Harvest and Slaughter

Today was a day of witnessing the fruits of farm labor! In the morning, we bunched vegetables for the Saturday morning farmer's market in Sorrento. I helped collect salad mix for a bit, but then I got moved to other duties when we had all the salad we needed. I gathered up 16 bunches of kale, 8 bunches of collard greens, and few bunches of carrots. Harvesting kale or collards means taking the leaves closer to the ground--if you do it right, the plant will continue to grow and provide leaves all summer. After that, I brought all the bunched out to the side of the house and gave them a cold water bath to prevent them from wilting.

After harvest, I went back to the kitchen because I was on lunch duty. It was really hot out again today, so I couldn't really fathom the idea of eating hot food. Hence, I made a cold carrot soup. I am really pleased with how it turned out. I sauteed two large onions in about 4 tablespoons of olive oil and a tablespoon of butter. I also added two medium cloves of garlic, salt and pepper. Simultaneously, I sliced and boiled about 7 extra large carrots until they were soft. Since I was in a rush, I gave the cooked carrots a cold water rinse and blended everything together with some cold water and ice. Finally, I added some fresh mint and basil I picked from the farm and a squeeze of half a lemon. It seemed like an original idea, but I found a similar recipe on the BBC. The same thing happened last week when I made egg rolls wrapped in collard greens--someone else had already done it, all the way down to the almond butter and chili flake dipping sauce.

Finally, I ended my work day by helping to move some chickens. They are going to be slaughtered on Sunday, so they needed to move from their coop to the barn so that the mobile processing truck can get easy access to them. It is harder to catch chickens than you might think! These meat birds don't move too quickly, but they sure do struggle if you try to pick them up. It was a rough job because of the heat, the weight of the birds, and the stench.


As a side-note, I have to say that I am not a fan of this breed of chicken. They are a commercial variety (I think Cornish-Rock hens) that is bred for maximum meat production. It only takes about 10 weeks for them to be plump enough to eat. These birds are so fat their legs can barely support them, and they only walk for a few steps at a time. I didn't expect that moving these particular chickens would be so gross-they spend most of their day laying around in their own feces.

To be honest, I was a bit sad to see how selective breeding could create a bird that can't even enjoy the good treatment they are getting on this farm. I mean, the whole idea is that the chickens are supposed to fertilize the hops and do a bit of pest control. But instead, they don't venture anywhere near the hops and just loiter around the food and the coop in a big, smelly cluster. In contrast, the egg-producing birds I fed the other day are graceful, active, and friendly little creatures. They take full advantage of the good treatment they get! Needless to say, I was pleased to hear that Brian is not going to get this variety of chickens next year. However, I can guarantee you that 95% of the chicken you've ever eaten was either this breed or a similar one. And most of them are not given free range access to an organic seed farm with high-quality feed and the right to keep their beaks.


After work, we went out to dinner for Patrick's birthday. It was a surprise, and I think Colleen managed to pull it off without him having any idea of what was going on! The dinner was excellent, the company was even better, and I enjoyed leaving the farm for a little bit. I have to say, Colleen and Patrick have been really great with involving me during my time here. If I WWOOF again in the future, I really hope I find hosts who are this nice and thoughtful.

Let's end with a picture of some of the Celtic artwork that's all over the farm:

Harvesting Onion Seed

The new thing I got to do today was harvest onion seed! As you know, the name of Patrick and Colleen's company is Stellar Seeds, so it makes sense that we would be harvesting some seed every once in a while. I am actually pretty lucky to get to witness this process, because it's pretty early in the season for this to happen. The farm apprentice, Graham, actually missed out on the first seed harvest of the year. He reads this blog, so he's going to be sad when he finds out!

After a rough morning of mowing and wheel hoeing, Patrick and I walked by the onions and he noticed that the seed pods were ready to be collected today. So after lunch, we all went out there with buckets and scissors to collect the pods. They showed me how to cup the pod with my hand so seeds don't fall to the ground when the plant is agitated. Also, I was instructed to take an extra 6 inches or so of stem along with the pod. This way, the few seeds at the bottom of the pod that are not completely ready can draw up some extra nutrients. This is supposed to increase your germination rates.

I have to say, as with many other plants, it's really interesting to see the seed-production phase of the onion's life cycle. Apparently this is fairly common for plants, but onions take two years to produce seed. That means that all of the young onions I've been weeding this week are actually not going to produce seed this year. Instead, they will be collected at the end of the year, put into cold storage, and planted again in the spring. Actually, Graham told me that each onion can be halved next year and then you'll get two seed producing plants out of a single onion.

Here are some flowering onion plants from a distance:



And the seed pods I collected:

Here's a row after harvesting. We'll get the rest next week after they mature a little more:


As for the rest of my day... it was mostly defined by the heat. I started an hour early today so that I could finish a bit early and avoid working during the hottest hours of the day. But it was still sweltering!

In the early evening, I met some new people. First, I met the family I'm going to help on Saturday. They have a tractor coming by to harvest/bale their hay, and then I'm going to help them with the haying process. I don't really know what I'll be doing exactly--moving it? Helping to load it onto a truck? Move it to a new field? Who knows, it will be an adventure!

Then at dinner, I met a nice couple that Patrick and Colleen invited over. I made a bit too much food yesterday, so they figured they'd have their friends over to help us get through it. One of their friends was from southern Illinois! That means that both Americans I've met while I've been here have been from Illinois. There was some pretty good conversation at dinner about climate change, factory farming, and similar issues. However, I didn't really participate much because I felt like I didn't know enough to participate, so it was better to listen and learn.

I'll leave you with another picture. This is where all of the tools and the tractor are stored:

Weeding, Cooking, Swimming

First project of the day: Pulling out lettuce from the front field that had started to bolt. Graham and I worked on this long enough to transport three carts to the pigs. When lettuce plants bolt, they change from small, compact heads of greens into tall, weedy, flowering plants. This is part of the normal life cycle of a lettuce plant, but it also makes the leaves bitter and unpalatable. However, the pigs won't turn their noses up at them:


The pigs are actually part of a very unique system that is in place on this farm. While Patrick and Colleen farm the majority of the land here, Brian and Rebecca own the farm and run a brewery on site: Crannóg Ales. It turns out that running a brewery actually partners quite well with running a farm. This, of course, makes sense when you remember that beer and cider are agricultural products. By having the brewery as part of a working farm, they are able to be fully organic and run a zero-waste operation. The spent grain that is fit for eating is fed to the pigs. The waste from the pigs helps to fertilize crops on the farm. Other organic waste that is not fit for pigs is composted. Waste water from the brewing process is used to keep the compost heap moist. Then, just like with the manure from the pigs, compost is used when growing crops. Finally, they grow their own organic hops on site, and in past years they have had a small flock of sheep that are pastured in the hops field. Sheep will eat lots of plants, but not hops. Hence, the sheep weed and fertilize the field! They've really devised an elegant system.

Here's a picture of brewery:


After we fed the sheep, we continued weeding onions (we're only about a third done) and we also mowed some pathways. Graham is off visiting his grandparents this weekend, so the rest of the mowing will be up to me. It's not bad work, except down really narrow pathways. Moving between the peas is tough because I don't want to damage the plants. Even the silly plants that thought to grow into the middle of the pathway. Plants are Patrick and Colleen's livelihood, so I don't want to risk that by mowing over anything that shouldn't be mowed over! Basically, that meant when the mowing got tough, I asked Graham to do it.

Finally, I ended my work day by cooking my first meal for everyone. Everybody takes turns making lunch and dinner. This system makes for some great sense of community and shared responsibility, and eating meals with everyone is one of my favorite parts of the day. I made a vegetarian shepherd's pie with lentils instead of beef, colcannon, kale, an a radish salad. Everything came out pretty well, but I made a little too much food. It's not the end of the world, we'll just see shepherd's pie at lunch for the next couple days.

During dinner, Patrick suggested that we all go down to the lake for a swim, which is exactly what we did. The water was freezing, but it felt very refreshing after a hot day out in the sun:

Coyote Urine: The #1 Defense Against Deer

This morning, we all started out by weeding the onions together. I had already done about a half an hour on them yesterday, so I knew how long they were going to take. There were a lot of thistles, tangles of choke weed, and tall stalks of lamb's quarter. I am not sure which weed is worse--the choke weed wraps itself around the onion stalks and if you just yank it off, you damage the plant. However, the thistles are painful, even with gloves on. This is what the bed looked like before weeding:



It took until lunch, but we were able to get it to look like this afterwards:


There has been some heat recently, which is helping the onions to bulb. Patrick said that when it's cool and rainy, the plants seem to put their energy into their leaves. However, when it gets hotter and drier, they work on their bulbs. Hence, there might be some onions soon! I am not really sure which ones are going to market or being grown for seed, but I hope we get to try some of the heirloom varieties that they are growing. One of the varieties is "rossa di milano," which is a rare variety that you can only get from a few seed providers in North America. They're supposed to be a tasty storage onion that is flat at the top, and pointy at the bottom.

After lunch, we came back and culled some garlic that has been afflicted by a nasty fungus. It seems to attack the bulb and the part of the stem that at or below the soil level. Here's what a healthy garlic plant looks like:



And here's a sick one:

When we removed these, we had to keep them separate from healthy plants. It was not safe to compost them, since that is just inviting the fungus back next year. For many people, this is the argument against organic growing--lower yields due to a farmer not having a full range of tools to fight disease. However, relative to the entire crop, we lost very few plants. It all added up to about 6 or 7 sacks that have to be disposed of off site. Since fungicide is not an option, their best defense is good crop rotation and making sure the plants get enough airflow. Across the whole farm, it's amazing to see how healthy everything is, and how few pests are affecting the plants.

One pest Patrick and Colleen have been wrestling with are a little bigger than garlic fungus. The deer have been sneaking into the field at night and nibbling on the lettuce. It doesn't appear that they've made off with too much lettuce as of yet, but if they don't get it under control, they're going to have some major crop losses. This is the first year they've had too worry too much about deer, probably because there used to be sheep on site, an electric fence around the perimeter of the property, and bison on the neighboring farm. The commotion from domestic animals and the fence most likely kept the deer away in the past, but no more.

At first, Patrick and Colleen tried sleeping in a tent at the edge of the farm where the deer appear to be entering:



Of course, this is only a temporary solution. They couldn't sleep out there forever. Therefore, Graham and I got to spend the late afternoon putting out some deterrents. We put out some 100% Certified Organic blood meal out in some plastic containers--the smell of a fresh kill apparently keeps deer at a distance. But we didn't stop there. We also got to put out some coyote urine, which also should keep the deer out:




We put the urine in some little plastic bottles that are tethered to wooden stakes at the edge of the farm. There are some holes in the bottles to let out the scent. And what a scent it is. Let me tell you, this is the foulest substance I have ever encountered in my entire life. But it was pretty expensive and stores sell out of it as fast as they get it in stock, so I think I might go back to Chicago to start a coyote urine dynasty. The stuff is liquid gold. Or golden liquid. Whatever. Here are the stakes:


Finally, if you were interested in what I wrote about local food and sustainable agriculture, you might want to check this link out: http://www.hardwickagriculture.org/. The movement is catching on! Here's another nice picture of the farm to end with:

Dabbling in Dibbling

Today, my morning started at 8:00am, bright and early after breakfast. Patrick told me that today our work would come in two phases. First, in the morning we were going to be working lettuce that they want to bring to the farmers market in the coming weeks. Also, they have some standing orders for lettuce that they deliver to local restaurants every week.

Speaking of delivering to area restaurants, this experience has really cemented in my mind the value of eating locally. It's been great seeing the role that this farm, and others in the area, play in the community. Being able to talk to your farmer every week at the market, being able to see where you food comes from, and knowing that is was produced in a safe, sustainable way--it all helps you connect with the land around you and inspires you to value the food you put into your body every day. Plus, local food means using less fuel to schlep produce across the world just because people won't pay a little more to get it from local sources. I feel like the CSA I've been doing (Genesis Growers) is a great start, but I can still do better. Community gardens are popping up in Chicago, but there certainly aren't any in my immediate neighborhood. Also, when I get back this year, I want to start going to the farmer's market more often to pick of the few things I need that I didn't get in my veggie box from the CSA. Finally, maybe I'll check out some more restaurants that serve up local food.

Anyways, back to lettuce. We started out by "dibbing." Essentially, lettuce seed was spread in some flats of dirt before I got here. Those have all begun to sprout, and we spent time separating the mess of little plants into organized rows in a separate flat. Then these little rows are given more time to grow again. Finally, when they are ready, they are transplanted out in the field.

Post-dibbling:

After Graham and I finished dibbling, we went out the field and transplanted some other lettuce plants that had already been dibbled and were ready to go in the ground. Of course, this meant we had to weed the bed first, which took a long time. I got quite a few thistle pricks in the process. This picture is a little over-exposed, sorry:


Here it is from a distance. You can barely see the little guys in there, but, surprisingly, they should be ready for harvest in about three weeks:

After we finished up the lettuce, we did some weeding in the onion bed and fed the chickens. The egg producing chickens are very agreeable little creatures. They are alert, interested in people, and pretty active. I do have to say, the chickens that they are raising for meat are a sorrier looking lot. They are large, slow, and not prone to movement. I guess they've just been bred to grow quickly and stay tender. I heard that they might be slaughtered this weekend, so I'll have to help round them up. Not a big deal as long as I don't have to eat them!

Here's another random picture that I took. I don't think I captured the image very well, but I tried:

The Lake and Picking Redcurrants

On Saturday evening, I decided to talk a walk to the lake to check it out. This whole area is connected by a series of lakes, this one being Shuswap Lake. The mountains, serene lakes, and perfect skies make for quite a view. Apparently this area is a popular place for Canadians to retire, which I can understand. In fact, these pictures were taken from a bit of shore line at a retirement community (it was the only public access road I could find around here to get to shore):





I stayed at the lake until it started getting dark. I didn't want to leave it too late because I didn't feel like it would be a great idea to walk down the Trans Canada Highway when it's pitch black. Particularly because there are not street lamps on the road.

Then this morning, I checked out a church service at St Mary's Anglican Church. I ended up being late because the time was listed incorrectly on the website. Oh, and also it was a UCC service. So really that whole operation didn't work out so well. But I caught the second half of the service. It does make me miss St John's in Chicago a bit, but I'm going to be home before I know it. Three weeks can go by very quickly.

Finally, between the breaks in the rain, I helped Patrick and Colleen pick redcurrants. They are getting married August 10th and then moving out to a new farm in the Kootenay region of British Columbia. For their wedding, the brewery owners, Brian and Rebecca, or going to make them a red currant ale to serve at the reception. Hence, we picked them 10 pounds of redcurrants to add to the ale. Patrick said that the currants give the ale a nice pink tint, and will make it suitable for a festive toast.

It took a lot longer to pick these than I expected! The last time I really had fresh redcurrants was when I was living in Oxford and I used to buy them at the farmer's market. They were a lot more sour than these ones, though. The main thing I used to do with them was cook them down, strain them, and add some sugar. Then we'd use the resulting sauce on vanilla ice cream.

The Farm

Okay, well it's finally time to start writing about the work I am doing on the farm. I arrived here at Stellar Seeds (stellarseeds.com) on July 2nd around noon. When I got in, we all had lunch and I met my WWOOF coordinators, Colleen and Patrick. They seemed great from what I had learned on the WWOOF Canada website, and they are even more pleasant in person. I also met their apprentice, Graham, one of the brewery owners, Rebecca, and a brewery employee. By the way, I'll write more about the Crannog Ales brewery and the hops farming on site after I learn a bit more about it.

The most coincidental part of the day was that the brewery employee I mentioned is actually from Chicago. She grew up in a nearby suburb to mine, and went to a rival high school. This seems to happen every time I travel--I go 2000 miles just to meet someone from Morton Grove or Crystal Lake! Anyway, everybody is extremely friendly, progressive, and thoughtful. We already had some great conversations, and I've started to learn a bit about this part of the continent.

As for the work I'll be doing--a lot of it will be weeding. In fact, we already started on Friday after lunch. Here's what the row looked like before I started:

And here it is afterwards. There was apparently some lettuce down there:



My daily routine will be starting work at 8am, working until noon, eating lunch, then working again until 5pm. A lot of times, I'll get to work with the rest of the crew, so that there's some good conversation. Every day, one person will cut out at 11am to make lunch for everyone, and someone else will cut out at 4pm to make dinner. Not everyone is a vegetarian, but since this is a vegetable growing operation, that makes up the majority of their diets.

Here's the house I'll be staying in:





After weeding for the whole afternoon, it was time for dinner. We had a nice stew that Patrick whipped up. Graham then invited me to go see some live music with him and another friend. The venue was really unique. It was an old yellow house tucked away from the road, and inside it was decorated with vintage items from old bowling alleys. The floors were formerly bowling alley lanes. The railings were constructed out of pins and bowling balls. The bands themselves were very talented (Steve Brockley and Old Mans Beard). I am often skeptical of live music, particularly when I don't know the bands, but this was a pleasant surprise. Old Mans Beard was unique because they are the first band I've ever seen where every single member of the band (including the drummer) can sing.

Finally, this morning I walked into town to check out the Sorrento Farmer's Market. Here are two views I saw along the way. I lightened the foregrounds up in photoshop, which made it look more yellow out there than it really was:



Okay, last map until I start driving home. I'm at 702 Elson Road, Sorrento, BC. Let me know if you want any seeds!


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