Starting Seeds and A Few Random Musings...

We recently set aside a day for completing some extensive seed starting activities.   Last Friday Colleen, Leigh, Natalia, Jocelyne and Jean managed to assemble 300 soil blocks containing seeds of such things as onions, leeks, celery and celery root, strawberry spinach, broccoli, thyme, marigolds and Falstaff brussel sprouts.  Now the plant stands are full of flats of (hopefully) sprouting seeds.  We’re off to a good start for the coming planting season.  Much now depends on the weather.
We have been experiencing some unseasonably warm weather here in Nova Scotia.  Yesterday’s high temperature of 20 Celcius apparently set a record for warm temperatures in the month of  March.  Is this a good thing?  Only time will tell.  It is tempting to see it as an opportunity to get a jump on the growing season, but then it wouldn’t be totally out of the question for us to get a sudden storm near the end of March and have a load of snow dropped on us.  We are also assured of having at least a few more frosty nights so no rash moves will be made towards early plantings.
Mount Saint Vincent University’s Community Garden recently hosted an Incredible Community Supper as part of Select Nova Scotia’s initiative to bring more visibility to locally-grown, seasonally available Nova Scotia produce.    The menu for the evening included a variety of soups (curried squash and carrot, beef stew, borscht, and seafood chowder) all made using seasonal, local produce and fresh herbs grown in the MSVU Community Garden’s indoor herb garden. Jean was invited to be a guest speaker and discussed Lake City Farm’s urban farming operation, local food and food security issues.  Proceeds from the “pay what you can” evening went to support MSVU’s Community Garden.
We experienced a bit of a transportation crisis last January.  Our faithful old green sedan died and with its loss we no longer had any means of towing our utility trailer, which we use for carting equipment and manure around.  After a short search,  during which we contemplated the purchase of a small truck, we ended up with another 4 door sedan and it even came with a trailer hitch!  We are now back in business as far as trailer towing goes, but we aren’t ruling out another, more utilitarian vehicle,  perhaps a smaller pickup truck.
Happy farming.

Planting Time Draws Near On Lake City Farm

That time of year again.

Although we haven’t exactly been idle during the winter months, what with trying to figure out what worked last season and planning a new season’s crop plantings, activity is definitely beginning to pick up at Lake City Farm.

Still lacking warm greenhouse space nearby, we have rehabilitated our old lighted plant stand and set it up in the dining room. This will be the temporary home for a few hundred seedlings of various kinds for the next few months. We are hoping to solve the greenhouse issue this year but haven’t come up with a final plan that will work in our limited space.

We did some preliminary preparation of a new growing bed late last fall, and so if we have no more additions for this year we will be farming four locations this season. We are planning for a smaller CSA membership this year and with the addition of another garden we anticipate that this will make for fuller CSA boxes throughout the harvesting season.  Last year we found that 20 weeks was a little too long for us to provide a reliable harvest and so this year the CSA season will run for 16 weeks.  Accordingly, we have reduced the CSA membership from $400 to $320  (that’s $20 per week for 16 weeks).

We are looking forward to our first harvest Lake City Farm grown strawberries this season from plantings last year. This year may also see the addition of some fruit trees, but these plans haven’t been finalized.

On a related note, momentum is building across Canada for the legalization of backyard fowl. Initiatives are cropping up in more and more cities. Locally, the city is considering a pilot project of limited scope to see how well it works. Personally I don’t see the issue as being that complicated. A limit of say three to five hens per family and not located right under your neighbour’s back deck. No problemo, as they say. How this might eventually play into an urban farm CSA operation like Lake City Farm is hard to say. Fresh eggs from your neighbour’s backyard flock? Who knows?

Here’s to a great new growing season on the farm.