We're Off and Growing!

Summer has arrived on Prince Edward Island and we are pleased to have just about everything in the ground for the season.  For those of you who are not on the island this summer I have a few snapshots to share.

For those at home and those who plan to visit, we have a lot to look forward to as the summer goes on and turns into Fall.

It's still a bit early for most things (and perhaps we were a bit late this year) so the bulk of what we've planted won't be ready for a few weeks yet.  Our friends know we have good variety but not huge volume because we do most work by hand.  So if you see something you like, it's best to send us a comment or an email. We'd like to be sure you get the best of what we have to offer. I'll keep the blog updated with harvest information and buying opportunities.

We are pleased to announce we will be supplying fresh organic produce to Sand Bar & Grill at Panmure Island, PEI this summer.  Stop in for fresh, summer fare from our farm!   


Here's Some of What's On The Go:
Asparagus - (Almost Gone!)
Rhubarb - (now available)
Salad Greens - (Coming soon - in limited supply)
Sweet Peas- a favorite with the kids - coming soon
Summer Squash - Yellow Crookneck and Zucchini
Cucumbers
Yellow Beans

Broccoli
Cauliflower
Dill
Basil
Garlic
Onions
Leeks
Carrots
Beets
Potatoes
Tomatoes
Sweet Corn
Bell Pepper
Winter Squash
Pumpkins
Dry Beans
Herbs
...and more!
 (We'd love to have it all ready for you now but we gather each harvest in it's own natural time.) 

We're interested in making it easy for you to choose our locally grown and certified organic produce.  Please contact us here on the blog and let us know what you'd like. If you happen to be touring on the Points East Coastal Drive, you're welcome to stop in and visit the farm.

We've been known to let youngsters help pick something special for supper or discover fresh sweet peas right out of the pod!
We also like to answer your questions about organics, about sustainable agriculture and our work to return one small farm to production in PEI.

  

Work 'Till You Can't

I'm too tired to work anymore today.  There's plenty more to do...and it's all mine.

I'm planting and cultivating and weeding as fast as I can.  And it's hard work.  This city boy is finding his limits and the clock is ticking.  We do most of our tilling and some cultivating by small tractor.  But now I'm down to hand work in the rows.  Transplanting, cultivating, weeding.  I just don't have short cuts for that.  Partly because we don't have the tools/technique down and partly because we can't spray away our problems.

I walk the ground.  I hand weed and cultivate the rows and I learn what's going on in the field.  The potato bugs have made an arrival.  They are eating leaves and laying their bright orange eggs on the new plants. We beat the bugs last year by moving rows and scattering plantings, then staying on top of their cycle by hand picking them off and squishing the eggs. But they're onto our plants now and I've got to stay on them.

The weeds are coming in too.  Cultivating the rows loosens and aerates the soil around plants and tears up the small weeds.  It's important to get them before they overtake the corn, beans and greens.  I'm on that too.

I walk the farm every day and check the trees and the plants and the ground.  I learned to do that from one of our mentors. You see what's really happening that way - with weeds, with plants, with fertility, with soil moisture and texture.  And it reminded me of something...about me, about human nature and about machines.

When I was a lot younger I worked on a cattle ranch.  I mention that once in a while because I learned a lot from the men who ran cattle on 2400 acres of grass covered hills - the old way.  Some days I worked with the experienced men, moving the herd out of the foothills on horse back...just like in the cowboy movies.  And I learned that cowboys don't do ground work if they can help it.  They trained their horses so they could do almost any task in the saddle. The only ground work we liked was on the dirt in the corral during spring roundup.  Branding was done with an iron on a wood fire, with the sorting, and vaccinations. Even then the head man stayed on his cutting horse and sorted the cows and calves at the gate. That's the way it was done for 150 years and it was something to be part of. 

I watch the men here drive the big rigs that plant grain and potatoes and spray for bugs and till fields.  Big fields.  And they know their business.  I'm as impressed watching some of these tractor jockeys move through a field as I was watching an old cowman sidle his bridle horse up to a gate to open the fence for the herd, without touching the ground. 

So there it is.  Cowboys and tractor jockeys don't like to do ground work.  And I guess I know why.
But I don't have the luxury of being mounted for my work because I cant afford to skip the lessons I'm learning on the dirt.

There's a retired fellow down the road who puts in a beautiful garden every spring.  I watch his work because I like what he does - a clever mixture of traditional farming with a lot of good common sense use of  found materials.  He's shy about it, but he has a master's touch. And I'm pretty sure that skills like his come from the ground up. 

Goodbye God...

This story comes from the California gold rush and a young girl in San Fransisco. Her family was moving to the eastern slopes of the high Sierra Mountains on the Nevada border and the rough mining town of Bodie.

On the day she left, the little girl walked about her home and said, "Goodbye grass, I'm going to Bodie.  Goodbye sky, I'm going to Bodie.  Goodbye God, I'm going to Bodie."  Well some people say that's not what she said at all.  Some people believe she said, "Good, by God, I'm going to Bodie!"

It's spring in California. Our edible landscape lives in a yard of less than a quarter acre.  The above photo is of the blossoms on our apricot tree, a 20 year old tree that is surviving an oak root fungus attack with pruning, natural mineral fertilizer and compost.

We've lived here since 1993.  And in that time we've replaced the ornamental shrubs and trees with a wide variety of edible and food bearing plants. Our goal was to limit the irrigation and labor required by plants that produce work, but not food.

Here are our "wild" artichokes, which live in a mix of ground cover under a Mexican Fan palm tree that was planted by a scrub bluejay some years ago.  We preserved the tree and continued to compost mulch the garden beds.  You'll see ginger plants in the foreground mixed with the artichokes that are about to produce  edible flower buds. 

These are avocados on the tree.  If you buy avocados in North America, chances are they are from California, Mexico or Chile during the winter.  Imported avocados are pumped full of water and picked early for shipping.  These early avocados turn bad as they ripen, and even if you get a "good one" the flesh is hard, watery and bitter.

Our avocados, when ripe, are the texture of warm butter with a mild, nutty flavor.  Raccoons will break into our yard this time of year and get fat on these "alligator pears".  Not everyone is a fan of guacamole, but I can tell you that fresh guac. is about as good as food gets. You should try adding slices of avocado to your bacon, lettuce and ripe tomato sandwich.  Here in California, you can even get bacon and avocado on your cheeseburger...that's something you won't forget!

Now if you are making guacamole, drinking a cold lager beer, or craving a marguerita, you need fresh limes.  Most people don't know that ripe limes are yellow.  Green limes are bitter. The picture here is of our Bearss lime tree,  which provides limes for the foods we love.

This tree is tucked into a bed near our dwarf navel orange and our Jerusalem artichokes.

Every region has it's own special benefits.  Our yard in PEI produces pears, cherries and sweet apples that we love to harvest.  The point is to use your yard to feed your family the expensive fresh delicacies you love in the climate where you live.  These plants are beautiful and nurturing. The idea of decorative shrubbery is a luxury that many of us can't really  afford.  You'll either spend all your time in the yard trimming shrubs and bushes or you'll harvest supper for your family.

I'll have more photos from our edible yard in Santa Barbara and share how that influenced us to plant our kitchen garden at the farm in PEI,  a place where we can walk a few steps out the kitchen door and harvest fresh, organic food for supper.

Saying Farewell to Summer

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In the north, the seasons give way without doubt. This time of year you see the light change and the days shorten. So even as we enjoy fair fall weather it's time to make way for winter and prepare for the next spring.


Spreading manure/compost and seaweed for the next crop.


Green Manure is compost that grows in the field. This is oats and vetch.


That's a good yield of organic potatoes!

Hurricane Bill is Knockin' at the Door

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The shore of Murray Harbour.


Hop flowers are nearly ready. They smell like really fresh beer!

The Family Farm

Photo Update From Dunn Creek Farm ~


Robin Hood says, "Good Morning"


This week we made hay while the sun was shining and my brother Peter lent a hand with a pitchfork. Our old manure spreader doubled as a hay wagon. We loaded up the wagon and headed for the barn. Since we don't have a hay baler, we put the hay up loose. Using a hay fork I pitched the hay from the wagon on the barn floor to the hay loft above.


We visited Orwell Historic Village and I stopped in at the blacksmith shop to sharpen my Buck knife.


We visited the one room school house at Orwell. The leather strap on the desk made it clear that teachers could deliver swift justice. And in this school, your teacher might be 17 years old.


Free kittens in the stock barn. Dad had to be a big meanie and say no to another cat. They were really cute though.

Friday Podcast

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Pictures and text will be added tonight...please check back soon.
I'm out planting beans before the rain comes!

All's Well on the Farm

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Greetings from PEI!


Snapshot at sunset from our lane of the home across the road.
Hi Malcolm and Karen!

Boys out of school at the swimmin' hole - our pond on Dunn Creek

Pumping out the old well. We'll have the old hand pump working soon (I hope!)

This old well still puts out hundreds of gallons of spring water per hour...

...and the water is cold enough to chill beer to the perfect temperature!

Teenager emailing friends in SB. Army surplus field blouse makes good farm wear!

Wishing you well - wherever you may be! I'll be posting more soon!

Coming Home From Away

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Lupines along the shore in Sturgeon


Susan Weeding the GIANT rhubarb outside our barn


The boys and their bikes.

Well summer is here. And father's day was a sweet success. The boys gave me their cards and a fine present I'll be using to grill over the pit this summer.

We've had some ups and downs but that's nothing. Folks, when you leave your every day behind and plant yourself somewhere different you have a chance to see the world with new eyes.

Islanders occupy a particular place in the world and their pride of place makes it clear that if you're from "away" you can never truly be an "islander". But you can be a good neighbor, a friend, an asset to the community and someone that the folks on the road will wave to on the way past. That's good enough for me.

As I drove my tractor through the field the other day, a neighbor waved and beeped his horn on the way by. I took it as a simple note of approval like a friendly wave in town. I was out in the field working my farm and that made this passing islander glad enough to beep his greetings.

We aren't skilled farmers or traditional islanders. But I always hope we're seen as people who love and appreciate this community. We aren't here by birth - we're here by fate. And I think that because we've come here to work a heritage farm in this province people in the neighborhood are willing to give us a chance. That's all I could ever ask.

A friend who moved to Santa Barbara once noted that my children were lucky. Because they were second generation born in Santa Barbara, they would always have the honor of calling themselves Barbarenos - a distinction that goes back to Spanish California. You see we too have a particular pride of place.

My sons are 13th generation Americans. Our ancestors were among the first Europeans to plow fields in colonial Massachusetts and New hampshire. My mother's family walked west to the Kansas prairie behind covered wagons. So what are we doing removing ourselves to Eastern Canada?

We 're no longer English. We're not Spanish. We're not Canadians. But we are free people who have chosen to cast our lot here in the Maritimes. Why? Well, fate is hard to define. But whispers from the past offer a suggestion. Many of the folkways described by my father's father still live here. And my mother's mother actually foretold this place in an incredibly detailed free-hand embroidery of our farm which she gave to my mother as a wedding present in April,1943 - 57 years before we came to the island. So it could be lots of things that brought us here. Or it could just be that we've finally come home from away.

I observed the other day that Hollywood has put an obscene premium on wealth and beauty. But God must love plain people because he surely made an awful lot of us. On PEI, I feel comfortable with God's people. Sure, I'm proud to be a Californian. And I'll gladly trade on the magic of the name. But what makes this place special is that I'm free to be who I am.

When I fall on my face people will laugh. My pride will be hurt a little. But if I'm willing to swallow a bit of my California pride, some smiling islander will offer a hand up and have a laugh with me.

I'm the child of a benign and sunny coast come to a place that strips shiny exteriors to a weather beaten finish. I can only hope that when my shiny paint fades my outsides will harden up. And I hope that my outlook will remain as sunny and warm as the people I know who make this island their particular place of pride and hope.

New Friday Podcast From the Farm

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Hey there...

Big news for me is that my family is in the air, flying overnight on Air Canada from Los Angeles to Toronto - then to Ottowa and then on to Charlottetown, PEI!

I'll be picking them up Saturday afternoon here! I'm so excited I even re-finished the wood floor in the kitchen!

I also bought BB's for the boys BB rifles and I hung a new screen door for Susan...kind of a lame 20th anniversary present maybe? (I wonder which anniversary PVC vinyl goes with?)

It rained all day today, so I was glad I got the potatoes planted, and our WOOFER, (worker on organic farms) Carole, planted the sweet peas by hand yesterday. Carole also vacumed the upstairs, made the boys beds, cleaned one of the bathrooms and did laundry! Thank goodness for good friends who understand our particular form of madness. I made us dinner and she retired to her little borrowed cabin on the shore across the road.

Then I went wild with the floor cleaning and refinishing.

Now here is a real PEI story. My Wi-Fi went out last night. I was sending audio files back to Santa Barbara when it died. So this morning I called local tech support. I politely asked for help since I had a producer in Santa Barbara and another one in New York City hoping to take delivery on some audio tracks...could they please help?

The owner of my ISP came to the farm this afternoon to solve the problem. Now, Wayne Phalen only has one arm, but he's fearless and able enough to get the job done. Next thing I know, Donny is setting up the ladder so Wayne can climb up to the second storey roof top. Wayne decides that maybe the antenna isn't quite up to snuff and the trees, which have leafed out since the installation a month ago, are blocking reception. So, he unscrews the antena mount, re-attaches it to the roof, checks the signal and deems it OK for now. Wayne says that he'll call Gordon and get him out here as soon as possible to install a better antenna.

Did I mention that Wayne was standing on my second storey roof, relocating my antenna in a driving rain storm - with one hand? I was fuckin' impressed boys.

New Friday Podcast From The Farm!

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Cherry blossoms in the sky!

From the Farm

Some days, like yesterday, everything goes wrong. The washer had a leak. The car wouldn't start. It was about 60 degrees and REALLY WINDY and showery! I muddled about. I went to Montague and bought groceries. I grumped and growled and went to bed.


Clouds on Dunn Creek


Lilacs and Apples coming into blossom.

Today was perfect. I picked a few pounds of asparagus. I harrowed a field. I worked in the greenhouse and composted some asparagus beds. I weeded, I walked a hay field, I visited my neighbor and had a belt of fine single malt scotch.

Now I'm writing in the shop studio and I'm being dive bombed by these huge dumb clumsy brown beetles.

The frogs are peeping. A coyote is barking in the back field and at 10:00 PM there's still light in the sky from a long northern sunset.

Life is good again!

The Farm Puts on the Green

Walking up the lane these days, one is greeted by the gurgling chatter of Dunn Creek running into the pond. There's at least one pair of black ducks nesting there. Sometimes I'll see a great heron standing in the lane too.


(click to enlarge)
The view from the top of our little peach orchard looking toward our neighbors and the old church. Sorta defines pastoral landscape.
.
We'll be plantin' spuds. I hand cut the larger potatoes into halves to get a few more plants .



These are the red potatoes. Now they go in the basement for a few days until the cuts are dried over and more or less sealed. This helps prevent infection of the seed in the ground. Each piece has "eyes" from which stems will sprout. We don't grow a lot of potatoes each year. The market will only support about a dollar a pound even for organics that are un-sprayed and hand tended as ours are. If you've ever dug potatoes by hand you know it doesn't take long to realize that a dollar a pound isn't worth your trouble. But if you harvest for yourself and a few friends - you will taste the difference.

We also have an established bed of chives and I found some leftover parsley seed from last spring. So we'll have new potatoes with butter and herbs and won't they be good!

You can grow potatoes in So.Cal. In fact you could plant them in Feb or March. You'll probably want to use raised beds of improved soil to avoid our heavy clay. Add a bit of sulfur to moderate our "sweet" soil p.h. and you might need to put down some wire to keep the gophers out.

Update at 7:30 PM - If you want to plant and grow ANYTHING organically in SB - go see my friend Matt at Island Seed and Feed in Goleta. He'll help you with everything you need.
And please mention that I suggested you stop by.

A Few More From The Road Home

The Big Yellow Truck on Poverty Beach, Murray Harbour North, PEI on May 12, 2009.
We arrived on the evening of the 11th and drove 4,610 miles from Santa Barbara California.
It was quite a ride.

Our last run was from Bangor Maine to the Border, then on into New Brunswick. The shot above is "Down East" Maine on Route 9. We crossed the border at Milltown and had no problem importing the truck. I had all my papers in order which made it simple. President Obama's picture was on the Wall in the US Customs office, (which looks like a drive up / take out place).
Then we crossed the Saint Croix River to Canada Customs. We chatted a bit and got an earful about US politics, the election of President Obama and George Bush. You don't have to get very far outside the States to find out just how much the rest of the world dis-likes our former president.

Here we are coming over the Confederation Bridge from New Brunswick to PEI. The bridge is 8 miles long. Yup, that's a long bridge. We had been invited to supper with friends so our first meal home was surf and turf (steak and lobster) with Greg and Angela near Montague.

Yes, it's lobster season on the island. But prices have collapsed and the fishermen are in trouble.
The word going around now is that lobster is selling cheaper than bologna.

I got the lawn mowed, the car started up and the tractor ready to work. Next morning (Wed.) I woke to a frosty white blanket in the yard.


Annie confronts the frost. It warmed up into the high '60's later in the day but as you can see, mid May or not - it can still get cold at night.

I showed Peter how to hook up the disc harrow and start a parttern in the front field. He was

doing fine so I left him at it. He "made a good job of it" and so we got our first ground broken for the season. I plan to put in a "green manure" crop in here. Peter flew back to Santa Barbara yesterday (Thurs.) so I went from Charlottetown to York and picked up our seed order at Vesey's then headed back down east to Murray Harbour North.

Our road trip story is over, but now the farm work has begun. I'll keep you posted here, so do check back in and visit from time to time. Visiting is important here on the island. You'll be expected to stay a bit and get all caught up on the news. I'll put the coffee on.

Planning Your Summer Supper - In January

A visitor I was talking to this week asked how things were on the farm.

"Cold" I said.
"So what happens when you're not there?"
"The farm sleeps"

And while the farm sleeps we begin the work that will result in all the good meals we'll enjoy next summer on our farm in PEI.

We're looking at seed catalogs and browsing through the news on organics. I realized today that I could build a link into this blog that would help me and also provide a useful reference for others who may be thinking ahead to planting season.

I've linked the OMRI list to the resources of this blog...partly so I can hit it at a moments notice for product information and partly to make it more available to readers who stop by to visit. If you're planing on doing a little gardening or food growing of your own this year, I suggest you check this site for organic products you can use on your own - and maybe find some superior answers to your plant pest and disease problems.

Make Friends with a Farmer. Here's Why...

Published online today in the New York Times.
This is what sustainable agriculture is all about.

"Farmer In Chief"

Urban North America is about to be reconnected to food supply issues.