Seasonal Snapshot: May 2015 1

A lot has happened since my last Seasonal Snapshot post in April. But the spring still came late. I (Shannon) was in Ottawa for a few days last week attending the final 3-day meeting of the Organic Standards Technical Committee before the newly revised Standards come out. Oh man, was it HOT in Ottawa! And the trees were all in bloom….it was gorgeous! Here at the farm….our trees are just starting to bud out. Despite the back log of planting we need to do, we’re enjoying the weather and the lack of bug nets (the black flies have just started…though we have yet to don a bug net). Our daffodils have also just started blooming. For any of you interested in phenology, that gives you a good idea of where our season is at.

We found our first little snake, well actually our huntress cat Yuki found it. Luckily, she didn’t seem to think it would make a good meal and so the snake slithered away to meet another day.

We’re still working on preparing fields for planting. And our bodies are feeling the early season transplanting. The first Saturday in May, we started back at the Dieppe Market, mostly with greens from out tunnel but also with 3 varieties of spring-dug Jerusalem Artichokes and storage crops. Last week, we started harvesting beet greens. They have the added bonus of gorgeous mini beets attached.

In the picture above, the strange looking white thing (it’s a vegetable!) is Crosnes (also called Chinese Artichoke). Last year, we purchased 8 of these little tubers from Mapple Farm (after a request from a chef). They spent a full season in the ground and when we dug them up this week, there were about 100x what we’d planted. They are very small so in order to have enough to sell to chefs and at the market, we’re going to replant them all and wait another season before selling them. Lucky for these little Crosnes (pronounced Crones), we’ve got patience!