Feeding People

I started out this morning in a fairly foul mood, not for any particular reason, other than just feeling low. Luckily the weather was nice, the air was fresh and I am one of those people that finds it difficult to be unhappy when I am outdoors. Still, my cloud of unhappiness was hanging over my head, even if a little more distantly.

We spent the morning weeding and continuing to tie tomato plants. Normally I prefer to listen to music while doing these tasks to get into a good rythm, but today I preferred to be with my thoughts. It was during this time of contemplation that I had a sort of epiphany - I am feeding people!

This may seem like an obvious thought, since I have been writing about growing food for weeks now, but for whatever reason, the idea of growing food here and actually feeding people had never really clicked in my mind. Until today, the work I have been doing on the farm has served much more selfish ends - I have learned to grow food for myself, family and friends; I have been learning how to operate a farm in order to potentially run a farm myself in the near future; I have been growing food as a 'product' to sell to 'customers' as a means of gaining an income and a living. The fact that I now realize I am responsible for feeding whole, nutritious and organic food to an inumberable amount of people, who would, in a more abstract sense, not have access to this food without me doing what I am currently doing, was quite a profound realization. I am now a part of the farming network of BC, of Canada and of the world. Without people such as myself doing what we are doing, humanity would not be able to eat!

This realization is as a result of a brief bout of Facebook jabs a friend and I have been having this week. He posted on Monday that he was glad his day was over and that it was a short week. I replied that unfortunately farmers do not get short weeks. Curious, he asked what farmers do on statutory holidays - this coming Friday is Canada Day, a national holiday for most businesses. I replied that farmers farm on statutory holidays, because the for some reason the plants never got the memo that they don't need to grow on holidays. His response was that the plants won't die in one day, and that farmers should get the memo to take a day off too.

My friends last comment made me upset. Though I understand where he is coming from, it shows a lack of understaning of the cycles of a farm and the livelihood sacrifices made by farmers to do what they do. First, just like cows get into a milking cylce, plants too get into a harvesting cycle whether it be a daily, bi-daily, or weekly cycle. For example, now that our zucchinis are producing, they need to be cultivated everyday. In fact, the growth that occurs in a 24 hr period is usually the difference between 'too small' and 'too big', so if we were to leave the zucchinis for a day, we would not only end up with a number of 'too big' zucchinis, but the plants will not have poured their energy into growing new zucchinis without the more mature ones being harvested.

Next, the farm is on a weekly cycle. If we were to take Friday, our harvest day off, then we would have to do one of two things - 1) harvest for market on Thursday, which means that our customers will have produce that isn't as fresh as they normally receive, or 2) not harvest a skip a market week. If we were to harvest on Thurdsay too, the normal work that would be done on that day would have to be omitted as well. If we were to skip a market week, we would be sitting on a lot of produce that would be bad by the subsequent week, we would not receive any income for the skipped market, we would not be able to deliver our CSAs to our buyers and overall the Klippers name would lose some of its reliability for not being present.

I really hadn't thought of all the consequences of skipping a day of work for a statutory holiday, until I mentioned this bout to my boss in the field. She said to tell my friend that we will take a day off, when he and the rest of the world start to fast because of holidays.

This comment is what made it click in my head, that I am feeding people.

Harvesting and Planting

New cucumber that we will let grow and a plant head that needs to be removed.

Our new German roomate Vanessa and Manon washing the beets for market.

Learning to harvest the zucchini.

A collection of the greens we have ready to go to market.

Manon teaching me how to harvest the kale.

Pepper plants in the ground.

This week has been filled with many new foods.

Today was harvest day. We started the work day at 6.00 am in an attempt to beat the heat in the greenhouses – in past weeks we have been sweating buckets trying to get the greens and lettuces harvested for market because of the heat.

This morning we first cut all the greens and lettuces in the two back greenhouses and then moved across the street to harvest, kale, collards, cucumbers, zucchini, rainbow chard, and kohlrabi. I have never harvested any of the latter products before, so I was excited to be working with these plants.

For kale and collards I learned that you can harvest all the large leaves from the main stem of the plant leaving about three leaves to regenerate the plant in future weeks. Kale is one of my favourite greens, so I was surprised to see how easily the leaves came off the stem in the greenhouses. I later learned, when we were bunching the kale and collards, that those that were harvested from outside were much hardier and less delicate than those in the greenhouse. I am unsure if it is because of the speed at which they grow inside under much hotter conditions, or just the fact that they are protected from the elements that the leaves do not harden up as much as they do outside. We also learned it is important to harvest both greens with their leaf stem attached otherwise we will have to sell ‘kale balls’ and ‘collard balls’ at market – a product that will be available this weekend actually!

Rainbow chard, chard with stems that are yellow, red and orange, are collected similarly, but the focus is more on the big leaves, so you are leaving many more leaves behind to grow for future weeks.

The zucchini plants are producing lots of zucchini. I learned a few years ago that the way to be successful with zucchini is to keep harvesting so that the plant keeps producing for you. We collected about a crate of 8 – 10 inch long zucchini and there are many more to come. To harvest the zucchini you need to cut it from the plant at the base being careful not to slice any of the flowers or other zucchini. Then, because the vegetable is so delicate, especially the skin, you need to lay down a matt in your crate to protect from scrapes as well as lay the zucchini with their cut ends facing out so that those tougher parts don’t knick the other zucchini. Even if you hold the zucchini too tight, you will start to see the water coming out. Be careful!

I had worked in the greenhouse earlier in May de-suckering the tomato plants, and didn’t even realize that we also had cucumber plants in there. The cucumbers plants are growing vertically and not on the ground as I have most often seen them. As we harvested the cucumbers, long English and baby ……, we had to go through and de-sucker the plants as well. Basically at every leaf join, a cucumber grows out as well as a new plant head that would allow the plant to spread all over the ground. But, because we are more interested in the vegetables, we remove these heads to force the plant to pouring all it’s energy into growing the cucumbers instead of spreading its reach.

The afternoons this week have been filled with planting. Yesterday we planted a number of varieties of peppers, and today we planted kohlrabi (green and pink), green cabbage, red cabbage, cauliflower and broccoli in the field directly outside the house. We were filling four rows where corn had been planted but then only sporadically germinated because of a cold spell. Once mature, these rows will be like shopping in a produce aisle. I can’t wait.

Last bit of information is with regards to weeding. Yesterday we spent a good number of hours weeding carrots, parsnips, turnip and green onions. The section in which these were planted has not been covered with black plastic mulch as have our other sections. As a result, I have changed my mind about my least favourite weeding activity, and it is now weeding green onions without plastic mulch. It is so difficult to see the tiny onions in the jungle of weeds that are able to grow because of their access to light, that the job becomes very very slow and tedious. The carrots, parsnips and turnip were not bad because they are distinctive as seedlings, but the onions were difficult. When we asked farmer Annamarie why the mulch had not been used on this field, she said it was to test the differences and show the benefit of using the mulch. Point taken!

Harvest Day

Friday for harvest day, I started off the day bunching spinach. A fairly simple job because of the way the seeds are planted for spinach. Earlier in the week when we were weeding baby greens, I remarked that the spinach was growing much more sporadically than the other greens – I thought that this was as a result of poor germination. In reality, the spinach are seeded quite far apart to allow the plants to grow big and makes harvesting them for bunches much easier. We pull the plants entirely out off the ground, bind bunches and pack them in boxes ready to go.

The day consisted of getting a lot of items ready in the greenhouse and then packing up. These are some of the items we sent to Trout Lake for the market: rubbarb, lettuce heads (romaine, butter, red oak, green oak, red leaf and green leaf), mesclun mix, baby spinach, spinach bunches, eggs, lilac bunches, heirloom tomato plants, squash, apples, and apple chips.

We harvested so much lettuce on Friday that it was decided Nadja would go to the Penticton Market also on Saturday to try and sell off some of the load. She sold out – of eggs too.