Local Farms

Sleepy G Farm
photo credit to Sleepy G
on the majestic Sibley Peninsula, Pass Lake 

I'm sort of incredibly jealous of local farmers right now. After connecting for a Walleye story I'm overwhelmed with daydreams of goats and chickens on acres of garden.

Then I add R's dream of a traditional Australian pie shop and add some lambs to our farm.

A few greenhouses...

Fields of flowers. I say sort of when I think about the amount of work it is for the families, and exceptional commitment to what they're doing.

I have farm envy, chicken envy after writing this one - not that I wasn't already afflicted.

I am amazed by all our local farms, each doing unique and innovative things, gardening with both knowledge and creativity, challenging the climate on the Boreal Edge. 

Boreal Edge Farms
photo credit to Chris Merkley

Belluz Farms
photo credit to Kevin Belluz

Restricted by space, I could not possibly do these farms justice in the short W article, but do hope to follow up throughout the season - including this blog and Twitter too. There is so much to tell about how farming is reinventing itself in the Thunder Bay area.

Though I was featuring only three, Thunder Bay is surrounded by farms that have so much to offer. This week the Kampoff's dairy farm in the CJ, showing what they've been doing for generations - complete with evolution and newness. I went to school with those kids - Thunder Bay Christian School....a lifetime ago. Maybe it was through that connection (and my father being drawn to Dutch fellows) that brought him, the math professor, to take up farming.

He put in a good effort, for a hobby farmer. I was chased off the school bus by geese, my mother will tell you stories about running out of the house with a broom to shoo the rooster from the foot of the swing-set, so that my sister and I could get off. Matt from Boreal Edge was telling me all about their new chicken flock of 100 pasteurised laying hens and all I could think about our "pasteurised" laying hens roaming free everywhere - no "eggmobile" to keep me safe...sigh... 

It was an interesting childhood.

I became far too attached to the chickens, and our goat (who was often found tied to the mostly chewed Tamarack tree outside my bedroom window); then there was Brutus the bull (?), and of course the baby animals in spring. Oh I loved the day Dad came home with a box full of baby chicks to keep in the family room with lights until it was warm enough, and they were old enough, for the coop (non roaming coop). I realise much more now, in retrospect, why my mother cringed the way she did. I laugh a little imagining the conversations my parents had. 

The math professor farmer was a bee keeper and an apple grower, wannabe Geologist, Forester, Ecologist. Our property boundary was shared by the Wishart Conservation Forest, and the Current River. What a playground I lived in. Far from the urban lifestyle I live now. 

Time and weather thwarted my photographic hopes, but the season has only just begun. I imagine a lot of sweeping farm panos in my future.

Sleepy G Farm is a new farm, re-establishing an old farm. Belluz Farms are reinventing themselves with each generation, each offering a variety of local produce - enough to sustain a family of four, for less than what you would pay in any chain store but better: fresh, and locally grown. 

I think what deters people, or where value is lost, is the lost knowledge of storage and preservation. I bought apple for lunch at the neighbourhood Safeway yesterday - "Ontario Grown," in other words: out of cold storage. Storing and canning, preserving - it all takes preparing and planning - which isn't nearly as daunting as it seems. Understandably space can be an issue for some families - speaking as someone who lives in a century home in an overcrowded downtown neighbourhood. Closets? Say what? ...but, every challenge has a solution, somehow...solve it.

Their concepts aren't new or even unique - they're proven, tested, and evolved. CSA shares from Sleepy G Farm are quite different from what Belluz Farms offer, each local farm with variety - and with local producers of beef, lamb, chicken, eggs, milk, cheese, chocolate, fruits, vegetables, herbs, ...include area artisans, honey, syrup, tea, wheat & rice. What else do we need? Jeff & Kerr and their coffee, Denyse's pancakes, Sovereign Room, Growing Season, omg this list is too long to begin. !

We're doing pretty good here in Thunder Bay for local sustainability. Pretty incredible actually.

Sleepy G Farm

Brendan Grant & Marcelle Paulin

RR1 Pass Lake, ON

P0T 2M0

807.977.1631

http://sleepygfarm.nfshost.com/

sleepygfarm@gmail.com

Located at the base of the Sibley peninsula, approximately 45kms east of Thunder Bay.

Boreal Edge Farm

Matt Baughman & Leigh Potvin

RR1 Marttinen Lane

Nolalu Ontario

P0T 2K0

807.475.8835

https://sites.google.com/site/borealedgefarm/home

http://borealedgefarm.blogspot.ca/

borealedgefarm@gmail.com

Belluz Farm

Don, Claire, Kevin, Jodi and the kids

RR6 752 Candy Mountain Drive

Slate River, Ontario

P7J 0C2

Farm: 807.475.5181

Greenhouse: 866.200.1011 ph/fax

http://www.belluzfarms.on.ca/

info@belluzfarms.on.ca

https://www.facebook.com/BelluzFarms

Dear Garden Diary,

It's been a week since I spilled a large, steaming hot mug of coffee (black) on my computer. Thankfully my data has been retrieved, but the fate of my machine is still in the hands of the guys at Mentor. I could be more patient if we weren't leaving for Australia in four days. ...sigh..

I've lost track of where I was with updating our garden status, ...and now we're about to leave it. N & T, and M will have a lot to raid while we're away - the garden has gone mad, simply mad. It's hard to say goodbye. Hopefully everything will still be producing and blooming when we return.
If Thunder Bay continues to live up to it's name there shouldn't be a lot of need to water, other than for the pots. The garden has required minimal watering this year so far, inspite of the heat wave and forest fires - down here by the bay, five blocks from to be exact, we've had plenty of rain. Rain and heat, rain and heat, it's been absolutely delicious our small vegetable garden.
The peppers have been buried... so,..whatever happens happens. Some are surving down there in the jungle. I've already been picking them and they are yummy - yellow banana peppers, green bells, ..there are some jalapenos I have plans for beofre we leave too.

The Early Girl tomato is a monster: taller than me, with strong arms like Popeye. It seems the more I prune it the more it grows, so I've stopped and have turned my attention to pruning the yellow tomatoes growing in the east perennial garden. They too have grown almost over my head - but gangly and needing staking (there is both a tall wooden stake and a iron bean support behind Early Girl - the plant has never had to work a hard day in it's life). Unlike poor yellow number 2 over by the peonies. Your get what you deserve when you plant a tomato nearish peonies, so I've learned. It reached for sun every way it could, and was awkward. I chopped it right back to some string producing branches near the tomato cage height. It looks much better now. :)

The peas have also grown taller than me, allowing for hands free nibbling (no, no..I don't really do that...). The beans I've dealt with by dropping strings from the second floor back balcony to the bean polls. I'll be adding a few nore strings before we leave (I ran out of R's meat-binding barbecue string, which has come in handy all over the garden...)..we need more string.

Some Cosmos and one of the Basil plants suffered at the floppiness of Gromit, who rolled off the new back deck before the new railing was installed. It was a great flop: one minute he was recharging in the sun on a warm cedar deck, the next he was two feet below in soft cool garden soil, pink flowers, and surrounded in a green jungle (for being of Basset Hound height). Gravity has a way with all that extra skin....
He was fine, just a little shocked, ..then embarrassed. The Basil was done in instantly, while the Cosmos carry on but with significantly less sturdiness.

The new back deck (once the basic wooden steps leading from the back porch to the backyard) is beautiful, cedar, and hand-made by R. It's large enough now to fit one of my Muskoka chairs -

which were my Mother's Day gift to myself when Hannah was 1, our first summer with our own backyard garden. I originally bought four: two remain - which R and I painted green last year, one died, and one was never put together and still is somewhere in the basement, in a bag, waiting to be assembled, ...and, with R's new fascination with woodworking I think it might.actually.happen ...IF we can find it; our basement is a scene from Hoarders.

It's so hard to leave the garden now, of all times. The tomatoes are all about to ripen, the peas are delicious, the zucchini - finally exposed to sunlight after also being buried by heavy drooping peonies are finally beginning to grow ...the coming weeks are going to be crucial in keeping it growing upwards. I'm more worried about mildew than overcrowdedness...mildew spreads faster. So long as the zucchini climbs more than rambles we should be good. With the pruning of both yellow tomato 2 and the peonies (which have finished blooming as well as became a few nice bouquets for around the house for our last pork-and-more barbecue party) there is a lot more air flow to the area, as well as sunshine. I expect a zucchini boom.

The cucumbers under the beans are slowly working their way on to the barbecue deck...searching for sunlight. They were a little slow to get started, but are finally behaving like the vine I know. Meanwhile, the cucumbers hastily planted in the side garden are also making up for lost time, but at a much quicker pace. I gave them a little support and one of the twig trellises to give it some places to go, along with weaving along the path (I suspect any cucumbers on the path with be chewed or at least licked by a dog and I accept that. I'd say most of these cucumbers are for Claire anyway...)

They're good filler for the area this year, in the sunniest part of the side garden filling in the gap between the Morden Blush rose and some more transplanted blue irises. (Next year there won't be as much space between..)

And of course: more natsurtiums tucked in and around for fun.  

The Mounding Nasturtiums 'Buttercream' from Renee's Garden are poking out all along the edge of our kitchen garden. The have huge leaves that playfully ramble near the footpath, and butter yellow blooms. I adore them. :)

  

There's so much more to update before we leave, which I hope I can find the time to do. I am looking forward to the change of scenery, the smell of the gum trees, the daffodils and Birds of Paradise along the roadside.. ..under a new set of stars for a few weeks..I do plan to do an Aussie version of garden blogging while we're there - which I didn't do last year and wish I had.

The storm clouds are passing now, the lightning is on the Giant and blue skys are taking over. It's time to go outside. ... :)

Dear Garden Diary,

Where have all the irises gone, you ask? Well, I can not break them apart - they are so overgrown and so tightly grown together that no spade nor old kitchen knife can dissect them. I thought about sectioning them, but even that proved to be too much. Admittedly my arms are weakened, but with all else I am able to do now again, I should be able to free a few irises. sigh

I've moved the giant clumps to the side of the house, for R to attempt to break apart this weekend. I do desperately want to save and replant 20 of them (maybe more) in the large open space in front of the Wegeila, eastward from where they were before, a little closer to the fence.
They are a stunning blue, the perfect colour to break up the pinks and reds we have such an abundance of in that are (unlike the front garden which is home to too many blues and purples...)

rescued red 1                            rescued red 2

I've rescued the two red dayliles from the west evergreen garden, which can now become dog territory without worry for the flowers. My favourite of the two, rescued red 1, is planted near the spot where the Rudbeckia Goldsturm is mean to be (a few leaves have appeared but timidly and without the vigor that plant should have)... I may have to seek another rudbeckia plant. Rescued red 1 is a large-flowered cultivar with deep red velvety, ruffled petals with a yellow throat and eye. Rescued red 2 has more tapered petals in the same deep red, with just yellow in the eye of the flower. They're both late summer bloomers, appearing just as the peach and yellows ones are finishing their bloom on the east side of the garden. It should look nice now that they're all together on the same side, ...though I'll miss the balance the red blooms brought to the west side of the garden.

The name Hemerocallis comes from the 

Greek words ἡμέρα (hēmera) "day" 

and καλός (kalos) "beautiful".

I'll find a great bit of satisfaction adopting blooms and more for the west side's new side garden (I should come up with better names for the garden beds...this is getting confusing..). After a few thousand dollars in vet bills to remove rocks from a certain Basset's belly, R has removed every rock and pebble from the beds on the west side of the house along the walkway - creating two rather large, 26 foot long x 2 foot garden beds. One side, to the west of the walkway, we've filled with bags of triple mix and manure, but we'll be needing a truckload to finish the job (and repair the dog run). 

The tall, thinly leafed hosta nearest the corner is "Twilight Time", which we chose for H thinking vampires are all the rage, but I don't think she was nearly as excited as I was. Either way, it looks nice - and under are two lime leafed, small 'Gold Drop' hostas. Further along is another hosta, another rescued plant from dog territory. This one was hidden under the giant dogwood that's taking over the middle garden, and unknown to R until I mentioned it. It's a gorgeous hosta (the kind I usually fall for in the greenhouses) and will thrive in his new spot nicely. Near to that is a section of rescued red 2, which divided nicely during the move.

Hosta 'Gold Drop'

Taxonomists differ on the number of hosta species; there may be as many as 45. The genus may be broadly divided into three subgenera. Interspecific hybridization occurs since all the species have the same chromosome number (2n = 2x = 60); except H. ventricosa which is a natural tetraploid that sets seed through apomixis. Many Hosta formerly described as species taxonomically, have been reduced to cultivars; these often have their names conserved, and retain Latin names which resemble species names (e.g., H. 'Fortunei' ).

Getting back to the east side, other losses have created new space for ..apparently tomatoes. Yellow tomatoes to be exact, which fill both the space where there was once that nice two toned spurge plant, and an open area in front of the zucchini. Hoping that the zucchini catch the trellis on the fence and climb upward, my only concern would be if it caught a touch of mildew. It's a little tight in there with the tomato, but it's a sunny, hot (probably the sunniest of the whole garden) there so unless it gets damp from over crowning or too much water from above we should be good.

Black Beauty Zucchini Squash

COMPANION PLANTING:

Monarda is a great companion plant to grow with tomatoes, attracting pollinators and some predatory insects that help to minimize garden pests. Commonly understood as a food plant for the larvae of some Lepidoptera species and many Coleophora (moths), the plant is a favourite attraction for hummingbirds and bees. Also, the roots of the Monarda plant contain oils which are beneficial in deterring subterranean pests around small, susceptible vegetable crops. 

Monarda, (Bergamot, Bee Balm) and the East Garden

Dear Garden Diary,

It's raining right on cue. I just came in from the balcony, where I've been leaning against the railing drawing this:

It's been threatening to rain all morning, and I want it to settle all the earth I've been moving around.

The empty space left after removing the two enormous and overgrown irises is a little larger than before. The leaves which had branched over the grass had killed it off, and by the time I weeded the space this morning it all just seemed to blend together. The bed rolls out into the yard a bit further than it used to but I don't mind, I like the extra space.

A good number of irises are going back in, but this time in a few rows around the facing side of the Wegeila (Red Prince) shrub. I like them, there were just too, too many of them. Somewhere near there should the the Asiatic Lilies ~ but I'm beginning to fear for them. Why am I not seeing them return yet? Alos near them is another Liatris which hasn't shown it's greens. This worries me. Dogs. (dogs + gardening = another post)

I love that R is as keen as I am about squeezing more vegetables between the perennials. We've now filled the empty spaces (where things either died, were moved, or were empty to begin with,  ...or, as in the case of the irises, where spaced was made by downsizing). A couple of yellow tomato plants (tag is downstairs, I will update in more detail), and a zucchini crop sure to cause some chaos along the fence.

And up the fence, thanks to R attaching three trellises along the east fence. The facing fence receives sun all afternoon and evening, perfect for warming veg vines. I'm actually hoping the noon hour sun will attract the vines upward, and let the evening sun slow it down to rest for the night - if that makes any sense (I just think the position is perfect and look forward to watching how it grows). Beside the zucchini are a couple of new hollyhocks. 

We have three new Clematis plants (those tags are also downstairs, which I will update later). I saw a photo once of two boldly coloured  Clematises climbing twined together along a fence like ours. I'm going to recreate that, with the plants in the grown beneath the Caragana and behind the Peonies - the first being 'The President' and the other still unknown but will be a deep cherry/raspberry colour. 

I'm really happy to have again my blue/purple Delphiniums. To me, they're one of the defining flowers in an English cottage garden. They're just babies this year, but I've promised R that next year they'll be impressive. 

I've missed these flowers. :)

They'll tower over the Peonies and begin to bloom as they finish. Behind the blue stalks the deep purple and raspberry coloured Clematis will cling to the fence - a wall of blooms. 

I've rescued the two red Daylilies from the west side of the garden, the ones on either side of the dwarf Alberta Spruce:

and I'm going to plant them in the void left by the irises...along with something else (there's still more room to share). Maybe a pumpkin? Or some other perennial, or tomato.

Not only were they becoming overwhelmed by the spruce, but they were getting trampled by dogs.

Reconciling gardens and dogs doesn't have to be difficult, even in our small space. By allowing the west garden bed, mostly comprised of evergreens and trees (and that massive Rhubarb), go to the dogs they can have their space and we can have ours. The dogs love to trod through there, as if it's the Tree Farm, their own backyard forest. Why take that away from them? They just need to be trained to know that some spaces are okay for them, others are not. They've been pretty good with the kitchen garden - so far, and I've used more of our little fencing to create a barricade between the lawn and the east garden (which is off-limits to dogs).

The lawn is a mess, but oh well. I am not going to worry too much, it is repairable.


I've been reading the Gin & Tonic Gardener and enjoying it immensely. Around the evergreens in the west garden is a spreading colony of weeds. It really bothers R, but for some reason - as overwhelmed as I am over the task ahead to remove them - I'm not bothered. It will get tidied up, it will get done. There was a time when I would have gone on endlessly until it was done, but I'm not into killing myself over a few weeds anymore.

I am coming at it from a few angles, as I continue to make my way down the east garden to the dog-run fence, where I will plant two more Clematis plants, this time in pale shades of purple and pink with flecks of white to climb behind the lilac.
I've also started to fill and create the new gardens along the west side of the house.

We thought a few bags would help us get by until we could sort out a truckload of fill for both these gardens and the dog-run repair, but I've already used most in just a small area, with three bags going to the iris void, and four to the front garden. I was hoping to at least cover the space so that no dogs swallow any more rocks but no such luck. Poor R had no idea what he was getting himself into when he asked me: "Are you sure you can fill the space?"
First to be planted along the west side, under the Tamarack will be a new "Twilight Times" hosta, for our teenage Vampire enthusiast...who rolled her eyes, and two small lime leafed hosta (tag downstairs) - along with another rescue from dog friendly gardens, from under the Dogwood a hosta with great round lime and deep green leaves. It's been overshadowed for long enough.

Purple Salvia appears in the kitchen garden, planted a little to tightly beside the Chamomile, some Cosmos, and the herb garden. John Davis continues to thrive in the corner behind. We've replaced the Basil (again) and added two Swiss Chard plants near the Roma tomato.

The Van Gogh sunflowers are beginning to speed up their growth, enjoying these rainy nights and hot, sunny afternoons. (Well, except for this afternoon.) Also the beans, peas and carrots are all picking up the pace.
The two Early Girl tomatoes are doubling in size every time I look at them while the plant produces even more. Hannah and Gromit's strawberry plants have fruit.

The peppers are all covered in blooms and small fruit.
I can't wait for soup and salsa, pizzas on the barbecue...

Buttercream Nasturtiums are popping up all over the kitchen garden, sprinkled there by me. They're fun, and numerous underneath Early Girl ...which should be interesting later on.

Nasturtium,  Buttercream