Our Blog

Last year’s garlic planting party was such a success – we all basically got ‘er done in about 15 minutes – so we’re having another one this year. When: Sunday, October 6th from 1 pm to 4 pm. Where: Broadfork Farm, 3630 Boars Back Rd, River Hebert, NS. It’s about […]

The harvests have been busy. We had a cold, late spring so many of our summer (frost-sensitive) crops were planted late into the ground. Because of this, they hit their peak of abundance later than usual. For example, our melons are perfect right now. And the tomatoes! This tomato is […]

Last Saturday, Hurricane Dorian brought his energy to Atlantic Canada. We were nervous in preparation for it. All week leading up to it we tried our best to secure as much as we could, though you never know what might happen. Saturday was a market day and some people expressed […]

Growing flowers has become a very special part of our farm. Local flowers offer benefits to both our customers and the land we farm on. We think about flowers an inordinate amount of time, we fill our house with flower arrangements for practice as well as vase life trials, and to […]

After beginning our Spring market season indoors at the Dieppe Market, this week will be the first that we move outdoors to our regular Summer spot. We’re located outside the entrance of the market, on the rue Acadie side of the market. We’ve spent the summer at this spot ever […]

We’ve been really happy with the vegetables we’ve been harvesting. The small root crops like the salad turnips and radishes have been incredible. Our greens have been really incredible too! Most of the areas of the farm we’ve planted this year have been planted without tilling first, including putting down […]

We’ve got a few opportunities coming up for you to get some organic seedlings for your garden! Where we’ll be: On Saturday, we’ll be at the Dieppe Market (as usual) with a lot of seedlings. And then on Sunday we’ll be at La Bikery in Moncton between 10 am and […]

We’re excited to return to the Dieppe Market for the year, beginning this coming Saturday (April 27th)! It has been a wet spring for sure. Our fields are extremely well-draining but it’s still too wet to do much digging or driving around with our tractor. Luckily, our work is mostly […]

When we first started growing flowers 8 years ago, we didn’t realize that there would be some differences from the vegetables we’d been growing for years. In our first year growing flowers, I bought a handful of seed packets, including one called Cut Flower Mix. This was a mixture of […]

There are a lot of things that make it tough to eat the right foods.  Especially for people who give a fork. What do we mean by “give a fork”? Our customers tend to care (or give a fork) about the same things we do: Health The food we eat […]

Compost is very valuable to us. On our farm, we use compost to provide nutrients and to increase organic matter in the soil (for water retention, reduce soil erosion, and prevent nutrients from leaching off the farm). Over the past few years, we have been trialing different methods to reduce […]

I’m going to start off with the weather. Yeah, yeah, people love talking about the weather. But this isn’t just small talk for us. It’s the greater context of our life on the farm. And it has an impact on everything. 2018 began with a less-than-ideal winter. There was some […]

  Our life on the farm is so strongly associated with seasons. Spring, summer, fall, and winter play a strong role. But there’s also a seasonality to the business aspects of running our farm. We stop going to market at the end of October or early November. We have a […]

  Well, this coming Saturday will be our last week selling at the Dieppe Market this year. We’ll be inside at the market, near the entrance where the blueberries were. Then we’ll spend the winter planning, seed-ordering and bookkeeping. And we’ll be back in the spring – usually sometime in […]

Thanks to our great friend Katie for taking all these photos of our field day! This past Sunday (October 14th), we held a Field Day at our farm. While it was a bit late in the season to show the peak of abundance, the timing was strategic. It would be […]

  The Canadian Organic Standards Revision Process has begun! This is required to happen every 5 years to keep the Standards relevant, legal, and to maintain equivalency agreements with other countries. The Committee that is responsible for the revision of the Canadian Organic Standards is called the Technical Committee (or […]

We’re hosting a Field Day at Broadfork Farm, welcome to all!   Approximate schedule: (possibly subject to modifications) 1-2 pm: Farm tour. We’ll show you around and talk about what we see. 2-3 pm: Garlic Planting Party! Many hands make light work. Garlic is a fun crop to plant and […]

    This past weekend we got frost. Sigh. This is pretty early, though there was one other year since we started Broadfork Farm that we had frost around the same time. When there are warnings of ‘chance of frost,” we tend to get them. And when we’re checking the […]

Planting Fall Bulbs Ok, I’ll admit it. When the time comes to plant our fall bulbs, my body is not in the mood for it. After a season of planting, and while we’re still harvesting heavy root crops, we’ve also got thousands of fall bulbs to get in the ground. […]

What do you say when someone asks you what Organic means? Or what have you heard? I’ll bet you’ve said or heard phrases like “no synthetic pesticides,” “increased animal welfare,” “no GMOs.” While these responses aren’t wrong, they don’t adequately describe the “spirit” of what organic means. For decades, people […]

We’ve got 2 events coming up where we’ll be selling our organic seedlings and seeds for gardeners. The first one is this Tuesday evening in Shediac, at the Shediac Community Garden’s annual spring meeting. We’ll be doing a little talk about our farm and farm practices. For more info, find […]

Mother’s Day is coming up – a day to honour and show some respect to all the creative forces that have given birth to new life! Our own mothers (Shannon’s mom Janet and Bryan’s mom Judy) have always been there for us to offer their support and encouragement.   They’ve […]

It’s not hard to ferment vegetables. Once you learn the basics, you can pretty much ferment any vegetable you can think of, and use any kind of seasonings you want. The ferment you end up with will nourish you, be delicious, and preserve those vegetables while retaining their nutrients (sometimes […]

  We’re so excited to be returning to the Dieppe Market this weekend – April 28th! It’s been a great winter for us – filled with learning at farming conferences, feeding the wood-stove to keep warm, and visioning all the exciting things we hope to do on this small farm! […]

Every year on the farm, awesome stuff happens, things we consider successes (and…. some less-than-awesome stuff….aka learning opportunities). There are lots of small things we consider successes, but we used the winter months to think back on the season as a whole. We each told each other a few special […]

It’s so rewarding to put on your toque and boots and run out for a bowl of fresh greens while the ground is still covered in snow! For farmers relying on selling winter greens for income, there’s more to consider than what I’ll describe. Whole books and conferences are devoted […]

  Hey friends! We’re getting so close to coming back to market! It’s March now … sometime in April is when we plan to start back at the Dieppe Market for the year. That means…..it’s time to sign up for our 2018 Market Food Club! Our Market Food Club is […]

Shannon wrote this article for Atlantic Farm Focus. To read other articles they’ve published or to find out how to subscribe, go to their website.   I remember when Bryan and I started our farm and were applying for a loan. We noticed that the lending officer started off speaking […]

When you’re a farmer, you hear a lot about Yield. High-yielding varieties, “buy this product to increase your yield,” Yields of organic vs conventional, “we need to feed the world.” I’ll start this off by saying that I run a diversified small-scale organic farm that provides Bryan and I with […]

  Hope you enjoy this lovely time of year! It’s a darker, cozy time of year. More hygge – at least at our place (we just learned about hygge this year). We hope that your holiday season, period around winter solstice, and cozy time is so lovely! You can imagine […]

At the recent ACORN conference, Shannon spoke on a plenary panel called ‘Striking a Balance – Philosophy, Principles and Outcomes of Organic vs. Market Development and Profitability’. Other panelists were Allison Grant, Dr. Andrew Hammermeister, and Dr. Av Singh. This is what Shannon said: “I’ve been thinking about this topic […]

This article was written for Rural Delivery’s November 2017 issue, with a focus on Organic Farming. I’m always surprised how many people don’t understand what organic means. I’ve heard people say they think it’s just a marketing term, a way to get more money. It’s possible, or rather likely, that […]

  Well, this coming Saturday will be the last one for us at the Dieppe Market this year…we’ll be back in April. And we wanted to say Thank you! This has been a really great year for us, and as always, it has so much to do with our amazing […]

So, I (Shannon) was all set (and sponsored by Canadian Organic Growers, Island Natural Growers in BC and the Atlantic Canadian Organic Regional Network) to attend the IFOAM (International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements) NA (North America) General Assembly in Baltimore.  But just a few hours before I was set […]

Well, things on the farm have been busy and I’ve had plenty of thoughts I’ve wanted to share with you…..then another day passes…. Anyhow, here are 5 things that we’ve been talking about/excited about lately here on the farm: Melons! I’m pretty sure that there is no better season for […]

  For the past 2 seasons, a natural-minded beekeeper named Bobby has been keeping honeybees at our farm. He wanted to try to find the most “natural” places in our county as possible and called us to inquire whether we’d be open to hosting these wonderful pollinating beings. We’ve been […]

Can you guess which vegetable I’m talking about? It’s these gorgeous little round root veggies that look a lot like white radishes (though the different leaves are a telltale sign that they aren’t radishes). They are a Japanese salad turnip called Hakurei turnips (navets blancs in french). Many people have […]

  Many of our customers don’t have the set-up or time to start their own tomato seedling(s). Rather than start from seed, it’s way easier to buy them fully grown and ready to plant. Each year, we grow tomato seedlings (lots of different great varieties!) for our customers to grow […]

*Shannon wrote this article for Rural Delivery magazine, one of our favourite magazines. Check it out if you’re not already a subscriber! Every so often, a customer at the farmers’ market asks me about pesticides. They know I’m an organic farmer and they’re specifically asking because they’ve heard there are […]

5 Things we’ve been thinking about on the farm lately: 1. We’re always trying to figure out how to increase the efficiency on our small farm. It’s just the 2 of us farmers, so we need to focus on working smarter, not harder. But we also prefer small-scale, DIY solutions. […]

It’s that time of year! When many of our customers are starting up their personal gardens. We’ve grown seedlings for sale ever since we started Broadfork Farm. Last year (in 2016), we also started selling seeds for our customers to plant at home. Not all seeds or plants can be […]

In our area (the region where Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island meet), we could still experience frosty nights. While people sometimes think it’s too early to plant their gardens, there are plenty of plants who love spreading their roots in the cool soil at this time of […]

Sometimes, we’ve got some cool things to share with you….but the idea of writing a whole blog post is intimidating (like when we’re transplanting like crazy and our bodies feel sore and we come into the house and grab a bag of Sweet n’ Spicy greens and eat them like chips […]

We’re back at the Dieppe Market, starting this coming Saturday (April 22nd)! Our fields are still drying out but we have crops from the unheated tunnels. Beautiful baby kale, brightly coloured Asian greens, arugula, and the earliest tulips we’ve ever grown! We’ll also start bringing some of the seeds we’ve […]

Dear Eaters and Co-producers (all of you who are contributing to the local food and farm economy with your support, both financial and through words of encouragement to direct-to-market farmers –  farmers who are committed to seeing the faces of those that they feed and shortening the “supply chain” of […]

  We adore trying new things. And, while it’s not only new varieties or crops that excite us (it’s also fun each year to re-connect with old friends/favourite crops), here are some that we can’t wait to grow and harvest this year. Chocolate Sprinkles tomato: Trialing new tomato varieties is […]

  Spring is here and we can feel it! Regardless of the temperature outside or whether there is snow on the ground, spring to us feels like: starting seeds in the greenhouse trying to tie up all the URGENT and IMPORTANT items that were on our Winter To-Do List (some […]

                                  Food connects us. The food we eat nourishes each cell of our bodies – that’s what inspires us every day – to grow food with our primary value of Health. Health for every […]

Last summer, Shannon was invited to speak at the Nova Scotia Small Farm Expo about how we choose the varieties we grow. Here’s that presentation in a nutshell.                     Every winter, we order seeds for the coming season. We’re always on […]

We love the Winter Solstice! It was snowing lightly and we thought “We should get a photo….with the cats and the ducks!” Not easy….the ducks weren’t having any of it. Kevin was preoccupied and didn’t come when we called (though he suspiciously came into the house right after we took […]