Old Gardeners Never Die, They Just Go to Seed
Fall is the time when seeds are able to be gathered and stored. And a seed exchange is the perfect place to share some of those seeds.
Winter: A Season for Change
“The more things change the more they stay the same” and “The only constant in life is change” are both very cliche and very true. In some sense farming and gardening means things are staying the same. We usually use the same plot of land and plant the same kinds of vegetables. We also raise …
Winter is Coming
Over the past few years the gardens have been producing more and more vegetables. So, come fall we start to look for places to store the root crops for the winter. Our main root crops are potatoes and carrots, which need a dark, cool space with a bit of humidity. We have been storing them …
Training For the Yukon
Recently we went down south for a family visit. At the time it was still very much winter here in the Yukon. Down there the snow was melting, there were puddles everywhere and it felt like spring. If it had been like that up here we would have already been in the garden. But no one …
Seed Catalogues Launch Dreams
“There are two seasonal diversions that can ease the bite of any winter. One is the January thaw. The other is the seed catalogues” – Hal Borland, American journalist (1900 – 1978). Seed catalogues evoke memories of summer breezes and warmer times; they are wonderful to peruse on a cold blustery day. We often receive three, …
Saving the Harvest
One of a gardener’s goals at the end of summer is to preserve the food harvested. This takes many forms , from allowing a potato to set skin so it won’t dehydrate in storage, to the pickling root crops , to the canning of fruits , to the blanching of vegetables for freezing. One form …
Unexpected Encounters on the Farm
Working outside is a given when gardening. Planting, weeding, and harvesting all are labour-intensive jobs, which are done manually on our farm. Most of the time, working in the garden it is just that, work; it is very easy to focus on the job that needs to be done. Gardening can be very repetitive. Picking …
Market Season Ends as the Seasons Change
All good things must come to an end. And the summer outdoor market is no exception. Over the years we have enjoyed getting to know our summer market customers, and the other vendors become like family.So when the last market happens it is often a bittersweet time for us all. It is nice to look …
Seed saving
Seed saving is a time-honored way of keeping certain plant traits growing. It used to be a common practice among gardeners. This year we have decided to keep seed from some of our vegetables. The challenge is to prevent similar plants from cross-pollinating. I find it amazing, the plants that will cross with each other. …
Perennials
In spring, while we wait for the snow to melt, we check on the chives to see if there will be enough for a taste. Once the snow is gone we keep an eye on the rhubarb. This year I was also watching for asparagus to return. Last year I seeded asparagus in a flowerbed …
Migration
Early in the spring, Swan Haven offers Yukoners a place to watch swans and other water birds as they stop to rest on their long migration north. Shortly thereafter we see small groups of swans flying past our farm, trumpeting as they go. Our geese really notice when wild birds fly overhead. The migrating fowl …
One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Four…
It’s planting time and one of the last things we plant are potatoes. We put in all of our cold crops first because if there is a late frost the seeds of these plants and even the seedlings are able to deal with the cold stress better than a potato plant can. In fact, “seed” …
The Real Dirt
A few years ago, a neighbour told me my garden needed to be amended with some dirt. He was referring to the stereotypical black soil that can be purchased from either big-box stores or a local distributor who harvests the soil from old marshland. Neither source promised high nutrients for the vegetable garden. Here in …
Living on Farmer Time
I have always wondered why we need to adjust our clocks for daylight saving time here in the land of the Midnight Sun. It was originally adopted in Europe to extend the evening daylight hours during the summer months. Sure, it is necessary if we are to stay in sync with the rest of North …
Winter Gardening
Years ago I was asked by a Japanese helper what kinds of plants grew here in the winter. I laughed and said nothing grows, it is all frozen solid. She was amazed. In many places they rotate their crops based on the season. Heat-loving plants like tomatoes and peppers can be followed by crops that …
The Joy of Homegrown Tomatoes
Nothing tastes quite as good as a garden fresh tomato. Here in the North these are rare enough to find, but this past summer we had enough heat to grow tomatoes outside without any protection from the elements, though we did fence them off from the laying hens. I started seedlings indoors around mid-March. And …
Talking Turkey
Because turkeys are a North American bird, it makes sense to have them for the North American holiday of Thanksgiving. There are about 15 different kinds of turkeys ranging in colour from a slate-blue to the bronze of the wild birds. The most commonly raised breed of turkey looks nothing like it’s wild predecessors. It …
Yukon Harvest Time
I can’t believe it’s almost over. This summer was one of the best on record as far as gardening goes. We always had lots of produce to harvest and a sell at the markets. But the garden doesn’t stop producing just because the Fireweed Community Market is done for the season. In fact, there are …
Where are the Bees?
With summer comes the sound of songbirds and the hum of insects. Often insects are seen as nuisances — pests that need bug dope to keep them away. And while I absolutely hate biting bugs there are some insects I find very interesting and necessary for gardening. With ladybugs around aphids won’t be a problem …
PHantastic Soil
It is a good idea to find out a bit about your garden before planting anything in it. What will grow in a plot of soil depends on what is in it, how compact the soil particles are and the pH level of the soil. The required nutrients are reliant on what is to be …
Venturing into the Unknown
All good things must come to an end and two days ago this was true for our piglets. It’s been eight weeks since they were born and we usually wean them between six and eight weeks. We determine the time based on how well the mom is dealing with them. When pigs are eating they …
Spring Means New Life
There are pussy willows, crocuses and chives growing in the garden. Migrating birds are returning to Swan Haven and mallards are swimming in the ditch just down the road. On the farm we see new life in spring as well, although it isn’t as reliant on the weather as crocuses and returning geese. Every spring …
Our Egg Situation
My husband Allan got a goose egg last night. He wasn’t hurt as some may suspect, rather he found an actual egg out in the goose pen while doing chores. Lately the egg situation on the farm has been nonexistent. Our laying hens stopped giving us eggs some time just after Christmas. For the first …
Tiny Little Pieces of Life
I got my seeds today! Seeds … tiny little pieces of life, stored until spring arrives to awaken them. It is this miraculous life that makes them so attractive to gardeners, especially after a long, cold winter. Each seed has its own set of requirements hardwired in them. It is up to the gardener to …
Gardening: It’s About Knowing Where and When
Can you smell it? … fresh-tilled dirt. There is nothing like it to a gardener or farmer. It is one of my favourite smells of spring. With the warming sun and the longer days, people who garden are waiting impatiently for planting time, a time when the garden is tilled, the rows are laid out …
The waiting is the hardest part
I don’t really like waiting but as a farmer there are some things you have to wait for. Like seeds to sprout or crops to mature before harvesting. More recently I waited for Kali, our sow, to have her piglets. Last year at this time she was also due for babies but she lost the …
Ploughing for Parsnips (and Other Root Crops)
With the snow finally gone, a gardener’s mind turns to working the soil. But, to work it too soon could leave it in unwieldy clumps, and too late would mean that most or all of the soil moisture has soaked away. So it is difficult to know when the best time to cultivate is. At …
What’s ‘Up’ in the Garden
They’re up … radishes and swiss chard that were planted only a week ago are now pushing up through the soil. The radishes looked like they have been up for a while, too, but I didn’t notice them because I was still planting other parts of the garden. When Allan watered last night, they became …
The Joy of Weeding
Well it seems that summer is here. The heat that we have been getting has been a bonus for the garden. Everything is up, even the corn that I planted outside in containers. Usually in the Yukon, one of the main challenges is to keep enough heat on the plants and to prevent frost. Not …
To Market, To Market …
I usually plant more vegetables than I am going to personally use because I like to attend the farmers’ markets in Whitehorse. It started out that I was just bringing the surplus of the garden, but soon it became a reason to plant more. When I started to attend the market, it was being held …
Unwelcome Guests at Butchering Time
It’s chicken-butchering time again … This is a part of farming that is definitely hard work. It starts a day or so before the actual butcher date with the set-up of the equipment: a kill site, a scalder, a plucker, an evisceration table and some large chill tanks. Most of this is stored in a …
Unearthing Harvest Treasure
It’s fall. I know that no one wants it to be fall, but it is hard to deny. With every season, there are vegetables that are in decline and those that have just reached their prime. Root crops are usually biennials, which means they store up energy in their roots the first year, then flower …
News from the Barnyard
With winter finally here, the farming workload seems to lighten. Winter is a time of rest and contemplation. It is also a time to recuperate from the busy summer season. Normally we just have laying hens in the barn, over the winter, so the chores take almost no time at all. But this year we …
Sunny Side Up? Over Easy? Egg-cellent!
About six months after we purchased our farm, we decided we needed to start raising chickens. This decision came about when, about a week after Christmas, there were no eggs, milk or butter on the shelves at the local grocery store. In order to have our own milk and butter, we would have to acquire …
The First Sign of Spring Arrives in the Mail
Spring starts when seed catalogues arrive. At least it does for me. I receive about four or five every year. This doesn’t include the online catalogues that can be accessed either. The fun part is that they very often arrive in the same mail pouch as Christmas cards. So, after all of the hustle and …
The Signs Point to Spring
The pussy willows are out! Willows are one of the first plants to show any signs of life in the spring. Even with mounds of snow on their roots, they still seem to be able to sense that it is time to awaken for another season. With the warm temperatures that we have had recently, …
The ‘Love Apple’ Needs Love
With the snow so deep, it seems impossible that spring will ever arrive. Gardeners, however, take things into their own hands and start seedlings in the sunniest window they can find. Onions, tomatoes, peppers and leeks are just some of the seedlings that are started as early as February. There is nothing quite like watching …
Where the Chickens Roam
With the warmer weather we have been having, my thoughts turn to spring. I am wondering if this year I will be able to get into the garden earlier than last, or will I have to wait until June. Even without the warmer weather, my thoughts would probably still turn to spring. There is only …
Manure Tea and Mud
One of the main spring tasks is to clean out the barn. On our barn we have two four-foot doors at each end to help with the easy removal of the manure. With the doors wide open, the chickens take advantage of having no fence and go exploring. They usually don’t go too far as …
Plants Are Popping Up Everywhere
It’s up! In my garden there are all sorts of little sprouting plants, most of which we planted. This year we were able to get on to the garden sooner that usual. Al cleared the snow off sometime in mid-March which allowed the garden to warm up quicker. I wasn’t too pleased with him at …
Kali and Sienna Would Rather Dig Holes
Kali and Sienna are home. They have been for about a week now, and it is very nice to have them back. When I mentioned to a friend that they were gone for awhile, she asked if they were on holidays. My reply was that they were, kinda. Kali and Sienna are going to be …
Shredding the Trees is Within Her Comfort Zone
I tend to mow the grass around the barn areas as green feed for all of the animals. This not only gives them the greens they love, but it also helps to protect the roaming chickens and geese. You see, it’s easy for a fox to sit and wait in the tall grass and not …
Meeting Chicks at the Watering Hole
One of my favourite parts of spring is when we get our chicks. It doesn’t seem to matter how often we have gotten them in the past, new chicks are always fun to watch. When they first arrive, they are given a drink of water, shown where the food is and then placed under a …
Is it Really Greener on the Other Side?
The grass always seems greener on the other side of the fence. When living in the north, it is easy to look at how things are in the south and feel a bit jealous. Especially with farming or gardening, the longer seasons, better soils, more rain, the list can go on and on. It can …
Some Like It Cold
With the snow blowing around and the temperatures dropping, most people and animals prefer to be indoors. This isn’t the case for the geese and one of our pigs, Kali. The geese are in a yard attached to a small building and they have the option of going inside. In fact, their water is in …
Reap What You Sow … Now!
The sun is shining, the snow is melting off of the roof and it is starting to feel like spring. But we are still in the month of February and spring is a long way off. Still, there are things that can be gardened indoors even in February. Tomatoes, peppers, onions and leeks all need …
Rhythms Change as Seasons Change
Iam enjoying our long fall this year. It has allowed us to work on outside projects much easier than if we were knee deep in snow. It is also easier on the animals. The laying hens continue to go out into their yard to scratch about and dust bathe. However, we no longer allow them …
Stopping to Smell the Roses on the Farm
I took a walk today with three young boys. First they followed me throughout the barn while I did the chores. Asking questions and admiring the birds. The turkeys were scared of these unknown beings that just wanted to watch them. And so they backed up into a corner. But the Cornish cross chickens didn’t …
Peas Aplenty
I decided to go with the larger package. It is a variety that has done very well in the past. It was almost funny, when I opened the parcel with my seeds. I know I ordered a large pack but I really hadn’t visualized what that would look like. A packet of pea seeds bought …
Ode to Beets
Most vegetables have their share of pests and problems. If it’s too wet, mildew will attack peas or tomatoes. An early fall frost can kill many of the garden vegetables commonly grown up here, such as lettuce and potatoes. Radishes, cabbages and others of that family have a beetle (I don’t know the name of …
Schwartz on the Job
One of my pet peeves is dogs (no pun intended). More specifically, other people’s dogs that come onto the farm. One reason dogs were domesticated was that they were territorial and would protect their territory and their pack. Farm dogs are here for security of the pack, which includes humans and farm animals. Our dog, …
Volunteers and Other Visitors
Volunteering is something that a lot of people do to give back to their community. Sometimes it is more than that. Some volunteers go a very long way to help out others. We have had people volunteer to help out on the farm. Some were travelling around the country and took part in a program …
Mother Goose
They say birds of a feather flock together. When you visit our barnyard, you will see that the chickens don’t like to spend much time with the geese. In fact, most things give the geese a wide berth. Even our dog, Schwartz. The geese tend to patrol the barnyard in a very stately manner, hissing …
Will It Germinate?
Children, when learning to garden, show this quite plainly when they dig up a seed to see if it is doing anything. Sometimes this actually slows things down. And even though a seasoned gardener may have faith that everything will come up, they too sometimes have the urge to dig into a planted row and …
Multi-tasking Time
Springtime on the farm is one of the busiest times of the year. Harvest is busy, too. You’re racing the frosts and fall rains to get everything in without losing anything. And everything harvested needs to be processed in some way, so that the harvest is stored for the winter. Harvests on our farm seem …
New Life, New Challenges
Well, spring has sprung. I am seeing the evidence of this everywhere. Trees and bushes are starting to bud, grass is coming up and crocuses are in full bloom. The geese are back and heading further north. The barn is getting cleaned out and the garden is drying off, although it isn’t quite dry enough …
Living Self-sufficiently
There’s more to farming than feeding animals and planting seeds.” This is a quote from my husband, Al. When he said this a few weeks back we were talking about the firewood he had just finished bringing home. He’s right, too. The typical farmer tends to be a “Jack of all trades, master of none.” …
The Juggling Act
Sometimes farming takes on aspects of a circus act more than anything. In early spring, you throw one ball up in the air and order some chicks. Then another ball follows when you order a few piglets or goslings or both. With only two or three balls in the air, it seems quite reasonable to …
Ordering a Garden
January is seed ordering month for me. It usually involves sitting down with two or three of my favourite seed catalogues, my garden journal and a cup of hot beverage in front of the fire. First I plot out what should go where in the coming spring. I try to rotate crops every year. This …
Moving Sienna
With the wind blowing and the temperature almost at zero as I write, it doesn’t seem like a typical Yukon winter at all. But I am thankful that it is warm – not because I find the cold too hard to bear, but because Sienna has to acclimatise herself to the winter again. And that …
Plucking Our Christmas Dinner
Goose is not an everyday kind of food. Some find it too greasy to eat, but others love it because of the oils. I like it because it is all dark meat. I have never really been partial to the white meat of chickens or turkeys. All summer they eat grass, but in the fall, …
When it Comes, to Weeding, Err on the Side of Caution
I keep telling myself, it is still early. Because of the warm weather that we have been having it feels like the middle of summer. Now, I am not complaining about the weather, but normally when it is this warm, our greens are have already been planted in the ground for more than a few …
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