The Apprentices, My Friends

Farming cannot happen without people, and as I have learned this summer, organic farming in particular is substantially more labour intensive than other farming practices. Though we had a rough start at the beginning of the year with many of the young workers leaving the farm, I am happy to report that we finished the season on a high note. For the last two months we had a committed young crew of apprentices, people I can now call my friends, that saw us through the busy season.

Though we are all different ages, come from different places, have very different educations, and have divergent world views there seems to be something about what has brought us to Klippers Organics that automatically unites us. We all love food, love being outdoors, don't have a huge affinity towards material possesions, and are trying to find our place. As our departure date nears, questions about what we will do next in life are constantly at the forefront. Though it is often uncomfortable not to know, it has been reassuring to know that I am not alone in my uncertainty about the world and my place in it. What I do know is that your actions are concrete and your values, though ever changing, are with you wherever you go. The people here have taught me to keep taking life one day at a time, not to worry about the outcome of events until it is upon you and to enjoy every experience for what it is while it lasts. I hope that the laughs we have laughed, the jokes we have made, the stories we have shared and the comraderie we have built while we have grown and cooked food together is evidence that we are following our own advice.

Thank you for the good times, the laughter, the learning and above all the memories. Good luck in your futures everyone!

Some memories I will not forget...

....Manon stuffing unusual items into her clothing including eggs, every kind of food and a dead bird!

....Oliver conducting to the plants, dancing in the fields and always having an inside joke.

....Kirsten producing some fabulous mead, beer and other fermentation projects.

....Gina exposing me to more beautiful music and 'probably, maybe' her indecisive language.

....Mark eating honey, nut butter and bread exclusively for every meal.

....Kerry dressing up as the most fabulous dancing bear for Halloween and getting her party on in Cawston.

....Whitney making corny jokes.

....and Nadja gossiping with me when no one else would (and her beautiful eyes).

Greenhouse Cleanup

I can't remember exactly when we abandoned the greenhouses, but it must have been sometime in August. Three months later, the greenhouses have become jungles. Plants were completely overgrown trying to fight for space; the vegetables that remained were of huge proportions, mouse-bitten or rotting; the density and moisture of the plants caused some of the plants to rot and others to shoot out roots six feet in the air. The sight of the greenhouse was particularly amazing because there was so much going on in this unique growing environment.

When we cleaned up, we tried to rip everything out as fast as possible. Some people tried to salvage the monster zucchini or cucumbers, other were trying to protect their faces from the mold cloud that went into the air when we started to disturb the plants. We are lucky that the green houses are beside the chicken area, because we could remove all the plant matter directly into their fields for them to eat. Chickens love cucumbers apparently!

Apples

The biggest late crop we have are our apples. They are able to withstand a freeze of up to -6 degrees Celsius, and cold weather actually helps sweeten them up. Luckily at our farm, one of the girls worked as an apple picker for several years before being taken on at Klippers Organics. For this reason, she has pretty much been put in charge of taking off the fruit because she is 1) fastest and 2) least likely to bruise the fruit. Nevertheless, we do have so many apples, that we all did get a chance to take part in the fun.

I have learned that you need to flip the apples off the tree keeping the stem on the apple. If the stem is removed, the apple dries out much more quickly. Also, when we are clearing the trees - that means removing all the fruit at once - we wear harnessed apple picking bags that strap across our back and have notches to hold up the bag when picking at a variety of heights, depending on how much apple weight you are strong enough to carry, and then release the bag into the big tractor-moved bins for storage. Like most of the fresh products here, bruising is a concern, as bruises reduce the lifespan of the apple. So when you are picking, we've been taught to get into the habit of placing the apples in the bag with the back of your hands to the bottom of the bag. This prevents you from dropping the apples into the bag, especially when you are trying to go fast, and causing them to bruise by hitting one another.

Another trick I learned from the apple-pro is to pick as much weight as you can at the top of a tree when you have to be standing on a ladder, them climb down and fill you bag to the brim with apples from the bottom of the tree when you have your two feet on solid ground again. Personally, ladders freak me out, especially when you are carying a sack of heavy apples strapped to your front, so I tried my best to stay on the ground. Being tall was very beneficial in this quest.




When we are not clearing the trees, we take the time to spot-pick apples that are ripe. Though this is more labour intensive process, in terms of sales, it gives you the advantage of being first at the market with a certain crop or variety of crop. What this means in turn, is that the consumer gets used to bying that product from you, because you had it first. So it can be argued that the time investment is worth it. Spot picking is much more challenging especially when you don't know the varieties very well. You don't pick just on size, but on colour too. So for certain apples, such as the Muzu, they were picked when they had a yellow to pink blush on them.

If you pick an apple too early, the sugars haven't fully developed and the fruit flesh is still quite starchy. No one on the farm is particularly an expert at knowing the starch level in any given season, and for growers that sell to the packing house, Cawston Cold Storage, they receive free testing of their fruit sugar content so that they know exactly when to pick for the packing house. Then we call the neighbours and find out what they were told :) Convenient.

As far as I know we have harvested (in this order) Shamrocks, Cox Pippen, MacIntosh, Gala, Spartan, Golden Delicious, Red Delicious, Muzu, Granny Smith, Fuji and still to come off are our Pink Ladies.

My favourite apples have been the Cox Pippen, Muzu and Fuji. I know I like Pink Ladies, so I will be eager to try them too! We don't have any Winter Banana apples on the property, but I have learned this year that I like them a lot too.

Apples need to be kept in the cooler in order to have them keep over the winter. However, because we have so many apples, 1) there is no way that we would be able to sell them all before they start to go and 2) we don't have the space to store them all! So we process the fruit.



With the excess apples we make both apple juice and dried apple chips. For both we have external companies that do the processing on behalf of the farm, so we need to get the apples sorted for juicing or drying. A juicing apples is one that is small, mis-shaped or severely damaged. A drying apple is one that is large to excessively large because they will then be a decent size once all the water is dehydrated from them.

For home processing we have collected many of the apples that dropped to the ground before we could get to them or while we were picking. There are also the bird pecked fruit. Apparently the birds like apples as much as we do, and they have seriously done some damage on some of the fruit.

Happy Birthday!

This past Friday, our last harvest day, was farmer Annamarie's birthday. Appropriately, I made her wear a 'Happy Birthday' tiara all day long while working in the fields, and we also made her a delicious surprise (Klippers' organic) carrot cake with cream cheese icing.

Annamarie started her birthday slicing onions to dehydrate for market sale - not every girls dream day. But for this hardworking birthday girl there was no day off, so at least we made it as fun as possible!

Chicken Coop Clean-Up

Today we cleaned this chicken coop. This is a job that happens twice a year and is accordingly very disgusting. The actual shoveling of shit does not bother me, but the smell that is released from layers and layers of crap being disturbed. The odour is definitely very ripe and infiltrates the nostrils despite our wearing of masks. The only good news is it won't need to be done for another six months - and that the chickens now have a clean home once again.

Tomatoes, Celery, Corn, Basil and Hot Peppers

Tomatoes! Death becomes you. The tomatoes are dead. The frost earlier this week did them in, and we are happy. A couple of people here still tried to salvage a few last tomatoes to extend the tomatoe sandwhich addictions they have developed over the last few weeks. And others yet were trying to nab a few for seed saving purposes. But for the most part, we are done with them. (Side note - to save tomato seeds you crush the seeds out of the flesh of the tomato, cover these vegetable innards and let them ferment which deactivates the compounds that would allow the seeds to sprout. So when you actually collect the seeds, you are getting them out of a goopy, foul smelling, fermented mess you have let sit for weeks.)

Now we are undoing all the work in the tomato field we spent seeks putting together, namely cutting down all the supporting strings, then we'll remove the metal poles and the plants and last the plastic mulch and irrigation system. This should all be done by next week.



On the only two crops that remain in the field that was assigned to me is celery and celeriac. This weekend was the last summer market in Vancouver, so we harvested most of the remaining celery to send off for sale. I am unsure if they will keep the rest for winter markets.


Back behing the tomato field was planted two rows of pop corn. After the frost, this too was ready to come off. We tore off the cobs, peeled them back right away and will let them cure for a few months in a dry and well ventilated location. Once they are dry you can pop the corn right off the cob in the microwave or if you would like to pan pop just peel back the kernels. The cobs sell for $1.50 each.

By the time the frost was strong enough to kill the other crops, it had devastated the basil. When it froze, the basil turned black-brown and looked like death. I didn't make any pesto or really use the basil too much this summer, though I thought about it, but working in the basil field was always a favourite. Some would say it makes a person smell delicious!

Last but not least are the hot peppers. I took a special interest in the hot peppers in recent weeks, a crop which sells for $15.00/lb, and got to know each of our varieties quite well. When dealing with hot peppers, a popular question is how hot are the peppers really? Well it turns out that there is a grading system for 'hotness' called the Scoville Scale and it is measure in Scoville heat units (SHU). For example, a sweet bell pepper has 0 SHU while a jalapeno has anywhere from 2,500- 8,000 SHU. On our farm we grow a wide variety of hot peppers, and our hottest is the habanero which is around 300,000 SHU. That's right, it is often 100 times hotter than a jalapeno.

The peppers we grow are pablano, padrone, habanero, jalapeno, hungarian hot, serrano, yellow cayenne, cherry bomb, joe's long cayenne, purple cayenne and thai dragon chile. I dehydrated a of these varieties for later use and also pickled a few varieties. Take a look!

Habanero pepper basket.

Adventure: Leavenworth, WA

Since 'cultivating adventure' has been a primary focus of my lifestyle change, I am pleased to report that I have been able to successfully incorporate adventures into my weekly routine. This summer the adventure focus has mostly involved outdoor rock climbing.

Climbing is addictive. It requires physical strength and flexibility, mental stamina (read stubborness), problem solving, technical skill and a certain level of bravery. The wall is what challenges you. Sometimes you win and other times the wall does; but with persistence, you usually are able to overcome whatever problems are presented to you on a route.

I started climbing outdoors in June of this year. I luckily was connected with a fabulous group of young professionals who spend all their free time climbing, talking about climbing or dreaming about climbing - it was a good fit. Their level was much further advanced than mine, so I quickly had to improve to be a respectable participant in our weekly hangouts. Needless to say, my stubborness, has paid off.

Two weeks ago I went on a climing trip to Leavenworth, WA with some friends from the area. The climbs were mainly traditional, which means they required gear, and the climing was definitely graded much differently than where we normally climb. It made for some interesting ascents as we never knew what to expect when starting a route. (Including not having an anchor at the top of one route and having to then figure out how to get down safely then rescue the gear thereafter!)

The two most memorable moments of the trip are this. First, we arrived late into town and headed directly for the campsite. It turns out that Leavenworth is an American-style tourist destination that has taken the Bavarian theme to a whole new level. For this reason, the Leavenworth population had exploded from 2,000 to 10,00 for Oktoberfest celebrations the weekend we were visiting to climb. This meant, around midnight, there were no free campsites. In the end, we ended up crashing someone else's enormous campsite and hoped for the best - that is that they wouldn't throw a fit that we were there. I was informed by doing this, and generally being a climber, meant that I was now a 'dirtbag climber'. I was not glad to hear this information, nor did I want to accept that I was a dirtbag. Unfortunately, my new friends insisted that this is the case, that it is not so bag to be a dirtbag, and that I might as well just accept it. In the end, if camping on a crystal clear river, waking up to snow-covered mountains, meeting many interesting local outdoor/climbing enthusiasts, ascenting challenging and scenic mountaintops and cliffs, and laughing with friends at the end of the day around a campfire means I am a dirtbag climber, I will accept ownership of the title.

The second awesome thing about the trip was lederhosen.

Fellow dirtbags, Andrew and Flo.

Our crashed campsite.

Shauna and Catalina with a local lederhosen enthusiast.

$30,000 for the Organic Farming Institute of British Columbia

This summer I wanted to make sure that I was involved in the broader organic farming community in BC. To do this, I chose to support the Organic Farming Institute of British Columbia by becoming their temporary-volunteer administrator. My first task was to complete a grant application to the Southern Interior Beetle Action Coalition (SIBAC) for the sum of $30,000 which we will use to develop and implement a new organic ground crop course for potential organic farmers in the province and hopefully provide an alternate economy for those areas hardest hit by the pine beetle. Here are the results:

ORGANIC FARMING INSTITUTE RECEIVES $30,000

At the September 19th Board Meeting, the Southern Interior Beetle Action Coalition (SIBAC) Directors voted in favour of supporting an application from the Organic Farming Institute of British Columbia (OFIBC) for $30,000.00 to develop an online organic field crop production course. SIBAC Director Randy McLean (Regional District of Okanagan Similkameen) said, “The SIBAC Board viewed this application as an opportunity to support a project that will be beneficial to not only the SimilkameenValley, but any region in the province with suitable land for growing ground crops.” The Organic Farming Institute of British Columbia is a non-profit organization that aims to increase the economic viability of regions throughout British Columbia through organic farming. The SIBAC funding will help to develop a new online educational program to educate prospective farmers in organic field crop production. Kevin Klippenstein, OFIBC Chairman said, “We look forward to being able to provide people in BC with the opportunity to broaden their knowledge, learn ways to supplement their livelihoods and most importantly grow healthy organic food. Thanks to the support of SIBAC, the resources that will allow these goals to become a reality can materialize." SIBAC is one of three Beetle Action Coalitions in BC’s Interior created in 2005-2006 to develop and implement mitigation plans in order to help affected communities endure the impacts of the mountain pine beetle epidemic. The funding is intended to support projects approved by the Beetle Action Coalitions that will create business partnerships, diversify local and regional economies, find innovative and value-added uses for forest resources and explore new industries to assist rural interior communities through this transition.

source: http://www.thenewsleader.info/october-2011.html

(Tbe words are pretty much all mine :) )

Garlic, Egglplant, Zucchini, Sweet Peppers and Melons

The frost has finally come! Last night we had our weekly potluck outside around a campfire, while we used the wood burning stove to make a number of home-made pizzas, and talked about what still needed to be done on the farm. Apparently, until the frost arrived, it would be hard to gauge the timelines. So today, was like day one. Today the real clean up could commence.

First we removed all the rest of the melons out of their field, then pulled up the last of the plastic mulch, landscape cloth and drip lines. I am unsure how good the melons will be since most of them had visible frost damage, but we put them in the shop nonetheless to be dealt with later in the weekLater in the day we moved to the zucchini, eggplant and sweet pepper field. We had already cleaned most of the plants the previous week in fear of an imminent frost which did not come, and since then, the plants had been producing very slowly. We were able to salvage six more bins of eggplant before ripping the plants and mulch out of the ground. It is amazing how long it takes to set everything up in the spring and how quickly it can be destroyed.

The eggplant and peppers were harvested twice a week for market. We usually would decide on how many bins of a certain product could sell at the market and then take that amount. Toward the middle of September, we started harvesting everything that was ready to go. For both the eggplant and peppers that depends on size and/or colour. The other main job that we are doing right now is planting garlic for next season. After the garlic was hung to dry in the shop for six weeks, we then spent many hours cleaning the garlic. This means cleaning off the soiled outer shell and pruning the roots and top of the bulb. Much of this garlic is stored for the winter markets, but some of it was taken one step further and split. We split 1000 lbs of garlic (our garlic sells for 12$/lb at market fyi), which is now being planted in the ground to be harvested again next summer.

We still don't know what will happen with the tomatoes. I look forward to letting you know.

Beans

Kidney beans - the one on the left is not dehydrated yet, the one on the right was dried out by the sun.

On Friday we pulled up all of the bean plants at the farm. As you may recall, at their peak we were harvesting bins of green, yellow, purple and dragon beans for market every Monday and Thursday. And in July, because of poor germination, we replanted a number of bean plats to supplement our harvest six weeks later, starting in September.

Well the plants had seen there day and during our last harvest we literally ripped the plants out of the ground and stripped them of all there beans. Since we also grow these plants in a plastic mulch with a drip line underneath for irrigation (by the way we stopped irrigating the farm about 2-3 weeks ago), this too had to be cleaned up and sorted for the dump. That same day, Kevin mowed and tilled the front field to get it ready for winter. The only crops that remain in the front field that used to be filled with garlic, corn, cauliflower, beans, cabbage, broccoli and kohlrabi are some chard, collard and kale plants.

The more exciting bean harvest however was from the 'my field'. In the field that was assigned to me we have been growing drying beans all summer long. We planted the beans from seed in June, and then let the plants grow and dry out until now - no maintenance, other than a bit of weeding, was needed. Here too we ripped the plants out of the ground and stripped them of their beans. You had to be more careful with the harvest though because the pods were so dry that bean would be flying everywhere. Also, not all of the bean pods did dry out. Those that 'beaned out' but were still green were ok to take, because the beans can be air dried for storage. Those that had not 'beaned out' were left on the plant.

We grew four types of drying beans, and this year was the first attempt at growing these crops - kidney beans, black turtle beans, pinto beans and cowpeas.

Carrots

The season is quickly winding down. As I write this we are sitting inside eagerly anticipating the big frost. Will it come tomorrow? Who knows. I hope so because there is so much to do and so little time left, so if we can stop harvesting our ground crops, that would be a big time saver.

Last week was our last Wednesday (Main St) and Thursday (Granville Island) markets. Nadja, who does the drive everyweek, was happy to learn that she would not have to go back mid-week again for the season. We have two more weekend markets, and then the summer season is over.

So how does the farm maintain its cashflow in the winter? Luckily Vancouver has a winter farmers' market every Saturday and Klippers Organics is a major presence at this market. After one week break, the winter market will start up the first weekend in November.

Though we have been harvesting carrots all summer long, these will be one of the main winter crops for sale. The carrots will remain in the ground and we will cover them to protect from frost damage. The cool weather will also sweeten up the crop.

I really enjoy harvesting carrots, because you never kow what you are going to pull out of the ground. Will they be orange, white, red or purple carrots? Will they be small or large? Will they have any parculiar growth formations because of other elements in the soil?

It has been particularly apparent that our rainbow carrots have thrived in our soil. They are significantly larger than the orange carrots, so much so that it seems challenging to even sell the massive carrots.

Another favourite are kissing carrots - these are when tow carrots, for whatever reason, intertwine themselves and look like they are in an intense embrace. This one was particularly unusual.

Onions

Walla walla onions cured in burlap sacks on pallets for storage.


Rotting walla wall onions that had to be discarded.


Cleaning and sorting walla walla onions on a Saturday morning.


White onions that have turned green from too much sun exposure and damaged by a pink mould.


The size of one of our larger walla walla onions - in short, huge!

Cleaning onions that have been curing in the field for storage.

We had a very successful onion harvest this year. At market, most people cannot believe the size of our onions in fact. I was not around when the onions were transplanted into the ground, which was over about a three week period in April, but I understand at that time there was some concern that not enough onions were being planted. This concern was misdirected because now we aren't even able to sell them fast enough before they spoil.

On the farm we grow five varieties of onions - walla walla, torpedo, red, white and yellow storage onions. In July and August, we were spot picking the first four varities for market. Then in late August we had to start pulling the walla walla onions, which are the sweetest onions we have, to prevent them from over ripening in the ground. To do this, we would literally pull the onions out of the plastic mulch and lay them in nice rows for a couple of days so that they could be dried out and cured by the sun. Once they were partially cured, we would then return and cut off the tops to store them in burlap sacks in the field so they could continue to cure. This would prevent them from having too much sun damage while they lay in the field. We then layed the sacks on pallets and put them in the shop to store.

Unfortunately walla walla onions are not good storage onions. They have a very high water content, and especially since our got so large, they contained even more water. A week ago, we had to go through four pallets that remained of the sacked walla wall onions to remove all those that were rotten, rotting or bruised because it was making the gathering of onions for market a very drawn out ordeal. At the end of the exercise, we had two big wood bins full of onions that were to be discarded. It was hard to see so much go to waste.

For the torpedo, red and storage onions, the process was similar, except that we first harvested the torpedo and red onions, because they do not store as well as the yellow storage (or cooking) onions. These we also let cure in the field under the sun for many more days. Once they were cured, we would dump them directl into wooden crates from the field, so they could be transported and put into storage with the tractor. With all onions, it was important to make sure that you were handeling them gently, because any bumping will cause bruising and subsequent rotting while they store if you are not careful.

One of the biggest concerns while the onions are laying in the field is rain. One weekend I was at the farm in September, it was forecasted to rain, so we were assigned to get the storage onions cleaned up and out of the field. It was a last minute forecast, and so we did not have the man power or foresight to get the job done in a timely way. As a result, myself and three of my colleagues were pruning and collecting storage onions in the light of the moon (as well as the light of our on farm kawasaki utility vehicles) until we were able to cover the rest with giant tarps to prevent them from being rained on. It was in these weeks that I really felt that you have to pull up your socks and get the work done which needs to get done - somehow.

Our white onions have been a bit of a failure. When we went to prune and collect the cured white onions for storage, we all noticed that the onions had developed bright pink patches on them. We are still unsure what it is and what caused it, but were unwilling to put the work into storing the onions if they are just going to go bad on us. We did collect one bin worth, but the onions had sat in the field for so long before the decision was made to save some of the crop, that the white onions turned green because of the light exposure. The remaining onions are still laying in the field, and we are told that gleaners might be called to come and salvage whatever they can from the field, but that we are not going to spend any more time on the white onions. I am still curioust o find out what the pink discoloration is on the outer shells of these onions.

In terms of perservation for the winter, storage onions can be eaten fresh almost all winter long. I have also taken the time to dehydrate a bag of onions and have even tried pickling some of the smaller walla wallas to eat as a condiment. The dehydrated onions are great for making salsa, because they absorb some of the extra liquid that is released when the tomatoes break down.

One more thing, apparently snakes, spiders and mice like to hang out in the onion patches. I am afraid of two of the stated creatures, so there was always an element of fear lurking in my mind while cleaning the onions. Here is a picture of one of the black widow spiders found while cleaning the onions.

Squash Harvest

Kirsten holding our largest banana squash.

Oranghetti squash with frost damage.

Annamarie teaching the apprentices about frost damage and what to look for when we are harvesting.
Whitney taking a break in the squash bin.

Me harvesting carnival squash!

Fall is here. We have harvested 95% of the squash we planted in the spring, and have even cleaned up one of the fields. The end is near and it is both sad and exciting. I still can't believe that my job consists of harvesting pumpkins, for example, something that I used to pay money to go and do in my spare time.

The squash were one of the few crops that we grew from seed. Back in the spring we were racing to get the squash in the ground fast enough because there was a worry we were too late to beat the frost. Turns out that fear was partially correct. When harvesting, especially the spaghetti squash which aren't as hardy as some of the other varieties, it was apparent which ones had been hit by the frost - you could see dark spotted discoloration on the top of the vegetables.

The squash are still good to eat, they just won't keep as long as the others into the spring, so we had to make sure to separate them into their own bin to be sold or eaten first.

From memory, these are the variety of squash that we have on the farm: butternut, oranghetti, spaghetti, turban, carnival, delicata, sugar loaf, sweet meat, sugar pumpkin, acorn, blue hubbard, golden hubbard, banana, and red curry. Admittedly I have not prepared many of these varieties, but I look forward to doing so in the next few weeks.

We had our squash planted on three different fields. The field that was supposed to be the most productive, unfortunately was the least productive. The reason being that we tried to use landscaping cloth to discourage the bindweed from growing and inhibiting the squash from successful growth. In the end, the landscaping cloth, which is a black, permeable, nylon-like material prevented the squash from flourishing because it got so hot in the summer that it not only partially burned the plants but also allowed for all the water meant to hydrate the plants to evaporate. Long story short, the landscaping cloth will not be used again for the squash.