The big news this week was the success of the Celebration of Food event organized by Jennie Rideout, a friend and a masters program student at Laurier Brantford. This event was for the CSA sharers at our farm. Jennie had organized this and had made contact with Liaison College, a school for chefs here in Brantford who were persuaded to be a part of the event as a part of their school course. Five student chefs and two instructors planned and cooked a meal partly made up of ingredients from the farm … veggies, beef, lamb, milk and eggs. We had thought they were going to use only ingredients from the farm but it turned out otherwise and am unsure why. The meal was excellent none the less and all those in attendance seemed in agreement on that point.
The chefs did all the work of meal preparation but there was considerable other work needed for which we have many volunteers to thank; Jennie first, of course, for getting it organized and for helping with weeding and with general cleanup moving stacks of lumber among other things; Rob Feagan and Max Feagan for the construction of a lovely roomy outhouse built as solid as a brick one for sure; Jake, Max’s friend, who dedicated the better part of a day in assisting with the building of the loo; Rob Feagan for much other work organizing, getting stuff, and being the man behind the successful effort to erect a tarp canopy over the eating area in a pretty stiff breeze; Peter Farrugia for bringing out supplies, eating utensils and dishes, being available as an extra hand when needed and being the co-conspirator, along with Rob in the erection of the canopy; Bree Akesson for donating some of her honey and doing some running around to get last minute items and being a stalwart member of the canopy up putting team; Paul Mathers for scaling to great heights to make critical tie offs to the canopy and; I’m forgetting who else, I apologize for not mentioning you by name, but thank you too for being a part of this great effort; all hands involved were much needed. The rain of the morning did not return as was threatened, in the afternoon and, except for that stiff breeze, the weather was perfect.
We must also say thank you to all of the CSA veggie sharers who were able to come. We are considering the possibility of doing another gathering of sorts, perhaps a potluck farm day on a Saturday afternoon in late September. Maybe we can get more of you out then too. I am always greatly impressed by the wonderful things that people tell me they have done with the food that we have grown, and hopefully we could get you to bring a little of these great dishes to a pot luck. But all that is only now just at the preliminary thinking about stage. Any body have wants or suggestions ?
The admission ticket to the event was suggested as $5, or $10 for families, as a farm fund raiser. We had suggested that we could use the money to help obtain another single row horse drawn cultivator., so we will have to start asking around as to the price and availability. They were somewhat commonly available just last year so hopefully we’ll be able to get one. The intention is to rig one with a particular set of tools suited for one range of jobs and to rig the second with another set of tools to do very different jobs. The problem with having one cultivator and changing the tools on the beams is that it takes quite a bit of time to just make the changes, at the very best it would be a half hour, but probably a bit longer … especially if something breaks or goes missing. Then once installed it must be adjusted to do the job. and readjusted and likely readjusted and after that a test run is done and it might need readjusting once or twice more. On the other hand it might take just ten minutes to do the change and it will be perfect and … not likely though. So with two machines,it is a matter of dropping the heel chains from the one walking the horses ’round and hooking the heel chains to the second machine.
Weather has mostly been o.k. for moisture and day time temperatures, but too many nights are really not warm enough for some veggies, peppers in particular are showing signs of stress from too much cold. The recent very hot weather is really much to the benefit of most of the veggies. We are still doing reseeding and transplanting and we really need to do a whole lot more weeding as weeds are starting to take over just a bit too much in lots of places.
Thank you to all of those who have been out doing weeding and planting in the garden, the work done by the volunteers and the working shares in our garden has been vital in our being able to harvest what we have. I cannot emphasize that near enough. You get us inspired, give us great company and conversation. Thanks !
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Devon Acres Organic Farm 