FarmON in the North: Sep 22, 2010

Week 1, August 16, 2010:
Heart & Soil Gardens and FarmYard Gardens

Our crew of interns, Eat Local staff, community food workers, and interested public (roughly 20 of us) left on our mini-bus on a glorious morning from Eat Local Sudbury on Larch St. to our first stop in Chemsford.

Heart & Soil Gardens (my place!) is a big backyard garden where Jerusalem Artichokes, radishes, cherry tomatoes, flowers, and salad crops are grown for market.

We toured the back, and talked about successional baby salad greens cropping - folks had a lot of great questions and ideas.

The other part of the operation is a sprout grow room where sunflower, pea and buckwheat sprouts are grown in trays of soil.

Participants learned about how to sprout their own soil grown seed varieties and tasted some sprouted wheat bread during the coffee break.

The next stop was the FarmYard Gardens site with our host farmer, Dillon Davekis.

Dillon showed us her diverse flock of laying/meat hens housed in a straw bale insulated converted hen house.

Then we toured Foodshed's FarmYard Gardens project garden where 13 interns this year learned how to grow vegetables, learning from Dillon and Project Coordinator Lark Fairgrieve.

Some of the interns were on hand to show us their hard work and talk a bit about what they have learned.

We ended the tour with a walk of the rest of the property and a look at Dillon's amazing 'wall' of raised beds (helps to have a hubby in the earthmoving business!).

After snacks, we hopped back on our mini-bus provided by Lockerby Taxi and returned to Eat Local.

Week 2, August 23, 2010:
Creative Meats and Dalew Farms

The theme of last week's tour was generally vegetables, and this week we decided to focus a little on the meat side of the farming world. The first stop was Creative Meats, a cooperatively owned abbatoir in the Warren area (East of Sudbury) where many local meat producers have their animals slaughtered.

We met our host Gilles in the storefront part of the operation where their homemade value-added products are sold along with other grocery items. We then had to put on hairnets and plastic aprons in order to tour the rest of the facility.

Lookin' good....

Okay, sorry, just one more....!

It was fascinating to be led through the entire process - from the slaughter to the packaging - by such a knowledgeable and thoughtful manager. All aspects of the process were closely monitored for contamination and the slaughter designed to cause the animals the least amount of stress.

While such an experience may be distasteful to some, it is an important step in our local food system, and a necessary education for every meat eater, in my opinion.

The next stop on our tour this week was Dalew Farms, in Lavigne (South of Verner). Dave and Chantal (with help from little Jake!) Lewington were our tour guides here.

First Dave put us all in his cold storage facility (very welcome on a hot day!) as part of his talk on small to mid scale farming tools. This is a storage container adapted with a refrigeration unit that is very cost efficient.

Here's Dave showing us some of his tools including a homemade row spacing tool that can be walked on without compacting the soil.

Then we toured the rest of the market garden area where vegetables are grown for the CSA program, Eat Local Sudbury, and for the stall they have set up on the property.

Black plastic is used for several crops, especially those that need a lot of heat - seen here is a plot of strawberries. The plastic also helps greatly with the suppression of weeds.

Afterwards we toured the fields by tractor and Dave shared his rotational grazing method with us while we watched the pigs eating compost - good family fun!

After questions and snacks, we headed back to Sudbury. Another great tour - thanks Dave and Chantal!

Week 3, August 30, 2010:
LoonSong Garden

Thanks to Orest for his photo and account of the LoonSong Garden Tour:

Thanks for the opportunity to share my photo and as I type the story that accompanies it I'm reminded of that wonderful free trip to LoonSong Garden not so long ago courtesy of Eat Local Sudbury and FarmON Alliance (Amy Hallman--coordinator).

Some 25-odd gardeners, future farmers, students and adventurers enjoyed the hospitality and knowledge of our hosts, Paul Salanki and Heather Thoma. Did I mention it was a freebie for participants? Thanks Amy.

The school bus arrived at LoonSong mid-morning, dropping us off at an organic grain and vegetable farm on Manitoulin Island. Over a period of four or five hours we learned about such things as Community Shared Agriculture (CSA farming), improving tillable land via cover cropping and succession planting, grain milling, greenhouse and vegetable growing, tool selection, recycling dirty oil and even beekeeping.

Lunch in the shade that hot, hot day was a treat with popcorn and organic cranberry juice provided by Amy and fresh cantaloupe from Dalew Farms thanks to Dave and Chantal Lewington (whose farm in Lavigne some of us had the pleasure of visiting the previous Monday). Before leaving Manitoulin we stopped at Farquar's Ice Cream Bar in Little Current for some very welcome treats.

That day's excursion was the third and final trip offered by Eat Local Sudbury and FarmON Alliance this year. I was fortunate enough to make two of them. I learned a lot (like cover cropping my garlic beds right after harvesting with nitrogen-fixing legumes like peas and beans--which I plan to do next year), made some new friends and generally had a great time--hope we do it again next year, and if we do, hope to see you there.

Orest #332

Here's a few more of my pictures of the day: