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!

Weeding, Thinning, Planting and Manure

Time is flying by here on the farm. Bonnie, my long-time friend, said to me yesterday that we have already been in Cawston for 28 days. It is amazing how much we have done already in this time, though I wish she could stay so that we could continue to explore the beautiful Okanagan.

Last week on the farm we continued to do the work we had started a few weeks earlier and finished up quite a few jobs. We finished planting the tomato plants finally, then moved on to planting a couple of rows of basil which are currently still looking a little yellow. I learned when we plant the basil to remove the heads of the plant to encourage them to bulk up.

I spent an afternoon mowing one of our peach orchards, because we have moved right away into thinning the peaches which I have been told will grow much more quickly than the apricots have (which is very fast in my opinion). The peaches also need to be given much more space to grow than the apricots were, so we are thinning quite extensively. We are giving them a space from about your thumb tip to your pinkie tip while extended. Seeing how full the apricot trees are now that the apricots have grown, it barely seems like we thinned them at all. I have taken this as a lesson for the peaches - take off more than you think you should.

We spent some time weeding the onions which are also growing fast, though not as quickly as the weeds. I was recently away for five days and I can't believe how much everything grew in my absence.

The last job for this week was cleaning out the chicken coup - great. The birds were all chased out and we started piling the manure into wheel barrels to take over to the compost heap. If you have never been in a chicken coop, when you unsettle the layer upon layer of straw and crap (excuse my language) that has been leveled down, the smell is suffocating. But the job had to be done and it was quite rewarding when we had sorted the spaces out for the birds.

Weeding and Planting; Washing and Bagging

The sun is out, the sky is blue and weather warm (25 C). In my experience, the weather here is something that belongs to late summer days, where the sun is still strong enough to change the colour of your skin, but its warmth is welcomed as a solace from the cooler nights. Yet, it is not August, it is May! It is raining in Vancouver, flooding in Montreal and in all likelihood snowing in Calgary.

I start with this meteorological anecdote, because it is the warmth and beauty of this place that make it not only a unique and fruitful agricultural climate, but it also is what makes working mundane jobs totally worth while. The weather and the place are the motivation I need to weed, plant, wash or bag for hours on end. Whenever I get tired of the work at hand, I think about stuffing envelopes, data entry or email blasts, which are to me the business world alternatives to the repetitive work that needs to be done on the farm. In the end, I am always 100 times happier to be here, under the sun, working the land than in an office peering from my desk enviously at the sunshine beyond my office window.

This week there is a lot of planting and preparation that needs to happen for the season. On Monday, I started off the morning weeding the onion field. So far this is my least favourite job. Essentially, we have a large field covered with 18 rows of plastic, and each piece of plastic has been punctured with six holes across and I would estimate 150-200 deep. In each of these holes is planted an onion. If my estimation is right, that is close to 19,000 onions! Weeding the onions meant reaching into each of these little holes and pulling out the weeds. Working two people per row, it took my partner and I almost 3.5 hrs to do 3 rows. Needless to say it was a lot of work.

The reason that the plants are planted under the plastic is to retain the heat and soil moisture because Cawston is such an arid environment. Also, the cover is supposed to help with preventing the weeds from growing too savagely. We'll see how that works out.

That afternoon, we moved to the next field to plant tomato plants. There are an enormous variety of tomatoes being planted at Klippers Organics, and I look forward to getting to know all the varieties. It appears that tomatoes do best when they are seeded inside and allowed to grow in a green house until about 4 inches. The trays of tomatoes are then taken out of the protective greenhouse environment and laid outside for a few days to toughen up before being planted in the ground. The tomatoes too are planted beneath plastic rows, however the tomatoes are only planted one across and require about a foot spacing between each plant. For efficiency sake, the plastic and irrigation (which is a drip line underneath the plastic) was laid in the morning, then Annamarie punctured the holes in the plastic one foot apart, we then laid the tomato plants out by each of the holes and the final step was to push the plant deep into the ground. With tomatoes, you want to plant them very deep because all the furry bits on the stem of a seedling will become roots if covered in soil. This will allow each plant to have a more extensive root system and be better stabilized from the elements.

While we organized the plants, Annamarie took care of keeping track of which varieties were planted where. (Definitely a log book day!)


Tuesday was similar. I started with weeding the strawberry field of cooch grass. I don't know much about this grass, but it's roots were plenty in our strawberry field. After 3 hrs of raking and pulling, it appeared that the situation was better, but to an onlooker they would not have believed we had accomplished anything!

The spaces between the rows of strawberries that were already planted were being mulched with straw. In one of the straw boxes we had a nice morning surprised and found five little quail eggs. Kirsten ate them for lunch.

In the afternoon, we started bagging 4lb Spartan apples still left from the fall for the upcoming Trout Lake farmers' market. Again, it is important to know how to put all the produce to use, so those apples that were too bruised or rotten to be bagged will either be dried, made into cider or fed to the chickens. I have already sliced up six of the apples and they are drying in our kitchen dehydrator as we speak. Yum!

Opening weekend last year Klippers sold around 210 bags of apples at Trout Lake. Since the weather is supposed to be a little 'damp' this year, we only bagged 160 bags which we completed in just under an hour.


My last job for the afternoon was to finish washing the chicken eggs for the market. Eggs are always a popular item at farmers' markets. Klippers sells their eggs for $6.00 a dozen and today we finished packaging 210 dozen to take to the market this weekend. Hopefully they sell!

Essentially, we start with the oldest eggs (which are really only a few days older than the newest), dump them in a big bin of water, and scrub off any dirt or crap that may be on the egg. For the most part they are pretty clean, but we also have to watch out for eggs with cracks or eggs that are broken. If they are completely broken, the eggs obviously are useless and get tossed. If there is a crack in the egg, we keep them for, you guessed it, the apprentices! Also though, I have learned if the egg is broken but you can see that the inner membrane of the egg has not been ruptured, you can still eat the egg. Having learned that membranes are designed to allow substances and particles to move in and out of it, I have decided that I would prefer not to eat the broken eggs that have their membranes intact. However, I am more than happy to eat the eggs with cracks in their outer shell or ones that or just too massive to fit into the egg cartons - I am always filled with joy when we find really humungous eggs.

In our storage trailer, we have hundreds of egg cartons that people have been so kind to return to us to use or reuse. It always makes me wonder what kind of people remember to turn in their egg cartons on a weekly basis. Who are they? What are they like? What are the life values of these people? I know it doesn't seem like a very difficult thing to do, but I have been so trained to recycle that as soon as I have emptied my egg cartons or reusable bottles, they are out of my house ready for pickup. Today, packaging the eggs and seeing all the different brands and companies of egg cartons people had donated for us to use, furthered my curiosity on this subject. I am interested to meet the 'egg people' at the market and see what they are like.

In other news, Klippers might be getting a cow! I really hope that this happens because it will definitely be an awesome supplement to our current diet and decrease our monthly food bill. But a cow does need to be milked EVERY DAY. It is definitely a commitment.