang out and try to give the ones we want the biggest boost. What else is farming but selective plant planting and speciation? What is a 'weed' other than a plant getting in the way of human plantings? We desire green onions, and so we plant and water them but that didn't stop these other individuals from showing up. They are all weeds if they are interfering with our green onion dynasty. In the above photo we have Black Nightshade. Below we have several more. The one with the dark spots on the leaves is called Lady's Thumb. There is probably some chickweed in there as well.

Various weeds happily invading green onion territory

Below you will see the Swiss Chard is doing a good job of shading out weeds. Planting space can have a big impact on weed establishment, because once that canopy grows it takes away all the light and sun that the weeds need. Jean-Martin Fortier talks about this in his book, The Market Gardener.

Chard shading out weeds

Spinach seedling

I also planted Spinach a couple weeks ago. We are finally seeing some germination and seedlings coming out! Its great when you zoom right in and look at them. However, weeding them becomes an issue when you have lots of grasses in the bed! You can see what I mean in the picture below. Its not so easy to distinguish the grass from the young spinach when you are standing with your eyes 5 feet or more away from the soil with a hoe in hand. But I have yet to see any farmers wearing binoculars while they weed. Maybe it will be the next innovation in organic weed management.

Can you spot the young spinach amongst the grass? Of course you can't 

Can you spot the tomato plant?

In this case, we have a tomato plant that is a weed. We are growing peas in this section, and the tomatoes from last year are actually quite unwelcome here (according to Mike). Who ever thought a tomato could be a weed?

Sunflowers behind peas

Here we have sunflowers growing behind our second stand of peas. These sunflowers however, are not weeds. Why not? Because we planted them, thats why! We planted them such to minimize interference with the peas, but they are probably still competing below ground for nutrients, etc. The peas might think the sunflowers are weeds, but since in this case sunflowers are amongst the plants we desire, they are not weeds in our minds.

Sprouting Zuke

Sprouting Cuke

After doing the morning walk around, a truck full of us headed off to the orchard to harvest strawberries and garlic scapes.

Weedy Garlic Field

On days with fortuitous aromatic conditions, one smells a lovely garlic scent when waltzing past the garlic patch. Garlic season is coming ever closer, and one sign of that is seeing the garlic scapes at the market.

Garlic Scape

Garlic scapes are the immature garlic flowers. We cut these off so that the garlic plant will spend all its energy growing the bulb, and put no more into flowers. Turns out they taste just like garlic, and can be use deliciously just as you would use bulb garlic.

Will harvesting Garlic Scapes

The strawberries are various. Our instructor Rebecca is running a trial of a few different varieties. The mutant looking variety below is called Cabot. I have yet to taste one because they haven't quite ripened yet, but I'm sure they will be just as delicious as the other strawberries of more typical morphology. While we were harvesting we were remarking how great it was to be able to see such a diverse group of strawberry plants all in one place. Cabot was the only one with consistently unconventionally shaped fruit, but all of them were quite different from each other. Some are bushier, some are taller, some grow more densely, and they all have subtle differences in flavour. Its really neat to have all that diversity on display.

The 'Cabot' strawberry

After harvest, both the marketable and non marketable fruits are weighed and recorded. Then its off to market!

Torin and Isabel, collecting sweet
strawberry data

Before and after shots of the truck interior.
On the way back we were crammed full of strawberries.
Isabel mentioned it was a bit of a jam 

On the way to the orchard, Jordan informed us that Train to Busan is the best zombie movie he has ever seen. On the way back from market we contemplated our capacity to be artistic. E.E. Cummings and Charles Bukowski were recommended for inspiration. Then we spread some wood chips in the terrace pathways to suppress the pathway weeds and called it a day!

Food = Connection

"The thing I love most about food, is its powerful ability to create connections. How much it connects us to the environment, to old memories, new memories, or to each other. How much it is able to make us see and feel." 

The Environment
Since food comes from the environment, by walking around the garden and connecting with the food crops, we can get a sense of what is going on in the environment. For example, one of our routines is to taste test the leafy greens. By tuning in to the flavor of the leaf, and how it varies from week to week, we can understand how much stress the plant is under. For example, if the leaf is highly bitter this tells us it was likely exposed to high temperatures. We can literally taste the secondary metabolites that the plant released during a stressful time, which is the bitterness. Who knew lettuce could be so bitter about the heat!

Extra bitter and spicy arugula.

Along our walk-about, we also keep our eyes wide open to discover what is going on in the environment as well. We came across a patch of beans that were yellowing and dying off. For some plants, this may tell us that the soil is lacking in nitrogen. However, legumes are nitrogen fixers so this shouldn't be the case. When we pulled one of the dying plants out of the ground we found that the root looked short and like it had been chewed, leading us to believe that an insect pest population is present and eating the roots. Some further investigation of the soil and plants is needed to find out what insect this may be.

Sad root of the dying bean plant.

Old Memories

The smell and flavour of food evokes so many things in us - memories, nostalgia, things that are connected to our past. In some mysterious way, it helps us to feel again a sensation of the past, of something we otherwise might not have access to. 

One of the last things we had left to harvest for the market was some licorice mint. Licorice mint is a beautiful mint-coloured plant with thick and full leaves that taste sweet and spicy when bitten into, a unique combination of licorice and mint flavours. It also has an intensely beautiful aroma to it. It is a plant that isn't forgotten after a nose or palette has come in contact with it.

As the market vendors were setting up, one of the men called out to me and asked me what I was harvesting over here. I told him it was licorice mint. He looked surprised and delighted, and let me know that he hadn't seen or eaten that in years. I offered him a stalk of it, and he came joyously skipping over like a young child to accept it. He mowed down that licorice mint stalk like Bugs Bunny would a carrot. As he was chewing, he told me stories of how when he was a child there was a spot in Burnaby that a whole bunch of it grew. Him and his other young friends would go hang out there and munch on the licorice mint all day.

Licorice mint.

Later on I got to sell food at the market stand. It's so exciting being at the market stand as new foods become available throughout the season, and seeing people's reactions to it. Some people have never seen some of the local in season crops like licorice root, while others have strong nostalgic reactions to it. It's strawberry season now, a crowd favorite, which makes for all sorts of beautiful and magical stories. One of the first customers I had saw our strawberries and her face lit up. They don't exactly resemble the pale red strawberries at the grocery store that are mostly white and flavorless when you bite into them. The strawberries we have are different sizes, varying shades of deep berry red, and you can smell there sweetness from a good distance away. Just by seeing and smelling them, the woman at the stall remembered the complexity of juicy flavours a strawberry can have. She told me about the strawberry bushes that used to grow in her backyard before she moved to the city, and how exciting it would be when they would start to bear deep red, juicy fruit every year. She bought a carton of our strawberries and contentedly was on her way. 

New Memories

Another exciting crop that we had at the market was garlic scapes. Many people had never eaten or even seen them before, which made for plentiful questions and conversations. I'd say about 10 people who have never eaten garlic scapes before went home with a bag full of them. At some point afterwards, for the very first time, they will have the experience of cooking a new vegetable, smelling its' aroma, and tasting all of the compounds it is made up of. These sensations will leave an imprint on that person, memories of the people and feelings in their life during this new experience. And all of these sensations will create some sort of memory the next time they come across garlic scapes again. 

Another new crop for many people at the market was arugula. In fact, an older woman who had bought a bag of arugula for her very first time last week had come back this week to ask more questions about it. She had created her very first memories with this leafy green - she put it in some of her salads and in some of her sandwiches. Now she was looking for more ideas about what to do with the rest of it. This delighted me. Rather than doing a quick Google search, she came back to the very people who grew it to ask what they would do with it. We gave her a few more ideas like putting it in soups, pasta, or making pesto. I'm excited for the potential new arugula memories that are yet to be made for this woman. 

Bags of arugula.

Not only are there adults at the market trying garlic scapes and arugula for their first time, there is also a baby at the market literally seeing many things for his very first time. Ocean, less than a year old, is alive for strawberry season for his first time. How exciting is that?! The bright red fruit catches his attention. His Mom has only just started feeding him solid foods, introducing one new thing a week, and strawberries have not yet made the list.. Seeing how drawn he is to this red berry he has not yet tasted, she plans to give him his very first strawberry sometime in the next few weeks. That will be a berry special day indeed!

Ocean interacting with a strawberry for his berry first time!

Each Other 

"If a woman could see  the sparks of light going forth from her fingertips when she is cooking and the substance of light that goes into the food she handles, she would be amazed to see how much of herself she charges into the meals that she prepares for her family and friends." - Maha Chohan

And one of its' most special traits, in my opinion, is that food connects us to each other. So many beautiful moments and conversations take place on market day, that wouldn't have happened if we didn't have an abundance of beautiful fruits and veggies between us. I learn about who our customers are, what foods they like, the type of food education they have. I begin to care about the people who buy our food, and grow it with them in mind. It can become a very personal deed. On the other hand, customers learn who their farmers are, what their passions and life goals are, what their struggles are, and the variety of ways they enjoy their food. Customers can show up not just for the food, but because they believe in who the farmers are, what they are doing, and they wish to support that. When eating the food, they have someone in mind they can think about, to be grateful for. The market manager collects anonymous feedback from customers on their experience at the Kwantlen Market, and she told us during the market that someone had written their reason for coming to the market was to buy food from the very nice students - that's us! When relationships are made between the people who grow food and the people who eat it, it's a powerful thing. 

A small family with a large dog popped by the market stand at one point. They bought some leafy greens and a box of strawberries. Daisy, the large dog, was sniffing the new purchases. The Mother took a strawberry from her bag, asked Daisy to sit and then popped the berry in the dog's mouth. I knew that strawberries were a crowd favorite, but I had no idea it was the same among the canine world. 

Another woman came by and bought some strawberries. She told me they were for her mother. We got on to talking about how beautiful it is to give people food as gifts. She told me that her mother is in a nursing home, and every time she goes to visit her mother, she brings a handful of food with her, usually some strawberries. Her mother loves strawberries, but they don't often have them at the nursing home. Her mother's elderly friends at the nursing home would see this and would get excited by it, so she began bringing more food, and more strawberries to share with her mother's friends during her visits. And that's where this box of strawberries was heading. I gave her her change and she was on her way. A couple of minutes later she returned though, and decided that she needed a gift for a friend who had invited her over for dinner that evening. So, she bought another box of strawberries. 

Strawberries.

The Beauty of it All

Food can be so beautiful. So many colours, flavours and stories to appreciate about it. One of my favorite things to do at the market stand is to make everything look beautiful, so that others may also see it's beauty. I've discovered a new found passion for making bouquets of flowers. At first they were kind of awkward, but week by week they have gotten more beautiful, I must say. 

Flower bouquet beside basket of kale.

I remember an elderly man telling me a story last summer. He told a story of a group of astrophysicists who set out to discover why the universe would create humans. What purpose did we have here? All of the other animals, the plants, the sea creatures, the mircoorganisms, had a meaningful place in the ecosystem. There was a natural harmony, a balance that existed among them. Why then, would Mother Nature take the chance of introducing humans, a species that could very well disrupt this harmony? "And so the atrophysicists concluded," the elderly man told me, "that even though everything was in balance before humans existed, Mother Nature was still missing one thing. She was missing something that could appreciate her beauty. And so she made humans". 

It's an interesting thought too, that no other species may be able to admire the bouquets of flowers I made for the market the way that humans can. Perhaps no other species can look at the stars in the night's sky, the mountains in the distance, or a bowl of freshly picked strawberries with the same sense of gratitude and appreciation for its' beauty that we have the capacity to. And sitting in the midst of a farmers' market, among a table of beautiful food, I think that we humans begin to remember the uniqueness we hold to see nature's beauty, and we live out that purpose again. 

Piper and I, getting stoked on beautiful bouquets.

June 8/2017

As we all know the beginning of this year has been… challenging. It was to cold to plant and then all of the sudden, summer, with brief interludes of fall.

            This out of character weather is due to a pacific weather pattern called ENSO, or El Nino Southern Oscilation. Within that cycle is 2 phases the “hot phase” called El Nino and the “cold phase” called La Nina. Guess which one we are in now? So snuggle up aggies cause this little girl is with us till the water warms (usually 9-12 months) … ( we are about 5-6 months in so don’t panic)

What are El Niño and La Niña?

     

   But like all plant lovers, gardeners, and aggies we threw on the rain gear and toughed it out to get things planted. First, however, was a brief reprieve in a cozy classroom to learn about earthworms and yarrow (our professors aren’t cruel).

            Lumbricus terrestris, also known as Earthworm, Dew worm, and (my personnel favourite) Nightcrawler. These creatures are super common in Canada but only arrived in the 16^th century, who new!…

Maybe their from Germany?... get it?... no one an Xmen fan?...

Anyways… any gardener or novice alike knows when they see earthworms in the soil they have a good thing going on. They are important in soil activity, creation, aeration, and decomposition. So small, yet so helpful!

Worms are slow moving, but still found all over the world in wet climates in temperatures -35C to 30C and despite the belief that they can recover from being cut in half (not a starfish!) they are damaged and killed in highly cultivated soils, just another reason for no/low till practices.

As usual Eric brought the pun game to this many segmented presentation. As we wiggled our way through truly slime information, the material gave us something to chew on and baited us into learning heads from tails about Lumbricus terrestris.

Our next learning venture brought our focus to the surface to Achillea millefolium or more commonly known as Yarrow.

Yarrow is a plant considered to have many varieties or separate species, the judge is still out on that one. While in some cases this plant is considered a weed, it also has a place in history as a medicinal herb. Used to treat pain, reduce fever, and patch wounds.

It can be identified by its fern like leaves and compact umbel flowers

The extensive and fibrous rhizome of Yarrow adapts it to life in dry 

rocky terrain or life by the lake, which makes it unsurprisingly found

 throughout North America.

Yarrow is potentially effective in bioremediation for its ability 

to absorb heavy metals like Cadmium. As well, its a source of 

nourishment and shelter for beneficial insects like ladybugs and bees.

Bring on the rain!

Once landed on our soggy soil we went through the tasks, which included; weighting the pear trees, laying irrigation lines and harvesting strawberries from the experiment patch.

Here Rebecca is giving us the low down on the irrigation structure

Laying out drip irrigation involves mainlines and T tape, which we had to be laid out, measured, and cut to size for the specific beds in half of the AB block, including Nick's carrot and onion experiment and Stark's Strawberry experiment.

Pear trees about to pump some iron (cement)

Now is the perfect time to weight the Pear branches, as we are past frost and with so much moisture the trees are pliable. Weighting the branches furthers our goblet design that we pruned last fall. redirecting branch growth can be done in several ways; tying the branches to guide lines, which are then tied to the trunk or ground is one way but can (if never removed) girdle the tree. Today we were using cement weights made by scouts (thanks!). This process will improve light penetration in the canopy. As we moved through the orchard weighing were needed we also thinned fruit to 1 or 2 per branch, lightening the burden to the branch and tree.

Along with laying out the irrigation lines, a team finished transplanting leeks and celery in AB1 next to Nick's experiment and at the same time another group started harvesting strawberries, carefully weighing and counting each variety. As much as we were tempted we were forbidden from eating any until this was done.

We may not like this weather but the transplants like it just fine

The irrigation took no time at all and those left to separate and loosen the seedlings for transplant, rushed to get things out of their trays for the next step. 

The only glitter I like

 Even though this spring has been wet and cold, every class I have been impressed by everyone’s spirits; no grumbling (maybe a little) and mostly laughing and making terrible yet amazing puns. Every lunch on the farm is evidence to this, we squeeze in under the canopy to eat and end up laughing. Our fearless leaders (as a few of us have come to call them) Mike and Rebecca spout out silver linings to our grumbles. This makes me think of how important a good crew of people is, to get things done but also to enjoy what you’re doing. I’m interested in exploring intentional communities and healing through teamwork and if anything this class is the perfect example.

"Many hands make light work"

Little farm of horrors!

Fancy Strawberry