Monthly Archives: June 2011

Farm for a Year featured on Raw Lawyer

My dear friend Faye wrote a lovely blog post about me and our Farm for a Year project on her Raw Lawyer blog last week.

Faye is one of the strongest and most amazing women I know. Passionate about human rights and totally devoted to her husband and chihuahua, Faye is also a big promoter of raw, vegan diets. The path that led her to her new eating habits is both heartbreaking and inspring. I won’t try to retell it myself, but you can read about it in her own words in her post, ‘Scepticism: An Opportunity To Share’. It might make you cry but in the end, it’s a story of hope and happily includes some very tempting recipes (like the Chia Chocolate Pudding for the Exhausted – yes please!).

Faye has completely changed her home/ kitchen/ backyard lifestyle to accomodate her life-changing raw vegan diet and I love reading about and hearing about her progress and her new gardening adventures. She writes about how small experiments with home-grown sprouts has developed into raised garden beds and just yesterday she posted about enjoying the first fruits of her gardening labours.

As a result of her diet changes and new interest in food and nutrition, Faye and her husband now find themselves dreaming about getting themselves a little piece of land somewhere so that they can mess around in more than just suburban deep beds. She’s been a big supporter and encourager of my move to this farm and I can’t wait for the day when she and her family will be writing about their own adventures with composting toilets and black bears :)

You can follow Faye’s story at www.rawlawyer.com. Screenshot of her website above, as well as photos of her personal gardening projects.

Local Feature: Mark & his plants

On Sunday night, Chris, Julie and I visited Mark at his suburban home in Port Coquitlam. Mark has created a garden paradise on a pretty typical suburban lot. It’s incredible. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many plants in that kind of space before. Chris had found Mark and his plants through a craigslist plant sale ad and insisted we visit his home to buy some Jerusalem artichoke plants. And we’re so glad we did!

One of the things we’d like to start doing more of is visiting other local farmers and gardeners, connecting with them, learning from them, supporting them and promoting them through this blog. As new farmers who are learning as we go, we have a lot to glean from others who’ve been growing their own food and plants a lot longer than we have. It’s also nice to think of local gardeners as a network rather than business rivals. Everyone offers something a little bit different and we can all help and support each other’s efforts to pursue a long-term local food culture.

Mark used to spend his weekends selling his plants at Farmer’s Markets, but now he does all of his sales from home. He has a greenhouse in his backyard and scattered among all the well-established plants in his front yard are pot after pot of flowers and edibles waiting to be taken home. We ended up leaving with more than just the Jerusalem artichokes that Chris was so excited about. We also picked up a ground cherry bush, gooseberry bush and a chocolate mint plant. Yummy!

Every spring Mark holds a big weekend plant sale on his property so we’ll blog a reminder about that next spring before it happens. In the meantime, if you’re interested in visiting his property, picking up some great plants and getting inspired by a very passionate gardener, keep an eye on craigslist for his ads. He’s actually having a sale tonight that is currently listed online. I’ve reprinted it below:

FRUIT PLANT SALE TUESDAY EVENING – $5 (Port Coquitlam)

DATE:TUESDAY JUNE 7TH 7pm -9 pm Rain or Shine

Location: 3952 Hamilton Street, Port Coquitlam
FRUITS OFFERED FOR SALE:
Saskatoon berries(shown), cranberry plants, ground cherries/ cape gooseberries( shown)yellow raspberries,hardy edible ginger,
asparagus roots, black currant,rhubarb, red currant, , red strawberries,black walnut trees,
red raspberries,, jeusalum articokes(shown),horse radish , red seedless grapes, green seedless grapes,
goose berries red or green, , wonder berry plants, & thornless blackberries.
HERBS: Basil,Rosemary,fairytale dwarf egg plant, chives,lemon balm, begamot,,Stevia ( sugar substitute plants), swiss chard, cucumber plant,,are a few of the herbs offered
Heritage tomatoes in 1 gallon pots: Super snow white, tiny tim( shown), green zebra, red zebra, and others

Thanks for having us Mark! It was great to meet you and we look forward to next time!

baby goats & horse poop

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBvg8Mo7nt4?wmode=transparent]

This weekend Chris and I took the truck and tractor down the road to get some composted horse manure from our neighbours Michael and Kerri-Jo. We did three trips, loading up the truck with the tractor and unloading with shovels back at the farm. A lot of shovelling, but great news for our blueberry bed, compost garden and Mel’s new gardening patch.

While Chris was loading up the truck with the tractor, I frollicked with the 8 baby goats on the property. THEY ARE SO CUTE. Seriously. So cute. Can’t get over it. Most of them scattered when I went near them, but one little guy took a liking to me, followed me and my camera out to the back meadow and let me pick him up and snuggle him. SO FLIPPIN’ CUTE. I took a little video clip of them, embarrassing baby talk included.