November: time to review the season

Class on Wednesday, November 9th, we were in the sustainable agriculture lab again. We continued with the season in review, looking at what went well and what could be improved upon. Our harvest by weight showed the squash and potatoes being the largest harvest, not surprising.

For next year, the class is thinking of trying Spaghetti Squash and Blue Kuri Kabocha Squash and not so many pumpkins. The Orange Summer Kuri and the Galeux d'Eysines did well as they were sweet and good for eating. The corn didn't take well, most likely because of the high wire worm population in the field. We tried the variety Luscious but were not happy with it, so next year will probably be Peaches & Cream as it is sweet and very popular. In the Terrace garden, we somehow got a melon plant in with the summer squash and it did well so next year the class will probably grow some melons. The Hakurei Turnip is white with a crisp texture, nice for eating raw. Once people tried it, it became popular so next season the class will definitely grow more. We tried sweet potato not knowing if it would be warm enough for it, but it seemed to do ok. So the class will try it again next season, planting it earlier than we did this year. The spring was really warm and made it hard to grow a lot of the greens because they like cooler weather and they just bolted. We planted too many beans for the size of our class and we couldn't keep up with the harvest and most of it got tiller under. Not a loss, as it makes a good nitrogen fixer and organic matter.

We collected more seed from the hulless pumpkins for the trial.

A inexpensive oil press was purchased to extract the oil from the seeds, but it didn't work well so.

We did figure out that the seeds were approximately half oil to half meal and the amount of oil worked out to be about two percent of the weight of the pumpkin.

 

 

But before pressing, the seeds needed to be roasted.

 

 

 

Out at the Orchard, the garlic we planted is starting to grow and the cover crops are doing well.

 

It's a little sad that the Agroecosytems Management classes are coming to an end, as it has been a lot of fun, a great group of people to work with, and a great learning experience. Part of it has been hard work - digging up potatoes, some parts a bit monotonous - picking beans, learning that tractors (even though they use fossil fuels) do certain jobs in a fraction of the time - tilling the beds (priceless!) and honestly I personally would not be able to do the physical work for very long before being worn out. I think life is about balance, and it is especially true for agriculture. Farming sustainably is not about going backwards, it's about looking at the whole picture and seeing what we are doing wrong for the environment and what we can do to work within the environment/nature. Learning about the natural ecosystems and how they work. By doing things like farmscaping, providing habitat for the native predators of the pests on the farm instead of using insecticides that tend to kill a wide range of insects the bad and the good.  Just to have the pest populations bounce back faster than the predator populations, meaning you have to continue to use insecticides creating an unhealthy vicious cycle. There is still so much to learn about sustainable farming, and this program is a great place to start.

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Life in the Rain: Sustainable Agriculture in the Winter on the 'Wet' Coast

Class Date: October 26th 2016

Even though fall and winter are often the times when those who are not involved in Agriculture think the farmer has time off, and the weather is often miserable, there is always something to do when running a farm. Therefore, instead of doing outside work, we did some inside work and then had a quick walkthrough of what had been done on the terraces over the last couple of weeks. 

Our first task inside was cutting open some of the hull-less pumpkins that we had grown at the Orchard and calculating how productive the plants had been. Although it seemed that most vines only produced one pumpkin, a few vines produced more than one pumpkin. However, counting the number of pumpkins from each plant was not to be our method of calculating productivity. Our method of calculating productivity was to count the number of seeds in each pumpkins, since these pumpkins are harvested for their seeds to create pumpkin seed oil. Once we got the pumpkins opened in half, we measured the length and width of one of the halves, then halved that piece again and removed the seeds from one of the pieces. The pumpkin, now in quarters, already previously weighed, was given to the pigs at the TFN farm so as not to waste any of the delicious tasting seeds or any other part of the nutritious pumpkin. The collected seeds were then rinsed and weighed; they will be weighed again once they have been dried down. A seed oil press was to arrive for our use in a few days, so it might be possible to squeeze some of the seeds next week! 

There had been two different seed sources that the pumpkins had come from (Austria, apparently the location that the variety had been developed, and another source), and there was a noticeable difference between the two sources. The pumpkins produced from the Austrian seed source were shorter and rounder in appearance while the pumpkins from the other seed source were taller and narrower with more prominent striations running parallel down the side of the pumpkins. There was also a difference in the taste of the seeds. The Austrian seeds were sweeter tasting than the seeds from the pumpkins from the other source. 

A lovely example of our Austrian Hull-less Pumpkins

Once we had cut up and removed seeds from several pumpkins, we went outside and down to the terraces for half an hour or so and walked around to see what had been done. 

Although the terraces didn’t look as green as lush as they had been during the summer, there was still an awful lot going on. The dye plants that had been planted during the summer seemed to be faring the cool and wet last few weeks rather well, although the second planting of peas that had been done didn't look to be doing as well. However, there were several healthy looking broad bean plants who did not seem bothered by the weather at all!

Some of the Dye plants on the Terraces

The rapidly-growing Broad Bean plants

The row covers that had been placed on much of the terraces only a few weeks back half many wonderful surprises underneath them. Young scallions and lettuces were doing rather well, although the scallions were suggesting that a high tunnel might be better for their production rather than a medium weigh row cover. There had been several varieties of lettuce planted, and while we were admiring the plants there was some discussion of harvesting techniques for lettuces during the heavy production times. 

The Scallions underneath their row covers

A wide variety of lettuces under row cover

We then moved over and had a look at the rice plants that had been growing nearby. Masa, our resident rice expert, talked briefly about his recent harvest experiences and how the rice plants seemed to have done fairly well on the terraces. 

Moving down to one of the lower terraces, Mike pointed out that the cover crop that had been sewn several days back was coming up, but not at the pace he had been hoping for. There was then a lengthy discussion about how to incorporate the centre pathway down each terrace into the production cycle. 

Back towards the stairs, we lifted some the lower row covers to reveal the sweet potato greens that had been somewhat of a hit at the Tuesday Farmers market during the later half of the summer. Mike had mentioned that it would soon be time to mow off the tops of the sweet potatoes before the first frost hit and the tops began to deteriorate. 

Sweet Potato greens EVERYWHERE

Mountain Spinach under row cover

The most interesting part of walking through the terraces that day, for this author at least, was seeing the final row cover pulled back and seeing little red plants growing. These were “Mountain Spinach”, as Mike called them, a naturalized plant here in Canada, with a salty spinach-like taste and a hardier behaviour to warm weather. It would be interesting to see how this item would sell at the farmers market. 

Although the Kale looked fantastic, it had a heavier aphid infestation than would have been desirable for market (although there were several mummified aphid, suggesting natural aphid predation) and didn't taste as good as it could have been. 

After our walk outside, we went back inside and had a short discussion about the future of a wash station at the Orchard property. Several wonderful suggestions came about as a result of the discussion concerning the design and the location of the wash station, including one mock-up of the station itself that this author would love to see put into practise in future. Power location and ease of transportation of goods was also discussed during this time. There was a mention of poultry on the orchard in the near future, which has gotten this author very excited about the possibly of animal production on the Orchard. 

More details about what we do in the coming weeks with these and other projects will be up on this page when the next blog post comes. Please stay tuned!