Holiday Sale

We are participating in our first ever Holiday Sale, The Collectively Green Holiday Sale.  We participated in the first ever Collectively Green Sale in Spring of 2013, and the organizers decided to coordinate a Holiday Sale, so we really could not resist in supporting and participating in this fantastic concept.  All items for sale are one of a kind which have been recycled, upcycled, ethically produced, earth friendly and in our case naturally grown.  The sale takes place on 

Saturday Nov 16th from 10:00-6:00 at the Grace Westminster Church 505 10th St. East.

Pat has been busy building birdhouses and birdfeeders from recycled wood that once were used for corrals.  The birds are an important part of our environment at the farm as they play a vital role in keeping the insect populations in check.  Another very important creature for insect control are bats and Pat will have his cedar bat houses on display for purchase.  We are making bird seed feeders in various shapes that you hang in your trees to attract the birds to your yard this winter.  We really enjoy observing the birds.

Dried flowers, packaged dried culinary herbs grown by us, Mistik Acres home grown salsa, pine door swags and red willow for holiday decorating, will be available for purchase.

There is a Silent Auction taking place with fabulous items up for grabs with all proceeds going to the Saskatoon Food Bank.

Dried flower bunches

Advertising our naturally grown fresh flowers for weddings.

Please join us this weekend and support local.

Fall already????

October already....we have been really behind in posts this summer.  It was an incredibly busy summer for us, but I did take photos throughout the summer of the blooms and wedding flowers etc., so will do a recap for next few months of what went on at the farm.
But as of now we are cleaning up the gardens.  Everything froze, or most everything, so we can start the cleanup, seed saving and bulb and tuber saving.  We are also processing the tomato crop into salsa, sauce, tomato jam and canned tomatoes.  The horseradish digging has also started and as I write Pat is at the sink peeling the horseradish root so he can grind it to pack in jars.

Ranunculus

Had a great crop this year.  Will try again next year

and hope the weather will cooperate again.

                                      

Assorted bouquets for the market

More flowers for the market

Elk near the yard.  This is a rare sighting as we hardly ever see

them up close.

Love this photo!  The Delphinium harvest.

Along with Max the resident dog.

The birds have pretty much all left the farm now.  We have Northern Flickers, Robins, Doves, Hawks, and the birds that stay around all winter.  We have been taking daily bike rides to the slough about a mile from here with Max.  There is a pair of beavers that have taken up residence and we take a daily run to checkout what they are doing.  

We are at the Saskatoon Farmers Market this weekend and the tables will be overflowing once again.  There will be Horseradish, Salsa, made with ingredients grown on our soil, dried herbs, pumpkins, squash, hot peppers, dried flowers, a few succulents and thirteen different colours of Asiatic Lily bulbs that are ready for planting.  Fall is the best time of year for bulb planting. 

Dried flower bouquet

Cardoon bloom.  First year they have ever produced a bud and they have not succumbed to the frost.

Busy week.

This past week we accomplished a lot of fall/spring chores.  We planted just over 1100 garlic cloves a few days ago, almost tripling what we planted last year.  The reason we increased the quantity is, that we always sell out of garlic within a month of harvest, so hopefully next fall we can stretch the garlic supply over a couple of months.  We came across some well aged sheep manure, so we hauled eight truckloads and spread it throughout the gardens, before the rain came on Friday.  This past week we hauled three truckloads of alfalfa bales.  We incorporated some of it into the soil and we will use the rest for mulch next growing season.  We moved a lot of perennials this past week, and shredded the garden plant material and tilled all the gardens.  It was a very productive week, the weather was wonderful and we received an inch of rain on Friday to settle everything into the soil.
We are planning on attending the Saskatoon Farmer's Market till mid December this year.  We continue to have a lot of ripe tomatoes, yellow onions, leeks, carrots, dried herbs, frozen raspberries, succulents and dried wheat and flower arrangements.

Some of our customers have been stopping by the last couple of weeks at the market to tell us their dahlias, they purchased from us in the Spring, are still blooming.  So envious, sure wish all of ours hadn't froze.

Enjoy Thanksgiving!

Tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes.....

Want to share our experience with roasting tomatoes.  We are preserving tomatoes for the first time this way, and we are really enjoying them.  The tomatoes are the Tumbler variety and the picture above is before they went into the oven and the picture below is after they have been roasted.  The process is simply halving the tomatoes and laying them cut side up on a cookie sheet.  Drizzle olive oil over them, and season with salt and pepper.  Place in a 300F oven and roast for 2 hours.  I placed two cookie sheets in the oven together and they roasted up just fine.  They can be frozen or stored in the fridge for a short time.  I guarantee they will not last too long.  They are wonderfully sweet and go great with a tangy cheese, (goat cheese is my favourite) or eaten right out of the oven.

With our next batch of large ripe tomatoes we are going to roast them at 200F for 10-12 hours, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper.  They also can be frozen for future use.

With the unseasonably warm temperatures we are going to do some painting on the house, something we just couldn't find the time to do this summer.  We have been digging out the plant material in the gardens and will let them dry for a little while and then we will shred them and incorporate into the soil along with alfalfa straw.

Last week just before the frost hit we had a group of students from the Saskatoon School of Horticulture visit the farm.   We gave them tours of the gardens and talked a lot about the various flowers we grow and cut for fresh cuts.  We enjoyed having them visit, and hope they will make this an annual trek with next years group of students.

Tomorrow I am going to dig a few peonies roots for sales at the Saskatoon Farmer's Market.  Fall is the best time to transplant perennials that bloom in the Spring.  There will be roots from the white, burgundy and pink peonies.  They will have to be planted within a few days, as I am not potting up the roots.  This way you will get a larger root mass which will in turn be a healthier transplant and they will produce flowers a lot sooner.  We will also have the remaining perennials, that are potted up, at reduced prices along with the succulent sale, buy one get one free.  Vegetables will include tomatoes, green and cooking onions, leeks, and horseradish root.  Dried herbs available are, Basil, Oregano and Catnip.  We have been making dried flower arrangements with the various flowers we have dried throughout the summer.  Those will be available along with golden dried wheat.

Frost hit hard.

So, Tuesday night it all came to an end for us.  The frost hit so hard, our thermometer recorded -11C.   Nothing was spared.  We had covered quite a few dahlia's in hopes of it being a mild frost, but the covers were no match for -11C.  The flowers are limp and lifeless.  We certainly were not ready for the flower season to end so abruptly, as we had a fantastic summer for flower production.  So now the cleanup begins.  The weather looks like it is going to stay nice for a while so it will be pleasant working in the gardens.  We will dig all the corms and tubers we want to save for next year and start shredding the dead foliage and incorporating it into the soil along with leaves and the barley mulch.
We made our first batch of salsa this evening, using the tomatoes and peppers that we harvested, and the house smells wonderful.  Tomorrow we will make leek and potato soup with our produce. The carrots, leeks and beets are still in the ground and will be harvested at a later date.  Unfortunately I think our entire celery patch froze.  Will take a closer look in the next couple of days and see if we can salvage any of it.  We really enjoyed using the green celery that we grew, but the red celery variety was quite tough and stringy.

This weekend at the Saskatoon Farmer's Market we will have a few fresh flowers that I had picked before the frost hit, but I will be making dried flower bouquets and will have those available for the next few weeks.  We are going to bring some perennials that are still in pots, which will be price reduced and I also potted up some more succulents, so lots of selection available for the two for one sale.
The vegetable selection this week is green onions, cooking onions, tomatoes, leeks, and garlic along with dried herbs.