July flown by

Ok, I know..I've been a very negligent blogger. About 6 weeks has flown by in a roller coaster of mid summer neverending to do lists. And honestly there hasn't been a spare moment for the blog. The 3 months of gst paperwork backed up in a pile at my elbow, due today, is testament to that.

The strawberries owned me for several weeks. Twice a day they needed picking before the slugs and birds claimed them. MMMM, juicy sweet organic berries, they flew off my tables at the farmers market, I made them into strawberry cake, strawberry milkshakes, strawberry jam...every evening Jimmy sat hulling and slicing them for the freezer. Glad that's over but I miss them in all their fresh abundance.

The kids came home from Yellowknife to visit, so wonderful to see them. They buried their beloved little dog Leroy beneath our old apple tree. Always so sad to lose a faithful old dog.

Every sunday in July was perfectly sunny for our farmers market, in fact it has been perfect weather from the start. My weeks have become a predictable cycle of wednesday - make granola, thursday dig new potatoes, friday - pick wash, weigh, bag all the salad greens, chard, and spinach. Pick nasturtiums and johnny jump ups from the new flowerbed to pretty up the salads,, pick peas and beans, put the chick peas in water to soak overnite. Saturday - clean the cottages for the next tenants, make the hummus, pull carrots, beets, onions, cut broccoli and herbs. And tomorrow morning before market - pick cukes and zuchinni in case they grow a bit more overnite. Monday, Tuesday, catch up on the weeding and re planting succession crops like spinach and lettuce.
The market seems to be growing more popular every week. I really enjoy presenting good healthy food to people who appreciate fresh, local and organic.
One of my favorite vendors is Pizza Del Fuego. They pull in with this great little wood fired brick oven on it's own little trailer, and they make the most incredibly delicious thin crust pizza. My weekly lunch treat.

Avery said goodbye today after 3 weeks in St Martins. I will miss his six year old gap toothed smile. He loves his pal Stormy as much as ever. His family comes every summer from Ontario.

My birthday was mid month and I was too busy to give it a thought, but my beloved, unbeknownst to me had the whole market serenade me with a box of vendor Derrick's sinfully delicious chocolate truffles. As if that wasnt enough, when I got home I found this apple cider press on the porch! Apparently he had been trying to buy it for me from a local guy for the past 4 Christmasses and birthdays, must have worn him down.

St Martins has a Farmers Market !

We thought at times it would never come together, but after many months of steps forward and back, the pieces have fallen together. Location issues, liability issues, so many complications, but that is now all behind us and what a great first week we had ! I sold out of granola, kale chips and radishes and sold the last bag of mixed salad greens to the ice cream lady on the way home. We have 14 indoor vendors and several including me, outdoors. A nice variety of products from baking to meat pies, German shnitzel and sausages, thai food, chocolate truffles to die for, organic veggies, jewelry and crafts, and artisan soaps.

We were blessed with a sunny warm day and a clear view of the sparkling Bay of Fundy in the distance.

Tomorrows market has taken 2 days of preparation, so much picking and washing of spinach and salad greens. I cant imagine how I did this in the 70's in Fredericton without a salad spinner.

Here is my new right hand man, Zachary putting the finishing touches on a deluxe compost pile, saving my creaky old back. He raked up a wagonload of grass clippings, emptied the chicken bedding/manure bin, and rebuilt the pile making alternate layers of grass and chicken doo. I think with the green/brown mix it should heat up and cook along nicely to make some A1 compost for fall.

A month of weather woes

Surely we must have broken records for lack of sunshine in May. I think I remember one and a half days when it wasn't raining, foggy, drizzley or cloudy. And the slugs loved it. And they multiplied and multiplied, so my early morning ritual became don the rubber gloves and saunter thru the gardens doing slug patrol. Into a pail with salt water they went, by the dozens and dozens. I started prowling about at 11 at night with a flashlight and my trusty pail. Horrible nasty creatures, so vile even the laying hens wont eat them.

May had its good points however, like a Mother's Day visit to Corn Hill Nursery for a great lunch of real food, and a trunkful of plants, hardy roses, raspberries, black currants, and coming home, a terrific roadside sale of perennial flower plants dirt cheap.

Our next wwoofers, Armandine and Richard from France joined us and we tackled loads of garden chores, setting out tomatoes in the greenhouse when it rained,

setting out plants outside when it stopped..

Everything was covered immediately before it could be chomped on by the slugs.

A family with a 4 year old came by to visit. The little boy was impressed with all the ice cream buckets in the garden and asked wide eyed, "Wow! Are you growing ice creams?"

The little meat king chicks arrived and Freckles loved them immediately. 21 days before pickup day at the feed store we borrowed some fertilized eggs from the farm next door and put them under Freckles who had been broody for a week or more. On day 21 several were beginning to hatch and make peeping sounds, which causes a hormonal shift in the hen to change her from setting mode to mothering mode.. They all went with us in a box to the feed store where we picked up 8 chicks, a day old, and slipped them into the box. Freckles thought, "Great! Instant family!" and pushed them all under her wings. The neighbor got his hatchlings back and Freckles was none the wiser. One of the best things about meat kings is that they will eat slugs.

And now we have our last wwoofer for the spring season, Konstantin from Germany. A wonderful lad who cheerily tackles any job that comes along.

He was exceedingly cheery when we put his very first lobster in front of him! I think we enjoyed watching him figure out how to eat it as as much as he did chowing it down.

First week of May projects

A huge dump truck unloaded this pile of topsoil into our prepared flower bed (sort of into). Our valiant wwoofers shoveled and raked it into place, until it was all tidy and ready to plant.

Tall perennials like hollyhock and sweet peas will go in the back, then cosmos, lilies and dahlias. There will be lots of room for edibles like nasturtiums and johnny jump ups to pretty up my restaurant salads.

We finished boarding in the roof of the log cabin and worked on the gable ends.

Tess got an all over haircut from the scissor wielding girls. She is due for a bluegrass transplant to fix that receding hairline.

Alina cleaned out the dead leaves and sticks from last fall, that were clogging up the pond.

More potatoes got planted, the weather still unseasonably cool with much too frequent rain.

The crew put together the trellis for the scarlet runner beans, which I planted this morning. They are always so pretty covered with red blossoms and alive with hummingbirds.

Dr Brian came to listen to Big Red's vitals, finding dirt in the gas a likely cause of her loud and rather startling backfiring.

There's always the never ending transplanting to do when the rain starts again.(The red ring is to pass the hose through to keep it off the plants)

The girls cut out new mesh fabric covers for the ice cream buckets that will protect the newly set out transplants from slugs, cutworms, and cabbage moths.

The fence for the meat hens was rebuilt, ready for the chicks arrival later this month.

The carpenters learned how to put on 3 in one roofing shingles.

..and posed with Prince Charming in the doorway of his new house.

      Our wwoofers left today on their way to new adventures, new skills, new experiences. Whoever is lucky enough to host them next will surely feel as I do...in a world seeming to be spiralling out of control we are so encouraged by the enthusiasm, creativity and strong work ethic of these young folks, who are not afraid to get their hands dirty out in the real world .



Beginning to look like a little house..

Our neighbor with a big bandsaw ripped one of our cedar logs into four pieces of quarter round, one to fit in each of the pig trough corners to finish and strengthen them. We bartered eggs , salad greens and jam. The young crew assembled the rafters as I measured and cut, and sometimes measured and cut again.

Next came the door frame which the forewoman cut too tall and the long suffering patient and polite crew disassembled so it could be cut and re made shorter.

Chain saw Brian came and cut out the doorway for the pieces to add to his kindling pile.

Next the crew gathered bags of moss from the woods and chinked all the cracks.

The trim boards and roof went on pretty fast with three hammers going. Tomorrow we'll go get a few more boards from the mill to finish up where we ran out of lumber.

Can we get any busier?

Chain saw Brian from the village came and cut up our pile of salvaged cedar telephone poles and the wwoofers went to work hefting them into place and then drilling and nailing with 6" spikes through the corner boards.
By the end of the day most of the logs were in place.


Next day we sadly said goodbye to Matt and Alina who were on there way to the next host farm in NS.





Laura and I got on with some early potato planting, 4 rows of Yukon Gold and Superior. Rain drove us inside where Laura set out the green and yellow bush bean transplants that were started as an experiment in soil blocks just over a week ago.

There were enough rainy days to keep us transplanting hundreds of seedlings. Here are some heavenly smelling basil plants moving to larger quarters.

And then an email from Alina and Matt who are not having a good time in Antigonish and want to come back to us! Hooray!! So Jimmy picked them up at the bus station yesterday and we will have them til about the 7th of may.

Todays engineering problem was to get a gravity fed water supply to the greenhouse from the steep hillside behind. We gathered up scrap pvc pipe and garden hose and joined them together with plastic parts and screw clamps.

We ran the pipe about 150 feet up the ravine where the water tumbles down for about a week after each rain, and anchored the top end under a rock  in a small pool.

RUNNING WATER!! There's a shut off at this end. I fill 2 big totes and then we have warm water for the watering can to do the tomatoes, beans and other plants that don't like cold water from the hose that draws from the well. 

The crew.

Maintenance never ends with an old house and barn. Jimmy had to replace the cellar cover which was rotten and collapsing from the winter snow load. How pleasant to finally have some warm days to putter outside.

The garden is slowly taking shape with hardy transplants going into the soil. The girls are setting out kale seedlings with cardboard collars around them to deter cutworms.